Troy Karraker and Aleksandr Kuzminsky presented a session at Percona Live Santa Clara 2017. For the last 5 years, Box has been launching and managing various open source tools. In these years, there have been many hazards that have been avoided, interesting problems that have been solved, and many benefits provided to Box. We would like to share these stories with the community at large and ensure anyone is prepared to launch their own tools into the open source community.

1. Database Open Source @ Box
Troy Karraker and Aleksandr Kuzminsky
Percona Live Santa Clara 2017

2. About Box
Box (NYSE:BOX) is the Cloud Content Management company that empowers enterprises to
revoluMonize how they work by securely connecMng their people, informaMon and
applicaMons. Today, Box powers more than 71,000 businesses globally, including AstraZeneca,
General Electric, P&G, and The GAP. Learn more at www.box.com.
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3. Troy Karraker
• Lives in Phoenix, AZ
• Joined Box in 2015
• Started with MySQL in 2011
• Started with Sys Admin work, moved
to MySQL
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4. Aleksandr Kuzminsky
• Started with MySQL in 2000
• Percona Alumnus (2008 to 2014)
• Joined Box in 2016
• Founder of TwinDB
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5. Objec*ve

6. Agenda
1. ExisMng Box open source tools
2. The benefits of open sourcing a
project
3. Open source process with story Mme.
4. What’s next?
5. Q & A

7. Box Open Source

8. Anemometer
Slow query analyzer
Open sourced in 2012
Minor acMve
development, open for
PRs

9. Raingauge
Frontend for pt-stalk
Open sourced in 2012
Stable, open for PRs

10. etcdb
SQL interface / PEP
249 driver for etcd
Open sourced in 2016
AcMve development

11. Open Source Benefits

12. Types of Benefits
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Benefits to Industry Benefits to Company Benefits to You

13. Benefits to your company
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14. Benefits to your company
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15. Benefits to your company
• PosiMve image and branding
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16. Benefits to your company
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17. Benefits to your company
• PosiMve image and branding
• Sales
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18. Benefits to your company
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19. Benefits to your company
• PosiMve image and branding
• Sales
• New Hires
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20. Benefits to your company
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21. Benefits to your company
• PosiMve image and branding
• Sales
• New Hires
• Free producMvity (Code, TesMng, Feedback, etc)
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22. Benefits to you, the individual contributor
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23. Benefits to you, the individual contributor
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24. Benefits to you, the individual contributor
• Resume builder
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25. Benefits to you, the individual contributor
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26. Benefits to you, the individual contributor
• Resume builder
• Code reviews leading to skill growth
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27. Benefits to you, the individual contributor
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28. Benefits to you, the individual contributor
• Resume builder
• Code reviews leading to skill growth
• Networking
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29. How to Open Source

30. How to get started
• There are mental hurdles and mindset changes needed
• Nothing is too small
• Solving smaller problems frees up engineering Mme to solve
bigger problems
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31. The other(non-code) stuff
• Speak to Branding
• Speak to Legal
opensource.box.com/cla
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32. Timing
Where do I put it?
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When do I put it there?
It depends.

33. Timing cont.
• As early as possible.
• It is a pain to rip out business logic at a later date
• The community can find bugs with you as you grow
• Changing direcMon vs. full refactor
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34. OrganizaKon
• We recommend the git flow model
h2p://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
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35. Git Flow Model
Master Branch
Develop Branch
Feature 1
Feature 2
V1.1.0 V1.2.0
V1.2.0-rc1

36. OrganizaKon
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37. Tests
• Confidence in your code
• Robust development
• Avoid tribal knowledge traps
• Unable to know what a specific PR could do
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38. Tests cont.
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39. Test cont.
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40. Release and Deployment
• Dogfood
• Know your fault tolerance
• Unit tests are not perfect
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41. Release and Deployment cont.
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42. Release and Deployment cont.
• Make it as easy as possible to use
• Include rpm spec files and equivalent
• Open source puppet modules or chef recipes, too
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43. Release and Deployment cont.
• Tag releases
• Deploy to repositories
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44. What’s Next?

45. Ques?ons (and hopefully answers)

46. Thank you!
Aleksandr Kuzminsky (@twindba)
Troy Karraker (@TeeKraken)