Jenkins is an open source tool that provides continuous integration services for software development. With tens of thousands of active instances around the world, it has become the de facto continuous integration server. Agile developers are very familiar with Jenkins, as it supports agile development processes exceptionally well. However, Jenkins is more than a build tool for Java: through its extensive plug-in architecture, it benefits from hundreds of open source and proprietary plug-ins, an extraordinary ecosystem in which you are likely to find what you are looking for!
We formed CloudBees in 2010 to provide a Java Platform as a Service (PaaS) in order to make it easy for cloud developers to create and deploy Java applications in the cloud. Consequently, since Jenkins is an essential part of the toolset of most agile developers, providing a cloud-ified version of Jenkins to our user base immediately made sense. That’s how, at the heart of our CloudBees development services, you will find Jenkins. And additionally, since not everybody is ready to move to the cloud just yet, we also offer “Jenkins Enterprise by CloudBees” a fully supported version of the same open source Jenkins that developers know and love, completed with enterprise-type plugins (such as a High Availability plugin, for example).
CloudBees recently open sourced some of our Jenkins Enterprise plug-ins, making three proprietary plugins free and contributing two additional plugins to the Jenkins open source community. We did this because we believe in the open source way, and know that it’s possible to create a virtuous cycle that benefits developers, companies and users of OSS code.
Open sourcing the Jenkins plugins made sense to us, much as implementing a cloud version of Jenkins did. We had built a number of proprietary plugins we were providing as part of Jenkins Enterprise by CloudBees, but with the growing sophistication of the Jenkins plugin ecosystem, keeping those proprietary was not much of a competitive differentiator. The plugins have great value to the Jenkins community and are a good way for us to contribute back. For our enterprise users, we will continue to provide support and grow the sophistication of what we bring to table.
Also, through the support we provide to our cloud and on-premise customers, we again donate back to the community by sharing first and foremost with the community any issues we discover and resolve for CloudBees customers through support of our Jenkins Enterprise software.
CloudBees is committed to the open source way. Not all companies are, and that’s fine. Some companies are mostly consumers of OSS projects. Some sell value-added services and support but don’t contribute. Some contribute everything – the best example being Red Hat. Open source is a continuum. It’s best to let companies decide where to sit on that continuum, based on the constraints of their business model, with no need to apply any social/community pressure. Over time, our bet is that companies will find value in playing nicely with the OSS community.
When you’re deciding how to proceed with OSS, three things come to mind:
- First: is this going to be a service model or a software model? The big differentiator in becoming a service is recognizing that many people do not want to fight with lines of code any more. They want service in a snap, which is, to our way of thinking, the ultimate level of productization. Users of your project don’t have to customize code or learn, they can just consume it as a service and let other people deal with optimization.
- The second consideration is a bit of executive advice: if you’re going to open up source code, do it when things are going well, not when you’re going bust and you think OSS will save your company. That strategy never works.
- The third, perhaps most important thing is to be true to your commitments: open sourcing code is the easiest part. If you want to succeed you have to live with it, be willing to help and be part of the community. Don’t dump code. Participating as part of a project is very different.
I discovered OSS around 2000 as a contributor. It was amazing – back then the way we developed software was very slow, with very little collaboration. It was the way to do things. One of the biggest achievements of open source is its impact on the entire software industry. We don’t do development the way we used to. It’s a radical change and it probably had more impact on how we develop software than in how we monetize it. Now that OSS is everywhere, I believe real monetization will come from the cloud. We realize some companies can’t move to the cloud just yet. Maybe because they want to wait for a new project before they can jump in, or maybe because they think the cloud is not compatible with what they are trying to achieve. But for those developers and organizations already working with cloud technologies, they quickly realize how critical it is for them to have support for continuous integration of development teams.
The cloud is about economies of scale. If a project or technology doesn’t have an economy of scale it won’t succeed. I believe we will see a revival of OSS business models coming from the cloud. But the virtuous cycle can only exist if those cloud companies not only use OSS but also contribute and give back. I hope those companies will understand their contributions are needed to maintain the cycle of project growth and maturity.
Participating in the open source community is part of an encompassing strategy. It’s not just a one-time thing; it has to be part of the DNA of a company. At CloudBees, it is very much a part of our DNA.
