 Yeah, probably Hello Hi, I'm Simon and this is my friend rich and we used to what Simon We used to work at some microsystems and One of the things we you could you look back at your career and you work out what your career highlights were one of them was making the Java platform GPL and One of the little-known facts about that is that wouldn't have happened without rich writing an FAQ It would have been absolutely impossible for it to happen. And so we're here to explain to you why that was So I don't if you can imagine this situation Some developers just thinking about their their project and deciding that you know We've got this this this piece of software here. It's a you know, it's it's a web framework And we would really like to just release it to all developers everywhere and we hate patents So let's let's add a defensive patent grant along with the copyright license What could possibly go wrong if you release something under a really straightforward permissive open-source license and just add a Patent defensive patent clause in it can't imagine what could could you imagine anything going wrong with doing that? No, I can't imagine anything going wrong with that so What do you do when that happens? What do you do when it turns out now? So why did this this happened at Facebook in case you weren't aware? Facebook released pretty much all of their open-source software under a very straightforward OSI approved license and they added a defensive patent grant to it and the defensive patent grant kind of favored Facebook a little more than the community and And the reason that happened as far as I can work out is because Internally the folks at Facebook had different views on what the community was was interested in on What their business direct directions were on what they're messaging about their products were they they weren't actually Internally aligned and consistent and then they did a thing and it turned out that they weren't ready for it it all went horribly wrong and they didn't know what their plan was and We've we've we've been in that place We've been in that place. So you can't see these But so the Java platform I said in my keynote this morning the Java platform was a great thing The Java platform was the first real big commercial project that used An unrestricted source code license that you could just pick the source code up and do what you want with it in 1995 son released all of Java Source code and all put it on the internet the license was not a free software license because it didn't let you use it for commercial purposes But this was really bold no one had ever done this in quite that way before and the market picked up Java and ran with it And and they were able to make it into a huge Market phenomenon well before the term open source was defined well before free software was in the popular commercial mind Only three years after the internet was really widely popular in the amongst the general public problem was The way it was licensed wasn't free software and anybody who cared about free software and then open source said hey, that's not open source and So we we actually stimulated Richard Storman into the creative act and he actually wrote an article about our product And you'd think that will be great wouldn't you it was it was called free but shackled the Java trap And then our our chief executive was was was he you know He was an old-style BSD guy and he didn't have much time for this GPL thing And he was an old-style Unix guy and he didn't have much time for this upstart Linux thing And and and he was an old-style tell it like you see it guy And so he said those things in public quite often and so coming into the role of chief open source officer everybody hated us and If we tried to release Java as open source, we were pretty sure that on day one we would get Rocks thrown at us from all direction so the the question then came of what do you do about that and The short answer to that question is well you you write an FAQ now you don't write an FAQ To answer frequently asked questions. That's a common misunderstanding about FAQs Primarily you write an FAQ to work out what the answers to the questions are and to get everybody who ought to have an Opinion to agree before you go public that's why you write an FAQ and So you write an FAQ to test and refine your strategy and to get everybody to get your legal counsel your Your VP of marketing your VP of engineering your VP of OEM sales your everybody in your company To agree what your strategy is Somebody pointed out to me earlier This is the old strategy of if nobody will decide just do it do it wrong and they'll all help you fix it So so that's that's what we're doing here and by doing this we created consistent messages and that led to Establishing trust through transparency if you can stand in front of a FOSDEM audience and answer questions about your Considered to be proprietary product and nobody throws anything Then you have got a coherent strategy and I'm proud to say that wasn't my first FOSDEM keynote this morning Because I did that as well in 2006 I spoke at FOSDEM and I explained we were making Java open source and everybody cheered and that's all because of him So rich So Yeah, let's have the thing. Okay. I'm just gonna hold it So who's the audience for an FAQ like this well a lot of times what companies will do is they'll Create different messages for different audiences. They'll have one document for Customers a different audience a different document for partners and another document for developers and all that sort of thing But that doesn't work in this case because developers are actually a very tough audience and Really understand what's going on with? Developer initiatives at a pretty deep level and Developers are also very allergic to Spin and to seeing different Messages to different people so you have to focus your message on developers and What you do is you? Actually get very transparent you tell them what the what the truth is and Amazingly all of these other audiences your customers your partners the media the analysts They all actually love this because you're being a lot more Forthcoming a lot more unvarnished with the message that you're putting out to developers And so all of these other audiences that are used to getting spin Actually get the unvarnished truth and and they like it as well So if you can satisfy developers you'll satisfy all of the audiences so don't try to Create an FAQ for customers and another FAQ for partners or whatever just do the FAQ for developers You're this you're the scroll man Licenses the most popular Okay, so what's the most important thing that developers are looking for they're looking for the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth in a word They're looking for transparency so transparency is actually a difficult thing for corporations because a lot of times The people who are responsible for messaging Marketeers etc have have developed a lot of skill at Convincing people what they want to convince people of and it actually works. So transparency is very scary for For companies, but that's why this actually works. So if you if you deliver what Developers are are looking for they will actually Cut you a lot of slack They'll they'll give you the benefit of the doubt even if they don't like all of the messages that That you're giving them oops Okay, so, you know in this in the spirit