%% Balancing Expectations: Large Companies and the Open Source Community %% Copyright 2002 Bdale Garbee %% %% Presented at CeBIT Bilisim Eurasia on Thursday, 5 September 2002. %% %% %% Title: %% %% Balancing Expectations: Large Companies and the Open Source Community %% %% Abstract: %% %% Hewlett Packard is a large company whose main motivation is the making %% of profits for their stockholders. Debian is a non-profit organization %% whose main interest is the creation and distribution of a high quality %% operating system that is freely distributed. Bdale Garbee is both the %% Debian Project Leader and an Engineer / Scientist for HP. He is %% therefore uniquely qualified to speak about the issues which occur when %% large companies interact with complex software projects in the Open %% Source community, such as the recent release of Debian GNU/Linux 3.0. %% %% %% Define the fonts we will use %% %deffont "standard" tfont "Arial.ttf" %deffont "typewriter" tfont "Times_New_Roman.ttf" %deffont "fixed" xfont "terminal" %% %% Default settings for special lines %% %default 1 leftfill, fore "black", back "white", bimage "background.bmp" %default 2 size 7, vgap 10, prefix " ", font "standard" %default 3 size 2, bar "gray70", vgap 10 %default 4 size 5, vgap 30, font "standard" %% %% Default settings for indented lines %% %tab 1 size 5, vgap 40, prefix " ", icon box "green" 50 %tab 2 size 4, vgap 40, prefix " ", icon arc "red" 50 %tab 3 size 3, vgap 40, prefix " ", icon delta3 "blue" 40 %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %page %nodefault, font "standard", fore "black", back "white", bimage "background.bmp" %center Balancing Expectations Large Companies and the Open Source Community %size 6 Bdale Garbee %size 5 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %page Premise Large companies can make important and valuable contributions to the Open Source community. However, the first priority of a corporation is profit... And the Open Source community is focussed on freedom... %center This can lead to conflicting expectations! %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %page Approach For a successful partnership to occur... The corporation must behave as a good citizen of the Open Source community. The community must appreciate and incorporate the corporation's contribution. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %page Areas of Potential Conflict Schedule Predictability Volunteers are less predictable than paid developers. Predictability is more important than specific intervals. Supportability Obligations vs Dedication Contracts vs Reputation, Prestige Documentation Control The Power and the Peril of Forking %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %page More Areas of Potential Conflict Intellectual property issues Patents Protocols Required components Understanding obligations GPL source availability requirements Assignment of rights Funding developers Hiring an Open Source developer vs Encouraging existing employees to join community %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %page Benefits of Cooperation Company can focus investments on adding value. Community gets resources, users, focused bug reports. Companies may fund "unpleasant parts" of a project. Community will sometimes "adopt and preserve" a program that is abandoned by a company. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %page A Specific Example of Collaboration %center, image "hpinvent.jpg" 0 75 75 1 and %cont %center, image "openlogo.png" 0 65 65 1 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %page What is Debian? %font "typewriter" `The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system.' %font "standard" More specifically, Debian: is one of the most popular GNU/Linux distributions runs on the most architectures is a completely open volunteer organization is quite international is the largest GNU/Linux distribution works with companies to develop and maintain software is Focused on Freedom is well represented in the free software world %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %page A Few Debian Statistics Debian is a project of Software in the Public Interest 11 released architectures alpha, arm, hppa, i386, ia64, m68k, mips/mipsel, powerpc, s390, sparc other ports in progress Hitachi SuperH AMD x86-64 only distribution also working with the HURD 1080 people 6667 source packages 10637 binary packages %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %page Debian Social Contract Debian Will Remain 100% Free Software We Will Give Back to the Free Software Community We Won't Hide Problems Our Priorities are Our Users and Free Software Programs That Don't Meet Our Free-Software Standards %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %page Examples of HP / Debian Cooperation Debian as an interface to Open Source community HP Donated Hardware and Network Bandwidth HP funded legal opinion on crypto in Debian US main HP sponsorship of PARISC Linux, contributions to Itanium Linux Many ongoing development projects. Linux for iPAQ and related PDA devices Installation and management tools %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %page More Examples of Cooperation Debian 3.0 supported HP Itanium 2 systems using ZX1 chipset, before the systems even started shipping... HP used Debian GNU/Linux to set new SpecFP2000 record with an rx2600 Itanium 2 server. HP Enablement Kit for Linux is based on Debian Early PowerBar, carrier-grade servers, and early-access Itanium 2 systems shipped with a preinstalled Linux based on Debian. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %page HP Open Source Review Board OSRB reviews all relationships between HP and Open Source community Protect HP from inappropriate exposure to intellectual property risk. Establish proper business controls based on a clear understanding of Open Source. Have a central place where all Open Source activities are understood for consistent communication and leverage inside and outside of HP. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %page To Learn More %center %size 10 http://www.debian.org/ http://www.spi-inc.org/ http://www.hp.com/linux/