Bridging the Knowledge Gap on Community Data With Daniel Izquierdo  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Business of Open Source]] - Full Title: Bridging the Knowledge Gap on Community Data With Daniel Izquierdo - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/4834009d-92c2-411f-833e-8d140833026f ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Origin of Bitergia** - Daniel Izquierdo and five others co-founded Bitergia in 2012 after their academic research group shrunk during an economic crisis. - The team transitioned from academia to business, aiming to apply their open source research practically. Transcript: Daniel Izquierdo A good question. So mainly because of the crisis. So we started in 2012. That was the time when I exactly finished my PhD on free software engineering. And the research group we were part of, we kind of decreased from 30 people. We were more or less down to 10 people. Basically, the question on the table is what's next, right? Because we were having a master on free software for a few years. We were doing all of this research on open source communities. Then we started to have having like more industrial oriented projects like, hey, I need you to do certain development. You know, I need answers on a certain topic or We said, what if we start this? So it was not the kind of the usual research group, which is trying to, you know, make business really quick. Or so there was not a real clear path to move there. ([Time 0:01:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f665390c-dc18-4b71-a737-503e7007ba03)) - **Early Customer and Growth** - Bitergia's first customer was the OpenStack Foundation, helped by a well-connected professor's networks. - Early projects built trust and the company grew slowly by engaging open source communities. Transcript: Daniel Izquierdo And here we are. So 11 years after, we're still alive. Emily O'Meara Tell me just a little bit about that first year. At what point did you realize you were going to survive past the year? And, you know, what did you do to make that happen? Daniel Izquierdo We were, so Jesus, the professor from the university, he was very well connected in the open source community. What happened there is we started saying, hey, we are planning to have this company. And then because of these initial projects I mentioned, more industrial based, our very first customer was the OpenStack Foundation. So it was our first contact was Stefano Mapulli. Back in time, he came and sent an email. He's now the executive director at the OSI and said, hey, I need an implementation to support Launchpad, you know, because that's the ticketing system that they are using. We said, well, if they are asking for this, what if we try to replicate this? So then, because we had OpenStack, then we started to have some other, it was about building trust. So then I remember back in time, we were talking to Red Hat. So then we started to get hired by some Red Hat community managers. I don't remember some names, Dave Neri or Rich Bowen, that are really well known in the open source space. So thank you if you are listening to this. And probably because we created this trust with the OpenStack Foundation, they said, OK, let's try this. It's not that big amount of money. You know, at the very beginning, you go cheaper. You have to try it. You need to open market. We didn't even know if there was a market on metrics. So we were kind of slowly growing in that space. So the first year, going to your question was mainly about discovering the market, testing the market, and moving forward, trying to make a name. ([Time 0:04:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0aa2e6d4-13cc-4b9a-9efc-2d606e4c689d)) - **Bitergia's Revenue Model** - Bitergia earns revenue mainly through their open source project Grimoire Lab and consultancy. - They help clients interpret community data and answer strategic business questions with their expertise. Transcript: Daniel Izquierdo I would say there are two main areas. The first one is we are developing an open source project, which is Grimoire Lab. It's part of the chaos community. It's a working project from a working group from the Linux Foundation, and it's on community health analytics. So that software is the one that we are creating a product and basically doing ad hoc developments, doing deployments, doing deployments on premises. So there is, let's say, the classic business models of open source with an existing technology that we are using. Then what our customers have with this is mainly data, and they have a consistent reporting all across the different data sources that they may use. So the next step is basically, what do I do now? Basically, how can I make sense of the data? So then we enter into the more consultancy space. Because of our customers don't have the time, don't have the resources, don't have the knowledge. So we are typically the main users of our own technology. So basically we are able to consume the data. So then we answer the business questions. ([Time 0:06:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a18e5227-1738-4834-afd7-504fbd639b12)) - **Critical Open Source Metrics** - Metrics to measure open source communities depend on the audience, from budget for VPs to collaboration bottlenecks for engineers. - Example: Wikimedia Foundation focuses on volunteer engagement longevity by tracking unresolved older tickets from volunteers. Transcript: Emily O'Meara What should people be paying attention to? Daniel Izquierdo That depends a lot on the on the person consuming the data. So if we go to the concept of OSPOS, so it's about making the best of open source all across the different departments, right? And then how they can make a good use of open source. Perfect. From a metrics discussion, this is another tool to make informed decisions. So then the question is, how can we embed those metrics into those different departments that are consuming effectively open source or producing open