Fostering open source culture (Interview)

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29:26You mentioned having some case studies. I don't know if you have any cases around this, but the question really is, is like, aside from Kubernetes, that's a good example of Google open sourcing it, not holding on to it. They gave it to the foundation. What are other good examples? And maybe you've written about them in your book. I'm not sure. That are beyond Kubernetes. that are examples of a large corporation giving something or even a smaller startup even, like not even so much a corporation, but like what are some of their examples beyond Kubernetes? Yeah, I think the book has about 40 plus case studies.

30:04And these are case studies from companies like Mercedes-Benz, Bloomberg, Toyota, GitHub, Infosys, Dell, Amazon, a wide range of companies, Fidelity, Johns Hopkins, UC Santa Cruz, so from a wide range of verticals as well. And these case studies really talk about why they care about open source culture and what have they done within their company to foster that open source culture. So, for example, for Bloomberg, one of their big corporate philosophies is philanthropy. and for them, contributing to open source fundamentally aligns with that corporate philosophy. And as a matter of fact, what they also do is for developers who contribute to open source, they do matching dollars.

30:56Now that, okay, hey, we're going to contribute dollars to an open source foundation of your choice. So in that sense, lots of these. So the beauty of these case studies is no matter where you are in your journey, are you starting? Are you an expert? because the wide range of case studies that have been incorporated into the book, there is something for everybody. And frankly, I reviewed each and every of these case studies. I did not write them because they were written by 55 contributing authors. But even to date, and I'm sure over the next several months and years, whenever I read these case studies, aha, I missed this nugget.

31:34And this is how I can apply to my day-to-day lives. I think in that sense, there are lots and lots of different case studies. So I would encourage you readers to go through the book and say, which vertical do you align with? Oh, maybe I'm a medical in the pharma industry. So I will take a look at Johns Hopkins. Maybe I'm a retailer. I'll take a look at Amazon. Maybe I'm a GSI. I'm going to take a look at that. I'm a device manufacturer. I'll take a look at Dell case study. Or I'm into a technology company. Several examples in there. So I think in that sense, hopefully the diversity, the quality and the quantity of case studies gives everybody a nugget that they can pick up and apply into their day to day work.

32:20I think going back to the why is really important and well said by you, because if you have a solid why that aligns with your business incentives, everything else kind of makes sense. And if you don't, then you're kind of perpendicular and you shouldn't be doing this in the first place. And so if you can find the why right away, I think Swift is another good example. You brought that one up, Arun, where it's like Apple put a lot into Swift. And if they just wanted an awesome language for iOS or Apple platform engineers, they probably didn't need open source. And of course, there's non-open source languages of the past that are just fine for that.

32:56But if they want a general purpose programming language that's adopted by everyone around the world, it had to be open source. And so that was their why is like, we want this to be more impactful than merely the next best language, not the next best, the best language they think for developing Apple apps. And so that's another good one where it's like, that was a huge decision because think of how much money they had in the Swift, you know, just engineering hours. It was like five years of just Chris Latner working on it. And then they brought a team in and like all this stuff. And then they got all this stuff rewritten in Swift.

33:29And so that's a huge investment that someone said, yeah, we're going to go ahead and give it away to the world in order to accomplish our business goals. And I think that's totally fine. It makes complete sense. Not everything is merely altruism. It's cool with Bloomberg that they have that in their mission statement or whatever. Like philanthropy is one of our core incentives at Bloomberg. Not every business does that. But if you can find your why, then the details have to be figured out and managed, but they're just details. Correct. I think you're putting it very well. There is different companies have different whys and each company has different whys for different projects, as a matter of fact.

34:11But locking that down, writing it down is super important because oftentimes it's brewing in your head. So usually when any leader comes to me that, OK, we want to open source this project, my first question is why? and there is a corporate altruism, as you said, you know, in some cases, more often than not, it's an enlightened self-interest. Okay, this is where it's going to serve me, and in the process, it's going to serve the world as well. It's totally a fair gesture, as a matter of fact. I mean, one of the efforts, like, I think, Adam, you were asking, Intel contributed, for example, one API, right?

34:47So we created this one API that's going to be a unified API across different accelerator architectures. So we created this for our benefit, but then over the period of time, we realized, hey, you know, this could benefit the world as well. So over a couple of years ago, we created this thing called UXL Foundation, Uniform Acceleration Foundation. So that's the foundation that we created, brought a whole bunch of members together over there. And now that thing is taking a life of its own. So in that sense, the whole idea was, if this is indeed an API, unified API, then everybody needs to partner in and everybody needs an equal stake at the table so that they can define what the life of it's going to look like.

