[Free Software Publishers] Open Source Experts: Advise and Support Open Source

Open Source Support and Consulting: Open Source Experts

Walid: Welcome dear listeners, welcome to this new episode of Projets Libres!. Today, we’re going to talk about a topic that we touched on very quickly during the round table “how to evaluate free software?“. We’re going to talk about free software support, and not only that. It’s a very interesting subject and one that the four people around this microphone know more or less well. That’s it, we’ll be able to explain to all those who are not familiar with these issues, what it’s all about. And so, to talk about this subject, I have with me my faithful friend Raphaël Semeteys, who knows this subject well, he will tell us a few words about it too. and then I have two guests, we’re going to talk about the Open Source Experts company. I have Cédric Ravalec, who is in charge of operations, and Jérôme Herledan, who is project director. Hello to all three of you.

Cédric : Hello.

Jérôme: Hello everyone.

Introduction

Walid: To introduce, do you just want to say a word about what you know about this subject? That way, it will also let everyone know why you know the subject well.

Raphaël: Yes, for nine years, in an IT services company, I was in the Open Source competence center, which offered support services, but not only, to companies and administrations. So I participated in creating this offer and more specifically, I was in charge of technology watch, strategic intelligence. And that’s why we talked about it during the round table.

Walid: We were colleagues, I didn’t work directly on the support activity, but my colleagues worked on it, so I also have some notions. We’re going to move on to the presentation of Cédric and Jérôme. Cédric, would you like to start by introducing yourself and telling us who you are and how you discovered free software, please?

Cédric: Hello everyone. Cédric Ravalec, I’ve been in open source for more than 20 years. And I discovered open source when I started in the professional world. So, that was just before the dot-com bubble. I started my professional activity in open source, with the first company that provided services in this field, we called it SS2L, free software service company. And this company was called Alcove, so it was the first appraisal company. That’s how I started. Afterwards, by the way, about ten years ago, in fact, I met Raphaël, and you too, Walid.

Walid: We were colleagues at one point.

Cédric: Exactly. It’s a small world.

Walid: That’s it, it’s very small.

Cédric: I joined OSE, Open Source Expert, a few months ago, to develop the commercial activity of this company, of this project, which will soon be a year old, in a few days now. I joined Jérôme, who convinced me to join the adventure. Jerome, you can introduce yourself.

Jerome: Yes, so. Jérôme Herledan. I’ve known about free software since the end of the 90s, with the university, where we launched a terminal to play Quake 3 on a network, and the joke was “Linux was a multitasking system, Windows is not”. Afterwards, naturally, I became interested in free software via Framasoft, with the free software directory. I installed Mandrake at the time at home, and then, after personal careers in the world of free software for more than 20 years and professional careers for a few years. And I worked in recent years, before joining Open Source Experts, in the same IT services company as Raphaël and you, Walid, at the same center of expertise. We’ll talk about it again because it’s important in relation to the creation of Open Source Experts.

Walid: It’s a really small world (laughs).

Jérôme: And for the record, I also knew Cédric, a few years ago, in the heyday of Firefox OS, when we were both members of the community campaigning for the late operating system, which was intended to be an alternative for smartphones.

Cédric: Not fire, because it still exists. Few people know this, by the way: we can give one piece of information, which is that it was taken up by a former Alcatel OneTouch employee and Indians, and now it’s called KaiOS. For information, here it is, K-A-I-O-S. and it’s very, very much used in India.

Issues related to support and advice around free software in administrations

Walid: If we get to the heart of the matter, if we start talking about the issue that interests us tonight, that is to say the support around open source in administrations and large companies, the first thing I would like to understand and that we introduce is if I am a company or an administration that I have free software: What are my challenges and what makes me say to myself at some point “ok, maybe I need support on these subjects?”. Who wants to answer?