source, right. So then, I don't know, if we go to the VP level, maybe they are just interested in money, budget, cost. So then you need to translate, you need to transform whatever you are doing into meaningful numbers. That's really hard, by the way. But then if you are talking to engineers, perhaps they are more interested in learning about their bottlenecks, their process, the differences between what they say they do and the Reality usually happens and so on and so forth. So basically that depends on that. An example here is Wikimedia Foundation. We have a use case with them, public use case, where they are really interested in taking care of volunteers because they have a certain amount of people that are being paid by the foundation I think it's through a a company rival this structure but then what happens with those contributions because their goal is to grow the community by having volunteers happy then they Avoid frustration so then they are able to have a healthy community around the project. So it's not only about them basically investing in development teams that they have to pay for, but it's about growing the community and the benefits of all of this. That's an example. So they were looking for really old tickets, really old pull requests that they could help with, go there, understand that. So then we can go to metrics at the level of what are the tickets were open by a volunteer that are still open and longer than, you know, five weeks or two months or so then you have a list of Them. ([Time 0:09:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/748cf24a-9126-455d-9bb6-6219dc9bec9d)) - **Bridging Knowledge Gaps** - Most clients struggle to contextualize their community data due to lack of time. - To reduce this knowledge gap, dedicate personnel and time to learn and interpret community analytics properly. Transcript: Emily O'Meara What is that knowledge gap that you find among your clients? And how can you give away the farm here? So how can somebody, you know, reduce that knowledge gap in themselves? Mainly time. Daniel Izquierdo So basically what happens is that they don't have the right time to spend on using the tool or understanding their communities. Because we have all of these accumulated experience, we keep doing research. So we have a deep understanding of what's going on. So basically we are faster or we are more reliable, right? We are cheaper at the end of the journey with a high quality results. So that's basically the main difference. But what I would say is mainly time. ([Time 0:11:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/530855e9-c4a0-4637-9eab-9650273449db)) - **Sustaining Open Source Communities** - To sustain or grow a community, provide a welcoming space and onboard members effectively. - Understand collaboration dynamics using metrics and network analysis to identify isolated groups or strong connectors. Transcript: Daniel Izquierdo Okay. So probably then independently on your business goals, a way to have a sustainable community, which is probably the key here. It's about giving the stage to those people that are part of the community. Either they are coming from companies or volunteers or so. It's about giving them the space to be part of something, onboarding, you know, it's about growing them. And for this, I think it's really, really important to understand the dynamics of collaboration those communities. So basically, who's working with who? So then there might be a connection into that person, right? Or there might be areas where you have like an isolated group of people working or participating or developing software. So then it's, again, so you can see that from a visual perspective with metrics, with this technology, for instance, which is a network analysis. It's not rocket science, right? But then it's about learning and understanding how you can consume the data that you are seeing. ([Time 0:12:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c48966d6-e135-4a49-8bb1-815f459a0a6e)) - **Open Source Licensing and Advantage** - Bitergia chose a fully open-source GPL license for their technology to force contributions back to the community. - Their competitive advantage lies in knowledge and data interpretation, not just software technology. Transcript: Daniel Izquierdo We tried, not open core, we tried SAS, which is basically we were using the same technology that was everything open source, which is Caldron.io. It didn't really work. It's still there. The service is there. It's free, but we basically removed the paid part. And that's mainly at the SAS level. OpenCore and so on? No. Emily O'Meara Any particular reason? Daniel Izquierdo First, because what we say is what we say. So that means that, so first we started the company being open source and we are using GPL version three or later. And it's very important for us that, that the, and that was a business decision specifically, like we want to be GPL. So from that point of view, that's forcing others to proceed in a certain way when they are using the software, right? So we are kind of, we can say, protecting somehow whatever we are doing by kind of forcing others to basically redistribute, again, the same under an open source license, GPL version. So one of the reasons was that another reason when we started all of this is that we were teaching business models at the university, open source business models, you know, the whole. It was a master degree on open source. That was a lot of hours. So we wanted to try what we were saying was true, basically. And then because we are heavily based on research, we really believe that basically we run faster than others. ([Time 0:14:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2252437e-6134-4494-9bb2-99d6ef771f38)) - **Business Development Challenges** - Bitergia's challenge is gaining visibility at high decision-making levels in large corporations. - Despite struggling to reach chief-level influencers, their work gains recognition by attending open source