35:28Because if you want that collective engineering effort, there is no other way without going out in the open source. And that the diversity of thoughts is what I really enjoy in the open source journey. We're steeped in open source, of course, but how does this reflect into the other open source, a.k.a. inner source? I was just leafing through the GitHub case study really quick while we're having this conversation. I was just looking at how essentially their inner source, you know, GitHub began as a social coding platform. We all know GitHub. I don't need to tell you what that is. But their practice of inner source really became this sort of internal, like basically open source behind the firewall inside GitHub.

36:14How does that manifest in a lot of these companies? Like, is that truly open source? What are they calling it? Is it licensed? How do you manifest inner source? What begins that? Is it simply our software and you can contribute? Or how does that manifest? I think the biggest reason that I've seen inner source happening are multifold. First is you want to avoid duplication of code. You know, how many loggers do you need in a world, right? In a company, if everybody is writing a same ETL app, there is no point doing that code duplication. So how can I create that discipline where inside the company, when you're not within the firewall, you're not going outside, it's only engineers from the company that can contribute to it.

37:04So hopefully you can be a bit more open. So in that sense, how do you publish that repo so that others in the company understand this ETL app is being built and we can all contribute to that? Again, very much open source philosophy that 80 % of my task is already done with that one ETL app. I just need to put 20 % more effort to customize it for my need. And if I contribute it back upstream inside the inner source repo itself, that will do my job. So that's one. The second part of it is, you know, a lot of the companies have certain stricter requirements that what you can or cannot do in open source.

37:45Inner source basically is bringing that open source practice inside the firewall. So that's really a good way by which you can coach your employees, train your employees on all the open source skills with much less risk. oftentimes companies are under a trepidation that oh you know what if this person wearing my company hoodie you know commit something out in the public is going to look really bad you know that one person will define the whole company which is generally not true at all you know everybody make mistake giving people a chance to recover from the mistake is exactly what defines them to be more successful but it is what it is so inner source in that sense provides that learning opportunity platform where they can practice all of the open source practices inside the company.

38:39GitHub definitely has a very excellent case study in that. There is a case study by InnerSource Commons by Gail and Russ over there as well because they really call out in terms of all the fun things that have happened within InnerSource Commons because that provides common terminology. They run an InnerSource Commons gathering on a regular basis. They have lots of InnerSource case studies over there. So you can start looking at it on all the fun things that are happening in the InnerSource space. And then the third reason that I've seen it is you could see potentially InnerSource as a stepping stone, you know, a stepping stone to going to open source.

39:19So, for example, a project started. You want to see how the internal collaboration is going to look like, because oftentimes teams don't recognize, don't realize that, hey, I built a project before I release it to open source. I don't know what level of support I would need. Do I need 30 % more engineering if pull requests start coming in? How am I going to manage them? If people file issues, if they are not aligned with my roadmap, how does that work out? So again, InnerSource kind of gives them that feeling as a stepping stone to going to open source that, okay, this looks like, okay, I understand my engineering efforts are not going up by 30%, by only 10%.

40:01And maybe when I go to open source, they will double up to 20%. So it helps them with their resource planning and their roadmap and all of those things. So in that sense, InnerSource is very, very effective. And Intel has a very large InnerSource practice. We have hundreds and thousands of repos here, which are run on an internal platform. Very nice nomenclature. So it kind of calls out, are you looking by a language? Are you looking by a technology? Are you looking by a business unit? So you can start filtering your repos. And that really significantly improves the discoverability of the entire element that we were talking about earlier.

40:39So I think in that sense, InnerSource is definitely a key factor that allows you to be on that open source journey in a much more constrained environment and giving executives that feeling that, yeah, nothing is lost here, it's all happening within the company. And most importantly, giving them a comfort feeling that when these people go out, they're trained on these tools very well. It seems like almost like a proving ground for open source at large. It's like if you don't know what open source is or Jared, back to the question you asked before, like what are the hard questions or what are the pushbacks you get from management?

41:10I feel like if you can prove this is how Intersource works. Now, imagine how it works for the world. You know, like it's this, you know, our safe world behind our firewall, controllable, you know, all those things. It's still unclear to me, though, how you begin. Is it simply like a private repo on GitHub? Is there a way to dashboard this stuff? How do you truly, you know, spark this? It seems like it's bottoms up, like where it's I've got this thing I think this team or these other teams could use. I still don't understand how you manifest inner source. Is it just, you know, behind authentication and authorization?

