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**Adam Stacoviak:** I always love a good case study, that's for sure... Especially whenever it's applicable. Sometimes case studies are just case studies for case studies' sake... Because hey, you've got to have white papers, and somebody on your page, or whatever. But wow... I was digging into some of these, and... Li... |
**Jerod Santo:** So Arun, you've been at Intel for a few years now. I think when we met you had just joined, or maybe you were there six months, or something like this... And you really came on at Intel to foster this open source effort, or I don't know if you call it a community, or this OSPO, this office, perhaps... ... |
**Arun Gupta:** Yeah, totally. So I joined Intel about three years ago, April of 2022. And I was hired to build the open ecosystem team. And that's sort of what I built for about a couple of years. Now, for the last few months, I lead the broader developer programs effort at Intel. So for the open source culture part o... |
\[08:08\] We would do speakerships across the industry, we would recognize people internally at Intel who would do the chop wood/carry water work, which is So so essential in terms of keeping an open source project thrive. Because oftentimes code is glory, or the chop wood/carry water is what keeps the project going. |
So I think those were some of the key elements that we did. We participated very actively in the inner source practice. We ran a lot of internal open source summits, enablement, advocacy... All sorts of stuff that we did, frankly, to energize the internal engineering community... And also telling the story in a credibl... |
We have a very long history... I mean, I was looking at our first commit back to open source was back to the GCC compiler 40 years ago. And over the last 20 years, Intel has been the top corporate committer to the Linux Kernel. We are one of the top contributors to Kubernetes, OpenJDK. We are among the top three contri... |
**Jerod Santo:** Yeah. Yeah, I recall that from our conversation, because it was news to me. I just thought "Intel... There's not an open source story there." And it just sounded like it was always there to a certain extent, but nobody was telling that story. It was too far inside, to use your guys' Intel Inside... |
**Arun Gupta:** \[laughs\] |
**Jerod Santo:** It was too inside for a lot of us devs to even know that Intel was doing open source. So the company was already bought into the overall idea. Does your book also talk about the process of advocating - not just "We should use open source because it's great for our business", but then taking that next s... |
**Arun Gupta:** No, I think it was very well established inside Intel. We just had to kind of set up some formal programs where that is more recognized. And once that is recognized, then it becomes a lot more sustainable. I'm at Intel, but prior to that I was at Apple, and prior to that at Amazon. And those are the com... |
So a lot of it was -- Kubernetes is built by 80,000 developers across 5,000 companies. There is no need to invest into any such engineering effort. One or two maintainers is all it takes. Either hire the top maintainers, or groom inside the company for somebody to become a maintainer, so that then your issues can be re... |
**Jerod Santo:** \[12:24\] And what's the best way that a large org - because you're mostly working with enterprise. I mean, your history is all enterprise. Of course, there's small business and startups as well, but for enterprise to engage, obviously, like you said, hire existing maintainers, or groom future maintain... |
**Arun Gupta:** A lot of different ways, actually. Oftentimes, we think that just the code contribution is the only way you can engage. One of the chapters in the book is really talking about 10 different ways by which you can contribute to open source communities in a non-code manner. Coding is just one part of it. Pr... |
For example, Intel allows me to be their rep on the governing board of CNCF, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, and Open Source Security Foundation. And about a couple of years ago, when there was an opportunity that, okay, I could stand up for an Open Source Security Foundation governing board chair... So I talked... |
So I think kind of creating those incentive mechanisms, recognizing the employees, putting that as part of their annual focal or quarterly insights, or their OKRs, goes a long way. Because at the end of the day, we humans are always looking for incentives. So creating those incentive mechanisms, being very deliberate a... |
So I think step back, think at a macro level... How does it help your effort? How does it help the community? Because end of the day, the sustainability of the open source project is super-critical. So for example, at Apple pretty much all of their services run using OpenJDK. So the sustainability of the project is sup... |