events worldwide. Transcript: Daniel Izquierdo So more and more our business is with large corporations, but we don't have the person, you know, the whisperer close to the chief level at a large corporation telling you, you should Hire this company or this other to do this or that. So we are not at that level. So our main problem probably is how can others discover the work that we are doing in Vitergia? How we can help them, basically. That's something we are still learning from. ([Time 0:21:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5e2ea484-f4a7-46a4-b992-f049ed880d6f)) - **Build a Diverse Founding Team** - Build a startup team with diverse skills including finance, networking, development, and management. - Diversity in skillsets helps address various challenges in founding and growing an open source company. Transcript: Daniel Izquierdo Than open source, I would say in general, my experience, which is sort in creating business, just one, it's about having a diverse team with diverse skills. So in our case, I would say we have someone from finances that was kind of warning, you are crazy, don't do that. That's one. He was always saying no. Then we had another person with really good network, kind of good talking and, you know, speaking in public and that experience, good network of people. Then we were, including me, a couple of developers starting from scratch all of us were developers in it trying to create a product or productizing what we had at the university and then The other the other person was on on administration and management so with with all of these people it's it sounds like six people at the very beginning are like a lot right but then you Know looking backwards sounds like the right number for the kind of things we were doing because of the different, the diversity of skills. ([Time 0:22:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e82ee3b9-f36e-4e32-a1d1-f246fbf25c90)) - **Lessons in Communication and Culture** - Key learnings over 11 years include enhancing internal communication and navigating cultural business differences. - Proactively managing these aspects improves decision-making and company cohesion. Transcript: Daniel Izquierdo Don't know. Perhaps. So one of the things we've been learning over the years is about two things. One of them is communication across the different team members, with customers, of course, but specifically internally. How to do that properly? That's hard. And the other one is cultural differences. So even when, you know, the US and Europe or Europe and Spain, we are, well, similar in ways of approaching problems and so on, you realize of certain things over the years. So having someone on kind of cultural differences about how to do business and so on, that would be, would have been really helpful. ([Time 0:23:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/544f828c-5710-4c55-873c-255d6362e580)) - **Sharing Knowledge in Open Source** - Open source companies must be comfortable sharing knowledge because intellectual property is often represented in source code. - Bitergia balances openness and protecting internal consultancy knowledge that adds business value. Transcript: Daniel Izquierdo So you really need to feel comfortable about sharing knowledge and expertise, because at the end, what we have in the code is that knowledge expressed in source code lines. Right. We even have or we've had from time to time the discussion on the table, like, do we want to open everything we have? So all the code is open as open source is public in GitHub. But then we produce, I don't know, a consistent list of metrics that we are using over the years. Do you want to publish that or not? Is this perhaps internal IP and knowledge and experience accumulated from Vitergia or not? Because we have this balance between does it really make a difference for others out there or, you know, from a competitor's perspective that they have access to this? Probably not. But that's kind of a discussion we internally have from time to time with certain assets, we can say that we we have internally, perhaps more from the consultancy perspective. ([Time 0:25:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4b61d55b-64d1-46cc-b02c-99f49f3a9c0b)) - **Open Sharing Builds Trust** - Sharing tools like the Inner Source maturity model openly builds community trust and adoption. - However, consultancy work goes beyond public tools to tailored analysis and strategic positioning. Transcript: Daniel Izquierdo Like, I know that big percentage of our customers are coming because we are part of certain open source communities and it's, know they oh is it higher return yeah that are good perfect But that happens because we released or we served first with the with the community what we know example here is inner source commons so we released some years ago a maturity model on Inner source that was done together with other companies and we released that as open source. We give it to the community. This is now what we call patterns at the Inner Source Commons. But then if you want to do a full consultancy process, it's not only about the maturity model, because that's just a photo. It's about analyzing the community, sorry, the company. But then you are positioning the company into that maturity level or maturity readiness. It's about having a certain capabilities, skills, discussion, or model as well. So it's about having many things. But a maturity model has been, for instance, a really powerful tool to show we can do it. So that's basically the key problem here. From a consultancy perspective, sharing what you think might be key assets that are useful for the community because maturity model was really useful. My understanding is that, for instance, in the Finals Foundation, they took that as a starting point and they have their own inner source maturity model, which is really good as well. ([Time 0:26:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/950ba407-468d-4141-b22d-d3e58843a6d1))