41:52Is that what it is? I'll give you two examples. One of them is from Apple. Like the IT team from there reached out that folks were recognizing the ETL example that I gave earlier, that there are six different ETLs that are happening. It's a waste of resource, waste of time and a waste of engineering resource. Now, how do we consolidate all of them together? So essentially what we did is, from ground up, we built up an inner source org. And we built up a nomenclature that, okay, folks, as you are creating these new projects, and even within the company, there could be sometimes a firewall, right?

42:31Like, oh, IT team only want to collaborate among themselves, which is fine, whatever the structure is. So we created an org, internal org, on a GitHub platform or whatever your Git platform is. We created an internal org and said that, okay, folks, before you create a new project, take a look at that org. There is some discoverability mechanism. There is some tagging mechanism. You can start looking at dashboards in terms of how healthy the project is, how many other teams across the company have adopted it, what is the bug fixing rate, what is the pull request approval rate. because that kind of shows the health of the project in that sense.

43:14Because if anybody is coming and looking at an open source project, that's what they would look at. Why not adopt the exact same practice inside the company? So that's sort of how we started Ground Up. It took a while for us to gain traction. We ran an Inner Source event internally. A lot more curated people because then they're coming to learn about Inner Source. And we had to intentionally and very deliberately build those relationships and connection. So it took a time, but then the practice kicked off. I came to Intel. At Intel, there was already an effort that was happening on that. So we have 100 ,000 plus repos.

43:51Those were all put onto the platform. They were all on a wide range of CICD systems, wide range of Git repos, wide range of orgs. So all of that was automatically then thought about that. Okay, how do we bring this into inner source again? Improve the discoverability, cut down the cost on running this wide variety of CI, these CD systems, cut down the cost by doing this wide range of orgs, et cetera. So that really allowed us to minimize the cost and then also improve the engineering time that is required. I already found 70 % of my work done and I'm just going to contribute to that project and that really cuts on my engineering time.

44:30And now I'm also able to exchange that mind, that knowledge with another engineering team who's having a similar issue. So in that sense, it continues to build that intellectual knowledge as opposed to intellectual property, you know, for your work and you continue to make progress. I think there is no one right answer here. It really depends upon where you are in the journey and how you want to start about it. Yeah, I like that. I mean, I like it seems like some of the key characteristics are, you know, organization, some sort of org that says okay we're gonna we're gonna make this a thing this is not a thing we're making a thing done that's easy you mentioned nomenclature so how do we describe this stuff and maybe each company is a little different with the way they describe it maybe there's certain term terms across all inner source organizations across different companies just make sense and there's some sort of shared knowledge or shared nomenclature and then you've got sort of visibility okay i don't want to recreate the wheel i don't want to go out to the open source land because is I can't play there.

45:31I got to play in business user land, not open source user land. And so where can I find that stuff? And then gauge my own desires. Like, are they maintaining it well? Does it solve my true problems? Can I actually contribute all these different things that you would consider? I love though, how this manifests to say, these are the open source culture mechanisms you would care about. I love how that has the possibility, I suppose, of getting people to truly understand what open source at large works and how it works versus simply just how it works internally? I think one of the things that we don't talk often about is as new developers are getting on board, they're coming fresh out of college.

46:17I mean, a lot of the developers understand open source really well, but for developers who don't understand open source well, who have that fear of failure, that, oh, it's going to spoil my career, it may not look good on my career or whatever, right? One of the best keynotes I heard at KubeCon was this person said, hey, I burned down a 10 ,000 node Kubernetes cluster at Spotify. And a week later, I did that again. And my manager said, go give this keynote and how you recovered from it. So I think InnerSource in that, I mean, it's a bold move. And I really love it. I admire it because that's how I am.

46:58but not everybody is like that, right? So in that sense, InnerSource really gives that safe space for people to like, okay, I'm going to refine my skills in my own comfortable environment and I'm going to try this out. I played with the CID system. I know how to get forked. I know how to get merge it. I know how to rebase. And I'm learning those internal tools. So that's from the engineering perspective. On the other side, from the InnerSource team, doing that advocacy, providing those tools, running those workshops, running those internal hackathons, you know, that, okay, let's get together. Let's figure out what this project is.

47:34Let me guide you how this works. And that opens up the avenues and the opportunities for the engineer that when I go out in the public, it's very much like that. It's just that the person on the other side is from a different company. That's cool. So you dedicate an entire chapter to internal events. You just mentioned a couple of things right there. And while we're talking inner, it was a surprise to me to see a chapter on internal events because I'm not in the know, but apparently you are. And so tell us why that is like a whole chapter of your book and why that's so important inside organizations in order to foster this open source ethos.

