Sharing the experience of managing an Open Source Project like Magento, some of the key decisions we made that lead to Magento becoming the leading eCommerce application in the world and the challenges, failures and successes we had.

1. A Journey Down the Open Road

2. Bonjour SymfonyCon!
Yoav Kutner
CEO of Oro Inc. & x.CTO of Magento

3. Happy Birthday!

8. The Journey

9. Choose Your Travel Partner(s)
• Seek travel partners who share a common interest.
• Discuss your trip budget when choosing adventure companions.
• Review your ideal itinerary and travel dates.
• Travel on a short excursion before taking a longer one.
• Locate potential travel partners online if you can't find any through your
existing contacts.
http://www.wikihow.com/Choose-a-Travel-Partner

10. My Partner
Roy Rubin
Co-Founder and x.CEO,
Magento, Inc.

11. The Varien Days (and Nights)

12. Open Source
• Open Source: is a philosophy, or pragmatic methodology that promotes
free redistribution and access to an end product's design and
implementation details.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
• Open Source Software :(OSS) is computer software that is available with
source code: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved
for copyright holders are provided under an open-source license that
permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the
software.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software

13. The Open Source Definition
Introduction: Open source does not just mean access to the source code. The
distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following
criteria:
1. Free Redistribution
2. Source Code
3. Derived Works
4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code
5. No Discrimination Against Persons
or Groups
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of
Endeavor
7. Distribution of License
8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product
9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software
10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral
http://opensource.org/osd

14. Open Does Not Mean Free

15. Open Source Technologies
• Linux/Unix
• Apache
• MySQL
• PHP

16. • osCommerce was started in March 2000 in Germany by project founder and leader Harald Ponce
de Leon as The Exchange Project.
• As of August 2008 the osCommerce site says that there are over 14,000 'live' websites using the
program.
• In November 2010 the development of osCommerce v2.2 was met with another stable release.
Version 2.3
• Version 3.0 has been released on March 31, 2011 and is a major re-write of the program to
incorporate an object-oriented backend, a template system to allow easy layout changes, and
inclusion of an administration-area username and password definition during installation.

17. We Hit a Crossroad

18. Select a Programing Language
<?php
echo “php?”;
?>

19. A Modular Application
• OO support. We wanted Magento to be an OO application
so it would be considered as a platform and allow to
extend and develop it. We also wanted Enterprise
organizations to consider this platform.
• The added support for Encapsulation (privet, protected
public), Interfaces, and Static Methods etc allowed us to
create a true OO architected application in PHP.
• We were worried about the support for PHP5 when it
comes to hosting (even considering creating 2 versions of
Magento) but the PHP4 End of Life announcement made
our decision much easier.

20. Selecting a Framework
Prior to Magento we were using an in-house developed framework (PHP4).
Lead to problems:
• Specifying hiring criteria when it comes to developers.
• Long training process due to lack of documentation and training materials.
• Collaborating with other companies on big projects was a nightmare.
• Maintaining and Supporting our framework without a large community was hard
both in allocating resources and without a large “collective wisdom”
• Many different coding styles – each code I looked at was different

21. So let’s select a framework!
• PHPDevShell
• Prado
• Pronto
• QPHP
• Seagull
• Symfony
• ZOOP
• Akelos
• Ash.MVC
• CakePHP
• Codelgniter
• DIY
• eZ Components
• Fusebox
• PHP on TRAXz
Not an easy thing to do!!!
Selecting a Framework

22. Criteria for Selecting a Framework
• Must have a commercial company behind it.
• Widespread community support.
• A wealth of documentation and training.
• A use-at-will architecture that enables developers to use the
Framework for the functionality they need.
• A clear roadmap and transparency
• Open Source Licensing that protects the entire ecosystem of products
built on the platform

23. Magento Development Time Line
December 2006
January 2007
February 2007
May 2007
June 2007
August 2007
September 2007-February 2008
March 2008
April 2007-June 2008
July 2008
July- Nov 2008
December 2008
Decision to create a new open source ecommerce platform
Begin by selecting the Zend Framework, and creating the core team (3
developers)
Core team starts designing the application architecture (3 developers)
First “proof of concept” a semi-working ecommerce application (3 developers)
Start working on First Beta (core team 5 developers)
Magento Beta release (core team 5-7 developers)
12 Beta releases (core team 5-8 developers)
Magento 1.0 released (core team 6-8 developers)
Seven 1.0.x releases (core team 6-8 developers)
Magento 1.1 released (core team 6-8 developers)
Eight 1.1.x releases (core team 5-7 developers)
Magento 1.2.0 released (core team 5-7 developers)