of an FAQ, of course We've structured our our talk as a series of questions and answers So do I have to answer the hard questions as well as the easy ones? Well Yes, you do have to answer the hard questions and the reason is that nothing is really all that new about developer initiatives We've got decades of experience with this kind of stuff and developers know where the traps are where the Where the difficult questions are and they're going to be expecting answers So if you can answer those hard questions, you do two things the first is You actually prove to the developers that you've thought things through and that you know what you're doing But even more importantly If you don't answer the hard questions, it's like a big red flag So the developers know what the hard questions are They're expecting to see the answers and if you don't answer them They know you've got something to hide and they'll be looking for it And you know all of this is going to come out eventually anyway, and they're going to figure it out They're just not going to trust you and they're and they're going to do all the the pitchforks and the and the torches and all and the rocks and all that So You're not going to please all the developers That are part of your community if you're doing something controversial So what if what if you don't know the answer to a question? Well, it's very simple You put the question in the FAQ and then you say I don't know and Then you come back and you answer the question later when you do know But by leaving the question out, then you run into the first problem not Engendering trust what if they aren't going to like the answers? Well, they I can promise you that some of them won't like the answers but don't spin put the truth out there and They'll you will at least earn their respect and their trust even if they don't like what you're saying and That's very important. It's just vital to put even the uncomfortable stuff in the FAQ and Don't try to don't try to To hide that it's okay to put things in the best light. That's not the same as spin It's okay to to talk about things in ways that you think people will understand and accept but Be sure to put it all in well What happens if they read the old the FAQ and they decide you know what we're not really into this We're not going to adopt your technology Well, at least you know that your strategy is one that your community isn't going to accept and that gives you two choices You can either go back and fix it so that it is something that the community accepts Or if that's not feasible at least you know and the community knows and there's no surprises So this can be a very strong signal to go and rethink your strategy if you put the FAQ out And you get the pitchforks and the and the torches So here's an example from the open-source Java FAQ So the question is why didn't you choose a license like BSD or Apache version 2? Well, so that seems like a pretty straightforward question. What what makes this a hard question? Well, it's a hard question because at the time there were a lot of large companies who Had paid son a lot of money to license the the binary Runtime for Java and they looked at the opportunity with Sun open sourcing Java well, maybe we can use the open-source version and we won't have to take out a binary license well It didn't really work out that way because Sun thought through What all the different strategic choices were and made a very specific choice that definitely was not popular Sun opted for a dual license strategy GPL for the open-source and a Binary license that you had to pay for in order to Be able to to use Java on these platforms so What happened was this was very unpopular, but it was the truth and By putting that out there by putting the real answer out there in this fashion the community at least Understood what what this was about next So what goes into the FAQ we've we've already talked about some of the characteristics, but Depending upon your particular initiative you might have some or all of these topics such as But you know you start from the more General things and you get more and more specific, but the whole thing has to hang together as a as a coherent Explanation of what you're doing so if you say one thing in the more general Questions and a different thing that doesn't really follow in the more specific people will look at that and sort of scratch their heads The general FAQ does not replace documentation. It doesn't replace a getting started technical FAQ This is really about why you're doing it how you're doing it and what you're hoping to accomplish Thanks So this seems pretty daunting. How do you get started? Well because it's complicated you start early and you bring together a cross-functional team You get all the people who have a stake in this strategy like the marketeers and the lawyers and the sales people and the engineers and the support people and You get everyone together with an empowered team that the members of that team can speak for their function and and work together to really Figure out the strategic conflicts and work it out in advance through this process and By doing that you can engage leadership and then you can gain some concurrence across the whole organization So who should write the FAQ well? You need a great writer. You need someone who's really good at messaging and and a great team leader. Well It's your community manager, of course So by using a community by having the community manager really be the leader for this They are much more likely to help the organization create a Strategy that is going to work for the the community and It's also a terrific career builder if your Community manager and want to take on a larger responsibility or get exposure within your company to to the leadership So how do we get the leadership on board? Well, this is actually now that you've drawn the short straw and no good deed goes unpunished So how do you get your leaders to to really buy into this? Well, it turns out that an FAQ like this is a really difficult leadership test for the top people in your company because That radical transparency that developers expect is something that Is going to put them on the spot once the strategy is out there? They're going to have to own that strategy they're going to have to Be on board and they're going to have to get the whole organization to work By demanding compromises disagree and commit whatever is necessary And they'll have to embrace some of these difficult Things like Radical transparency giving up some control. This is all stuff that does not come natural to leaders So if your leadership isn't on board watch out and at any rate You're going to learn a lot about the Leadership and the operation of your company just by doing one of these So one of the one of the challenges you have with any open-source activity is everybody wants your legal department to run your strategy for you and When it comes to engaging in this sort of radical transparency where you actually tell the community Truthfully what it is that you're doing it turns out your legal team may have a few questions for you In fact, they will quite possibly think the transparency is just too risky That the really you can't afford to tell people the truth and really you should take a leaf out of Oracle's book And just surprise everybody each time you do something And you know, they're right that radical