48:12I think it's super important. And I'm, again, looking at the chapters here, the types of internal events that I talk about in that book is like workshops where you are bringing people and teaching them that, okay, let me tell you how to be an effective Git user. So hackathons, where you bring a project and say, let's hack on this together. So now that you've learned the skill, let's apply this to a real-time project. Because, you know, just a workshop and hackathons is just a very different nature. Bring those external guest speakers. You know, these are luminaries across the industry that you can bring them on.

48:47That way you get to hear their story. You feel inspired about it. Internal projects, where you may say that, okay, I'm just going to run a hobby project. and on a daily basis, I'm feeling the need that I need to do this again and again and again. So every knowledge that I've learned so far, I'm going to spin up an internal project, maybe an inner source as a matter of fact. Having those topical summits, I remember when we did the Open Ecosystem Summit at Intel a couple of years ago, there were about 2 ,500 people that showed up and a lot of internal discovery happened. Oh, I did not know you were working on this project.

49:23I did not know you were working on this effort. So that really allowed them to connect with each other and then join hands. Very little experience when we ran the first Kubernetes summit at Apple. There were 1 ,000 plus people that showed up at Apple to that Kubernetes summit. And Apple, as you understand the company culture, is very walled across different BUs. But for the open source topic like Kubernetes, they were all able to share information. and they recognize that the technical challenges are very similar because they know exactly how the Kubernetes is deployed. They know the internal terminology, the entire architecture.

50:05So they can talk at a very much elevated level in that sense. And that essentially brings that internal community. There's a particular chapter dedicated on how do you organize the hackathons and how do you go about doing those hackathons? So I think it's super important, the relevance of those internal events, because those internal events help you prepare to be a better citizen out of the open source world. They help you bridge the gap, connect to the existing open source elements. So a lot of fun. I think it's very, very relevant. And I've seen the importance of these internal events all across.

50:42And in that chapter, there is case studies by BlackRock, Infosys, Intel, and SUSE in terms of how they have leveraged these case studies, how they have leveraged internal events. Like I remember SUSE talks about something like Hack Week, where they will have a week dedicated to hackathons. No work done during that time, but essentially bring a project in, hack on it. And that incentive by the top management is really big time and encourages employees that it's okay to do that. And that is what is fundamental. You mentioned the thousand people that showed up to that first Apple Kubernetes event.

51:23You remind me of an old show he did with a late, great Dan Cohn. One of my favorite episode titles ever, Adam, if you remember this one, we named it Kubernetes Brings All the Cloud Natives to the Yard. I love that. We were just so surprised at how many, like the growth of KubeCon and just how excited people were for Kubernetes back in the late teens. It was amazing. Like KubeCon doubled in size every year for the first five years or something crazy like that. And it was probably a surprise at the time that a thousand people showed up, but probably shouldn't have been because, man, people were just interested in Kubernetes for sure.

52:00Yeah, for sure. That was a good title, Jared. Good call back.

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55:20Hackathons include a special hit training for open source developers. They provide time-boxed and concentrated bursts of engagement that push participants to deliver impactful contributions within short time frames. I think that's a great analogy because I've always struggled to understand how you can do a hackathon at a company. I get it for, you know, hey, come. And it's sort of like, because the most thing, the thing we struggle with as human beings, obviously we're human beings, right? is that we desire and thrive in connection, right? You can't expect innovation or things to happen unless you connect with others.

55:58And I think this whole part here on like internal events is enabling me inside of a company to get to know somebody else. And even if I go and just meet one person or two people, now I've got more connection in the company. I've got a deeper, deeper roots, so to speak. Like, so my, my, uh, I'm not leaving anytime soon. If I feel connected, if I feel invited and then you take a thing like a hackathon, which I was like, how do you, how do you do that? Well, to company, well, you're just sort of taking the inner source you may already have spun up and you're saying, go out, have fun, meet people, do fun things, innovate.

56:35Correct. Yeah. No, I think when I was writing that chapter, I was thinking in terms of what do I do in my daily life? And Jared, thank you for the reference. I've been a long time athlete. And this morning, as a matter of fact, my workout was a HIIT workout. And I'm a lifetime runner. So I've been running for a very long time. But in order to maintain that running, you can't keep running every day because that leads to a burnout. Some people do, which is great for them. But for me, I want to run. But then I want to also get equally strength trained so that I can be a more effective runner. And if I bring that analogy essentially to open source, that's exactly what it is.

57:17You know, in open source, new tools keep coming all the time. And in order to understand those tools, that high intensity interval training is what is required. Because what I'm doing is for one hour, I'm all in. I've cut down all noises and distractions from my life. I just want to learn this tool. I want to fail in that tool again and again and again so that I understand the way this works, the way it doesn't work, and what are the boundary conditions, what are the normal happy path, all of that. So once I understand that, then I can go back to my normal running because then I can say, aha, I'm stronger in this area and I can apply that skill into my day-to-day life.

