Engineering open ecosystems: Inside the process of building collaboration at scale

In this session, Francisco discusses the importance of engineering successful open source projects, emphasizing the need for collaboration among various stakeholders such as industry leaders, developers, and small to medium enterprises. He explains that open source ecosystems thrive on structured interactions rather than spontaneous occurrences, highlighting the roles different parties play in ensuring project credibility, innovation, and agility. The speaker outlines how organizations can align their business challenges with open source solutions, ultimately leading to shared costs and reduced development times. Francisco also underscores the significance of governance provided by foundations, which foster environments conducive to innovation and compliance within the open source framework. Throughout the talk, he encourages engagement and contribution to enhance the ecosystem.

[music] >> Right everyone, thank you very much for for attending the session. Uh >> [sighs] >> All right, a little bit about me. I do know some of you as a part of the community, part of the members. Uh my name is Francisco. I've been uh working with the ecosystem development at the Eclipse Foundation. And uh mostly uh driving industry collaboration uh at scale and working across

multiple initiatives. So, I've been involved with many of the working groups that we have and many of those. And I'm getting a little bit to to the point on telling you exactly what what we have been doing with the ecosystem development. If you want uh to have a chat, talk about the Eclipse Foundation initiatives, feel free to scan. It's my It's my LinkedIn. We can have a

We can have a chat. >> [snorts] >> All right. So, successful open source projects are engineered. That basically means that they do not happen uh out of nowhere. They're not given. They're planned and they are engineered They're They're crafted, so to say. So, most of the successful project projects that we have, they require a lot of coordination amongst our internal stakeholders, but also the external stakeholders, so

the community. So, basically you and and and us. >> There are many things in these projects that they basically tell to why do we need to engineer them. So, think about it. If you think about competitors working together at the same table and sharing the same problems. Sometimes in this industry you see this kind of like collaboration amongst different stakeholders. They might have a joint venture, a

project with the beginning, with a development, and with an end. But, in many cases in our working groups, we have this ongoing collaboration. So, competitors working together, not necessarily with a deadline or anything like that. So, they they're basically sharing costs of development together, trying to reach solutions together, trying to innovate together. So, in that sense, it is something that doesn't happen naturally. Right? So, an ecosystem

within open source, it is not a crowd. It is not a mess. It is a system. So, we try to bring all of these different players together to try to build the ecosystem in in a way that it's balanced enough, and let's say allows the project to grow in an organic way. So, in a sense, the balance that it requires. So, industry leaders, developers, SMEs, and foundations,

all of those have their own say, their own take into the [snorts] into the equation. We know that industry leaders, so the the large corporations, the strategic members, so to say, that we have, they bring that legitimacy to the project, meaning, okay, I'll take a look at this. I look at these guys. Okay, that's credible, right? They wouldn't join a project that they wouldn't put their name,

their brand attached to a project I mean, it gives the credibility that the project needs to succeed. That's their one of their roles. Then, we have the developers. They bring the innovation. And when I talk about innovation, it's not the fluff innovation. It can be even to a basic level. For example, you're working in an industry, you're building a process, and that process you're doing a way,

then your competitor, he's doing that in a different way. You both have the same problem. He does it in a way, does it another way. We have the platform where these two can share and learn from each other. That is a way to innovate, right? You bring to your company some other way of doing the same process from another corporate culture, from another perspective, from from something

else. That that's that's the kind of thing we want to we want the kind of interaction we want with the with the developers. And then SMEs, SMEs bring that agility that the industry leaders don't necessarily have, right? Because the outcome of these projects, many times we have innovative solutions. Many times we have uh new ways of doing things which are still relevant or old or legacy, whatever.

