Everyday Life of an Open-Source Company: The Story of VSHN

VSHN – The DevOps Company
Adrian Kosmaczewski, Developer Relations
Everyday Life of an
Open-Source Company
The Story of VSHN
On behalf of VSHN, I would like to thank you,
particularly Tobias Weinmann and the Swiss Re TEC
Conference 2022 team, for the invitation to talk at this
event.
Open Source software has become the most critical
infrastructure in the modern world in the past 20 years.
In this talk, we’re going to analyze how VSHN decided to
become an Open Source company, how we organized
ourselves towards that goal, what benefits it has
brought to us, and what it could bring to you.
Speaker notes
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Pronounced ˈvɪʒn – like "vision": The DevOps Company
Founded 2014, 50 VSHNeers located in Zürich and Vancouver
Switzerland’s leading DevOps, Docker & Kubernetes partner
24/7 support
ISO 27001 certified, ISAE 3402 Report Type 1 verified
First Swiss Kubernetes Certified Service Provider
This talk will discuss how VSHN embraces the Open
Source philosophy to its core. But maybe some of you
don’t know us yet!
VSHN is a company founded in Zurich in 2014 to help
organizations to become more agile and to be able to
release better software more often. We are 50
VSHNeers (that’s how we call ourselves) near
Hauptbahnhof Zürich, of which around 35 have
engineering or technical responsibilities. We offer 24/7
monitoring to our customers and specialize in
Kubernetes and OpenShift technologies.
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We are resellers and partners of a long list of very well-
known names in the industry…
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…and we also have three main products, which we will
discuss today.
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We love Open Source at VSHN. We use a lot of Open
Source projects every day, and we have released a few
of our own.
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Espejo Kubernetes object syncer
Floaty Cloud integration for Keepalived
Garacho VSHN Package Cache
K8up Kubernetes Backup Operator
Krossa Kubernetes object list splitter
Larawan Automated VM image builds using Packer
Locutor Ansible callback plugin
GitHub
GitHub
GitLab
k8up.io
GitLab
GitLab
GitLab
In our day-to-day work, we have developed
to make our job more manageable, some of which
are Open Source.
Here’s an interesting point: we Open Sourced tools that
"scratched a particular itch" in our work. We started by
creating the tools we needed, and by making them
Open Source, we realized many other people had
similar needs. We think this is a great way to get into
Open Source because you provide value to your
customers and the community.
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quite a few
tools
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Another thing that sets VSHN apart is its ultra-flat
organizational structure. We use as our
corporate framework, and we have a profoundly
participative management model. Everyone in the
organization is entitled (and expected) to provide
feedback and new ideas and trigger discussions about
any concept at any time. VSHNeers can change
everything in the organization through discussion and
consensus. All of these things are very important to us.
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Sociocracy 3.0
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We have documented our way of working in an
extensive open to everyone to read
and explore. The printed material of the current version
of this Handbook is more than 500 pages long! It
contains details about many different things and how
we conduct business.
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VSHN Handbook
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Among the various pages of the Handbook, we have
stated .
Accountability: We take ownership for what we say
and produce.
Positivity: We are optimists and think in solutions
rather than problems.
Effectivity: We favor work that brings us closer to our
goals.
Integrity: We are objective, communicate in a direct
open fashion, give and accept constructive criticism.
Curiosity: We are open to learn about new and
innovative ways to achieve our goals.
Transparency: …
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our values
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Transparency
We actively share our knowledge both
internally and externally, be it in documentation
(Open Source) or communication. We believe
that collaborating with other experts over
company borders produces win-win results.
Open Source is critical at VSHN to fulfill our
commitment to Transparency.
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The term "Open Source" had been floating around
media and tech circles for decades, but it was in
January 1998 when it found its current meaning.
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Netscape decided to .
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open source its browser
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A few days later, on February 3rd, 1998, a working
group led by proposed the use of the
term "Open Source" to distinguish it from "Free
Software" and its associated movement and licensing
policies as started by Richard Stallman in 1985.
