01 Half a year in preparation, byte beating and establishment of OSPO are hard demands
Open source China: What was the original intention of byte beating to establish OSPO? Why did you choose to do this action at this time? What is the driving role of some previous compliance events?
Zhang Xin: Since 2015, byte has actively opened more than 50 projects, but we found that most of them Numerical Open source projects are driven by the personal interests of our engineers, so we have encountered some problems in the process of standardization and management. This makes us realize that it is not enough for open source to be driven only by the personal interests of engineers. It is also necessary to introduce company level policies, specifications and process mechanisms, which is also the first work of the Byte Beat Open Source Committee.
At the same time, with the gradual expansion of business scale, there are also many demands for open source security compliance and community operation, which need a department to respond in time and provide strong support. The company also hopes to set up a special OSPO team to connect relevant resources such as products, research and development, market, and manage important strategic projects. At the same time, it can also serve as the company's "diplomat" in the open source field to promote the establishment of better cooperation relationships with various organizations, communities, and industry partners in the open source field.
Open source China: Before that, byte skipping was more inclined to open source? What is the change process? What is the philosophy of the company's top management?
Zhang Xin: Byte beating has always been open and welcome to open source, and hopes to share its own practice and technological innovation in the community. Like many peers in the industry, byte access to open source has also gone through a period from using open source, to participating in open source, to active open source. In the process of business development ， byte Open source technology has also been widely used, and the original open source projects have been optimized to feed back the community, forming a good open source culture.
Open source is the foundation of the software world. Byte beating values the long-term value of participating in open source. In today's increasingly complex innovation ecology, open source software is extremely important land It improves the speed and quality of our innovation. Embrace open innovation, byte beating will always hold the attitude of learning and cooperation land Participate in the open source ecosystem, constantly expand new technology and innovation space, and work together with upstream and downstream partners in the industry to explore and move forward to promote ecological development.
Open source China: Open source management office was established. How long did the byte brew before doing this? What preparations have been made in the early stage? What is the focus of the research?
Zhang Xin: We started to prepare for the establishment of OSPO internally at the end of last year, and it took about half a year to officially establish OSPO.
In the process of preliminary preparation, our system land We checked the accumulated open source projects, related process specifications and related manpower in the process of participating in open source before, and discussed what is reusable and what is still insufficient.
In addition, we also investigated the industry's practices in open source management, mainly analyzed the open source management and commercialization processes of domestic and foreign cloud manufacturers, and how to deal with the relationship between open source and cloud business, and focused on the management experience of some companies that are ahead in open source management.
02 Strategic review and governance operation will be carried out simultaneously, and more than ten full-time teams will be invested
Open source China: Please briefly introduce the organizational structure of byte hopping OSPO. In terms of setting, in addition to false jobs, how many full-time students will be invested?
Zhang Xin: At present, the Byte Open Source Committee has completed the construction of the overall architecture and role division.
Since large open source projects often require long-term investment and need to coordinate many resources inside and outside the company, Liang Rubo, CEO of Byte Beat, and Yang Zhenyuan and Hong Dingkun, two top technical leaders, serve as the sponsors of the Open Source Committee. On this basis, Hong Dingkun served as the chairman of the Open Source Committee, responsible for coordinating and supporting open source related affairs. There were two groups, namely, the strategic review group in the charge of Wang Jian and the governance and operation group in my charge.
Organization Chart of Byte Bounce Open Source Committee
Among them, the strategic review team coordinates the development of open source strategy and the review of open source projects. For example, open source projects are divided into different levels according to their technical influence, and reasonable operational objectives and value systems are formulated accordingly. The team members include representatives from various technical fields (such as infrastructure, data, AI, etc.) and ToB business (mainly volcanic engines and flybooks).
The governance and operation team coordinates the open source compliance governance and open source operation, including building the infrastructure for the entire open source operation, promoting and implementing the open source culture and the best process, and providing front-line operation and governance assistance for important open source projects. The team members are composed of project evangelists, market operation teams, open source legal affairs, and students related to building platforms and tools.
Cooperation and reuse is one of the important principles for the Open Source Committee to carry out its work. At present, the team's operation mode is a combination of virtual and real, with solid lines. More than ten full-time students will be invested to lead the market operation, legal affairs, safety compliance and other work; At the same time, there will also be cooperation and reuse of dotted lines. For example, the construction of relevant platform tools will be contributed by students scattered in different R&D teams to maximize the reuse of the work that each team has done.
Open source China: According to the data, the open source committee of Byte is positioned as a "resource middle platform". Specifically, what kind of "middle platform" is it ？
Zhang Xin: The core of the so-called "resource platform" is to hope that the Open Source Committee can provide better support for the development of byte open source, which is mainly reflected in the following two aspects:
First, the strategic review team of the Open Source Committee will review the projects one by one with each project maintenance team no We should increase investment or have higher goals to provide open source strategic support for the project team ；
Secondly, in terms of governance and operation, for heavyweight projects, more resources will be invested in operation and user growth. The project maintenance team needs to continue to maintain the iteration at the technical level of the project, while the governance and operation team is responsible for providing more systematic support, such as publicity channel planning, content planning, community developer relationship maintenance, etc.
03 Simplify processes internally, emphasize usefulness, and do not set KPIs for open source
Open source China: Under the current OSPO settings, how much freedom does byte hopping give to projects? According to the data, Byte believes that the rule setting should minimize "disturbance". Why? How do you simplify the process?