SMEs have the chance to implement this faster, and they have a chance to show the industry like uh how much can you change and how fast can you change, right? But then you need an environment for You need a kind of like a a safe space for these for this entire infrastructure, this entire project, you name it, for for it to to flourish and to to come

to fruition, to to to deliver, right? And And that place are the foundations. So, we give the government governance, we give the platform, we give the the place for that to develop, the place for to to flourish, as I said. But at the same time, many of our projects have other foundations joining. So, for example, the Open Regulatory Compliance Working Group uh you folks probably heard a

lot about the about the CRA and about the the the the Compliance Working Group. That working group has 20 different foundations as part of the initiative. not only our we I mean, we are hosting, yeah, they are aligned with us in that project. So, they are there to contribute as well and to bring that layer of governance as well to the project. in practice, how does this

flow work of of building of building a project or building even a working group, right? How How does it How does it go? First, you start with the business challenge that will deliver value, right? So, so picture any kind of challenge. It can be technical, it can be related to compliance, it can be whatever. When you have the challenge, most companies have three options. Either they will

go open source or they will do something in-house or they will get something from a vendor. That is the point when a strategic decision is made. For the sake of the presentation, let's imagine that this decision was made to go with open source, right? Once you make the decision of going with open source, that is beyond that project, that scope of the project that you're thinking about

because it is a strategic decision that allows you to enter into a ecosystem. our previous talk was about was about Temurin and that's it's it's a great example. So, Adoptium is a working group that oversees Tamarind. say I want to to make usage of of of Tamarind in my project, something about standardization, which involves also Eclipse Dataspace. That software, whatever is the outcome of my project, will

be under the scope of the CRA. So, look at this, different touch points within the ecosystem of the Eclipse So, that is my point that in in in the in the moment you make the strategic decision to make usage of open source, that opens so many doors. Cuz now the stack you had has this extra option of growing with with open source as well. And once you're

there, makes total sense to engage as much as possible, right? To make it to make it as better as possible. Both from the benefit both from the perspective of getting a benefit out of it, but also to contribute, right? And also to have a Also to to for example present to the industry the way you see the problem, so, that uh ecosystem interaction leads to alignment, collaboration,

and contribution. Right? It goes both ways. So, it doesn't work in a way that many ti- actually many times I hear that when I'm talking to companies that like, "Okay, okay, so you have this open source project. I invest this amount, and then I get this." It doesn't work like that, you know? It's It doesn't It doesn't Open source We We Everyone has said that already. Open

source is not like free beer. Open source is like going to the gym. You pay, but you got to do the exercise yourself. but then you know that the benefit that you get out of it, right? Everybody does. It is a relatively the same the same uh uh concept. So, in that sense, you have the outcomes. We all know what they are, right? We have faster development.

You have a lower costs because you're sharing costs, right? You're not doing it in-house. You have a lower costs, and it is safer. When I talk about safety here, I'm not only mentioning the the security the cybersecurity aspect of it, you can talk about safety. You can include, for example, licensing. When you're using an open source project uh from the Eclipse Foundation specifically, are in bringing it

also the security that you're not going to be surprised by a license change out of nowhere, and uh I don't know, needing to pay 10 times what you used to pay before from a from a basic vendor. So, you probably know what I'm talking about. Anyways, um where ecosystems actually move is with these interactions that I mentioned before. So, you have industry conversations. So, we we try

to keep ourselves all the time talking to the industry and getting updated to what's going on, what are the needs. And then we identify strategic touch points. What are those? Okay, there's this upcoming new thing, but we do have an infrastructure here built to deal with that. And then these emerging needs, right? We got to get compliant. We got to get this done. We got to get

this somehow developed Those are the community signals. So, we get those to help us, in a sense, understand better these needs, and at the same time be able to address in a timely manner. Cross ecosystem links are exactly what I mentioned before. It's this opportunity that you have. So, once you have the foot in the door, make use of it. If you already are, if you understand

the principle of open source, if you collaboration, that goes all the way. Even though our initiatives are so diverse, they all go around the same principle of collaboration, of neutrality, you know? it is a major advantage to make usage of it in different working groups. And then these moments of alignment, they create new things, you know? So, when you look at our initiatives, we are constantly onboarding

new ones. So, these moments of alignment, they can also create new things. So, many times we see these emerging needs, many times we see these industry trends, and we can create things out of that. So, we can create working groups, we can create projects, we can onboard new initiatives from companies. So, completely open to call When we say that we are open to collaborate, that also means

that if you have an idea, if you have a project, you think there's potential, we would be more than willing to talk about it and and see how can we align with our existing ecosystem and So, to finalize, this sees a system. It is not luck. None of that is is built on luck, on "Okay, so you naturally found these uh floating around and and and made

it happen." No. We build it based on the existing resources, based on new inputs, based on new trends, and so on. All right. Thank you very much. >> [applause]