Cédric: Listen to me, I’m willing to answer, and then we’re going to complement each other with Jérôme. Just as an introduction, I think that for a company or a public actor that uses open source, there are several issues. On the one hand, we are in a world where the ecosystem is very fragmented, so he has to find who has the competence: what are the alternative solutions to proprietary solutions, there are often no notions of certification, and indeed, who can provide me with support on solutions that are open source, where there is no publisher behind them. There are a lot of questions that can be asked and it’s complicated. So I think the main challenge is to try to identify an interlocutor and someone trusted to accompany him.

So, if we go back to these major subjects, it is to find a trusted interlocutor who can provide them with reassurance about the products they use. Sometimes, we can have publishers who are behind the products and sometimes, we have service companies that are behind the products or sometimes, it’s a community that is behind the products. So, afterwards, for him, it’s complicated to manage all this: he is waiting for offers. We’ll talk about it later because it’s one of the ideas, one of the initiatives behind OSE: to find the right interlocutor in relation to the reassurance he wants to have in relation to solutions. And then, afterwards, it’s about finding the right expertise to support them in the implementation. That’s what I’d say on my side, I’ll let Jérôme complete.

Jérôme: Often, CIOs, who are aware of open source, are confronted with managers who will tell them: “yes, but with proprietary software, I have a turnkey, packaged offer, I have a contact person, a hotline, I pay for licenses and support.” whereas on the open source side, it’s a lot of different things, it’s a lot of different iterants, How can I do it? So, the idea is really to have an equivalent offer that can be positioned as an alternative to proprietary solutions. And we can see with the current geopolitical issues that this dependence… First, one, the proprietary solution is one subject, and two, all the more so if the solutions are of American origin.

The genesis of free software support markets

Walid: When did we start to think: “we should do support, what actor could do that”?

Cédric: I would say that it was the 2000s. That is to say, at the beginning, if we go back to the history of open source, just before the 2000s, many universities were starting to use open source, especially at the network level. It started with infrastructure, mainly. And it was when the Internet exploded, Internet infrastructures, which are almost all based on open source bricks, that the players who were starting to make websites, the hosting providers, sought to use these open source solutions, to seek expertise and support. I would say that it started during the Internet bubble of the 2000s. This is where the need… and that’s how the first appraisal companies, such as Alcove, were created.

Walid: Raphaël, do you want to add something?

Raphaël: No, I’m ok with that.

It was around this time that we started to see offers flourish and that each of us on our own or together we started to create these offers. So the Internet bubble, and then with the bursting of the Internet bubble and the visibility that free and open source software has gained. This has begun to be adopted by companies or administrations. First, maybe without them realizing it, precisely in the infra parts, because there were developers, geeks who were setting up infrastructures based on open source components, and then, afterwards, in the apps themselves, with languages that manage packages and dependencies and everything, it started to put more and more open source bricks. And at some point, I think there was this realization that open source was already there, in fact, and that maybe we needed to get support, since it was starting to come into the sights of people like buyers or technical directors or that kind of thing.

Raphaël Semeteys

Cédric: which is interesting, by the way,

You’re talking about buyers, it’s super interesting, it’s that in the 2000s, CIOs didn’t know, for the most part, that open source was used. Like open source, for a large part of them, there was no notion of acquiring license rights, there was no need for a budget in terms of licenses, but we could have a budget for services, integration. Finally, there are open source bricks that have arrived in the infrastructures of IT departments without the IT departments being aware of it. And since these were bricks that worked pretty well, there was no alert, the production worked fine. So open source spread like this in IT departments for a few years. And then, it was specialists who discussed with specialists.

Cédric Ravalec

I remember that time, when we were approached by very operational people who were looking for consultants to help them integrate bricks, that kind of thing. Open source has gone through several waves, and in particular several waves of business models: and at that time, the open source business model was the business model of publishers who brought support. So there was no notion of a license where you paid for a product with an open-core license at the center: the products were really open, and the companies that published these products, the software companies, sold support for a living. That’s how Red Hat started. Many companies started under this model… MySQL… There were a plethora of companies and players at that time. The support was offered by these open source publishers, by small companies of experts. After that, the models changed.

