Open Source Craft at TwitterChris Aniszczyk (@cra)

http://aniszczyk.org

#monkigras

TwistoryTwitter History

2006: A simple idea...

2008: Growing Pains

2009... Crazy Growth

2010+: Shit, build a company!

Employee Growth...

Now: Growth Continues...

1400+ Employees Worldwide50% Employees are Engineers200M+ Active Users400M+ Tweets per Day33+ Languages Supported60% Active Users are on Mobile100+ Open Source Projects

Engineers run the asylum...

Code dumping happens...

Code dumping happens...

No Ownership = Problems

Start with ownership.Created an Open Source Office in 2011

Open Source Craft and Culture

How we roll...

Open Source Craft(operating principles)

Use OpenAssume Open

Define Secret SauceMeasure Everything

Default to GitHubDefault to Permissive

Acquire and OpenPay it Forward

Use OpenUse and benchmark open source software by

default. When starting a new initiative, always evaluate open source options before going to

reinvent the wheel. (e.g., if redis doesn’t work for you, you better have solid evidence)

Twitter Runs on Open Source

Define Secret SauceDon’t open source anything that represents a core

business value. Define your secret sauce so there’s a shared understanding that can guide

decisions. Embed this secret sauce within your culture and company via training.

Secret Sauce, what is it?

What’s yours?

If you know your secret sauce...

Assume OpenAssume that what you are developing will be

opened in the future. Pretend the whole world will be watching. Use reasonable third party

dependencies to prevent pain down the road. (we mostly use Apache’s Third Party Guidelines as a

starting point)

Default to GitHubThe GitHub community is the largest open source

community, with over three million users. You would be stupid to ignore that fact. Embrace social

coding tools to lower the barrier to contribution and participation.

Foundations are Good*We just prefer not to default to them. We view

them as a place for stable projects that grow into maturity, not to incubate new projects. Our goal is to gain traction first as fast as possible. If not,

fail fast and carry on.

Default to Permissive

Be PermissiveFor outbound open source software, we default to OSI permissive licenses (the ALv2 in the majority of cases). We do this so we can maximize adoption and participation, which we favor instead of

control.

See http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/2011/12/19/the-future-of-commercial-open-source-business-strategies/

Embrace the Trend

See http://antirez.com/news/48

Notes from Antirez (1)“First of all, open source for me is not a way to contribute to the free software movement, but to contribute to humanity. This means a lot of things, for instance I don't care about

what people do with my code, nor if they'll release back their modifications. I simply want people to use my

code in one way or the other.

Especially I want people to have fun, learn new stuff, and make money with my code. For me other people making money out of something I wrote is not something that I

lost, it is something that I gained.”

See http://antirez.com/news/48

Notes from Antirez (2)1) I'm having a bigger effect in the world if somebody can pay the bills using my code.2) If there are N subjects making money with my code, maybe they will be happy to share some of this money with me, or will be more willing to hire me.3) I can be myself one of the subjects making money with my code, and with other open source software code.

For all this reasons my license of choice is the BSD licensed, that is the perfect incarnation of do whatever you want as a license.”

Acquire and Open*Include open sourcing software in M&A

discussions, especially if you’re mainly acquiring talent or shelving the product. There’s no need for

software to go to waste.

Acquire and Open: RedPhone

See https://github.com/WhisperSystems/RedPhone

Acquire and Open: Clutch.IO

See http://engineering.twitter.com/2012/10/open-sourcing-clutchio.htmlSee http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/10/prweb10067693.htm

Measure EverythingIf you can’t measure what you’re doing, you have

no idea what you’re doing. We measure everything inside of Twitter (affectionately called birdbrain)

and make it accessible to everyone.

Pay it ForwardSupport open source organizations and

projects important to your business, it’s the right and smart thing to do. This can be financially or simply staffing projects that are strategic to you.

Open Source Craft*

Use OpenAssume Open

Define Secret SauceMeasure Everything

Default to GitHubDefault to Permissive

Acquire and OpenPay it Forward

Note: This fits in a tweet

ScalingScaling an open source program

Light / Automated Process

Automated Process via JIRA WorkflowInspiration from Eclipse.org’s IPZilla

Not all process is bad!“process is an embedded reaction to priority stupidity”

True.Remember the history of surgery?Ignaz Semmelweiz (hand washing)

Surgery checklist: Glad your surgeon washes hands?Even with surgery process, metal objects still are left in people :)

See http://many.corante.com/archives/2003/09/17/process_is_an_embedded_reaction_to_prior_stupidity.phpSee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

Automate Quality ChecklistTooling to check for baseline “quality” before we open

√ README√ LICENSE

√ CONTRIBUTING.MD√ .travis.yml

√ Avoid KEYS / sensitive bits√ Avoid GPL License Family

Attempts to build and posts results in JIRA.Enforces and teaches good practices.

Automate Sourcing for HiringLet’s scale hiring a bit!

Run monthly queries on contributors to our open source projects and projects of interest.

Hand it off the Recruiting and the ATS.

It’s hard enough to find good talent, why not hire from open source projects of interest.

Automate Reporting / MetricsSend out weekly reports based on:

Open Sourced Projects (what opened)Top Committers (commits+issues closed)

Releases (assumed via git-tag)Contentious Issues (issues with most comments)

Top Watched Project (most stars)Top Forked Project (most forks)

Track trends.Motivates contribution.

Conclusion

Define Your PrinciplesOpen Source Almost EverythingMeasure / Automate Everything

Thanks for listening!(especially if you survived last night’s beer fest)

@crazx@twitter.com