57:57So I think it's super important in that sense on taking that intense exercise. It could be a workshop. It could be a hackathon. whatever it is. And in hackathon, again, Adam, as you called out, it's really a good way to engage with other people because no matter which business unit you are from, you are sitting together for a common purpose. And that pair programming concept is very extreme in that sense, right? Because you say, aha, I'm thinking it this way. And that diversity of thought immediately comes on to you. and then you are able to make progress on that together. Just the fact that how do I do a code review?

58:37Or if somebody has done a code review on me, how do I accept that feedback? Because don't take it personally. Take it in the technical sense that, yeah, this is a really genuine feedback and accept it. One of the things I talk about often is conflict resolution, right? It's a big one in open source. So often we get confused between personality conflict and task conflict. That, oh, this person has given a feedback. He lives in this part of the world, and that's why he must be giving me this feedback. Keep that aside. It's not about personality conflict. Take it as a task conflict, learn that element, and see how that makes you become an effective coder is what this all should be about.

59:23I feel like we could have an analogy for for the fitness junkies out there like you have hit classes like a hackathon you know pomodoro that's like tabata you know uh coding boot camp well I guess that's just a boot camp I don't already has an analogy but we could uh we could have a bunch of these well that's uh somebody coming in educating on what to eat there you go yeah see I mean in the book you know I'm looking through the chapters here so for example gosh I I wrote this a while back. The hackathons are like HIIT. The guest speakers are like the mentorship and coaching that athletes receive from seasoned experts.

1:00:02That's what guest speakers are. Athletes build muscle memory through repetitive training and hone their skills through simulated game scenarios in practice. That's your internal projects, essentially. And topical summits really dig deep into a particular topic. and these are like-minded individuals, experts that get together. And these are more like, you know, hey, I'm going to a bootcamp here and all sitting together, really discussing that topic. So I think, yes, in that sense, you're right, Jared. It's very much - Well, you beat me to it. I didn't know you already went through such a fleshed out exercise, but yeah, good metaphors for sure for those interested in such things as fitness.

1:00:44That's good for you. That's good for you. That's good for you. Not for you, Adam? Well, I like fitness. I'm done with the fitness so Arun share more of your your your fitness bent like you said you run a lot give us some stats how long have you been running how far do you run how fast do you run etc I've been running for 40 years for a long time for a very long time I've done 35 half and full marathons around the world wow I think 2021 was my most running year I ran 2000 plus miles that year, which is an average of five and a half mile every day. So that was the most extreme running year. Now I'm on a much more easier scale.

1:01:34It's about 10k every four or five days a week. And the other two days are lifting. So I do work out every day. The days I don't work out, I feel very like I'm not very myself. So I work out every day. This morning I had a seven o 'clock meeting. That means I got up at five, did my one hour workout. I have a full pull-up cage in my garage. It was a full on 50 minute, 55 minute workout. I pushed to the limit, all sorts of stuff, you know, box jumps, ball slams, bench press, pull-up bars, all sorts of crazy stuff. So today was my running day because it was raining. but otherwise like yesterday was a 10k the day before was a 10k and all of those stats are available on my Strava.

1:02:24Oh that's cool so you do that all by yourself or do you have a partner in crime like you sometimes for me I get more motivated when I have an accountability partner or something. I'm all by myself you know my schedules are been like very early in the morning and I gotta go drop my son to school get the breakfast ready for the morning for family in the morning so i do like really early in the morning um most of the days i'm getting up around 5 5 15 you know hit the road by 5 30 or so do an hour workout and back in time for the first seven o 'clock meeting very impressive yeah very impressive i find if i have i like an accountability partner jared but i find if i have to coordinate with somebody else it slows me down you know i I can't.

1:03:12I got to spend an extra half hour or just some buffer in there to deal with the, hey, how you doing today? Let's get going. You almost need somebody who's like super strict. Don't talk to me. Okay. Just don't even say my name. Just get to the work. Yeah. You want somebody who's in the same mindset as you are, which is like, neither one of us want to be here. Can't find that person in my life. I can't find that person. That's what I'm trying to say. I agree, but I can't find that person. just for me it's like if i'm gonna get up early i have to have something to where if i don't do it i'm letting somebody else down because i'm fine with disappointing myself i do it all the time you know but to disappoint someone else is like just harder on me so i'll get up for them but not for me you know well apparently you're self-motivated i guess yeah one of the very exciting things we did last year um was we went i took the entire family to kilimanjaro and we all hike the summit.

