John Mark Walker founded OSEN to help others understand the relationships between open source and business. Open source is ubiquitous and powers the global economy, but the business models around it vary. When building products, it's important to distinguish projects from products and manage risks for both customers and your own business. Cloud, open source, and software-as-a-service go hand in hand, and the same product management principles of understanding ecosystems and supply chains apply regardless of delivery method.

1. From Project to Product
What you need to know
John Mark Walker*, Founder, OSEN
*With an assist from Stephen Walli, Docker

2. Thank you to our sponsors!
Red Hat, CIC, Dell EMC

3. What is OSEN? Why did I start it?
Mission: help others understand relationships between open source and business
● Lots of content around open source technology, not much on business
● No one open source business model, but lots of business models use open
source
● Product managers, founders, investors, IT managers, CIOs/CTOs
● Every product and service can benefit from open source collaboration
● I got really tired of hearing the same questions:
○ How can you make money from stuff that’s free?
● OSEN: osenetwork.com

4. Key Principles of Open Source Product Management
● Open source is omni-present and runs the world’s economy
○ Every financial transaction depends on open source software
○ Every company, in every vertical market, uses open source
● Source code is not product
● Don’t confuse projects and products
○ Products can be built on projects
● Ecosystems are key to building efficient supply chains
● Selling product is all about adding value for customer
○ Manage risk: yours and your customers

5. Lock-in risk ->
Infrastructurerisk->
Profitability
line
Open Source Product Risk Graph

16. Thoughts on Cloud, Open Source and *-as-a-service
● Go together like “peanut butter and jelly”
● Same product management principles apply
○ Only difference is product delivery
● Provides natural divide between project and product
○ Actually easier to do than if you have “traditional” on premises product
● Everyone moving to *-as-a-service, even internal IT
○ Requires product management discipline from *everyone*
○ Requires knowledge of open source ecosystems, supply chains and risk management
Sources for this deck:
https://opensource.com/business/15/8/open-source-products-four-rules (by
Stephen Walli)

17. Contact Me
● LinkedIn/in/johnmarkwalker
● Twitter - @johnmark @osenetwork
● https://osenetwork.com/