Zhang Xin: In many cases, Byte has always encouraged everyone to submit contributions to the upstream community, avoiding the trouble of internal processes. It can also be seen from our OSPO architecture settings that OSPO members, especially the members of the strategic review team, are all representatives from various technical fields and some business lines to ensure technology neutrality. A basic audit standard is that this open source project should be useful to other people, organizations and companies, and we can maintain an open mind. The main responsibility of the governance and operation team is to help the project keep the bottom line, fully cooperate with all teams, and provide resources to support key projects.
In terms of rule settings, we default to open trust and effective cooperation to avoid the complexity of simple things, which is to reduce "interference" in rule settings 。 At present, the related processes of the Open Source Committee are all done have to Very light. It is mainly to provide capacity and resource support. I hope that while maintaining personal spontaneity, we can encourage more people by removing obstacles land Participate in open source. But we will also organize a lot of compliance related training to ensure that everyone is using open source 、 Do not step on the red line while contributing to open source.
Open source China: "KPI will not be set up for open source", then how should OSPO's work be assessed and measured?
Zhang Xin: Byte has always adhered to the principle of not setting KPIs for open source projects. We value whether open source projects are really useful and have long-term value. We don't want to change our actions because of setting rigid KPIs. At the same time, we won't take the commercial realization of open source projects as the only goal.
For the work of OSPO and the achievements of some open source projects, we will set some "Polaris indicators", such as looking at the whole open source term The market share of the target industry, which is strongly related to whether the open source project is used or not; For example, look at the contribution of open source projects, including the project being forked, the number of third-party developers and the number of applications. If it is a good enough project, there will naturally be many contributors willing to participate. In addition to the breadth of use, we will also pay attention to the depth of use. For example, whether there are enterprise users in the industry who are using the project in depth, and whether there are some benchmark cases.
In the final analysis, the "Polaris Index" is more about whether the open source project can actually be implemented, whether anyone is willing to use it, and whether it can generate value in the production environment or actual business. These are more meaningful than the simple Star numbers on GitHub. At the same time, even these "Polaris indicators" will not become strong KPIs, but will be used as a tool to assist in evaluation and a means to guide the direction of work.
04 External projects should be "fewer but better" and focus on compliance and value
Open source China: What are the standards and principles of byte in terms of independent open source? What are the considerations based on?
Zhang Xin: In terms of independent open source want The standard is to ensure safety and compliance. We hope to introduce company level strategies, specifications and process mechanisms through OSPO.
At the same time, we hope that the projects from bytes are "few and refined" and can be more sufficient land Utilize various resources of the company to open source a number of projects that are truly valuable to the industry. We hope that byte independent open source projects can become a source of water to bring out surging rivers, participate in and even lead the global software innovation ecology.
Open source China: What is the current situation of byte open source? Are there any special libraries on GitHub or Gitee? Now, what open source projects are mainly promoted by Bytes?
Zhang Xin: At present, Byte has opened more than 50 projects. According to the classification of technical fields, the top three projects are infrastructure, AI platform and audio and video fields. Typical projects include modern Web development framework Modern.js, microservice middleware CloudWeGo, high-performance distributed training framework BytePS, federal learning platform Fedleaner, etc.
These projects will be sorted out according to the technical field, and the main considerations are:
- Summarize byte cloud native ecological projects through independent organizations, output unified open source brand awareness and promotion, and also facilitate version management;
- It is expected to promote tripartite cooperation through relatively neutral organizations, including the Open Source Foundation (CNCF), developer users and enterprise users;
- stay Cloud primary direction ， The mainstream practice in the industry is to use independent organizations to operate (the main purpose is also the first two points), and we also expect to be consistent 。
This year, we will also launch a high-quality project on data platform. Please wait and see.
05 First of all, focus on the construction of the system of operational governance, which will grow together with the industry in the future
Open source China: Does byte OSPO differ greatly from other companies? What are the innovations? Will there be any changes after that?
Zhang Xin: The byte OSPO has just started, and there is still much room for development. We have always been modest and open, hoping to learn more experience in open source governance from the industry.
Next, OSPO stay In the short term, the key work will focus on the systematic construction of operation and governance. In the medium and long term, we hope to create a number of high-quality open source projects. Byte hopes that through the solid work of the Open Source Committee for a period of time, it can be better land Explore an enterprise level open source governance process and method, and constantly adjust the strategic direction in the process of exploration, so as to truly land Improve the open source ability and cognitive level of every student who uses and contributes to open source in bytes.
Open source China: In fact, many programmers lack open source knowledge reserves. OSPO still needs to play the role of preacher. What investment or plan is there in byte?
Zhang Xin: On the one hand, the Byte Open Source Committee was established to help our developers use, contribute and create open source projects more smoothly, and on the other hand, to promote innovation through active participation and feedback to the community.
To achieve this goal, OSPO students must have the ability 、 Enthusiastic 、 There are ways land Take on the role of open source evangelist. This not only needs to spread the open source concept and method internally, but also needs to spread some of the byte accumulation and best practices in the open source field to the industry.
In the future, we hope that byte OSPO can be more proactive and strategic, build OSPO into an excellent consulting center, and play an important role in guiding the company to understand the latest technology trends, open source development direction, and best practices.
Open source China: On the whole, what is the company's future strategy for open source? Is there a blueprint?
Zhang Xin: The establishment of OSPO means that the open source strategy of byte beating is clearer, but we still have a long way to go. We hope that the establishment of OSPO can help byte attract more top talents, and stimulate innovation through open source software from a global perspective.
Open source has become the key path of technological innovation. Byte Beat hopes that its open source strategy can be more practical, leading some high-quality open source projects, fostering community growth, and promoting more intra industry and cross industry cooperation with the help of open source power to grow together with the industry.
