How to have an Open Relationship... with software

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WARNING: THE FOLLOWING PRESENTATION CONTAINS OR MAY MAKE REFERENCE TO BAD JOKES, EMBARRASSING PICTURES, COMPLETELY FABRICATED DATA, OUTRIGHT LIES AND THE OCCASIONAL 4-LETTER WORD. LIKE “CODE.” YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

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How to have an Open Relationship with software If you are at this conference, contributing is a strategic part of your business. I am here to talk about how to make this strategy effective.

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(normal) Software relationship

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EULA By pressing OK I (USER) grant AppleMicroOracleSoftIncCoLLC (OWNER) the exclusive right to charge me stupid amounts of money for software I can probably get for free. I also grant OWNER the exclusive, non-transferable, non- expiring right to all tasty puddings, cakes, beer and any other desirable items residing in said USER’s refrigerator. Further, this license grants OWNER the right to all my toys, current and present, the toys of USER’s children, and anything else USER does not want to share. If USER tried to ﬁgure out how OWNER’s software works, or share with a friend, USER will be forced to clean the underarms of pro wrestlers and pop OWNER’s bum pimples from now until eternity. Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah Blah Blah blah blah OK WTF? You ﬁll out one of these, which is basically full of things that you cannot do {SWITCH}

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{FORBIDDEN}

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Free software

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What you can do

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Free and/or Open Source Software • Use • Learn • Change • Share Free to:

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Free software is software that gives you the user the freedom to share, study and modify it. We call this free software because the user is free. -‐ Free software Foundation

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Hey hippie-‐neck-‐beard nerd! How do I get paid? If I give everything away for free?

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Made or make a living (and then some) off of OSS

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http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Linux-Kernel-Development-report-2010/ Contributors to Linux Kernel Patent Maﬁa, not exactly altruistic.

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It’s not altruism! It is strategic! But let’s get personal.

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My relationship with Drupal First though, let me tell you my story.

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2006: I Hated Drupal * For the record, I had this haircut for 6hrs. OOP Python Zope PEAR XML Linux Admin Java XSLT I had been developing prof. for 8 years - used OSS, contributed minimally. Found the gig in the non-proﬁt section Drupal had anti-patterns, bad docs, and people were assholes in IRC. I stuck to CiviCRM, external systems for 1 year. No contributing.

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2007-‐2008: Beginnings of a contributor Speced and sold the Amnesty.org project, led it. Did sites for lots of cool non-proﬁts wrote my ﬁrst module (Admin Role). Working on a big project taught me how essential it was to be organized about modifying modules and how contributing provided more value for the customer. Met people.

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2008-‐2010: Acquia Engineering Built out Acquia Search. Built Drupal Gardens, got more heavily evolved in the community, core dev, etc. Worked on a product (different from a site, because it sticks around).

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• Enterprise hosting • Support • Consulting • Training • Drupalgardens.com • Hiring But ﬁrst, an obligatory plug

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2011... The evangelist * Picture actually from 2009. Only picture of me in a suit Going straight. Training, strategic planning w/ organizations Not as much coding

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Drupal and I: • Development • Consulting • Sales • Project management • Product development • Training I wanted to ﬁgure out where these journeys start from where they go. So I consulted some people I’ve met along the way. Let’s start where the money is

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More importantly

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I’ve made friends

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Two emails Engineers Sales and Management Why contribute?

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Sales and Marketing Management Developers

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Sales and Marketing http://consumerist.com/2007/04/3-confessions-from-a-former-used-car-salesman.html “That’s where the money is” - Sutton’s Law {Lasting Value} :15

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Typical lifecycle of an enterprise website 0k 67k 133k 200k Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Development License Support 0k 67k 133k 200k Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Drupal / OSS CMS Proprietary CMS * Completely made up numbers (like any good analyst) Prop (high license fee, support and consulting trends up, migration expensive) OSS has no license, high consulting cost, support constant or trending down, low migration cost. You can only realize these beneﬁts though, if you contribute.

