Talking with Management About Open Source
summary
Practical advice on persuading managers: argue with numbers, not philosophy — quantify how much revenue or user flows depend on an open source component and answer what would be involved to replace this functionality if the project went away tomorrow. Use public failure examples (Heartbleed, Meltdown, Log4Shell) to show real dollar risk from underfunded projects and propose concrete steps—sustained contributions, multi-stakeholder governance, hiring or funding maintainers—to mitigate supply chain risk while focusing internal teams on undifferentiated heavy lifting.
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chapters (18)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:18Talking To Management About Open Source
- 1:29Why do you do open source?
- 4:26Disclaimer 2
- 7:36What's in it for the company?
- 8:27Philosophy
- 12:47Supply chain
- 15:44Don't be afraid to tell scary stories
- 18:31What is sustainable open source?
- 19:26Dangers of single-vendor
- 20:04Dangers of single-maintaner
- 21:20Earning merit and reputation
- 21:58Instead: trust and influence
- 25:33And talk about adoption
- 30:13Resume building
- 30:48Instead talk about continuing education
- 33:12Instead talk about customer value
- 35:30Other things to talk to your management about
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