SAP’s Open Source Perspective  🔗 **Source:** [SAP’s Open Source Perspective](https://share.snipd.com/episode/fd5b595a-521a-470f-9c1f-fed74eae434b) ## Highlights - **OSPO Shifting From Compliance To Strategy** - Sebastian Wolf wants SAP's OSPO to evolve from compliance/enablement to strategic, business-oriented open source leadership. - He plans to build on existing foundations and shift toward strategic contributions, citing Neonifos as an example. Transcript: Karsten Hohage Since March. So just recently, Sebastian, you took over the SAP OSPO. How did that happen, and what are your first goals? Sebastian Wolf Well, it's pretty simple. Peter Giese, who founded the SAP Open office back I think it was in 2020 18 um he um well will enter his well-deserved retirement pretty soon that is at least from time of recording in just A few weeks from now um and um yeah he has led that since then but now as he's stepping out it's time for finding a successor yeah you know that pretty well well as sap open source of course Also sap but open source is my passion probably since i started working with computers that was still back in the 90s um and um as i my my time here in the ospo in the last six years were really Great, I said, well, I apply for this position. And, you know, fortunately, after all the recruitment process is finished, I was offered this position. And, of course, I accepted it with great honor, but also with a bit of a humbleness, so to say, because these are really big footsteps that I'm stepping in now. So I'm still a bit speechless, as you can hear here. But on the other side, of course, as you asked for the goals, and I also said that I'm stepping in big footsteps. First and foremost, I strive to continue the legacy of the previous years of open source at SAP. So on first hand, don't want to break things that work properly. Yeah, that's the first thing. And of course, I will try to make things better where there's still improvement potential, so to say. On the other side, these things that we want to make better have already been planned already together with Peter. So, yeah, there won't be that many big changes, of course, given the context that we are currently in with AI and other things. Of course, there will be some, but not dramatic, so to say. On the bottom line, we simply need to evolve the open source program office or the open source work at SAP from a mainly compliance-driven or enablement-driven perspective, ([Time 0:02:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/988bf9d3-fe34-4b5a-9172-2580194c484b)) - **Sebastian's Long Term Open Source Roots** - Sebastian traces his open source roots to installing Linux on his father's PC and starting projects in the 1990s. - He remains a maintainer for several Sailfish OS mobile apps and still contributes actively. Transcript: Sebastian Wolf I actually started working as a small student still attending school. Just installed Linux on my father's computer. I didn't have an own computer there back then. And I wanted to get the graphics card properly configured. And at least for 3D games back then, we didn't have proper UI configuration tools. And what do I do? I start my own project myself back then. And that was pretty much, dates back 25 years more or less. And these days, a little less, unfortunately, with respect to my open source projects, better for my family, of course. But, yeah, I'm a maintainer of quite a few of mobile applications for the operating system Sailfish OS. ([Time 0:08:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e5ab31ec-b1c4-4706-97ec-c87396d56b9f)) - **Orlin Joined SAP From SUSE And VMware** - Orlin joined SAP on March 1 after roles at SUSE and VMware and continues to lead Harbor and K3s community efforts. - He works as developer expert and technical community manager for Gardener and the NeoNephos Foundation at SAP. Transcript: Orlin Vasilev I know no it's not secret i joined yeah a few months ago, actually 1st of March. So that's almost like in time of recording two months. So I joined from SUSE and VMware before that. At SUSE, I was a principal open source technology advocate. And at VMware, actually, that was where I turned myself into the community work. I was a platform engineer and then I turned to the be open source technology community manager or I don't want to add more words to that role but I was working for projects like Harbor Valero Contour and I'm currently in time of joining actually I just figured out that the bio that I provided you beforehand was the bio that I added to the session ice for KubeCon and it was not Exactly reflecting my current role at SAP. As a community person, a part of SAP, I still work for the Harbor and the K3S community. I still contribute there and I lead the community effort there. At SAP, I joined as a developer expert and technical community manager for projects Gardner and the NeoNafos Foundation. ([Time 0:09:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2571cac4-9019-4af0-898f-db91471f0a87)) - **SAP Contribution Is Underrecognized** - SAP does substantial open source work but is poorly recognized by external communities. - Sebastian and Orlin say perception