New hire orientation

Max is in charge of the Open Source, Fedora, RHEL, and how it all fits together section of New Hire Orientation in North America. The talk is meant to be about 45 minutes + questions, and is delivered without any slides. It is also full of questions and audience interaction.

The notes below represent:

• The material that needs to be covered, though the order and the examples sometimes vary.
• The material that is general enough to be documented outside of the Red Hat firewall.

RHT -- 3k
Fedora -- 10k
GOOG -- 20k
MSFT -- 93k
ORCL -- 100k
IBM -- 400k
Sourceforge -- 2M

* The genius of open source is its model.
* The software commons is Red Hat's supply chain.

=====================================================================

VALUE PROPOSITION

"What the customer gets for what the customer pays."

* RHEL & Fedora --> why wasn't the old Red Hat Linux sustainable?
    * Boxed set every 6 months = FAIL
    * 18 month support cycle = no time for ISVs = FAIL
    * Moving too fast for enterprises = FAIL

* Subscription to an ecosystem, and a community.
    * Our best customers are in partnerships with us.
    * We ourselves are a member (albeit large) of that community.
        * NO RH --> Gimp, Mono, text editors, etc.
        * MINIMAL RH --> Firefox, OpenOffice
        * MAJOR RH --> Spacewalk, kernel, glibc, SELinux, RPM, Yum
        * TOTAL RH --> Deltacloud, and a challenge of moving away.

* Commitment to community proportional to tech roadmap success.
    * Open roadmap lowers risk of failure.
    * For Red Hat, Fedora lowers R&D risk.
        * Run several bets in parallel and choose the best.
            * libvirt -> Xen, KVM, etc.
            * Modularity and option value!
    * Lower risk of technology irrelevance through Fedora.    

* OSS community --> many projects w/ distros as magnets.
* Fedora --> dev, integration, packaging, QA, distribution.
* RHEL --> certification, compliance, support, etc.

* Engaging the consumer earlier is more efficient and sustainable.
    * Feedback arrives more quickly.
    * Advanced Development -> Design -> Prototype -> Feedback

* Using Fedora allows you to see the future of RHEL.
* Participating in Fedora allows you to create the future of RHEL.
* Technical election (best of today and best for seven years).

* Fedora is where Red Hat generates potential value.
* RHEL is where Red Hat distills that potential into products.

=====================================================================

RIVER OF CODE

* Explain upstream vs. downstream.
    * Upstream leads to efficiency --> AMQP & SELinux
* Compare RHEL's position to that of RHEL rebuilds.
* Value to the customer comes from strong upstream associations.

=====================================================================

FREEDOM = CHOICE = POWER

* Internet routes around censorship.

* Interoperability of data.
    * Patchwork
        * Many 1:1 relationships.
        * Promotes vendor lock-in.
    * Open Standards
        * Many:1 relationship
    * Internet is the best example of OSS and open standards

* Compare to FSF 4 freedoms
    * Royalty-free
    * Immune to vendor capture
    * Freely available specs & collaborative public review

* Internet speeds it up, but it's throughout history.
    * Scribes vs. printing press.
    * Assembly lines and tools become standard, industrial revolution.
    * Railroad tracks becoming uniform, enables trade and connections.

* Open standards leads to commoditization.
* Cost of switching is zero.

=====================================================================

LEGAL

* Public domain -> BSD -> GPL -> Trade secret
    * GPL provides an ever-expanding commons.

COPYRIGHTS                          PATENTS
* Actual implementations            * Potential implementations
* Clearly documented                * Poorly documented
* Clear protection instantly        * Poorly analyzed and granted

=====================================================================

CONCLUSION

* Red Hat model provides:
    * Mindshare hedge
    * Leverage and efficiency
    * Finding talent -> no age on the internet!
    * Consumer integration early on, including customers & partners.

* OUR CUSTOMERS TRUST US BECAUSE WE ARE THE GOOD GUYS.

Activity ideas

These are not meant to be comprehensible to other people, they're just to remind myself of things I'd like to try if/when I lead orientation. Mel Chua 20:26, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

• Give all but one table a puzzle and a lead.
• Tell the no-puzzle table to clear their table. They are Red Hat. Roles:
  • Project leader - ship on time
  • QA - no blank spots in the quilt
  • Engineer - orange border
  • Engineer - green corners
• Other teams come in with parts and reqs
  • orange border
  • green corners
  • some sort of dinosaur in the middle (mid-round RFE)
• QA goes and "patches" and ships

Terminology:

• requirements
• patches
• "upstream" (pile)
• mid-round contributions / code dumps
• bug report / RFE
• community of practice