 Hello, everyone. I'm very happy to be here. I'll be virtually at the open source summit 2021 Open source is the latest technology hype, right? Well, okay, maybe not for you guys, but for some people it is Let me tell you a little bit about our journey at Daimler slash Mercedes-Benz from a traditional car manufacturing company to a company which embraces FOSS free and open source software and has made a commitment to open up as much as we possibly can and Maybe our story can help you too If you are in a similar position and you're trying to spread the good word of FOSS in your company So just for some structure in this talk I would like to first speak about our motivation as to why we created the Mercedes-Benz FOSS manifesto Then I'll introduce you to the manifesto itself and then I'll give you some pointers how this could help you on your FOSS journey so to give you some quick background Daimler is the mother company of Mercedes-Benz and As you perhaps know we manufacture basically vehicles so passenger cars vans buses and trucks as a company we have been around for quite a long time and traditionally At our core. We are a mechanical engineering company. So We bend steel sheets in certain ways and in the end that car comes out So just a couple of months ago I Got myself a new one of these cars and I really like it. It's quite nice But it has one very interesting accessory that caught my attention and I brought it here with me So it's this thing here. You can find it with the instruction manual in the glove compartment and When you look inside, it's a small CD But the car doesn't even have a CD player anymore Which doesn't matter because it's not an all-year CD anyway. It's a data CD But my company laptop also doesn't have a CD drive anymore So, how do I know what's on it? Well, fortunately, it's labeled so it says License information free and open source software and Mercedes-Benz uses free and open source software with several of its products So this CD contains all the open source license information pertaining to your particular vehicle And if you like me don't have a CD drive anymore You can go to a website the URL is right here Punch it in and then you put in your vehicle identification number and you get all the information there as well Clearly the CD as such is a thing of the past and we are right now working on doing away with it Which isn't actually as easy as it sounds Because there are legal obligations you have to observe The license information has to be part of the product. It has to be physically available in the car So it's not sufficient to just say in the manual. Hey go to that website The reason I'm telling you this actually It's kind of funny to have that relic of the past CD. Yeah, this is the past old man In your brand new high-tech Mercedes The reason I'm telling you this is in order to say at Mercedes We already know how to use FOSS But we're not quite there yet to embrace all aspects of FOSS Now you're probably gonna go wow you already know how to use FOSS Impressive Daimler. Good job Yes, I know but a Few years back not that that long ago We didn't really use much FOSS at all in our software development We were proud to develop our own code If it's not invented here, you probably can't rely on it, right? Yeah, right now That just isn't possible anymore Even if you had all the budget in the world you still wouldn't have all the time in the world Let alone the developer manpower and above all of course It just doesn't make sense to write code for which there already is a nice available solution out there, right? Of course, I'm preaching to the choir. I realize that but in a big corporation That requires a change of mindset that can be tricky and time-consuming Actually the change of mindset and how it can be done is sort of the point of this talk So I'll get back to this This was the first aspect of just using FOSS and there's a second aspect to it You need to train your employees to have the necessary and awareness and understanding of the obligations that this brings with it Namely license obligations, right? You can't Just use FOSS. You have to understand licenses as well Especially if the things that you produce in our case vehicles or software that is centered around mobility and so forth Contains software, right? That's of course where that CD originates our current s-class model for example contains about 100 different FOSS licenses 100 and our Mercedes me app uses over 130 FOSS components in the in the Android version and about 50 for iOS So that means our people have to understand licenses And so we developed an internal training to that and which everyone in IT has to do Okay, so far so good now But just use isn't enough You don't want to be a freeloader only at least I personally don't you want to say thank you to the community Thank you for letting me use your code all these years and if you only use FOSS You're also not utilizing so much of the potential that FOSS has, you know, you can contribute back You can make it better here and there for everyone You can help steer projects in a direction that you and others benefit from In FOSS one plus one a lot of times does equal three, right? Okay, preaching to the choir again, forgive me so but what embracing FOSS means for us is Use but also contribute and also create our own open source projects and provide them to the community We're still quite at the beginning of that aspect of creating our open source projects. I have to admit But we're working on it. I'll talk about that later Some more in other words It means for us to become an active member and a good citizen of the open source community And that is what we're trying to achieve at Mercedes-Benz Let me illustrate how So now such a complete change in mindset from a proprietary software only company towards open source Has left many of our developers Slightly confused we get questions like so Now we really are allowed to use open source in our software development. Yeah, or Can we just use it or can we Now really also contribute back to open source projects because that's what a lot of our developers had been wanting to do in the past and It's like no, there are certain restrictions don't do that just yet But now is like can we now contribute back, please or can we even create some open source projects of our own and We can do this in our working time, right Now the answer to all of these questions is yes, of course Yes, please as a matter of fact to be more precise. Yes, please do these things all of them Right now in your working