Open source in corporates

[This is a post that I’d published internally in InfyBlogs in Dec 2009. Time to share it.]

Last month, my first application went live.

I’ve been writing code for 20 years. Not one line of my code has been officially deployed in a corporate. (Loser…)

It’s a happy feeling. Someone defined happiness as the intersection of pleasure and meaning. Writing code is pleasurable. Others using it is meaningful.

But this post isn’t quite about that. It’s about the hoops I’ve had to jump through to make this happen.

I’ve been living in a nightmare since March 2009. That was when I decided that I’d try and get corporates to use open source.

March 2009

It began with a pitch to a VC firm. They were looking to build a content management system (CMS). Normally we’d pull together slides that say we’ll deliver the moon. This time, we put together demo based on WordPress’ CMS plugins.

The meeting went fabulously well. We said, “Here’s a demo we’ve built for you. Do you like it?” The business lead (Stuart) was drooling and declared that that’s exactly what they wanted. The IT lead (another Stuart) was happy too, but warned the business users: “Just remember: this isn’t how we do development, so don’t get your hopes up that we can deliver stuff like this :-)”

Time to make my point. I asked, “What’s your policy on open source software?”

The business lead went quiet. “I don’t know,” he finally said. Fair enough.

I turned to the IT lead. “Well, we don’t use it as a matter of policy… there are security concerns…” he said.

“Which web server do you use?”

”Oh, OK. I see what you mean. We use Apache. So on a case to case basis, we have exceptions. But generally we have security concerns.“

”Why? Do you believe open source software is more insecure than commercial software?“

He thought about it for a while. “Well… maybe. I don’t know.” We debated this a bit. Then we found the real issue: “It’s just that we don’t have control over the process. We don’t know enough about it to decide.”

A couple of weeks later, I tried pitching to a newspaper. This time, it was our sales team that raised the same question. “But… isn’t open source insecure?”

I didn’t even bother pitching any open source stuff to them. But I’d learnt my lessons:

  1. Demo the application. Don’t talk about it.
  2. Show it to the business first, and then tackle IT.

Aside: June 2009

In June, I got another chance at a client where we were building their new website. The very first thing I did was ask to see the Javascript. Total mess, and filled with browser-incompatible DOM requests. So I went over to their web development team.

“Look, why don’t you guys use a Javascript library? It’ll get you cross browser compatibility and compact maintainable code at the same time.”

And, to their credit, they said, “Sure. Which library?”

I showed them this and we agreed on jQuery. So, if nothing else, I’ve managed to get one open source library into a corporate.

July 2009

I was also looking at payments on the website, and our client was looking to replace their chargeback application. Since I had a week off, I built a working PCI compliant prototype on Django. (I must clarify what I mean by PCI compliant. You see, any application that stores credit card information must pass through a stringent security clearance process. I bypassed the problem by not storing the card information. I’ve realised that I’ve been building PCI compliant applications all my life – and it’s a huge benefit to let people know that.)

This time, I applied the lessons I’d learned, and demo-ed it to the business, who were thrilled. Time to tackle IT.

I started with the architecture team. Matt on the architecture team was the most approachable. So I went over, demo-ed it, and said, “Matt, this took a week to put together. It’s based on some new technologies. Are you game to try these out?”

He was. And quite enthused about it too. So we put together a proposal for the architecture review board, proposing a new technology stack: Django / Python and MySQL. As before, I showed the demo before I talked technology. I had prepared answers to all security related questions upfront (and practically memorised section 3 of the PCI guidelines.) The clincher, though, was the business case. To build it on Java, it would cost ~1,000 person days. On Django, I’d mostly done it in 5. There was no way of justifying 1,000 person days for an application that could save, at best £100,000 a year.

So they said “Go ahead, we’re fine if operations and infrastructure are fine.”

It was time to find a Django developer in Infy. I hunted for a couple of weeks but none was available. (Only 2 people that I knew knew Django in the first place.) So that effort got canned, and we were back to the 1,000 person day solution. (Which got canned too, later.)
But in the process, I’d learned my third lesson.

  1. If you’re trying new technologies, plan on delivering it yourself.

October 2009

Another application popped up that looked like a prime candidate for introducing open source. They were using an Excel application to fraud screen orders, and wanted to make a web app out of it.