24. Magento Development Time Line

25. Features and Open Product Management

26. Community

27. Community

28. Community

29. Introducing Magento to the World
Twiistup Los Angeles January 15, 2008

30. Twiistup Los Angeles January 15, 2008
Introducing Magento to the World

31. Next Day January 16, 2008 Sun acquired MySQL
for $1 billion!!!
Twiistup Los Angeles January 15, 2008
Introducing Magento to the World

32. Introducing Magento to the World
Twiistup Los Angeles January 15, 2008

33. How Do We Make Money?

34. Services?
How Do We Make Money?

35. Services?
How Do We Make Money?

36. Support?
How Do We Make Money?

37. Support?
How Do We Make Money?

38. Commercial Open Source
• Alfresco
• Red Hat
• MySQL
• Jboss
• …
How Do We Make Money?

39. Commercial Open Source
• Alfresco
• Red Hat
• MySQL
• Jboss
• …
How Do We Make Money?

40. Brands

41. Evil
Superhero
Awesome
Ecommerce

42. Magento Trends

43. Magento Developers

44. Magento Developers

45. Any fool can use a computer. Many do.
Ted Nelson
Magento Developers

46. Contributions
Extensions
Magento Connect
Magento Developers

47. We are in the business of leaving holes
Roy Rubin
Magento Developers

48. Open Source Ecosystem

49. Magento Ecosystem
The Magento system integrator
ecosystem is significant, with estimated
collective revenues approaching
Forrester Research, June 2011
$1 billion annually

50. Core Values
• Partnership
• Community
• Collaboration
• Transparency
Magento Ecosystem

51. Don’t Be Afraid of Forks

52. • In software engineering, a project fork happens when
developers take a copy of source code from one software
package and start independent development on it, creating a
distinct piece of software
• Free and open source software may be legally forked without
the approval of those currently managing a software project or
distributing the software, per the definitions of "free software
and open source“
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(software_development)
Don’t Be Afraid of Forks

53. The way to deal with forks is to be attentive to the
reason(s) the fork was created and release often.
Don’t Be Afraid of Forks

54. Magento Inc.

55. Culture and Team

56. Lessons Learned
Don’t create a company or a product to sell it. Create it
because there is a need for what you are creating and you
believe that you can create a great business of it.

57. The Destination Is Not Always The End of the Journey

58. The Destination Is Not Always The End of the Journey

59. The Destination Is Not Always The End of the Journey

60. The Destination Is Not Always The End of the Journey

61. And some times we find ourselves at the same point
we started our journey

62. Yoav Kutner
Founder &
Chief Executive
Officer
Jary Carter
Founder &
Chief Revenue
Officer
Dima Soroka
Founder &
Chief Technology
Officer
Roy Rubin
Advisor

63. Our Products

65. • Tools for business application development
• Enabling business application suite
• Application compatibility and integrations out of the box
OroPlatform Goals

66. Applications Built on OroPlatform

67. OroCRM is the most flexible, open source CRM.
We’re redefining what you should expect from
customer relationship management.
www.orocrm.com

68. 300,000+
Unique Site Visitors
15,000+
Registered Community
Users
2,000+
Active EE Customers
16+
Worldwide Partners
35,000+
Product Downloads

69. Customers Powered by OroCRM

70. OroCommerce Will Disrupt B2B Online Commerce

71. • All of Oro Platform Productivity Tools
• Corporate customer accounts with
configurable roles, permissions and
workflows. Multiple business units and
flexible ACLs
• Multiple price lists
• Configurable payment term levels
• Personalized catalogs
• Configurable quote-to-order
submission process
• Quick order forms
• Contract pricing
• Reports, dashboards and data insights
• Multi-business / multi-brand websites
(including catalog-only websites)
• Fully personalized customer
experience
• Built-in flexible content management

72. Merci Beaucoup!
Life would be so much easier
if we only had the source code...
Anonymous

73. t: @YoavKutner
e: yoav@orocrm.com