Walid: And at that time, how was it structured? That is to say that the administrations, the big companies, they don’t talk directly to a small publisher or they don’t necessarily know how to talk to a community. and so, the first ESNs, well, the first SS2Ls, sorry, who responded… It was complicated for them, did they have to rely on bigger ones? How was that the model at the time, in those early years, which lasted for a while, by the way, I think?

Cédric: They weren’t really big CIOs. I would say that since we were talking about the Internet, it was more about internal entities of CIOs or spin-offs. I remember Carrefour creating a spin-off for everything that was e-commerce. And they were start-ups, let’s say… large groups that launched Internet-based start-ups. It was internet madness. And so they had a certain autonomy.

These weren’t mainstream applications, big databases that we were going to migrate to PostgreSQL, that kind of thing. It was really Internet infrastructure, messaging, the website, that kind of thing: it wasn’t extremely critical either, let’s say, in terms of business. And so they were really, at least for me, specialists who went looking for specialists, who knew what they were talking about and it worked pretty well. Afterwards, it evolved, indeed: it really got into IT, what I would call management IT in large groups, the banking world, since you need a lot of IT. In the world of development too, there’s the world of the web, there’s the world of development with Java, all the infrastructure, the frameworks, that kind of thing. And then, in the embedded sector, we don’t talk about it too much, it’s true, because all four of us have worked a lot in management information technology, but in the world of embedded services, they have undergone a huge revolution. It was an area in which the owner was omnipresent. When Linux arrived in the embedded market, there was a big upheaval in the market. By the way, now, it’s a field that is still very, very open source in the pure sense of the word, if I may say so. There are not these publishers that we see arriving in management IT: they are still purists, and it is omnipresent in the embedded computer system.

Walid: Jerome, do you want to add something?

Jérôme: In the 2000s, I started my career working on large Java and J2EE projects, where we used open source. It was on the backend, which means that the entire development layer was Red Hat servers, with development based on free software. But there was no such culture of free software. They were Windows workstations, we were in ESN, and there was no notion of code reversion. But the servers were running on Linux, and so the first open source bricks were being deployed. so there, it was at the Ministry of the Interior, and little by little, it also led afterwards…

Walid: The Ministry of Finance.

Jérôme: The Ministry of Finance, yes, at MINEFI. And little by little, afterwards, there was the arrival, in fact, in 2010, in those years, of the interministerial base of free software, which took place from a first initiative of the Ministry of Finance to have a support market for the open source bricks that they used internally. Little by little, they introduced it to other ministries, and so, I think it corresponds to a time when you were in the famous center of expertise in the ESN, right?

Raphaël: Yes, yes, absolutely. We’ve all worked more or less in these markets.

The first inter-ministerial support contracts

Walid: ok, it’s developing. The big IT services companies at the time, which are now called ESNs, are starting to take an interest in this too. The first inter-ministerial contracts are coming out and so, at the beginning, it is rather the big ones who respond to these contracts?

Cédric: You had two worlds, I think: you had the private and public worlds. Now, it’s a little bit different. They all have more or less the same maturity, but at that time, let’s say 10-15 years ago, is that a little bit like Raphaël?

Let’s say maybe fifteen years ago, open source spread very quickly in the public sector and it consumed a lot of open source solutions. And you had a ministry that was really avant-garde, I don’t have the name of the director anymore, I couldn’t find him anymore, who, within the DGFIP – General Directorate of Public Finances – had really put open source quite strongly with JBoss He had really pushed open source very strongly on critical state systems.

Cédric Ravalec

And so, there, there was really a need to have an industrialized support offer, and that’s where the big markets are. And that’s where the big guys came in to cater to this type of big market. whereas until now, it was really more about ticket support.

It’s Jean-Marie Lapeyre within the DGFIP, it’s really to him that we owe these big support contracts, he’s a visionary, frankly. And it was he who took the risk of massively putting open source on critical systems.