1:04:08So my younger son and I are big into fitness, but I train my older son and my wife. But I'm really, really grateful that we could actually summit Kilimanjaro. And then literally in about a couple of weeks, we are again going on scattered trips, but we're going to Patagonia. Well, my son and my wife are going to Patagonia. And then I'll be joining my son on a beautiful expedition to antarctica and so all of those really require a high level of fitness um grateful that we were able to do that so provide a comparison for us difficulty and pain of summiting mount kilimanjaro or authoring a book oh authoring a book was easy i think it was very Really?

1:04:54Yeah, yeah, yeah. And my experience, see, frankly, in 2023 December is when I did all of my writing. I pretty much did all of my writing within two weeks. You just cranked it out. Yeah, yeah. Just two weeks. Most people say that writing a book is like the hardest thing they've ever done. No, no. I mean, this was my seventh book too, right? It's too easy. So I think I've done that for a while. Oh, this is your seventh book. Okay. So you have some experience. I've been writing for a while. And particularly for this book, I've always been practicing this. So it was more about structuring my thought and putting it into a chapter format.

1:05:34A lot of the heavy lifting, I would say, was really working with those 40 plus companies, 40 plus case studies, getting their management approval, PR approval, helping them build a use case and all that, kind of refining their case studies. That's where the biggest heavy lifting was. So that's where we were. that's where it spent a lot of our time. Kilimanjaro was easy as well, as a matter of fact, because I run regularly. I lift heavily. What's hard for you? Tell someone what's hard. I think I take things, you know, as they come and just live in a peaceful, mindful manner. I would say the only hard part was the last day where they woke us up at 10 in the night and we hiked all night to reach the summit at seven in the morning and then come back the same night, come back the same day.

1:06:27So we started like 10 p.m. We hiked up, we came down, took an hour break for lunch and then hike further down at a lower elevation. So it was about 5 ,000 feet up and about 6 ,000 feet down in the same day in a stretch of like about 16 odd hours. And that was tiring. I was like, we slept like a log after that. Down sometimes is harder than up, isn't it? Down sometimes is actually, down is always hard, you know, a lot more impact on your knees. And the grade is pretty intense. I think that took a bit of a toll on the body. I feel like the down is almost more dangerous than the up sometimes because you can - Correct.

1:07:07You can, there's a lot, there's just, you almost have a faster pace because you're naturally being assisted by gravity. Right. But then you're like, you know, your knee buckles, your ankle twists, or like your sure footing may not be sure footing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And particularly because when we were going up, it was all during night, right? Because we started at 11, 10 p.m. we got up, 11 p.m. we started the hike, and we didn't see sun until 6.30, 7 in the morning. So it was all hike during the night. So with my headlamp, all I'm seeing is the person, the shoes in front of me, and I'm just chugging along as they're going through switchbacks, whatever.

1:07:42So you just chug, chug, chug. Well, why did you start that? Did you want to see sunrise? Oh, the whole idea was to see sunrise at the summit. That was one. And the second reason was you don't want to stay at the summit because Kilimanjaro is, what, 19.3 ,441 feet. So at that elevation, usually afternoons are a bit tricky. The thunderstorms can appear. So they want you to get back from a higher elevation before noon kicks in. Gotcha. I think going back to the book, one of the elements that we missed talking about is the relevance of open source foundations. And that's pretty big, actually. You know, we kind of touched upon that topic earlier in the podcast.

1:08:25Open source foundations like Apache, Eclipse, Linux Foundation, of course, is big. And I am myself on the CNCF governing board and OpenSSF governing board and the chair for both the governing boards, it's very important that enterprises understand the relevance of joining these foundations and their different tiers of membership. Because joining those foundations really helps you understand all the good things that are happening in the foundation, connects with similar-minded leaders, and again, becomes a hiring magnet essentially. That, okay, why Intel is joining over there, Intel really cares about the open source culture and other open source leaders get influenced that, okay, I want to work at Intel and I want to build my open source career.

1:09:15I remember when I joined Amazon, one of the first events we did, we got up on the reInvent stage and we said, hey, build your open source career at Amazon. And this was back in 2017. And that got a lot of applause because essentially Adrian Cockcroft, my manager who hired me at that point of time, he was big into open source. I've always been big into open source as well. bringing two large open source leaders that are credible in the open source community and saying, hey, we're joining this. I wrote the six pager for Amazon to join Cloud Native Computing Foundation. And bringing that credibility and saying, hey, we're joining in there really goes a long way in, again, fostering that open source culture.

