Why open source has gained so huge momentum and how it works. Slides from Janne Kalliola's opening keynote in DrupalCamp Finland 2015.

1. WHY OPEN ALWAYS
TRUMPS CLOSED
(EVENTUALLY)?
www.exove.com
@exove

2. About Myself
 Janne Kalliola, CEO of Exove
 Have been coding since 1983 – Basic, Pascal, Lisp,
Fortran, C/C++/Obj C, Java, PHP, JavaScript
 Working with web publishing since 1994 and open
source CMS from 2003
 Now running Exove, a leading Nordic company
focusing on open web technologies

3. www.kallio.la
@plastic

4. Exove in Brief
Exove is a leading digital services design and
development company focusing on open technologies.
We help companies to grow their digital business.
Quick facts:
 Founded 2006
 Over 80 people
 Served more than 200 clients
 Offices in Finland, Estonia, and
the UK
 AAA credit rating

5. www.exove.com
@exove

6. Ok. Let's go!

7. You remember
company called SUN
Microsystems?

13. And it's CEO Scott
McNealy?

15. Yeah, baby!
Me neither.
(Just kidding)

16. Back in 1999
Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy said
"Linux is like Windows: it's too fat for the client, for
the appliance ... it's not scalable for the server ...
Now why in the world would anybody ever write
another cheque to Microsoft? I don't know. But
why would you do Linux either? That's the wrong
answer." 1)
1) http://readwrite.com/2014/07/01/linux-world-domination-complete-why-its-foolish-to-bet-
against-open-source-communities

17. Back in 1999
Back then UNIX powered around 50% of world's
supercomputer market 1)
Five of ten the most powerful supercomputers ran
UNIX 1)
SUN Microsystems was 69th biggest company in
the USA– Value $54B2)
2) http://fortboise.org/top100-history.html

18. How About Now?
UNIX powers 2% of top 500 supercomputers, and
Windows 1% 1)
The rest – 97% – is powered by Linux 1)
SUN was bought by Oracle with $5.6B in 2009 3)
That's like 10% of the value in 1999
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_acquisition_by_Oracle

19. Wat?
What happened?

20. Two words.

21. Open Source.

22. Both Scott McNealy and
SUN Microsystems were
surprised by the power of
the community.

23. SUN had an exceptional
history of engineering
innovations – 27+ years –
but it was still a single
company.

24. That needed to pay salaries
to its employees.

25. And thus was constrained
by the amount of the staff it
could hire.

26. Why Linux was
successful?

27. Linux was the first viable
open source operating
system.
Had enough features and applications to be
adopted.

28. Linux overpassed its
competition – commercial
UNIX systems, Windows
NT, etc. – in speed of
innovation.

29. Linux was inexpensive to
test.

30. Adopting Linux saved
money on license costs.

31. Linux gained numerous
corporate sponsors that
donated developers to work
on the project.

32. This made it future-proof
and safe choice.

34. And the list goes on for
three more pages.
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members

35. Open Source
Communities Do
Matter.

36. Community makes it cool to
adopt an open-source
project.

37. Community makes it safe to
adopt an open-source
project.

38. Community creates a larger
total addressable market.

39. Community makes it hard
for rivals to compete.

40. Perspective Through
Numbers
 Surveys have found that developers expend on
average 11 hours a week on open source efforts (a
median of 7 hours), more than 25% of a standard
work week4)
 This is 0.29 FTE (full time equivalent)
 Thus 3.4 part time open source developers lumped
together work as much as one full time paid developer
4) http://www.health-policy-systems.com/content/9/1/36

41. Perspective Through Drupal
 Drupal Community has over 1.167M users and
over 37,000 developers5)
 The estimate of full time equivalent of Drupal
community development is thus
37,000 x 0.29 = 10 370
5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupal

42. 10 370
full time developers!

43. Perspective of Drupal 8
 Drupal 8 has been developed by more than
3,200 core contributors 5)
 The estimate of full time equivalent of Drupal 8
community development is thus
3,200 x 0.29 = 928
5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupal

44. 928
full time developers!

45. Show me a company that can
invest 10,000 people to develop a
complex server side platform.

46. Or a company that can invest
1,000 people to develop a new
version.

47. Or a company that has more than
million registered users in its
community.

48. SUN Microsystems were not one
of them.

49. My hunch is that there are
no such companies.

50. To give credit to SUN
Microsystems, they tried –
they bought MySQL in 2008.

51. With over $1B valuation.

52. TechCrunch:
Sun Picks Up MySQL For
$1 Billion; Open Source Is
A Legitimate Business
Model

53. GigaOM:
Sun Buys MySQL for $1B
and Wall Street Mourns

54. Oracle bought BEA
Systems with $8.5B on the
very same day.

55. Remember BEA?
Me neither.

56. So Why This
Community Thingy
Works?

57. Participation,
participation,
participation.

58. Participation
V
Commits
V
Progress

59. Why to Participate?

60. Being in a community is an
act of working together for a
shared goal.
The community must attract people that
collaborate.

61. The project leader has a
significant role in attracting
highly skilled people.
Demand is high, supply is scarce.

62. People have different
motivations for participating
in the community.

63. Motivational Factors6)
Economic Developerearnsmoney from contributions
Fun Developerenjoyscontributing
Identity Developeridentifieshimselfas an open source
programmerand maintainsthat identity
Learning Developerwantsto learn more
Networking Developergainsa peer network
Ownuse Developeruses the softwarehimself
Political Developerthinksthat allsoftware shouldbe free
Signaling Developerwantsto showhis skills.
6) Årdal et al. Health Research Policy and Systems 2011

64. A single developer has
several motives.

65. Motives change during time.

66. People needing the
software for their own use
typically leave when their
needs are met.

67. People that learn through
participation or identify
themselves with the
community continue much
more likely in the community.

68. A successful open source
project attracts people with
long-term motivation to stay
within the community.

69. Come for the Code,
Stay for the Community.

70. So, what kind of people to
attract?

71. People that see purpose in
their participation.

72. People that love what they
do.

73. People that are great in what
they do.

74. People that want to do things
that the world needs.

75. People that have employers
that understand the value of
open source...

76. ...so that people are even
paid to do it.

77. YOU LOVE
IT
YOU ARE
PAID FOR IT
YOU
ARE
GREAT
AT IT
THE
WORLD
NEEDS
IT
@Frank_Giustra

78. YOU LOVE
IT
YOU ARE
PAID FOR IT
YOU
ARE
GREAT
AT IT
THE
WORLD
NEEDS
IT
@Frank_Giustra

79. YOU LOVE
IT
YOU ARE
PAID FOR IT
YOU
ARE
GREAT
AT IT
THE
WORLD
NEEDS
IT
@Frank_Giustra
Purpose.

80. YOU LOVE
IT
YOU ARE
PAID FOR IT
YOU
ARE
GREAT
AT IT
THE
WORLD
NEEDS
IT
@Frank_Giustra
Purpose.
In everyday churn.

81. YOU LOVE
IT
YOU ARE
PAID FOR IT
YOU
ARE
GREAT
AT IT
THE
WORLD
NEEDS
IT
@Frank_Giustra
Purpose.
With open source.

82. You Can't Fight that
with a Mere
Paycheck.

83. So...

84. Do you want to protect your
license based business and
try fighting with open
source?

86. Or do you join us?

87. THANK YOU!
QUESTIONS?
www.exove.com
@exove