Stallman has since himself and the Free
Software movement from Open Source.
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Christine Peterson
distanced
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I explain the creation of a particular kind of
software–open source software– as an
experiment in social organization around a
distinctive notion of property. (…)
Open Source got a better definition thanks to Professor
of the University of Berkeley, California.
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Steven Weber
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(…) The conventional notion of property is, of
course, the right to exclude you from using
something that belongs to me. (…)
No notes on this slide.
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(…) Property in open source is configured
fundamentally around the right to distribute,
not the right to exclude.
"The right to distribute" is a crucial phrase. Open
Source projects have a copyright, and nobody other
than the author can claim it. Still, they are licensed so
that nobody can prevent others from running, enjoying,
and even reusing parts of programs according to their
needs.
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The previous quote was taken from this book. At the
end of this presentation you will find links to this and
other books, reports, and blog posts about Open
Source.
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So now you know a bit more about VSHN and the
concept of Open Source, let us talk about our
commitment to it. We can only properly talk about what
we experience, so in this talk, I’m going to go through
three concrete examples, all taking us to where we are
today.
I’m going to tell you the story of the following projects.
We will distill from these the core ideas that have made
them become the successful projects they are now.
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Kubernetes Backup Operator
K8up is a Kubernetes operator fulfilling a single,
simple, and critical role: backups. We started the
project because we needed to back up storage in the
Kubernetes clusters that we manage for our customers.
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We kicked off the project in 2018. It is quite a small
one; it encapsulates a backup utility called ,
written in Go, as a Kubernetes operator ready to be
deployed with a Helm chart. It drives Restic to store
data streams into S3-compatible object storage. That is
all it does, and that is all it needs to do.
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Restic
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One of the essential things about K8up is the intense
focus on documentation from the first day. We wanted
our users to be able to install, use, and even
troubleshoot K8up without our participation. Given our
small size, we cannot afford to offer full support to the
project; however, we offer paid support to our
customers who would like to use it. Our commercial
activities give sustainability to the project in the long
run.
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In 2019 we created a for it, using , an
Open Source documentation website generator. We
populated that documentation with ,
, and even a for new
users.
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website Antora
specifications
instructions getting started tutorial
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In 2020 we moved the code to
. We of K8up in March
2021.
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its own GitHub
organization released version 1.0
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In November 2021 that year, the
. As you can imagine, this
major milestone still makes us very proud.
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CNCF accepted K8up
as an onboarding project
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This is the announcement on our blog.
The project is in version 2.5, and we’ve been using it in
production for over four years without interruption.
Having the support of the CNCF means we get access
to a broader pool of software engineers in the Open
Source space, which means more feedback, more pull
requests, and a better project overall.
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The project is open to contributions from external
developers. Inside VSHN, we have a set of core
developers who take care of reviewing and eventually
accepting third-party pull requests. We also use
to get in touch with our
users, who gladly provide us with feedback and ideas
for future evolutions. Very important: we at VSHN use
this discussion forum to talk about K8up! Not only
reserved for external communication, but we make all
discussions about the project and all decisions visible
to everyone. Take, for example, about
architectural matters in the project, handled exclusively
by VSHNeers.
Finally, we released the project with an
.
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GitHub’s discussion forums
this discussion
Apache 2.0
license
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Documentation enables self-service.
Listening to your users makes the project better.
You could end up being noticed by some big names!
What did we learn with K8up?
So, what are the three main takeaway points of the
K8up experience?
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Suite of tools to manage Kubernetes clusters
The second Open Source contribution I would like to
talk about is Project Syn. It was born out of yet another
internal itch we needed to scratch, for which there was
no solution on the market.
Not all companies have to manage as many Kubernetes
clusters as we do; we have hundreds of them to take
care of, some belonging to us and some to our
customers. And through our work, we quickly realized
that we were repeating ourselves a lot, so it made
sense to automate the tedious parts of our work and
create a set of tools to do them instead.
Interestingly, Project Syn began with a series of
discussions called the , or
SDD for short. The defines what a Syn Design
Document is!