1:10:00I'm glad you mentioned that because I think the foundations are really important. It's always a grab bag of how you perceive membership, right? Like you might say, oh, this is necessary because you got to support it in cost. But then you think, well, is that pay to play? Does that get me a seat at the board, so to speak? You know, does that give me access no one else gets? And the usual answer, the obvious best answer is probably no, unless you're at the wrong foundation. And that's just like a different foundation. But, you know, I think that's really important you bring that up because I think that the foundations, they give the neutrality, right?

1:10:34They get the neutrality, the formation. And gosh, what has happened with the Linux Foundation over the last 15 years, I'd say, has just been tremendous. I feel like there's some angles where it could be good or it could be bad, like centralized control or centralized organization, so to speak. But a large majority of the most important open source work is being done under the Linux Foundation. And that could be seen as a good thing and potentially as a bad thing for centrality, in terms of centralizing things. But I think it's mostly a good thing that we've got a worthy and organized body that can do that and have such great structure.

1:11:14They've proven to do it well over the many, many years. That is correct. You know, I mean, different foundations operate very differently. They play a very critical role in terms of growing these open source projects. They provide this central functionality like CICD, security audits, legal support, marketing support, event support. So a lot of advantages of these open source foundations. Some foundations give you a seat at the governing board, depending upon what tier of membership you take. Most of the foundations that I'm aware of, they usually have their technical oversight committee or technical advisory committee.

1:11:57Those seats are all elected. Those are not pay to play at all. The maintainership, again, is, again, meritocracy. So, duocracy. And how do you rise up to become a maintainer? So, in that sense, the administrative part and the technical parts are separate. Like, I'm on the governing board. So, we are responsible for the administrative, financial, legal aspect of it. But we have zero say in terms of what the technical roadmap of the foundation is going to look like. And I like that separation of concerns in that sense. But if the technical folks need some budget support, then, for example, in OpenSSF, they come over to the board.

1:12:33But we're also trying to create swim lanes over there where a certain level of funding is not required to be seeking permission aboard every time because we want to create swim lanes where people can go faster on their own. Can you tell us more about duocracy? You just said duocracy. What's this? Yeah, so think about the concept of you do things in open source, and that really helps you rise up in open source. And it really could start with just being a lurker on an open source project, that, okay, I'm just observing what's going on in the open source project, and occasionally jumping in that, okay, hey, I'm participating in the working group, and then I'm starting to participate in the conversation, or I'm jumping into the Slack channel.

1:13:17and first maybe I'm asking my questions, but then slowly as I gain more knowledge into the project, then I can start answering other questions. Then maybe I jump into sort of the overall aspect of looking at other people's code, reviewing people's code. Then maybe I jump into the element of, hey, I'm going to start contributing code and then I'm contributing more serious code. Maybe I'm contributing deeper sections. And that eventually, that duocracy is that whole contribution ladder where you rise up from being a user to a contributor to a committer to a maintainer and different projects at different hierarchy levels or different contribution ladder.

1:14:04But that duocracy is the more you do into the project, the more you are known into the project and the higher your chances of getting a leadership position is. It's not like, hey, Intel is part of the CNCF governing board and Intel must have a maintainer into the project. No, it's purely, purely duocracy. You do the work into the project to rise up to that level of maintainership. I like that. Duocracy. How does one begin? So we got a diverse listenership in our audience. I would say from individual contributor to leadership and everywhere in between. What is a good on-ramp? I know you probably described some versions of this in your book, but what are the best ways to begin this culture shift of inner source, open source, organization, et cetera, if it doesn't exist?

1:14:56Or if it, maybe it's been tried before, but it hasn't been successful. What are some ways to begin for our audience? Yeah, one of the last chapters that's what I was looking at, you know, in the book is really about getting started on your culture change journey, right? A lot of the times, if you continue to do things in a certain way that you've always done, and if you're not challenging the status quo, because change is the only constant. If you're not challenging the status quo, then that's the first thing you need to do. How does open source work for you? You need to overcome your legacy mindsets.

1:15:34That's an important element. And there's a chapter in the book that talks about that part of it. And then the book really gives you like a 10-step framework on how you can jump onto that cultural journey, right? I mean, the diverse audience is great. Having a top-level executive sponsor, because you need that somebody either at the executive level, top executive level, that says, and it doesn't have to be like at the ELT level or the CEO must say that open source is our strategic direction. It could be like, hey, this is a group where a lot of the open source technologies happen and that executive stands up that, yes, this is how I'm going to define the culture of my org and I'm going to actively encourage, allow them to contribute to open source.