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Total Cost of Ownership Free ain’t that free Requires contribution to be actualized. Customers don’t care about Drupal (usually) Not (just) about license cost savings

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In Open Source, you get a lot for free: updates, new features, bug fixes. Contributing our features and fixes ensures that the client’s site will receive all of these OSS benefits into the future. Kelly Albrecht Founder, Left Click

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Discounting for contrib • Makes future maintenance less risky • Staﬀ can more easily be switched out a.k.a. “Bus factor” • Actually delivers more value for your customer What is a discount? Why is it worth it?

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What about my sweet support contract?

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Locked-‐in: No one wins By contributing, customers can leave you But wait, they won’t anyway if you’re good This sounds silly, but many shops think that by contributing they will free their customers from the bondage of monthly retainers. If that’s your philosophy on why your customers stay... good luck.

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Management {Innovation} :25

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Helping people reach their full potential

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Acquia • Mostly contrib anyway in Gardens • 2 days every 3 weeks of “free” Drupal time. Palantir • 2-‐4hrs /wk • Special projects get treated like clients. Developer contribution programs

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Anytime you set aside self enrichment time for your team, you’re not only boosting morale, but you’re helping open opportunities for your team to deepen their skill set. Colleen Carroll Director of People and Process, Palantir 2-4hrs a week for “free” Drupal time Palantir funded modules, like Workbench, get regularly scheduled time.

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20% time projects • Imagecache in core • translate.drupal.org • Update manager

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Sprints and joint initiatives • Software at a fraction of the cost • Be seen as a thought leader • Hiring

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Internal Benefits • Team gets to travel • Huge learning opportunity • Make partnerships

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For the past 3 years over 60% of our revenue comes from community efforts or referrals from other companies. If we didn't contribute, we wouldn't get that. Greg Knaddison Partner and Developer, Growing Venture Solutions

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Successful sprints • Simpletest (Paris) • Fields (Boston) • Media (Chicago) • drupal.org upgrade (Paris, Germany, Boston) • Translations in D8 (Montreal)

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It’s about character Community participation is a great way to judge ability Connections on d.o. are how the majority of “big shots” got their chance. OSS community events (camps, cons, etc)

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It's a major differentiator for a candidate. First, it shows they understand Drupal. Second, it shows they are motivated to do more than just show up and punch the clock. So it's a character issue as well as a skills issue. Evan Rudowski Co-‐Founder and Director SubHub

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Developers {Legitimacy} :35 min

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So how do you contribute and still get the project in on time?

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Know WTF you are doing. Moshe Weitzman, Director, Research and Development Acquia But we can get a little more speciﬁc than that.

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Coding with an intent to distribute • Avoid customer names in code • Try to ﬁnd generic solutions • Don’t hack anything!

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hook_form_alter() all the way! Wim Leers, PhD student & Facebook intern

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If you hack, track, track, track.

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If there is no d.o issue then the patch should not be in our repo. That way we keep the spirit of the GPL going, even if we know the patch will never be accepted. Mike Carper Engineer, datasphere technologies

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The Guild of Nerds By contributing to other peoples’ projects, or providing modules other people use, you enter acircle of trust where they will help you later when you need it.

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You can lie on your resume, but you can't lie on your d.o profile. Also, contributing to Drupal helps build a reputation, both among fellow developers and among companies. Wim Mostrey, Freelancer For me, when I reach out to a maint I almost always get a response. World is not fair, but through my contribs, I’ve entered the guild so to speak.

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Build Legitimacy • Establishing yourself as an expert is easier in OSS communities • Contributing drives consulting opportunities to you • Blogging, do it often. Don’t by shy

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Contributing to the Drupal project has increased my credibility as an expert-‐level Drupal professional, which I think or hope leads to more clients deciding to hire me rather than my competition. Jennifer Hogdon Documentation team lead

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★Innovation and inspiration ★Legitimacy and Community ★Long term value for customers ★Selling technology ★Managing coders ★Developing software {DO IT NOW}

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Bye and thank you! Jacob Singh Dude on stage Twitter: @JacobSingh