**Jerod Santo:** \[16:33\] What's the hardest pitch to actually sell on the inside of these? Because you're preaching to the choir here, and so we're very much like nodding along in agreement... But certainly people get pushback. And some pushback probably appropriately, because it's a lot to commit a lot of resources ... |
**Arun Gupta:** I think the biggest \[unintelligible 00:17:13.12\] that I've seen across these companies is just purely lack of awareness. When I was at Amazon, or when I was at Apple, either of those places, "Oh, we've always done it this way, and we were fairly successful. Why pivot? What is this open source thing? W... |
So in that sense, the strategy that we saw worked at Apple was that "Hey, all of this business around iPhone, Mac... We don't want to touch that at all. There is no need for that." Then we kind of create those isolation areas, that "Hey, this Kubernetes thing, this OpenJDK, this PyTorch, this all heavily lives in the o... |
One developer, maybe two contributors, two maintainers goes a long way building Apple's credibility. So for example, when I joined Apple - and I've been on the CNCF board for about eight years. When I joined Apple, there were about 40 people that joined after I joined, because that's sort of how the open source world m... |
So I think all of those things really take time to simmer. And I would say the first few months were a little challenging, because you walk in there and you start questioning everything, you start asking everything... And inertia is always hard, right? You know, Newton's law of motion is always kick in; that thing is m... |
\[20:01\] Understanding what the management wants, understanding how you're going to operationalize it across middle management to the engineering level is all that it takes. And being very patient, being very perseverant, and being very clinical about it, that okay, I'm not trying to change the world, I'm not trying t... |
So I think those are some of the pitches that I've seen that seem to work better, and be more acceptable. In case of Amazon, for example, Amazon is always, always keen on working with the customers. So when I joined Amazon back in 2017, we were launching Amazon EKS. I joined in March or So and then I learned about "Hey... |
**Jerod Santo:** There's kind of two angles into open source as an enterprise. You have "Let's support, embrace, extend", not extinguish, but extend, "the stuff that we currently are already using", right? Like "We already depend on this thing. It's core to our business. We're going to actually put some money into it, ... |
**Arun Gupta:** Yeah. My first question anytime a team comes to me that "We want to open source this", my question is "Why? Why do you want to open source this? What's in it for you to open source this?" Are you looking to gain mindshare? Are you looking to get more engineering contribution? Is that a mandatory require... |
For example, I may not want to run CI/CD infrastructure, and a hyperscaler may be interested in contributing credits for you to give those infrastructure. It may be a strategic initiative for the company. |
\[24:04\] So for example, when Google launched Kubernetes, it was made very clear - if you keep it as a Google project, even though open source, nobody would care about it. That's the reason they ended up contributing Kubernetes to a foundation, so that it's now a neutral governance body etc. And then everybody else ki... |
It could be a compliance and security, as a matter of fact, or community building. Or it could be sheer market visibility, that "Hey, this company--" Apple, for example, launched Swift, and they just want market visibility, because the only way to build developers around that is getting Apple's name out there and bring... |
The reason Intel contributes to these open source projects -- I mean, we contribute to 300+ open source projects. You pick an open source project, and we likely contribute to it. The reason we do that is because our customers, for example, who use our Intel Silicon - whether it's a hyperscaler, a laptop, a network, an ... |
I think whether you are contributing to an existing project, or you are open sourcing an existing project, the Why, the business alignment is fundamentally critical on why you want to do that. |
**Break**: \[25:50\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You mentioned having some case studies... I don't know if you have any case studies around this, but the question really is is aside from Kubernetes - that's a good example of Google open sourcing it, not holding onto it; they gave it to the Foundation. What are other good examples - and maybe you'v... |
**Arun Gupta:** Yeah, I think the book has about 40+ case studies, and these are case studies from companies like Mercedes-Benz, Bloomberg, Toyota, GitHub, Infosys, Dell, Amazon... A wide range of companies. Fidelity, Johns Hopkins, UC Santa Cruz. So from a wide range of verticals as well. And these case studies really... |
So for example for Bloomberg, one of their big corporate philosophies is philanthropy. And for them, contributing to open source fundamentally aligns with that corporate philosophy. And as a matter of fact, what they also do is for developers who contribute to open source, they do matching dollars. Now that "Okay, hey,... |