issues come from projects being seen as SAP-owned rather than community-led, limiting external contributor attraction. Transcript: Sebastian Wolf And in addition, and that's also the very basic motivation for this podcast, why we sit together and why I'm also really heavily looking forward to the cooperation with Orlen, his team, And all the other folks at SAP. We probably also agree that SAP definitely needs to be more, especially to be acknowledged and recognized as a major open source contributor or overall player in the open source community. It's really not a secret that SAP overall, well, with of course notable exceptions like the Neonifos Foundation and related work that we are doing, but it's not a secret that SAP is still Perceived as some kind of a commercial only or major commercial company in the minds of a lot of people in the industry, especially in the open source community. Okay. And, sorry, yeah. No, I was just going to ask Olin if you would confirm that. Orlin Vasilev Absolutely. Actually, when I said to my CNCF and other open source friends that I'm going to leave SUSE, they were like, why? Where are you going to go? And I was like, I'm going to SAP. And they were like, for real like are you are you sure like what's wrong and I'm so uh yeah I don't want to sell bad but we have to work and and to to wrap up a little bit on on what Sebastian said Like SAP doesn't have um um uh open source problem it has a little bit of I would say, a PR open source problem. So we're not vocal enough of the things what we do internally and how we contribute back on the open source. And pun intended, it's like a little garden, if I can say. Pun intended in the garden project. It's like open source is like this open public garden where everybody shares everything. And in our case, it's like a private estate where we develop stuff internally and then we put it out there. We have to open the doors of our private little garden more so people know what kind of good stuff we create internally. So, yeah. Karsten Hohage Yeah, and it's not even private. I mean, it is open source, a lot of the things we do. But you're basically for open source describing an age-old SAP problem. There was an old joke. I can't fully tell it because I'd have to mention other company names. But it kind of runs like if someone has an idea and somebody else declares themselves a market leader within two days of the idea, then SAP would deliver the only ever working solution In the field two years later without ever having talked about it before. That goes back to the on-premise R3 1990, early 2000s days, that joke. And so here we are again with open source behaving the same way. Or, Sebastian, what would you say in defense? Sebastian Wolf Well, I fully agree. And that was also the line I'm making here. It's very much as always in life. It's absolutely not sufficient to just do good things, to do a good job. We've done that for years. We've been top 10 contributors as long as the API was still there and updated of commercial open source contributors in the world. So, of course, we could improve, but the big issue was pretty much that we didn't only do a good job. We also needed to talk about it positively. We need to tell people what we're doing. We need to advertise our work. And that's also a very key element of successful open source companies and players. We need to team up with others to grow together and to make it bigger. And that was probably maybe also something we can improve is the team up. So quite a bunch of open source projects that we have been doing are perceived. I just tell about the perception, right? Are perceived to be some kind of a SAP driven, SAP owned, SAP project, so to say. And if you want to make things big in open source, you need to be attractive to the community. You need to be attractive to contributors. So to, let's say, have them a say when it comes to the further development maintenance of a project, of the direction where the project is going. ([Time 0:13:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6d5213c2-fbfa-4254-83d1-329d6799b0db)) - **Open The Doors And Tell The Story** - Do open SAP's internal development culture and communicate outwardly about contributions rather than assuming community will notice. - Orlin compares current posture to a private estate and urges opening doors so others see SAP's work. Transcript: Orlin Vasilev Would confirm that. Absolutely. Actually, when I said to my CNCF and other open source friends that I'm going to leave SUSE, they were like, why? Where are you going to go? And I was like, I'm going to SAP. And they were like, for real like are you are you sure like what's wrong and I'm so uh yeah I don't want to sell bad but we have to work and and to to wrap up a little bit on on what Sebastian said Like SAP doesn't have um um uh open source problem it has a little bit of I would say, a PR open source problem. So we're not vocal enough of the things what we do internally and how we contribute back on the open source. And pun intended, it's like a little garden, if I can say. Pun intended in the garden project. It's like open source is like this open public garden where