Foss governance succeeding / Philippe Richard

COPYRIGHT © 2011 ALCATEL-LUCENT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Michel Ruffin & Philippe Richard, Alcatel-Lucent - Bell Labs - Corporate CTO September 2011

FREE AND/OR OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE (FOSS)IMPLEMENTING AN EFFICIENT AND SAFE FOSS STRATEGY IN A GLOBAL COMPANY

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CanadaUK

France

Australia

Brazil

Research Centers

Product & SolutionDevelopment Centers

Executive Business Centers

USA

Belgium

Ireland

GermanyNetherlandsItalySpain

Israel

Turkey

Russia

PolandRomania

Slovakia

China

South Korea

TaiwanIndia

Singapore

N. America: ~36% Europe: ~32% Asia Pacific: ~18% Rest of world: ~14%

ALCATEL-LUCENTBACKGROUND

% of 2010 revenues

• 79 000+ employees

• 27 900 active patents

• Present in more than 130 countries

• 600+ new development projects per year

•Numerous suppliers and outsourced developments

• Several acquisitions of companies per year

• Product life can be from 1 to 20 years

• Sells anything in the network for communication

- Network access

- Core network

- Transmission technologies

- Applications

- Professional services

•Customers

- Network operators (around 1500 in the world)

- Strategic industries

- Enterprises

- Indirectly: end users: anybody in the world

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SOFTWARE R&D AND FOSSINDUSTRY TRENDS

Complexity: size and set of features

Component integration cost

FOSSDevelopment cost

Proprietary R&D

FOSS

Trends: R&D becomes a shared effort

We stand here

TODAYYESTERDAY

A proprietary SW product

TOMORROW

A FOSS distributor/integrator

Development cost

Development cost

Trend line

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• Strategy: use FOSS whenever possible

• Use FOSS distributors / supporting companies whenever possible- E.g. Linux - Android is our strategy

• 20% to 80% of an Alcatel-Lucent product code is FOSS (42% in average today)

• Basic rationale- Remove supplier lock-in

- Reduce R&D costs

- Create an internal and external community on common software

- Provide our contribution to the communities

It is also about

• Innovation

- Using FOSS accelerate innovation

- Re-use avoid to re-invent the wheel

• Provide freedom to our customers

- Provide them standard solutions to develop additional services

- Reduce their need to adapt their solutions for each supplier

• New Business model: Moving from a HW/SW supplier to a service supplier

- Compete on quality, customer care, innovation

FOSS USE IN ALCATEL-LUCENT

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• Contributions to tools

- Expat suite of tools, GForge/ Fusionforge

• Contribution to FOSS bug Fix

• Contribution to new developments

- Corba component model on top of Mico (GPL/LGPL licenses)

- Plan9 (operating system under Lucent public license)

• Indirect contributions to non core telecom business through FOSS distributors

- We pay ten’s of million$ per year to FOSS distributors for enhancements to OS, database, middleware, ….

• FOSS Forums and standardization

• Linux foundation: Alcatel-Lucent is one of the 9 founders of carrier grade Linux group (Part of OSDL in 2001)

• FOSSBazaar: Alcatel-Lucent participate to SPDX standard and promote it.

• FOSSBazaar: we will continue the standardization of FOSS governance process.

• OWF: we are a sponsor

• Systematic: head of FOSS project committee

• OVA: Open Virtualization Alliance we are in the process of being a member

ALCATEL-LUCENTA CONTRIBUTOR TO FOSS

FOSS GOVERNANCE IS NOT ONLY A MATTER OF LAW, AS A GOOD CITIZEN COMPANY, WE RESPECT THE PHILOSOPHY

BEHIND FOSS LICENSES AND WE CONTRIBUTE

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• Governance process started in 2002

- Process scope:

- FOSS selection,

- use of detection tools,

- outsourcing developments,

- professional services,

- Information technology,

- merge and acquisitions,

- packaging Alcatel-Lucent products,

- suppliers contracts,

- contributing to FOSS.

- Implementation nearly completed

- Process still under evolution

• Numbers and facts

- 160+ people trained to select/authorize/forbid FOSS and implement the process

- 1000s of people trained to basic tutorial

- 3500 FOSS in Alcatel-Lucent FOSS database (describing risk issues)

- Alcatel-Lucent is committed to align on SPDX/FOSSBazaar standard

- All new contracts with suppliers contains FOSS clauses

- Alcatel-Lucent is willing to share a common governance process with other companies

YOU NEED A STRONG FOSS GOVERNANCE PROCESS!

