Case Studies

Providing good security procedures and management is one of the things that OSPOs can do to show value. Hands-on security management requires solid technical capability, but no Ph.D.s in cryptography are needed to make a huge difference. Many open source security issues require just as much community engagement as they do technical acumen, and that sits right in the sweet spot of what open source program offices do.

G-Research wanted to invest in its open source supply chain, but traditional engagement didn't quite fit. Instead they built what they call a "muscular OSPO" with a deep investment in advancing upstream projects. Alex Scammon, head of G-Research's OSPO, talked to us about it.

Comcast's involvement in open source was a gradual process that evolved over time. The company eventually created two open source program offices, one for the NBC business and another for the cable side of the business, which is the subject of this profile.

NI (formerly National Instruments) has responded to the industry's shift toward open source by growing its open source footprint. This case study describes some successes and lessons learned in a growing open source program.

SAP’s climb to higher visibility is a sign of its continued commitment to excellence in open source. Peter Giese, director of SAP’s Open Source Program Office and Michael Picht, chief development architect, contributed this case study.

Dropbox was started and built on a foundation of open source code. But Dropbox did not always have a formal Open Source Program. This case study discusses the development of the open source function at Dropbox.

When you about how banks work, open source might not be at the top of your mind. But more and more companies—including those in the financial sector—have learned that open source software is often more reliable and secure than closed source.

As the largest open source company in the world, Red Hat is all-in on open source. This case study describes some of the lessons learned over two decades of working in the open source community.

Salesforce is well-known in the enterprise for its Software-as-a-Service offering. Many people don't know that open source is a key part of what keeps Salesforce innovating.

Autodesk is a traditional software company that has also embraced open source, as shown by its large and increasing presence on Github (at https://autodesk.github.io/ ). In this case study, Guy Martin (@guyma) talks about developing the open source program.

This open source office case study comes from Verizon Media (formerly Oath). Through its predecessor companies, Verizon Media has a long history with open source.

Uber is one of the best-known disruptors in the digital age. Its business model famously separated transportation services from the traditional underlying infrastructure with an app-based model offering on-demand and multimodal options. In many ways, this transformation, and Uber itself, also mirror the creative and collaborative aspects of the open source community.

It may be surprising to some that Microsoft is now one of the biggest contributors to open source. But that evolution was the result of deliberate work - and a thoughtful open source program.

"Open source is core to our engineering DNA. We believe that sharing our code and even hardware designs accelerates the pace of innovation in the world." Christine Abernathy, Open Source Developer Advocate at Facebook, features in this case study of the well-known tech giant.

Our next open source office case study comes from SanDisk, the maker of computer storage equipment. Open source is a key part of SanDisk's entire production pipeline.

From the very beginning, GitHub has been about open source. Scratching the itch of better code collaboration turned into a company built on and for open source; from the philosophies that founded the company, to the servers running the infrastructure, to the languages and libraries we use to build applications, to the millions of public repositories hosted on them. Even our business model - based on the premise that you shouldn't have to pay if you share - encourages open source.

This case study features Chris Aniszczyk (@cra) who established the Open Source Program Office at Twitter and is now the Executive Director of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

We're excited about what we've been able to accomplish and we look forward to seeing the projects emerging from other businesses in situations similar to ours. Being a part of the open source community is a rewarding experience and is totally achievable by companies working in enterprise capacities.

Yahoo had an early OSPO and was initial member of the TODO Group. This case study was provided by Gil Yehuda (@gyehuda), who is in charge of open source at Yahoo!. "You will find that open source participation is essential to long term tech health."

"It takes time and resources to build a great open source team, so you shouldn't take it on lightly, but .. in this day and age I don't know if you could build out a matrix and conclude 'we can afford not to'."