Challenge #1 — Choose What To Open Source

So you created this cool technology, and you want to share it with the world. That’s great, but there are a few things worth thinking about first.

Like any new initiative, the first thing to do is to define the problem you want to solve. Make sure the solution you suggest actually solves the problem and keep validating it along the way.

You’ll need to ask yourself what component you want to open source and why. It should bring value on its own and you need to see that it fits the problem and the solution.

Keep in mind that the business model of open source is very different than that of enterprise products. Spend less time thinking about how you’re going to make money out of this in the short term and spend more time thinking about what the community can bring to your product. Try not to think in terms of hidden features or direct up-sell opportunities. It’s okay to offer advanced features on top of the open source project as an enterprise solution, but you need to be focused on what you want to do that offers unique value in and of itself.

Our product operates in the orchestration space, and the open source offering is an orchestration engine, with existing workflows that can run on top of it, with the potential for a community to contribute a lot more workflows. Even after we defined the component and the solution it took us a number of iterations to narrow down our exact goal.