Leveraging the Open Source Development Model Inside Your Company

Leveraging the Open Source Development Model Inside Your Company - Mark Gisi, Wind River Systems

The Open Source Software Movement is responsible for creating some of the most valuable software of the 20th and 21st centuries. It gave us successes such as Linux, GCC, Apache Server, Eclipse, Git, Firefox, MySQL, Drupal, Python, WordPress, Hadoop, and Open Stack, just to name a few. All were developed using a loosely coupled, widely distributed, open development model. While economists and sociologists continue to scratch their heads trying to make sense of it all, one thing no one refutes: the Open Development model has been very successful. The question is: Can companies deploy this approach internally to obtain similar successes? Wind River conducted a pilot project to test the hypothesis that we can. We discuss why the Open Development model works internally, pitfalls to avoid, how it fosters innovation and the benefits it offers to both engineers and the company collectively.

About Mark Gisi

Mark Gisi, Directory of Intellectual Property and Open Source at Wind River Systems (an Intel subsidiary), has been responsible for managing Open Source policies, processes and programs for the past 10 years. Mark has extensive experience managing the use of open source software to both maximize ROI and mitigate risk. That includes managing Open source software to go beyond reducing costs such as: accelerating innovation; fostering internal code sharing and reuse; accelerating product adoption; obtaining ROI on strategically positioned open source projects; strengthening an organization’s brand; and facilitating the attraction/retention of highly skilled technical staff. Mark is a key contributor to the Linux Foundation’s SPDX and OpenChain projects. Mark holds a MS degree in Computer Science and a BS degree in Mathematics.