The Open Source Way

In this episode, host Karsten Hohage discusses open source and InnerSource at universities with our guest Clare Dillon. Clare explains how collaborative, community-driven approaches to open-source development at universities result in greater knowledge sharing, but also what the academia-specific challenges to open approaches are. This episode will help you gain insight into the evolving open source landscape in academia and how it differs from other parts of the OSS ecosystem.

Clare Dillon

Clare Dillon is an open source and InnerSource advocate and is currently a researcher with University of Galway and Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software. Alongside working with the emerging global community of academic OSPOs, Clare is a member of Lero’s OSPO team. From 2021-2023, Clare served as the inaugural Executive Director of InnerSource Commons, a global non-profit foundation supporting open collaboration methods in corporate software development. In 2021, Clare co-founded Open Ireland Network, a community for those interested in advancing open source at a national level in Ireland. Previously, Clare was a member of the Microsoft Ireland Leadership Team, heading up their Developer Evangelism Group and responsible for Microsoft Ireland’s Academic Outreach Programs for over 10 years. Clare is a qualified coach and frequently speaks on topics relating to open collaboration and the future of work.

Hosted by Karsten Hohage – Product Expert in Technology and Innovation (T&I)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karsten-hohage-0180312/

In this episode, our host Karsten Hohage talks to Powen Shiah and Mirko Swillus about the Sovereign Tech Fund. Established in 2022, it focuses on critical infrastructure in the public interest with the goal of supporting development, improvement, and maintenance of open-source components in digital infrastructure. The funding comes from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz), as investing in digital commons strengthens innovation, economic competition, and democracy.

Powen Shiah

Powen handles communications at the Sovereign Tech Fund. He’s worked in product marketing, communications, and internationalization at technology startups in Germany and the US and really enjoys thinking about how technologies impact our lives. His latest passion is a growing collection of (savory) popcorn seasonings.

Mirko Swillus

Mirko has 15 years of professional experience in software engineering, working in different setups and roles. He’s specifically interested in the question of how engineering communities organize to achieve sustainable productivity. While Powen lives in Berlin, Mirko is based in Dresden.

Hosted by Karsten Hohage – Product Expert in Technology and Innovation (T&I)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karsten-hohage-0180312/

In this episode, our host Karsten Hohage talks to Max Mehl and Sebastian Wolf about Software Bills of Materials or SBOMs. An SBOM is a detailed record of all components within a software application, including open-source libraries, third-party dependencies and licenses. Max and Sebastian discuss the importance of SBOMs as well as some challenges and unanswered questions of the state of the art. They also speak with Karsten about SBOMs within SAP and Deutsche Bahn and the importance of SBOMs when it comes to open source.

Max Mehl

Max has been committed to free and open-source software for many years. He is responsible for all aspects of open source at DB Systel. In this role, he supports Deutsche Bahn in using and contributing to open source professionally. He previously worked for the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), where he coordinated initiatives such as REUSE and “Public Money? Public Code!”. He is a board member of FSFE and F-Droid and is involved in several projects as a maintainer.

Sebastian Wolf

Sebastian is a development architect and has worked for the SAP OSPO since the beginning of 2020. He first joined SAP in 2003 as a student and has since worked in several development positions at, for example, SAP SRM, ABAP Development Tools, the SAP Community Network, and Central Architecture. He was engaged at the Corona-Warn-App project as a community manager from the very beginning and is now coordinating open-source consumption topics in the SAP OSPO.

Hosted by Karsten Hohage – Product Expert in Technology and Innovation (T&I)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karsten-hohage-0180312/

In this episode, our host Karsten Hohage talks to Thomas Barber about project “Foxhound”, an SAP-maintained fork of Firefox (the web browser) that is designed to detect security vulnerabilities in websites. Thomas discusses the history of “Foxhound”, how and why it was created, and its journey to becoming an open-source project. He talks about the importance of the collaborations that made Foxhound successful and about some of the challenges that it has faced along the way. Anyone who wants to get involved in this project is welcome to visit the GitHub page to learn more.

Thomas Barber

Thomas’ first experience with software development was at the age of twelve when he programmed the game “Mortal Wombat” in QuickBASIC. Since then, he has worked as an embedded software developer and security expert in the automotive industry, before moving to SAP Security Research in 2019. Thomas’ interests include investigating novel techniques for the detection and automatic prevention of injection vulnerabilities and privacy violations in web applications. Thomas holds a PhD in the field of Physics from the University of Cambridge and has published papers in the fields of Particle Physics, Astronomy, and Computer Science.

Hosted by Karsten Hohage – Product Expert in Technology and Innovation (T&I)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karsten-hohage-0180312/

In this episode our host Karsten Hohage talks to Ana Jiménez Santamaria about the TODO Group, a community dedicated to sharing knowledge, collaborating on practices, tools, and other ways to run effective Open Source Program Offices and similar initiatives. They discuss its history, mission, working mode, and how TODO Group provides a platform to connect peers and enables them to collaborate on projects that promote the integration of strategic open-source practices within different organizations. Everyone is welcome to join the TODO mission and contribute to the continuous development of best practices.