everybody shares everything. And in our case, it's like a private estate where we develop stuff internally and then we put it out there. We have to open the doors of our private little garden more so people know what kind of good stuff we create internally. So, yeah. Yeah, and ([Time 0:14:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fd18f5d0-959a-42a4-98a7-de0707bbc7f2)) - **Invite Contributors By Sharing Governance And Funding** - Do actively invite and empower external contributors to influence project direction to make SAP projects attractive to communities. - Sebastian recommends advertising contributions, conference presence, and extending the open source fund to support independent projects. Transcript: Sebastian Wolf So to, let's say, have them a say when it comes to the further development maintenance of a project, of the direction where the project is going. And that might also be, if we improve that, that might also be a key success factor for improvement for SAP to be a better open source player in the future. Karsten Hohage So that's about that. So in short, SAP is perceived for thank you that you're open sourcing this, but we're not perceived as, oh great, now we can work on this together. Sebastian Wolf At least that's one aspect that I've been hearing quite a few times, and I don't know if Orlin could confirm that, but, yeah, that's what I hear from time to time. Karsten Hohage Okay. Orlin, do you want to, like... Yeah, I can comment. Orlin Vasilev I still consider myself external. We had a joke with something about that like i said we're gonna record um the podcast in two months uh maybe i'll know so many so much about that he's like don't worry about that like we count The time in the company in decades not months so i still consider myself as a newcomer and as such i i can say that like um for example recent um from kubecon i was speaking with so many folks There about the neon ethos foundation what we're going to do there and it's um that's heavily perceived like oh that's the sap thing um if we join shall we like comply with sap things and They're like no, no, it's a foundation. We just happen to be one of the founding members, but it's not an SAP thing anymore. They're like, yeah, but if we join and the Garner thing is so great, but do we have to, I don't know, follow the roadmap that SAP puts out? And they're like, no. So this is common narrative that due to the fact that SAP is huge and it's been heavily influencing all that, people still perceive it this way, I'll say. But that's, I think, one of the reasons why the CNTF, so-called internally, or the Gartner folks, in other words, kind of approached me to leverage my community expertise to change That. So we can actually show to the world that, yeah, it's originated by SAP and it was developed within SAP for SAP needs. But now it's part of the huge Linux Foundation ecosystem and it's out there and everybody can participate and we have to be vocal about that and that actually the other thing the NeoNerfus Foundation yeah it was started by SAP and T-Systems and Stackit but it's not an SAP thing and we have to be super vocal and clear about So, yeah. Karsten Hohage It's just following an idea that, of course, in the first place also attract some large players, right? True. Well, the Neon FOS Foundation. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sebastian, if we want to do all that, or mostly that thing about we need to change our perception out there and the perception of the projects that we have some part in, anything particular That you think about changing or for a specific lighthouse project or in general? Sebastian Wolf Yeah, certainly. So we definitely need to be set aside from the discussion that we had about changing the perception and also attracting other contributors. We ourselves, the company overall, our many, many developers that we're having, need to become more active open source community members. So we need to clearly show that we don't only consume open source projects, but give back considerably. So that starts from small bug fixes, vulnerability fixes, up to feature contributions, up to big projects that we contribute or work ourselves on, like in the Neo-Nephos Foundation. And show that as well in conferences and other occasions. So that's what we will need to change and we'll do more. But of course, that only happens together with everybody in the company. And we definitely need to do a lot for this advertising, so to say, to make this happen. But as numbers show, it's not only an investment, there's also a lot coming back after all, and that would be our mission in the Ospol to make this happen. ([Time 0:18:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8cab37b9-203c-4313-bdb8-263f860abe58)) - **SAP Is Targeting Open Source AI** - SAP is planning visible open source AI engagement and already joined the Agentic AI Foundation with co-chair roles. - Sebastian says recruiting developers and architects to open source AI is a current OSPO priority. Transcript: Sebastian Wolf And in addition, that's also something that still started when Peter was still OSPOR lead, that's our open source fund. So