The Challenges of Public Code: Building an Open Source Culture at BBC
summary
BBC runs ~99 public projects and supports big products (iPlayer 25M users, Sounds 5M) while 21,000 staff include 18,000 public‑service roles that trigger regulator and public‑money checks. A random Node repo pulls in 339 dependencies and one audit finds 18 internal authors versus 335 external collaborators (about 0.25% internal), prompting tooling like a repo risk tracker (GitHub webhook) and Dependabot, faster IP sign‑off (months→weeks), InnerSource adoption, and plans for Copybara mirroring to split proprietary monorepos.
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chapters (15)
- 0:00BBC’s open source journey
- 4:40BBC’s open source history
- 9:56Open source community challenges
- 13:48Scaling open source projects
- 21:16Virtual open source office
- 24:10Balancing strategy and business
- 30:28Secure open source practices
- 34:21Tools for open source decisions
- 36:11Measuring project health
- 38:58Future open source plans
- 40:01Q&A on broadcaster collaboration
- 41:27Balancing quality and quantity
- 43:38Managing open source contributions
- 44:42BBC content and APIs
- 45:51Feedback for standards
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