1:16:18This is what the incentive mechanism in the companies are. Identify your stakeholders, not just within your team, but outside your team. If there are other business units that are doing similar work, if there are folks in marketing that care about, if there are folks in recruitment that cares about, because end of the day, they want to bring the top talent over there. So how you can start connecting with that? You need to have, I remember when I joined Apple, I think second or third day, I was having a call with somebody and my God, that person was screaming at me. I submitted this pull request so many weeks ago.

1:16:54It has not been approved yet. that it's been stuck into legal, what can I do to help? It was just a listening session, a venting session, essentially. Let that frustration come out. And it's very important to just listen with it. Again, we talked about task conflict, personality conflict. Think in terms of task conflict. What is a task not getting done? Because that person has probably been trying really hard for many weeks, months, and is not getting through. Just understand the task. Just get going on that. Identify sort of the non-core open source areas or maybe the core open source areas where you want to make attraction.

1:17:33Define those walls within which you can do more open source or less open source. I think that's an important area. Create those working groups, for example. At Intel, we have several of those working groups where we teach on the best open source practices. Anybody want to go to an open source project, they can come for education enablement. OSPO does a good part of that, essentially. Definitely having an open source program office goes a long way. So I don't want to give away all the tips from the book. So definitely encourage you - Nah, don't do that. To take a look at the last chapter of the book that gives you that entire framework on how you can get started with it.

1:18:11And there is a section in that chapter which talks about sort of my journey on how I went about building that exactly in these different companies. I was thinking as you were reading that, I don't give all the goods away but at the same time you know will this be you know will this be the book that gets handed to someone when they say how does open source work how can I make it work for my company I hear about this thing called inner source what are the frameworks I feel like you've in two weeks as you said you wrote this book it quickly in two weeks and a lot of the work was case studies and external work and whatnot but I feel like you've you've really organized a lot of your wisdom and thoughts over your decades of experience to really give us the initial steps, if not the full on steps of what it takes to change the culture inside of companies, whether it's inner source or open source or whatever.

1:19:03And so I think you've done a tremendous job. I can't wait to read the entire book personally. I've only leased through the table of contents and some of the stuff with you along this conversation here in my morning here. But I think this is a great framework for what I can see. I mean, I'm really proud of the work you've done here. And I appreciate this being in the world to give that guidance. Because, I mean, crowdsourcing is the plain term, but open source is the future innovation. I think actually, if I can lead through it quickly, page two. I want to read this if you don't mind. You might know what I'm not going to mention.

1:19:38But on page two, you mentioned Marc Andreessen's really famous phrase when he said software is eating the world. And then Jim Zemlin, the executive director and I believe the founder of the Linux Foundation, he said most of that software is open source. And then, of course, our very own Arun Gupta says here in 2024, open source culture sustains innovation. And I feel like what's happening in LLMs and AI, these models being open source, like we're seeing a massive change in accessibility to software, accessibility to models, accessibility to all these things. And the innovation that we're seeing in our world, I mean, open source is one.

1:20:20And that innovation, you've given a great blueprint and on-ramp for so many organizations to say, how can we really be a part of this or put it to work for our company or to truly understand what it is? So I really appreciate this work you've done here for the open source innovation that will come. Thank you. Thank you. I'm really excited about how the book came about to be. I really hope this book is a fire starter for people who want to jump onto their journey, kickstart their journey. Or if you are far along in your journey, look at those case studies and see what other fun things you can find out.

1:20:54Anything left we have not asked you? I know that you've got a lot to share. Have you shared at all? what's left you can even plug something if you wanted to no I think it's really good I think in terms of everything around the book we have talked about it open source culture is such an interesting topic and I've been working on this for such a long time that every time you talk a new story comes out a new perspective comes out and I would I would like people to think about would you go to a potluck and not take a dish of your own? Would you go to a communal garden and just eat all the vegetables and not plant your own vegetable?

1:21:39So that's why open source is like a potluck or a communal garden. So contribute, make it sustained for yourself and for others. And that's the critical element. A perfect note to end on. Thanks, Arun. Thank you so much for having me here.

1:21:58Well, those are wise words. Bring a side, plant some vegetables. Open source is for everyone and it thrives when it includes everyone. And if you didn't know, this full length episode is now on YouTube. We're shipping all of our shows full length to YouTube so you can enjoy them. Chapters, visuals, all the fun things. But let me ask you a question. The hypothetical question, of course. If the changelog wasn't here tomorrow, if you couldn't listen to any more episodes of this show ever again, how would you feel? What do you mean? Sad, devastated, irate, happy. You tell us. Email us at editors at changelog.com because we want to know.

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