Bringing the Open Source world to Stuttgart: The Mercedes-Benz FOSS Convention 2023

Wow! - The second Mercedes-Benz FOSS Convention!

Two days full of interesting talks, exciting discussions and inspiring workshops at the halls of the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart. The goal: Bringing together what belongs together - Internal Mercedes-Benz FOSS colleagues meeting external Open Source enthusiasts from various companies. Looking back at the two days we are proud to say the Open Source community is indeed one of a kind.

The Mercedes-Benz FOSS Convention really took in the spirit of the Open Source world. We at Mercedes-Benz were very excited to host this special convention. We had kind words of greetings from our Management Jochen Strenkert, the MB.OS Chief Engineer, and Matthias Schneider, Vice President of IT R&D, Security & Data, as well as from Magnus Östberg the Chief Software Officer of MB.OS. On the second day Sebastian Gress, Chief Officer Corporate Data Protection, took over and welcomed our guests with an impulse from the governance side of view.

Embracing Open Source also means having to overcome some obstacles. So, it may not wonder, that compliance once again came up. It is always a challenge to face governance topics but even a bit more when it comes to Open Source in the automotive industry. We do know what we talk about here 😉. It is the combination of software and hardware, which makes it even more challenging.

Therefore, we were very pleased to have a panel discussion by Ciaran Farrell (Mercedes-Benz) and experts of the Open Source community, which was about the latest hot topics such as: “Should the FOSS Community embrace generative AI coding?” or “How to make FOSS compliant?”. This discussion was indeed very interesting to listen as well as to contribute to. The talk by Jochen Dahl (Commercial Counsel RedHat) “Safely and securely complying with GPLv3 Installation Information requirements for a Linus OS in an automobile” highlighted how car manufactures should scope and mitigate potential concerns which may arise from inclusion of PPLv3 licensed software. Another challenge that can be faced is aligning various requirements of organizations into an Open Source roadmap. That was the topic Marcel Kurzmann (Bosch), Thomas Steenbergen (self-employed) and Helio Chissini de Castro (Cariad SE) talked about. As more organizations started using and contributing to ORT, the call for a public roadmap became stronger. They showed that, for example, people wanted to know when improvement requests relevant to their organization will be implemented. They highlighted that each organization has their own requirements, priorities and resources towards ORT. However, any significant change relies on the core maintainers, who are either dedicating their free time or require approval from their organization to participate. And lastly, we at Mercedes-Benz couldn’t miss the opportunity to show our compliance innovations, such as the FOSS Disclosure Portal.

However, it showed we are not the only ones dealing with this topic, so did Dan Alexander-Levien and Anna Wildegger from Audi also talk about compliance automation. They presented their process for Open Source compliance at Audi and talked about challenges regarding collecting, analyzing, interpreting and curating license data.

Having to face such challenges, we are very happy to know we don’t have to deal with them alone! Being part of the Open Source world also means being part of a passionate community at its core. So naturally, several talks at the Mercedes-Benz FOSS Convention put strong emphasis on communities and collaboration.

An enlightening talk about Communities was by Cornelius Schumacher who told us what happens when a company meets a community and how to prepare the employees for that. That’s important since cultures between the community and the corporate world can differ. So, this can lead either to conflict or it can lead to shared learning and collaboration. In this session, he showed how employees are prepared for effective work within communities. To explain why collaborative work in a community can trigger fears and bias Clare Dillon showed us the principle of the “Open Collaboration and our Lizard Brains” which enabled a more psychological view on communities and how they work. Drawing on neuroscience and psychology, Clare took a look at how we can sometimes unintentionally trigger unhelpful emotional responses in our efforts to enable open collaborations. She examined some of the frameworks that can help us make sense of how our lizard brains overrule our rational brains, and how we can use these same frameworks to plan for successful Open Source and Inner Source communities. Clares captivating talk stirred everyone’s emotions and prompted deep reflection. Working in the open, like pushing code to FOSS projects, can make many of us feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. Sabine Wolz (Mercedes-Benz Tech Innovation) expressed the advantages of a community when it comes to professional product management. As a Product Manager of a landscape, which follows the FOSS-first strategy, she gave real-world examples and insights about her experience when it comes to community collaboration on product innovation, user satisfaction, and market success.

A convention such as our Mercedes-Benz FOSS Convention provides a valuable opportunity to glance at future developments. What will the future of Open Source look like? Which topics will be put into focus even more? Some talks granted a glimpse into the near future.

Andreas Nauerz (Member of the Board at Bosch Digital) talked about how in today's fast-paced business environment, traditional organizations must constantly adapt to survive and thrive. Adopting an agile approach is mission critical to enable organizations to become more responsive, innovative, and customer-focused. It’s even key to be able to attract and retain talent and provide the right environment for them to prosper and perform. His talk resonated with everyone in the audience. The transparency and honesty were really refreshing. The great interest was also noticeable after the talk, he was surrounded by people who went into discussion with him. Moreover, numerous questions were posed, reflecting the considerable interest sparked by the talk.

Oliver Kopp (JabRef) expressed in his talk how to onboard in Open Source combining the developer perspective with the community perspective. He highlighted that attracting new contributors to existing Open Source projects poses a distinct challenge: streamlined onboarding. This talk explored how JabRef, a Java-written literature management software, navigates these challenges to facilitate a smooth contributor onboarding experience.

Another opportunity for networking and discussions were the eight open workshop spaces on day two. Giving you an insight on two of them: Danijel Soldo (Red Hat) hosted one of the spaces and discussed the opportunities of “Driving Sustainability: An Open Source Journey Towards a Greener Future”. An important and current topic that fascinated our participants. Another exciting Space was hosted by Ralf Jung, Sim Kolamkanni and Govinda Athyam, from Mercedes-Benz which showed the implementation of Enterprise IT FOSS license policies with Black Duck and the ORT prototype. All the spaces made it possible to dive even deeper into FOSS discussions and were a valuable addition to the talks. In parallel, we had a workshop featuring the Eclipse Software Defined Vehicle working group hosted by Sören Frey (Mercedes-Benz Tech Innovation) including three additional discussion rounds.

This short overview of talks and workshops really shows the diversity of the Mercedes-Benz FOSS Convention. And of course, this was just a small selection of talks and discussions, we had many more inspiring talks and guests that we couldn’t fit into this summary. Above all we had an exciting spirit of coming together and exchanging that still resonates.

And now, let’s see how the participants would describe the Mercedes-Benz FOSS Convention in one #Hashtag.

Now looking back at it, we can say it was indeed a great event with about 200 internal and external guests. We are glad that our participants enjoyed the various opportunities for networking, exchange, and collaboration. And of course, we also really enjoyed organizing the Mercedes-Benz FOSS Convention and being part of this wonderful community.

We want to thank everyone who made this Mercedes-Benz FOSS Convention so special. We extend our heartfelt appreciation to our speakers who provided us with valuable insights and generously shared their knowledge and experiences.

If you want to get more insights, the link to the videos will be provided here in this article shortly.

We look positively towards next year and are excited to continue contributing to the Open Source community.