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• Being able to identify FOSS in each Alcatel-Lucent product

- R&D identify all FOSS used

- Use tools (Blackduck/protex, fossology) to detect FOSS in Alcatel-Lucent products

- Third party software companies’ FOSS identified (suppliers, outsourcing companies, acquisitions)

- All FOSS used must be authorized

• Correct packaging of FOSS in Alcatel-Lucent products

ALCATEL-LUCENT BASIC FOSS PROCESS

FOSS expert

MEET EVERY WEEK SINCE 2007!

INITIATOR, E.G. PRODUCT MANAGEMENT

OR PROCUREMENT

160 FOSS evaluators

Core team evaluators

Lawyers

Purchasing

FOSS EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

5. Can you confirm that B is a library?

1. Check A, B, C

6. Set B risks

FOSS database

Supportfor difficult evaluation

2. A is OK, C is forbidden, B is not described in the database

3. Add B

4. Evaluate B

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EVERYTHING AVAILABLEFROM INTRANET

• Several tutorials on line: from 10’ to one day

• Mailing lists 600 people

• Linux dedicated page

• Tools

• Major Licenses description

• How to contribute to FOSS

• …

TRANSLATED IN 11 LANGUAGES

80+ PAGES OFDOCUMENTATION

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Having an internal process does not mean that it is implemented

• First

- Start at high level with legal and high executives

- Explain to R&D the issues

- Strong communication is needed

• Second

- Come from a light FOSS process to a strong one

- Start with a basic process

- Adapt the process to complex situations

- Have a committee with lawyers that can address issues

- Create documents – web sites, mailing lists, fora

- Be Flexible

THAT’S NOTENOUGH!

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Do not impose a process if you cannot implement it

• Resources must be available and must increase with implementation level

• Provide exceptions for transient situations

• Be flexible

• Do not discourage people for implementing the process

• Tools need to be tailored with load

THE MOST IMPORTANT

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• An effective and open-minded legal infrastructure

• A strict quality process which easily incorporate FOSS specificities

• Several corporate communications networks (Procurement, R&D, legal, …)

• The use of tools (e.g. Protex/Blackduck and FOSSology) to detect issues and inform executives of their product potential exposure

• A continuous decentralization of the process

FACTORS OF SUCCESSIN ALCATEL-LUCENT

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PITFALLS

• Having only a top-down (from executives) or bottom-up (from engineers) approach

- Middle management enrolment is key to success

• Having a rigid and/or static process

- Each group in a global organization has its own way of working

- Build your process bit by bit as you discover new internal issues

- The process needs to evolve continually according to new technologies and situations and the maturity of the company on FOSS

• Centralizing the process

- Not sustainable in a global company

- The process must be implementable

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NEW CHALLENGES FOR ALCATEL-LUCENT

• Standardizing the process with other companies

- Move to the SPDX standard

- Go further in standardizing FOSS governance process

• Keeping up with new business models

- Cloud computing, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, …

• Keeping up with recent technologies

- Maven – dynamic internet download of Java software at runtime

- Bit torrent propagation – automatic propagation of software between servers

- DRM or CAS software – limit to multimedia content access

• Improving our process

- Automate the measurement of the process implementation

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CONCLUSIONS

• A long and persistent effort: started in 2002 in Alcatel-Lucent

- All company must embrace the effort

• Process must grow at the same speed as awareness

• A symmetric inter-companies effort – companies must be partners

- Customer requirements are similar to what we request from suppliers

• Emerging standards must be followed (e.g. FOSSBaazar group)

• Be ready to third party requests

FOSS GOVERNANCE IS NOT ONLY A MATTER OF LAW, AS A GOOD CITIZEN COMPANY, WE RESPECT THE PHILOSOPHY

BEHIND FOSS LICENSES AND WE CONTRIBUTE

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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION ABOUT THIRD-PARTY PICTURES USED IN THIS PRESENTATION

• Firefox Nebula (slide 1):MPL (Mozila Public License)http://www.aidoweb.com/tutoriaux/themes-personas-tout-personnaliser-firefox-675

• GNU Meditate levitate (8): GFDL1.2+http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gnu_meditate_levitate.png?uselang=fr

• Radeau de la méduse (11): Public domain(painting in Louvre from Théodore Géricault, photo from University la Sorbone – Paris I)http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Th%C3%A9odore_G%C3%A9ricault_-_Le_Radeau_de_la_M%C3%A9duse.jpg#file

• La liberté guidant le peuple (13):Public Domain(painting in Louvre from Eugène Delacroix)http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix_-_La_libert%C3%A9_guidant_le_peuple.jpg

Foss governance succeeding / Philippe Richard

Technology

Transcript of Foss governance succeeding / Philippe Richard