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"Syn Design Documents"
first SDD
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SDDs are very similar in form and function to the
famous that have shaped the
Internet and the World Wide Web…
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"RFC" documents
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… or (Kubernetes Enhancement Proposals) used
to drive the Kubernetes project.
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KEPs
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The team at VSHN in charge of Project Syn gathered for
a few weeks and discussed (and documented) in detail
every decision around Project Syn. You can check them
out on , where they stay for
future reference.
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the Project Syn website
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The discussion around each SDD happened in a
separate GitHub pull request, like, for example,
, one of the components of Project Syn.
So, here’s the exciting gist: to start our work, we didn’t
just jump at our keyboards and start cranking code. We
sat down and thought, what is Project Syn? How would
it work? Where and how would secrets be stored? What
naming rules would we apply? And much more. This
analysis phase yielded better code in the short term
than anyone would have thought.
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the one
around Steward
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And no, this does not go against the principles of the
:
The first version of Project Syn was put in production
merely one month after the start of the project, and we
released the code in Open Source from the very first
day. The whole process of creating Project Syn was
available for everyone to see at .
We released the source code of the Project Syn
components using the .
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Agile Manifesto
That is, while there is value in the
items on the right, we value the items
on the left more.
its GitHub organization
3-Clause BSD license
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Analysis and architecture go a long way and save you money.
Open discussions make the software better in the long run.
Write your design decisions down, and store them for future
reference.
What did we learn with Project
Syn?
What are the most important three things we learnt
from Project Syn?
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OPaaS: OpenShift Projects as a Service
The final product we’re going to talk about today is
. What is it? Well, we need a bit of history
here.
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APPUiO Cloud
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In 2016 VSHN and (an IT and software
consulting company with offices in Bern and Zurich)
launched a joint venture called APPUiO.
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Puzzle ITC
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This word has many meanings: not only is it a word in
Esperanto meaning "support," but it is also composed
of "App" (for application) and "Ujo," which is Esperanto
for "container."
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APPUiO comprises a series of products built around
, the most widely used Kubernetes-
based platform in the enterprise world. Installing and
operating OpenShift is very complex, and many
companies cannot use OpenShift because of the lack of
staff or budget.
APPUiO is our response to the complexity of Red Hat
OpenShift. With APPUiO, customers can get a ready-to-
use cluster with the know-how of VSHN and Puzzle ITC.
We at VSHN specialize in setting up and maintaining
OpenShift clusters; we have been operating OpenShift
clusters since version 3.
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Red Hat OpenShift
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APPUiO Cloud is the latest offering in the APPUiO family,
officially launched in November 2021. It offers
customer access to private namespaces (or "OpenShift
projects," as Red Hat names them) in a ready-to-run,
shared cluster.
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APPUiO Cloud is available in two different zones: one in
cloudscale.ch in Kanton Aargau.
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… and another in Exoscale au Canton de Genève.
APPUiO Cloud also offers pre-installed operators, like
K8up, to enable users to perform backups of their
storage media.
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Building on our commitment to Open Source to create
APPUiO Cloud, we leveraged Project Syn. We
implemented new components allowing us to
encapsulate all the knowledge required to install,
manage, and support various APPUiO Cloud clusters,
wherever they are: and
.
And these components are 100% open source, of
course. It’s easier for our customers to understand how
APPUiO Cloud runs, increasing their trust.
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appuio-cloud appuio-cloud-
reporting
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Finally, we decided to
. Our customers can now directly influence our
priorities by voting on existing topics or suggesting new
ones.
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open our complete product
roadmap
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Customers trust Open Source code, and that affects sales
positively.
Our platform performs much better and is more attractive, thanks
to the feedback provided by our users.
Using our tools (K8up and Project Syn) in a real-life scenario made
those tools even better than ever. There was a retro-feedback
effect at play, unlocking synergies. Building on other Open Source
projects allows you to move quicker!
What did we learn with APPUiO
Cloud?
What three outcomes did we get from our Open Source
experience with APPUiO Cloud?