I followed the same route as before. Demo it. Show it to business first, then IT. Built it myself. I skipped Architecture, since they’d already approved the technology stack, and took it straight to Infrastructure.

“This application uses Apache as the web server, MySQL as the database, and uses PHP and Javascript for the application logic. Could we get a Linux server to host it?”

Our entire conversation lasted 30 seconds. He said, “No. We use Windows servers” (I was fine)

“… and you’ll need to chance Apache to IIS” (fine again)

“… and we don’t support PHP, so it’ll have to be Java or .NET” (I don’t know .NET or Java… but fine)

“… and we don’t support MySQL, it’ll have to be SQL Server” (fine, I guess)

“… and we don’t have DBAs available until January, so you’ll have to wait.” (definitely not good.)

So back to the drawing board on the technology stack. I needed something in Java (I know very little Java, but nothing at all in .NET) and to avoid the DBA headache, it would have to bundle in a database. I first explored key-value stores like CouchDB, Redis, etc. None of them worked on Java. The only one I found that did was Persevere, and it was a JSON data store, which fit perfectly with my plans.

By this time, I’d also learn my my fourth and most important lesson.

  1. Don’t try to promote open source. Just deliver the application

I said, “This is a custom-built application that runs on Java. Could we get a Windows server to host it?”

The answer was “Yes”, and we had it live the next day.

PS: December 2009

The application’s deployed and running. It has about 10,000 orders fraud screened by now.
And the lessons are well learnt. So when some came over asking if there was any image resizing solution I knew off, I said: “Sure, who’s your business sponsor?” Then I went over and said, “Let me show you this open source application called ImageMagick. It handles aspect ratios correctly, and can crop too. Doesn’t this look professional?” Then I went over to IT and said, “It’s open source, so you can change it. It has Java bindings, so you can integrate it into your environment. It can handle 8 3000×2400 images a second on my puny laptop. It’s used by your competitors. And I can build it for you if you like.”

I might just have my second open source entry into a corporate this year.

7 thoughts on “Open source in corporates”

  1. Hi Anand,

    I am no technie but I find your dabbling (as I see) and outcomes of various nice tools interesting and been following you for couple of years now – started when I found your search music by name application. So much for introduction.

    Recently, I was looking for list of Hindi and English movie names to build an automated application (in Excel) to randomly pick a movie. Basically, motivation was to play Dumb Charade when there are not enough members so that we don’t lose out one person who is supposed to give movie name. I couldn’t find any easy to download list though BollywoodHungama and IMDB have them in format that you can probably scrape and build whole thing in less than an hour. So would you help me? It could be interesting tool for you too! If not, I just need dump of all movie names in txt line by line for my purpose. To filter out list since it is going to be too big and for me to process in Excel, we may put IMDB rating > 4 restriction or some such.

  2. hi Anand

    This is interesting. I am currently working on a development of a product and we are debating which way to go. Should we go with the standard Oracle tech stack of Oracle 12g + Weblogic + Fusion Middlware + ADF & OBIEE (for BI) and build using JDeveloper. Or should we instead go for MySQL + Hibernate + Springs FW + jQuery & Jasper/Pentaho (for BI) and develop using Eclipse?

    While the former is standard software from an established vendor, the latter brings down the cost of operations. Plus, we are providing product support anyway. So will that not tilt the CIO decision in our favour? Or do you think they will be apprehensive despite all this just cos it is Open Source?

    Will be interested to know your thoughts on this.

    -shankar v

  3. I’m still struggling to answer a larger question of ‘why bother?’. You probably weren’t in a position where you were scared of not getting a job if you quit. Why did you stay?

  4. Very well written and I totally agree. According to corporates, bringing in an open source software as well as open sourcing a homegrown software – both are insecure. I am yet to find a plausible explanation. Apart from the problem of reinventing a wheel, this greatly limits a software developer’s versatility (unless he gets his personal time to play around with tech). Eventually, he ends up using the one big hammer to nail down all petty problems (irrespective of the type, complexity and scope of the problem).

    But ultimately, as yuvi says, why bother about all these when you have a good command over technologies. Get to a place that appreciates and supports you instead of fighting an endless war.

  5. Open source is viewed by lot of corporates as “free” , I realize that anything given free is not of any value ….Nice once Anand, I can echo with lot many questions I asked you during our initial days of Gramener….you would have written me off as one other guy with same questions 🙂

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