transparency is legally very risky one of the reasons it's very risky is because the the The act of discussing the difficult things puts on the record on your email system a set of arguments that are discoverable in a lawsuit and Consequently those arguments can be brought back and played back during the lawsuit to show that you were not actually as firm As you think you were as people think you were about your strategy. This isn't theoretical. This actually happened During the Oracle v. Google lawsuit. I was one of the I was giving testimony I was one of one of the witnesses and I did have emails brought up out of the discussion about the FAQ that I was asked questions about whether I was telling the truth about my position in court and whether my position was Defensible coherence saying and whether I was an idiot. It's great being a witness in court So so you are you are actually creating risks the question you have to ask yourself is is is the price worth paying and If you are committed to working in an open source community Then the the answer is yes that it is a price that's worth worth paying because if you don't do this You simply won't be able to get the network effect that goes with the community Which is the thing you're going into open source in a community to go and get in the first place You're buying trust at the price of legal risk And so You do have to involve legal you know legal language is very precise and your lawyers will read your FAQ And they will make sure the wonderful text that you have written is squeaky Precisely clean and you'll go back to them and you'll tell them that isn't English and So they'll then write it again and you'll iterate three or four times to get something that is both legally precise And also readable by somebody with English as a second language Which is actually crucial that you that you actually achieve that We actually had had that work very well in the case of the Java FAQ a good example Is that question that we did that I showed you before the original version of that question? said Why didn't you choose a commercially friendly license like? BSD or Apache and it was not necessary to have that editorial comment in the question The lawyers caught that The marketeers Wanted to put that editorial comment in to get people to think a certain way But in the end the lawyers were absolutely right so we were we actually blessed with really good lawyers At Sun as well Okay, so then the other challenge that you have in doing all these things is you may well be operating the level in your Company where you don't have the involvement of the executives who ultimately have got the say on what your company's strategy Messaging is and it's crucial that you do that it's crucial that you have executive backing for what you're doing in your coherent strategy and That's one of the reasons why I believe Writing an FAQ in advance of announcement is one of the key things to do because it will force your top-level management to get Into the loop because they will have to approve press what is effectively a press statement And so I found that the FAQ was very effective in getting our executive VPs Involved in the loop in early on in the process of releasing Java and we're zipping along because we're running out of time So this is you Okay, so zipping along Use an authoring tool with change tracking because if you don't people will really hate you for having to read a Gigantic document over and over Publish the FAQ close to where your community lives so that they have a pretty good chance of finding it Make it really simple. So just don't do all the fancy JavaScript with Expanding in collapse and questions and answers and all that stuff all it does is Make it difficult to link to the individual questions Give all the questions a number so that you don't have to refer to the fifth question in the legal section You can refer to question 25 and then finally evolve the FAQ and Moderate and publish all of the comments both Pro and con and that's part of the transparency That's a crucial technique when you are dealing with a legal department because your legal department is very expensive You don't really want to have them constantly authoring documents So you get them to write the legal statement and then the FAQ is the the discussion of the legal statement And you accumulate answers to the questions the community has got in the FAQ and then periodically you get the legal department To fold those back into the official license or the official legal document and that way you can remain responsive to your community Without having to get your general counsel involved every morning So we're just I'm just gonna gloss over this one because I really want to show the video But Once you've got this FAQ It's a terrific source for all the rest of the communicating that you're going to be doing whether it's writing presentations Training your spokespeople what have you now you've got the answers to all the really hard questions You know so if if the press comes at you with some crazy question you probably already have the answer already figured out You remember we started this process with Richard Sturman writing a helpful marketing document about the Java trap for us and Here's here's how we ended that process The GNU general public licenses the most popular most widely used free software license The special thing about this license is that it's a copyright license That is to say all versions of the program must carry the same license So the freedoms that the GNU GPL gives to the users Must reach all the users of the program and that's the purpose for which I wrote it It'll be very good that the Java trap won't exist anymore. It'll be a thing of the past That kind of problem can still exist in other areas, but it won't exist for Java anymore I think Sun has Well with this Contribution have contributed more than any other company to the free software community in the form of software and It shows leadership. It's an example. I hope others will follow So we started 2004 being denounced by the Free Software Foundation and Grog law and in 2006 we launched open source Java with a promotional video from Richard Sturman so How do you convince your organization to embrace this kind of radical culture change? It's not you can't start with something like the open source Java FAQ you have to start much smaller And that's what we did. We had a pilot that was a different license that was related to Java that we Used to get the the Debian community to ship Java binaries and we camped out on the Debian legal Mailing list for quite some time answering questions and we had a FAQ that Debian Used to better understand what we were doing and it really worked and that proved that this technique Was effective the other thing we did was we very methodically introduced the top leadership at Sun to top leaders in the free and open source Software world we had a series of events. We had some dinners We had some meetings and they got to know each other face-to-face and got to develop that trust And it's much harder to throw rocks at people if you know them So with that This is some resources. There's I wrote a thing called the FAQ FAQ Which is just what it sounds like the open Java FAQ was archived by the ICT project And Android creative commons and Apache all have FAQs that follow a similar approach to what we're talking about So with that we're done