So in that sense, lots of these -- so the beauty of these case studies is no matter where you are in your journey... Are you starting? Are you an expert? Because the wide range of case studies that have been incorporated into the book - there is something for everybody. And frankly, I reviewed each and every of these c... |
I'm a device manufacturer. I'll take a look at the Dell case study. Or I'm into a technology company. Several examples in there. So I think in that sense, hopefully the diversity, the quality, and the quantity of case studies gives everybody a nugget that they can pick up and apply into their day-to-day work. |
**Jerod Santo:** \[32:18\] I think going back to the Why is really important and well said by you, because if you have a solid Why that aligns with your business incentives, everything else kind of makes sense. And if you don't, then you're kind of perpendicular and you shouldn't be doing this in the first place. And s... |
**Arun Gupta:** Correct. No, I think you're putting it very well. Different companies have different Why's, and each company has different Why's for different projects, as a matter of fact. But locking that down, writing it down is super-important, because oftentimes it's brewing in your head. So usually, when any lead... |
I think, Adam, you were asking... Intel contributed, for example, oneAPI. So we created this oneAPI that's going to be a unified API across different accelerator architectures. So we created this for our benefit, but then over the period of time we realized "Hey, this could benefit the world as well." So a couple of ye... |
So in that sense, the whole idea was, if this is indeed an API, a unified API, then everybody needs to partner in and everybody needs an equal stake at the table, so that they can define what the life of it's going to look like. Because if you want that collective engineering effort, there is no other way without going... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[35:42\] We're steeped in open source, of course, but how does this reflect into the other open source, a.k.a. inner source? I was just leafing through the GitHub case study really quick while we were having this conversation. I was just looking at how essentially their inner source -- GitHub began... |
**Arun Gupta:** I think the biggest reasons that I've seen inner source happening are multifold. First is you want to avoid duplication of code. How many loggers do you need in a world, right? In a company, if everybody is writing a same ETL app, there is no point doing that code duplication. So how can I create that d... |
The second part of it is - you know, a lot of the companies have certain stricter requirements, what you can or cannot do in open source. Inner source basically is bringing that open source practice inside the firewall. So that's really a good way by which you can coach your employees, train your employees on all the o... |
There is a case study by InnerSource Commons \[unintelligible 00:38:46.19\] over there as well, because they really call out in terms of all the fun things that have happened within Inner Source Commons. Because that provides common terminology, they run an Inner Source Commons gathering on a regular basis... They have... |
And then the third reason that I've seen it is you could see potentially inner source as a stepping stone. A stepping stone to going to open source. For example, a project started, you want to see how the internal collaboration is going to look like... Because oftentimes teams don't recognize, don't realize that "Hey, ... |
\[40:10\] So in that sense, inner source is very, very effective. And Intel has a very large inner source practice. We have hundreds and thousands of repos here, which are run on an internal platform... A very nice nomenclature. So it kind of calls out, "Are you looking by a language? Are you looking by a technology? A... |
So I think in that sense, inner source is definitely a key factor that allows you to be on that open source journey in a much more constrained environment, and giving executives that feeling that "Yeah, nothing is lost here. It's all happening within the company." And most importantly, giving them a comfort feeling tha... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, it seems almost like a proving ground for open source at large. It's like, if you don't know what open source is, or - Jerod, back to the question you asked before, like what are the hard questions or what are the pushbacks you get from management? I feel like if you can prove "This is how inn... |
Our safe world, behind our firewall, controllable, all those things... It's still unclear to me though how you begin. Is it simply like a private repo on GitHub? Is there a way to dashboard this stuff? How do you truly spark this? It seems like it's bottoms up, where it's "I've got this thing I think this team or these... |
**Arun Gupta:** I'll give you two examples. One of them is from Apple. The IT team from there reached out that folks were recognizing the ETL example that I gave earlier, that there are six different ETLs that are happening. It's a waste of resource, waste of time, and a waste of engineering resource. Now, how do we co... |
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