27 au 29 mars 2013

XWiki SAS an open source company

Vincent Massol XWiki Committer CTO XWiki SAS

!

@vmassolVincent Massol, March 2014

XWiki SAS - Quick Timeline

• 2003: Ludovic Dubost created the XWiki open source project, an Extensible enterprise wiki

• 2004: Creation of XPertNet by Ludovic, office in Paris

• 2005: First employee & first customer

• 2007: XWiki Romania creation

• 2008: Ethical Open Source commitment through Manifesto

• 2008: All employees become shareholders

• 2014: XWiki Algeria creation

XWiki SAS - The team!July 2013 Seminar

XWiki SAS: A Distributed Company

1131

1

1 4

1161

1• GSOC: Romania

• Open source hires (e.g. USA)

• Past: Russia + Sri Lanka

• Buyout: Algeria

Team Organization

Product Dev (6)

Sales & Marketing

(4)

Product Marketing

(3)

Research (3)

Platform (2)

HR (2)

Support (3)

Client Projects

(15)

XWiki SAS

What type of company is XWiki SAS?

• A software publisher?

• No license revenue since it’s all LGPL and free

• Majority of developers are working on client projects

• A Service Company?

• Yes but it also spends a large part of its revenues (about 30%) sponsoring the development of the XWiki open source product

Open source Business model

Downloads/year

New active installs/year (sticking users)

New clients or projects/year (viral marketing, clients calling in)

250K

2500

25

10% of installs

1% of active installs

+ 90% renewal of existing customers

New installs/year 25000 10% of downloads

Sep. 2013 - Feb 2014

What does XWiki SAS sell? 2012

Revenues - Sales + subsidies

Source: Mid 2013

Open source project management

• Independent from XWiki SAS, defines its own rules

• Meritocracy, similar rules as ASF (Apache Software Foundation)

• VETO (-1) on mailing list to remain honest!

• Only individuals at open source level (no company), everyone at the same level

• Consensus-based approach (no hierarchical decisions)

Active Committers & Contributors

• XWiki SAS: 38

• Core Committers: 19

• Contributors: 60

• Contributors but not Core Committers: 41

• 60% of Core Committers are from XWiki SAS

XWiki SAS Open source contributors

CoreCommitters

5 21 12 7 20

Roadmap Process

Product Dev

Sales & Marketing

Product Marketing

Research

Platform

Support

Client Projects

Roadmap Team

XWiki SAS (Company) Open Source Project (Individuals)

Developer 1

Developer 2

Developer 3

Developer 4

Developer 1

Developer 2

Developer 3

Developer 4

Developer 5

Developer 6

Developer 7

Developer 8

Challenges• Ambiguity between “XWiki” (the open source project) and “XWiki” (the

company, which we call “XWiki SAS”)

• Need an official legal foundation to hold the “XWiki” trademark and allow donations.

• Could make it easier for outsiders to invest in the XWiki project

• Open source is about Give-Give

• Works if businesses play the game

• Problem of SSII in France for example who take but don’t give much in general

• Attract even more contributors/committers and businesses sponsoring the development of XWiki

Q&A

Me

Vincent Massol

• Speaker Bio

• CTO XWiki SAS

• Your Projects

• XWiki (community-driven open source project)

• Past: Maven, Apache Cargo, Apache Cactus, Pattern Testing

• Other Credentials:

• LesCastCodeurs podcast

• Creator of OSSGTP open source group in Paris

• 3 books: JUnit in Action, Maven: A Developer’s Notebook, BBWM