And that’s how the offer was industrialized, let’s say. and indeed, the big ESNs positioned themselves and the small ones couldn’t really position themselves. And by the way, we’ll see that that’s also why we took OSE now. But in the private sector, it was more ticket support, let’s say, that existed, but there was no 24/7 support with a bypass delay. It was rather ticket assistance that existed on the market, in the private or public sector. And it is really through the DGFIP and the vision of Jean-Marie who launched his first major interministerial support contracts.

Walid: At the time, in the private sector, it was already very rare to have 24/7 contracts. It was a commitment of means…

Cédric: And by the way, it’s still there now. If we build a bridge, now, because that was 10-15 years ago, it was an example for other administrations: I’m thinking of the CNAM [National Health Insurance Fund] and others who launched their calls for tenders in this area. From my point of view, the private sector has still remained, after that, I’m not a specialist, on small contracts. I’m thinking of the Banque Postale, I know that there were also things at the MACIF, which used a lot of open source – mutual insurance companies are very sensitive to open source – it’s in their DNA, but it’s more like smaller contracts. Really, the big contracts were more in the public sector.

Jérôme: This model has been reproduced, as we said, in the public administration with the CNAM, which still has a current support and expertise market. After that, we have the equivalents of smaller contracts in private companies: I’m thinking, for example, of the SNCF or the Banque Postale, which have this type of market, but also on smaller perimeters. We’ll talk about it later, it’s this type of market that we, as an appraisal company, are going to target.

The creation of Open Source Experts

Walid: Precisely, if we start talking about the creation of Open Source Experts, when did you create Open Source Experts? What is the observation that makes you need to create Open Source Experts? Jérôme, can you explain to us a little bit what the atmosphere was like at the time and the thinking that led to the creation of Open Source Experts?

Jérôme: Yes, of course. There is a genesis to all this that is quite linked to my professional history. It’s at the end of 2018, there’s the Open Source Experience show in Paris and there’s a stand with Atos, the IT services company, not to mention it, which is present. I was looking for a change of professional adventure and I’m going to see the stand in question. and I tell them “ah, Atos, you do free software? It makes me laugh, but I’m sure I’ll show my CV and they’ll hire me directly”. Because on my CV, there are more than 15 years in an IT services company with a whole personal section in the world of open source. I had a dual culture and therefore I had the profile of the ideal candidate. I continue my show by being in the more festive and associative side. I talk about it with my wife in the evening who tells me “no, but Atos is like the company you are in in terms of ESN, why don’t you go? Because there, you would be doing open source, but in a large group.”

So, the next day, I went back, I discussed, and I learned that there was indeed an open source center of expertise, which had declined a little bit and was looking to revitalize itself. So the idea is to join them to bring my knowledge of the open source ecosystem, to redevelop this center a little bit by relying on the manager who had just taken over the entity a few months earlier. I arrived at Atos in 2019.

At the end of 2019, it was the CNLL, the National Council for Free Software, which is an association that brings together different players in the world of free software and open source, published a study talking about the major support and expertise markets in France, the interministerial market not to name it, saying that this market does not involve small companies which, being small, cannot apply for this market study, and that this market is monopolized somewhere by large groups and by ESNs that do not necessarily have the necessary open source culture. With this in mind, I spoke to my manager about it, telling him that there might be something to do as an IT services company, to get closer to the CNLL to see what they are up to and how we could work by bringing the know-how, the pool, the big side of the IT services company and the expertise and specificity of the small players in the French SME ecosystem. And so, that’s how in 2020, there was a group that was formed, with Atos as the bearer of the answer for the market, and different players in the open source world, companies like BlueMind, Vortex, FactorFX, Arawa and others.

Jérôme Herledan

We responded to various contracts, and won the interministerial support contract in 2020: so Atos was the holder of this contract from 2020 to 2024 with this famous consortium. This type of response was replicated in the following years in other markets. Atos also won the CNAM contract, still with this grouping system. And during my career at Atos, I was a project manager and I worked with these different actors as a project manager. So, I had the knowledge and culture of the open source world. but being on the ESN side. This allowed me to gain experience and to relate to the various partners of this group.