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Ten Principles for Open Source
Based on our own experience, we can say that we took
ten significant steps that helped us work better in an
Open Source world.
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1. Build a culture of safety and
experimentation
First and foremost, every VSHNeer can experiment and
try new technologies and approaches with utmost
psychological safety. It is crucial to be able to learn and
discover, and we built VSHN so that everyone can do
that. Releasing code as Open Source is a way to take a
measured risk, knowing that the worst that can happen
is that nobody else cares about your project as strongly
as you do.
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2. Have an Open Source champion
At VSHN, every one of our Open Source projects has
one or many advocates ready to build a case internally
to justify the investment, engage with the community,
and contribute to the project’s success in the long run.
At least one or two people must stand behind the newly
Open Sourced project, sustaining the collaboration and
providing guidelines. They should have enough authority
internally to drive the project and externally to be actual
advocates of its benefits.
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3. Scratch your itch
We started by solving issues that slowed us down and
made us ineffective. We believe those are the best
starting points for any Open Source project because you
are not the only one who needs to scratch that itch.
Others will jumpstart and help you faster than you can
imagine.
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4. Choose a liberal license
At VSHN, we chose "liberal" licensing schemas for our
Open Source projects, such as Apache or BSD. They
work better in corporate settings, where our customers
might reuse our code together with proprietary code.
Unless your product incorporates code released under
the (which features a "viral
clause,") we recommend that you do not publish your
code using the GPL.
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GNU General Public License
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5. Open not only your source code
but its analysis, too
As I mentioned in the discussion of Project Syn, we
made our discussions open; many Open Source
projects die, not because nobody is using the code, but
because the community does not see any activity other
than commits around it. Showing you’re working on
features by openly discussing them is a great way to
keep a project alive and engage outside contributors.
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6. Documentation is everything
The key to a successful Open Source project is a self-
service developer experience, starting with good
documentation. Everyone is responsible for it, and
project champions must ensure that it is
comprehensive, correct, and up-to-date. Start with a
README file, written so that any other developer can be
productive with your code just by reading it. Use the wiki
systems provided by GitHub or GitLab to pour your
knowledge, and consider using a tool like to
create a separate documentation website for your
project. Finally, consider applying GitOps principles and
release documentation with your code automatically.
Speaker notes
Antora
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7. Listen to your community
At VSHN, we realized that because they found our
projects helpful, other users and other organizations
gathered around our ideas, and many of them helped
us succeed. Of course, some entitlement is going on,
but for the most part, Open Source has been a
fantastic way for us to get to know lots of potential
future VSHNeers, test the market with new ideas, and
create a better product at the end.
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8. Contribute
Open Source is not only about making available your
source code to others but also helping others grow their
projects. Start small by sending contributions to
projects you often use and find helpful, like Visual
Studio Code extensions or modules in whatever
programming language you use daily. Get involved in
projects critical to your work, and make yourself known
by being helpful to others, replying to bug reports, or
reviewing pull requests. And if you can’t contribute with
your code or time, think about becoming a patron; a
small monthly contribution means a lot to freelance
developers maintaining Open Source projects.
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9. Measure success
If you have to justify your investment in Open Source to
other stakeholders, you might want to refrain from
vanity metrics such as the number of GitHub stars.
Instead, count the number of pull requests your project
has received and how many you have accepted. Count
the number of tests in your code, counting those
provided by third-party contributors. Keep track of
references to your code in blogs or newsletters such as
, , or other technical publications.
Speaker notes
Changelog TLDR
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10. Learn from others
Many other organizations are asking themselves how to
publish some of their projects as Open Source. At the
end of this talk, you will find plenty of references to
books and blog posts, but we’d recommend you start
with the series by Artsy
Engineering, consisting of text and videos to give you
some hints.
In Switzerland, we have the chance of having great
Open Source experts such as , , or
, helping organizations pivot towards Open
Source. They will help you make the most of your Open
Source investment, both technologically and
organizationally.