time. All right from other non-IT departments, we would hear things like Excuse us You plan on developing software on company budget and Then giving it away for free Surely this must be some kind of misunderstanding, right? Well, then we sat down with these people And explained open source as a whole to them and they began to understand Or let's say they accepted that we might have a point there Maybe they were still a bit skeptical, but they're like, all right, let's give it a shot So clearly Communication about our open source strategy was taking a lot of effort. I Mean in general when implementing such a big cultural change. You are faced with three challenges First of all, how do we tell everyone? How do we make sure that everyone involved is made aware of this? after all Mercedes-Benz is a big company or If you take the whole diner or Mercedes group a big set of big set of companies even right I myself am from diner TSS, which is an IT subsidiary and in such a big company News tend to travel slowly before they have reached everyone. I guess many of you also know that experience Second how can we get people to actually implement the strategy not just to know about it as in point one But make it part of their day-to-day work for example in our case How do we crank up the number of open source? Contributions coming from out of our company in order to become the good open source citizen that we want to be and third For me actually the most important one. How do we get the open source way into the mindset of people? If you master this one, then the previous point basically follows automatically because then people are motivated intrinsically to do this So in short We wanted to deeply ingrain FOS into our company's DNA if you will and It had become clear to us that we needed to do something radical to achieve this Right, not just to have another strategic initiative Which big companies tend to have from time to time? And then we kind of had the agile manifesto in the back of our heads Which was a pretty cool back thing back then And so we created the Mercedes-Benz FOS manifesto It is a set of guidelines and core values which send our employees on their open source mission Knowing fully well that they are supported by the company and it is now a key pillar in all of our FOS endeavors So I suppose that was kind of a lot of motivating how we got there and why we created the manifesto We that is basically my colleague Basem Vasegi and myself We wrote it down and then other colleagues and friends gave us input and ideas and feedback and helped develop it further But so now let us actually look at it. So here we go our Mercedes-Benz FOS manifesto has three parts to it and We'll look at all the three parts The first one here is the preamble in in order to sort of set the stage To give the manifesto a solemn note and to show that we mean business that we are fully committed to the FOS manifesto So it reads the Mercedes-Benz FOS center of competence and the CIO Blah blah blah the lines in between have decided to establish the following FOS guiding principles The FOS center of competence is what we call our OSPO our open source programs office internally So the preamble also states our overall goals If you read over this that thereby we aim to improve the quality of our software That we want to be active members of the open source community and that we really want to work on making this happen All right So if you look look at this and style wise it looks a little bit familiar to you Then perhaps you have seen the Lisbon Treaty on the European Union. All right. I mean who hasn't Okay This it's a little bit similar just from the wording but make no mistake the preamble Purpose is not just to be pretty words Change in a big company requires well Time for one Don't underestimate the time factor And for two a change is always most successful if it is supported by the people and By the senior management. Okay, some people may claim senior management are part of the people But what I mean is you know top and bottom If only the crew wanted the base, you know It may be difficult to get it through and if only senior management wanted They may sort of have the power to push it But if the people aren't convinced it just won't be very successful So that's why the preamble here shows look this comes from the people at the base and it's fully backed up by senior management And in our case this actually goes to a very top including our CEO ola Kelenius who has endorsed it as well and I'm very very happy about this All right, so let's move on to the next page The next two parts are the company's principles and the employee Principles here are the company's principles So a lot of times our employees are still a bit uncertain as I already mentioned If they are allowed to have their own open source projects and if they're allowed to contribute to other open source projects Because as I mentioned earlier that actually hasn't always been the case in the past for various reasons The intention of the company principles is to not only show the employees that indeed they are allowed to do so But it actually sends them on a mission to do exactly that. So the first principle here encourages employees to use contribute and Create projects both in open and inner source endeavors Right now a lot of times employees will tell you but I have to work Productively in my project. I don't have the time to do open source or inner source on the side Even though it may be related to my work So it is the purpose of principle number two to let the employees know that it is indeed Absolutely okay for them to take the time to work on such projects as well Because as I also already mentioned earlier, this is actually something that creates value for everyone and for us too right So it's not at all Wasted time or extra effort without benefit Which is a position that? Unfortunately is sometimes still held by people who are not too familiar with open source in the first place All right next one principle number three it lets employees know that they are supposed to learn and grow with FOSS take the time to do so and for example attend conferences and Even give a talk perhaps I Don't need to mention that learning advancing or in exchange with experts is a good idea for personal growth I think that's pretty obvious. So we just want to make it clear that we ask our employees to do that as well Principle number four Strives to promote visibility for example through active membership and participation in open source foundations We