And at the end of 2024, the observation was that Atos was in a slightly difficult phase, with a split that had to be made between Atos and Eviden. The uncertainty of what the future will bring, the problem of whether an IT services company remains an IT services company… So, suddenly, there was a frustration, a little bit personal, on my side, telling myself “the center of expertise is not developing as much as we would like”.

For the background, in fact, when I arrived, the open source center of expertise was in a telecom branch, it was put there because it had to be put somewhere. Afterwards, it was put in an entity, in fact, as there were several restructurings in the cloud entity, and the open source center of expertise, in fact, was labeled “Cloud by Red Hat”. is that in fact, there was a global cloud entity, which included the cloud by Microsoft, by Google, by Amazon, and the fourth is the cloud by Red Hat/IBM as an alternative. Within this Cloud by Red Hat entity, half of the activity was really around OpenShift, and the other half was a little bit of open source expertise. But there was a frustrating side where we were always stuck with the vision “the cloud will grow and then the open source support markets go into perdition”, when that’s not the case at all.

As a result, five managers who were already working together said that they were going to create their own structure to be able to have their independence. And possibly respond with other IT services companies in markets where we would have to respond with an IT services company: we could respond with Atos, which remains a partner, but nothing prevents us from working with others, such as Sopra Steria, Capgemini, Thales or others, to have more diversity. It’s always good to have a little challenge and not to rest on your laurels.

So, a year ago, the 5 executives of the companies BlueMind, which is the messaging publisher, FactorFX, which specializes in everything that is virtualization, Proxmox, BlueMind, which provides BlueMind in SaaS as an integrator and publisher of the OCS Inventory software, Worteks, which is an integrator that has a strong open source expertise and also works on the fields of identity, Arawa, which works on collaboration, so Nextcloud and videoconferencing with BigBlueButton, among others, and Inno³, which are more specialized in legal aspects [see the episode with Benjamin Jean, founder of Inno³] and open source governance, joined forces to found a structure called Open Source Experts, OSE.

And so, naturally, when I heard about the creation of this company, I said: “I want to be part of this adventure because it allows me to continue working with companies with which I have affinities, and there is a business project that corresponds to my desire”. In fact, it was a bit like the alignment of the planets at the right time. I joined the adventure last June and Cédric joined us at the end of last year to develop the activities.

Walid: What is the legal structure?

Jérôme: It’s a simplified joint stock company, a SAS. that is, the five companies are shareholders and co-founders of OSE. For the record, this is not the first company they have co-founded together. FactorFX and Worteks had already previously created a company called ITSM-NG, which is a software company of the same name, which is a fork of GLPI [see episodes on the history of GLPI]. So, first of all, there is a precedent, which is the co-creation of ITSM-NG, and so ITSM-NG is a bit like the big brother of OSE, in a way.

What types of markets does OSE cat?

Walid: ok, so you decide to create OSE. Earlier, you mentioned the fact that OSE, the goal was to respond to medium-sized markets, right? or else, I didn’t really understand what you were saying…

Jérôme: In fact, it’s not just to respond to medium and large markets. It is to respond to the problem of a large industrial or public group that needs to have a single point of contact, but who can provide it with a certain amount of expertise.

The problem is that contracting with a set of different service providers for one-off assignments can be complicated, so the idea will be to say that we have a one-stop shop that will be OSE, which will in fact be on the front end, and in the back-end, we are not the ones who provide the expertise. The goal, be careful, is not to be an ESN or a free software services company, an SS2L, it is to be a small structure, but one that will bring a pool of open source partners ecosystem.

Jérôme Herledan

We’ll come back to what it means later, the notion of open source partner, but it’s to say we have a customer, we’re going to contract in the form of a contract or other, and at the time of the market’s life cycle, we’ll bring in the right interlocutor at the right time to respond to its open source issues, which can be support on bricks, a version upgrade, consulting, auditing, really to respond to all the services that could be put behind the word open source expertise.