Speaker notes
Open Source by Default
Puzzle ITC Sfera
UnlockOpen
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1. Build a culture of safety and experimentation
2. Have an Open Source champion
3. Scratch your itch
4. Choose a liberal license
5. Open not only your source code but its analysis, too
6. Documentation is everything
7. Listen to your community
8. Contribute
9. Measure success
10. Learn from others
A quick summary of these ten principles.
For VSHN, Open Source is a natural way of releasing
code and interacting with our community. It is a way to
embrace radical transparency and to get our customers
to understand how we work and why we work that way.
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We at VSHN would love to see code in the
in the future and collaborate with you
wherever we feel we can contribute.
Speaker notes
Swiss Re
GitHub page
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…but also a verb.
"Open" isn’t just an adjective…
The path to Open Source is not only about technical
maturity or narcissism; it is, first and foremost, a path
to significant organizational change.
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Adrian Kosmaczewski, Developer Relations –
VSHN AG – Neugasse 10 – CH-8005 Zürich – +41 44 545 53 00 – –
Thanks!
[email protected]
vshn.ch [email protected]
Thank you very much for your attention!
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Questions?
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Books, reports, and blog posts

to learn more about Open Source.
References
The following slides contains some links you might find
helpful in your exploration of Open Source.
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by Artsy Engineering (2015-2018)
by Titus Brown (2018)
by Tobie
Langel (2020)
(2021)
by Coiled (2020)
Getting Started with Open Source
Series: Open Source by Default
How open is too open?
Making the business case for contributing to open source
Tobie Langel on Twitter about Open Source licenses
Seven Stages of Open Software
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by Eric S. Raymond (1999)
by Steven Weber (2004)
by Daniele "Mte90"
Scasciafratte (2022)
by Karl Fogel (2020)
Books
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
The Success of Open Source
Contribute To Open Source: The Right Way
Producing Open Source Software
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by Red Hat (2022)
by the Linux Foundation
(2020)
by the Ford Foundation (2016)
(2021)
Industry Reports
The State of Enterprise Open Source
Solving technical debt with open source
Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital
Infrastructure
SustainOSS Report
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by Matt Holt (2021)
by Ben E. C. Boyter
(2019)
by Container Solutions (2022)
by Brett Cannon (2021)
Community
The Asymmetry of Open Source
The Three F's of Open Source Development
Entitlement in Open Source
The social contract of open source
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on Forbes (2021)
by André Staltz (2022)
on Infoworld (2021)
Economics
Open Source IPO Boom: What GitLab And Confluent Show Us
About The Future Of Software
Time Till Open Source Alternative
Stop saying open source nonsense
Dev corrupts NPM libs 'colors' and 'faker' breaking thousands of
apps
Comments by Tobie Langel
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by Dan Lorenc (2020)
on
The New Stack (2022)
(2021)
and
(2022)
Security
Getting Serious About Open Source Security
The Work-War Balance of Open Source Developers in Ukraine
Linux Foundation announces $10 million cross-industry
investment in Open Source Security Foundation
White House reminds tech giants open source is a national
security issue White House tackles "unique security
challenges" faced by open source ecosystem during dedicated
virtual summit
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(2021)
on
the Google Cloud Blog (2021)
on The Register (2021)
by amazee.io
(2020)
by VSHN (2022)
Case Studies
Open Source and Upbound
The rise and future of Kubernetes and open source at Google
30 years of Linux: OS was successful because of how it was
licensed, says Red Hat
Proud to be global, distributed, and open source
Creating a Product through DevOps: The Story of APPUiO Cloud
Speaker notes
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on the Accenture
Insurance Blog (2020)
by Friendly (2022)
on the
Accenture Banking Blog (2020)
by ungleich (2022)
Beyond Open "Source"
The Ultimate Guide to Open Insurance
Open Startup
Open Banking: KPIs to track for a secure ecosystem
The Open Infrastructure Project
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Everyday Life of an Open-Source Company: The Story of VSHN

Everyday Life of an Open-Source Company: The Story of VSHN

Adrian Kosmaczewski

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