are for example founding member of the eclipse foundation Europe, which is a really cool thing We are members of the Linux foundation cloud native computing foundation and a couple more Through our it subsidiary and my home base diamond TSS All right moving on The next slide are the principles from an employee's point of view They basically ask of an employee to become more active in the FOSS world and to think FOSS First so principle number one says Please look for alternatives in open and inner source first Before you write code for which there already is a nice solution out there The old let's not reinvent the wheel over and over again We emphasize inner source here as well because we think this is really important too But the order goes open source first then inner source and only then write new code of your own Principle number two says please be active in inner source and Number three, please be active in open source and Then lastly number four is sort of a mini code of conduct Please be nice act responsibly be a good citizen Remember that how you behave out there will reflect back on the company as a whole and obviously It's in the best interest of everyone to uphold a good image here So to sum it up We hope that our Mercedes-Benz FOSS manifesto and its principles will help to facilitate the cultural change In our company towards an open and inner source savvy company Now you may say well That sounds fantastic Wolfgang now you have the Mercedes-Benz FOSS Manifesto on paper or on virtual paper. How's that working out for you? Has anything changed yet? In German we have a saying that translates literally into Paper is patient in English. You'd say paper doesn't blush Meaning that just because you have it written down doesn't necessarily have any consequences yet so how to bridge the gap between having the manifesto and People actually doing it. We have to put it into action Establish the culture around it how to do that and I hope actually this might help you too if you're in a similar position and you want to establish FOSS and the FOSS mindset in your company well It is no surprise that you're gonna have to do a lot of communication In order to create a visibility So we are now working on making this known in the entire company or of course Predominantly in the IT departments, but not only the very first thing you have to do is To get senior management by in at executive level. I think that's pretty obvious You can't do it without Because you just can't make claims about people how people can use their working time without getting C-level approval, right? So as I hinted at earlier we showed this idea the manifesto and everything around it to our CIO and He was quite pleased with it. He really supports FOSS Which is great and then As I mentioned, we also got the approval even of our CEO and so once that happens Then you have the goal and that's that is a prerequisite Need C-level approval. All right So something that proved quite valuable for us after that was that we were just very recently Able to speak about the manifesto at an IT senior management meeting to show it to all of our senior management And so now we hope that the information will sort of be disseminated top-down All right, which in a big company doesn't happen automatically contrary to what one might assume Unfortunately, I mean it should and sometimes it does, but you just can't rely on it So at the same time you have to work on making it known at the base to mainly through publishing internal articles For example in your social internet if you have something like this Speaking at internal gatherings speaking at external conferences We are planning on making FOSS hackathons and a number of other things like that in order to show that we really mean it I can't give you a perfect one size fits all recipe here Because this of course also depends on the peculiarities of your company size mainly and many other factors And to be honest, we are ourselves still in the process of the communication work here We have already done quite a bit, but there is a lot ahead that we still need to do right hackathons We have done many hackathons, but particularly FOSS hackathons with the manifesto as a basis. We haven't done that yet We're planning on it So I hope I have sparked your interest where can you find the FOSS manifesto? Head to this website open source dot Mercedes minus bends dot com This is our FOSS landing page It is still brand new. We have just taken it live a couple of weeks ago So I don't think it's very high up in the Google ranking yet. We'll see how that goes If you Google open source and Mercedes Benz or Daimler You will get as a first hit to that website where you can enter your vehicle identification number and get the open source licenses For that vehicle. Yeah, so the information that is also on that CD. I showed you at the beginning All right On our FOSS landing page here open source Mercedes Benz.com you can find some blog entries Not very many yet. There will be more because as I said, we literally just went live with the page And you can find some of our open source projects Also, not very many yet at all. Sorry Because we don't have that many yet simply right hopefully more soon as time goes by and more and more So we're just starting with that, right? So Yeah, we'll put stuff there as soon as we have it and we're looking for cool open source projects to put there Yeah, oh and you can find the FOSS manifesto on the page and you can download it if you like Yeah, so that's it, please feel free to take a closer look at our manifesto a Friend of mine once called it the many FOSS though, which I thought was pretty funny actually Yeah, you can use it disseminate it. I hope you like it. I hope you find it useful and Let us know what you think. Yeah, are we missing some principles? Do we have quite enough the wrong ones the right ones? Tell us what's on your mind. I'll be glad to hear from you so this talk is Pre-recorded as you probably know because unfortunately Transilating traveling is still a bit difficult But at the time of recording it was planned that there is a live Q&A session directly after it so if that works, I will be in the chat right now and I think I might have talked a little faster than intended I guess that's With virtual recording and so we have maybe a bit more time even All right So I hope you have some questions for me and you can of course also shoot me an email the contact info is also on that web page Thank you very much for listening and taking the time to do so. Thanks