Ana Jiménez Santamaría is the OSPO Program Manager at the TODO Group. Ana has a strong background in Open Source, Developer Relations, Community Health Analytics, and InnerSource. She previously worked at Bitergia, a software development analytics firm, where she completed her M.Sc. in Data Science. Her thesis focused on measuring the success of Developer Relations in Open Source communities. For more details on her thesis work, check out: https://anajimenezsantamaria.gitlab.io/

Hosted by Karsten Hohage – Product Expert in Technology and Innovation (T&I)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karsten-hohage-0180312/

OCM is an extensible standard accompanied by a toolset designed to enable the automation of many software-lifecycle-related processes. It can be defined as a common machine-readable format for describing software components, which serves as a Software Bill of Delivery (SBoD). In this episode, our guests Jason Kafka and Ingo Kober discuss with host Karsten Hohage about OCM and why it is run as open source. Jason and Ingo also talk about their vision for OCM’s future, its applications, and its challenges.

Jason Kafka has been part of the SAP family for 14 years. He started as a Software Engineer in the development support area, debugging hard core C/C++ SAP NetWeaver kernel bugs, and then went into technical project management. After that, he spent 1.5 years in Shanghai to help set up the SAP Cloud Platform. He then joined the Gardener organization, where he is now an engineering manager responsible for the Gardener Lifecycle Management team.

Ingo Kober joined SAP 22 years ago and has since worked in various positions, including development (Web / Java / ABAP), and  scrum master. He is now a product owner for the internal service Landscaper, used to orchestrate Kubernetes deployments. In his current position, he mostly works with teams in the software lifecycle management area, trying to streamline processes and tools across SAP, with the goal to “improve SAP developers’ lives.” His current technology focus is on Kubernetes.

SGS = SAP Global Security team

Hosted by Karsten Hohage – Product Expert in Technology and Innovation (T&I)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karsten-hohage-0180312/

Dear listener, we typically have a summer break in August, but this year we will do it in July.

We will be back with an episode for you at the last Wednesday of August.

If you are craving for open source content from us, check out the recordings of our public webinars at https://webinars.sap.com/ospo-webinar-series/en/webinar-replays!

Credential Digger is an SAP Open-Source code scanner for detecting hardcoded secrets. In this episode, Slim Trabelsi discusses with host Karsten Hohage what led to the creation of Credential Digger and about its key differentiators. Slim also speaks of the early challenges of scanning for secrets, and lists the many advantages of using open source for building and maintaining Credential Digger. Open source comes with visibility for customers, and contributors can work on a project even before they join the team or after they leave, leading to improved continuity and a better tool overall.

Slim Trabelsi joined SAP 15 years ago and currently works as a senior security expert in the SAP Security Research team. His background includes data privacy, data protection, and social media security. He is currently focusing his research activities on cyber security, threat intelligence, and surveillance. Slim recently developed an open-source tool called Credential Digger, which is used to identify hardcoded secrets in source code repositories like GitHub.  

Hosted by Karsten Hohage – Product Expert in Technology and Innovation (T&I)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karsten-hohage-0180312/

In this episode, our host Karsten Hohage talks with Johannes Bechberger, who is an open-source developer at SAP. They discuss why and how Johannes promotes his work on SapMachine, OpenJDK, and profiling through blogging, speaking at conferences, and having a presence on social media. Johannes also shares tips and learnings collected on his journey of “doing good and talking about it”.

Johannes Bechberger currently works as a JVM developer in the SapMachine team at SAP. His responsibilities include making improvements to async-profiler and its ecosystem, as well as improving the FirefoxProfiler, which enables it to be usable in the Java world. In addition to his many contributions to open source, he also runs a successful blog, where he regularly writes about in-depth profiling and debugging.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/parttimen3rd
Blog: https://mostlynerdless.de
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/johannes-bechberger-381296149
GitHub: https://github.com/parttimenerd
Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@parttimenerd
SAP People: https://people.sap.com/parttimenerd

Hosted by Karsten Hohage – Product Expert in Technology and Innovation (T&I)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karsten-hohage-0180312/

In this episode, our host Karsten Hohage talks with our guests Georg Gruetter from Robert Bosch and Michael Picht from SAP about common concerns regarding InnerSource. They debunk some of the frequent myths surrounding InnerSource and explain the many benefits of its utilization, including its versatility and its innovative and collaborative nature. In the course of the conversation, they also discuss how InnerSource code can be maintained successfully and what can be done for quality control.

Georg Grütter is a passionate software developer and chief expert for InnerSource at Robert Bosch in Germany, where he co-founded the InnerSource initiative in 2009. Georg also co-founded the InnerSource Commons Foundation, for which he serves on the board of directors. Before Georg joined Bosch in 2004, he worked as a software developer and consultant for Line Information GmbH, Zurich System House and Mercedes-Benz AG.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georggruetter/

Michael Picht works as a chief architect at the SAP Open Source Program Office. He is one of the leads of SAP’s InnerSource program. Prior to this, he worked as a developer, software architect, project-, program- and product manager within SAP application development with focus on supply chain management, business processes, and innovation topics.

LinkedIn: https://de.linkedin.com/in/michael-picht-249b7a149

Hosted by Karsten Hohage – Product Expert in Technology and Innovation (T&I)

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karsten-hohage-0180312/