it's not only about, let's say, code contributions, but also monetary contributions to crucial independent open source projects that we use at SAP and we want to strive, so to say. And that's what we're doing. And we also plan to extend, of course. Last but not least, big lighthouse projects, NeoNifos Foundation and everything that we've contributed has already been mentioned several times. And we wouldn't be in 2026 if I didn't mention AI at least once or twice. So open source AI is also a field we will dive into and we will see quite some contributions from SAP this year and beyond. ([Time 0:23:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/24d379d0-7179-4e6a-a32e-d669fef1f5bc)) - **Act Upstream In Communities** - Do adopt a community-first mindset by engaging in upstream activities like triage and release management, not just internal usage. - Orlin suggests contributing to Kubernetes release work and triaging as concrete actions. Transcript: Orlin Vasilev If I can say something beforehand, like SAP is definitely open source friendly because we heavily rely on open source for our, for example, internal development. That I can see from my two months of extensive experience with the company for now. Work more on making SAP more open source native, which means to be, as Sebastian said, more engaged with different communities. For example, what I can say about the cloud native community, which I'm part of the last 10 years, part of it, we should be more engaged in, for example, in the Kubernetes release management Or to be more active in triaging and all that. If others are doing a better job on this one, definitely. Due to the fact that they had more experience with that, especially, for example, if we take as example, if SUSE is one of the companies that open sources in their DNA, community work Is first. I've seen that in my work at VMware. When we acquired Heptio back in the day, Heptio folks came with that mindset of community first and maintainers and all that kind of culture around open source and being engaged with The community, not just to do your job, but actually make contributions out there in the open to help others solve their problems is something that we should work and drive through the Developers within SAP. So definitely there is room to improve that. And we can take examples from other companies, as I said. ([Time 0:26:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3e53ef2d-aa95-45b7-84df-0001ed60a338)) - **Where To Discover SAP Open Source** - Visit opensource.sap as the primary entry point for SAP's open source projects, foundations, and contacts. - Sebastian adds you can reach him via [email protected] and find contributors on GitHub or LinkedIn. Transcript: Sebastian Wolf Of course, first and foremost, opensource.sap Main starting point. And from there, you find also all the other second, third, and whatever links you need for our major projects, foundation involvements, articles, and many, many other things. So that's, if you want to have one link, that's the one you need to go to, opensource.sap Of course, you also find both of us, if I'm not mistaken, on LinkedIn, at least from my perspective, I personally can say that you can find me on LinkedIn. And that's very important. I also take that very seriously. No matter from where you're tuning in right now, being SAP employee, external partner, whatever stakeholder, if you have personal feedback ideas that we can improve beyond the things We've said today, just send me an email, Sebastian.Wolf at SAP.com. All right. That's pretty much it. ([Time 0:32:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/13dff328-6838-40ca-adf3-5c07525b6d18)) - **Community Mindset Beats Product Mindset** - Shift mindset from product-first to community-first when developing open source projects to sustain growth. - Orlin emphasizes building community around a project to turn an internal product into a healthy open source project. Transcript: Sebastian Wolf From my perspective, point A, first and foremost, SAP is a major open source player. Many people don't know about that and we're here to change it. So OSPO, together with a lot of development teams and people like Olin, we work together to make things happen. And then reiterate what I've been talking about. If you have ideas for us, matter where you come from, please reach out to me. Let's talk about it and make things better. Karsten Hohage All right. Olin, anything to add? Sebastian Wolf Yeah, I have just one thing. Orlin Vasilev It's a mindset, community versus product. And just to reiterate maybe a little bit, SAP has that mindset of product first so we i think uh together with sebastian and the other folks we we discussed that we should think about it Like community versus the product first and in the open source world just to close it up you you have the idea you build a, and then eventually the product or the project comes along. So, yeah, if you have questions how to build communities outside of SAP as well, and you need help in general, open source community stuff, reach out. ([Time 0:35:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1e27f4cf-c038-4218-b503-5faa3b92dfd4))