Raphaël: It’s broader than just support, i.e. fixing bugs, it covers a lot of other services. Is this all that can support an end customer in the use of this kind of bricks?

Jérôme: The range that we will try to cover in terms of needs goes from the beginning: I want to get into open source, how does it work? What are these issues of license, GPL, Apache license, etc. ? So advice at the legal level, on open source strategy issues. Once the strategy is established, it will be the choice of alternative solutions and for that, we will use the writing of monitoring memories using the QSOS methodology, which is dear to both of your hearts [see the episode where we present the method]. We didn’t invent the wheel, we use recipes that work well.

We will support the customer by telling him that the alternatives to VMware are these solutions “in your context, this is the solution you should focus on”. The next step will be to POCer this solution to validate the feasibility and integration within the IS, to support it in the implementation and industrialization of this solution. Once it’s set up and it goes into production, then we’ll move on to a run phase, so support with support. I mean support in the sense that, if we identify bugs or others, but it’s not necessarily a bug in the software, it can also be in the configuration, performance problems, latency: we will support it to use these open source software in the daily context and afterwards, in the version upgrade, to respond to the issues of digital independence and sustainability as well, solutions within the IS. It goes from identifying “why should I do open source?”, to: “I’m convinced, I have open source bricks on a daily basis, but my job is not to do IT, my job is to do management IT, it’s to do embedded, it’s to do different… IT is a tool and within this IT of my IS, I have open source”. And we, in fact, are positioning ourselves on the support around these open source bricks.

Maintenance services

Raphaël: Maybe we’ll talk about it later on the contribution part, but… There may also be evolutionary maintenance, or this kind of thing to stick to customer needs, that kind of thing.

Jérôme: The differentiating element of OSE is that we have founders who come from the world of free software and open source, who have a strong adherence to the culture of free software, with this contribution and participation side. We, Cédric and myself, come from the world of free software, we have this culture, and that’s what we try to instill by saying: “in OSE, we have the name open source, which is the commercial name of free software that major decision-makers understand. From our name, we clearly show that we are going to work with open source software. We will avoid any proprietary software, we are not a company specializing in this.” It is more about supporting the migration from proprietary solutions to open source solutions and then explaining to decision-makers that open source is not about being a consumer, but about being a consumer-actor: that is to say that we have to play the open source game, that is to say put money to finance developments, and pay these changes: evolutions, bug fixes, etc. etc., and to play the game. Our role, too, is an ambition that we have, which is to rely on the OSPOs, so the Open Source Program Officers, who are people, in fact, who are the open source gentlemen or ladies within private or public companies, who are relay points. Rely on the OSPO to convey this message to IS colleagues: alone, we go faster, but together, we are stronger. By putting a little money in this basket, we will pay contributions that will be useful to everyone, and keep this sovereignty and independence side via open source software.

Our mission is also to promote this aspect: open source is not free software, it is software that allows us to have independence, which requires funding by providing a living for publishers and integrators. But this money is not spent on licenses that finance companies and shareholders. It makes people live on a daily basis.

Jérôme Herledan

Walid: For listeners who want to know more about OSPO and software governance, I refer you to the episode on Cité libre on the city of Paris, and also the episode with Sébastien Dinot. We talk about all these subjects.

Jérôme: These are very good examples of people with whom we can interact to work together in good understanding.

OSE’s governance

Walid: To finish on the structuring, how many of you are in Open Source Expert and how does it work, governance, all these players?

Cédric: There are four of us who are attached to the structure. Afterwards, behind it, we have more than 300 people across all the partners for the moment, who are part of OSE. We see a little bit how we are organized. We will take care of the people who are part of OSE. It’s to take care of sales, marketing, to identify projects, to make the initiative known, to promote through white papers – we can also talk about this later. And then, it’s the management part of the projects that we have to win. and then, we do a little bit of strategy consulting, as Jérôme explained very well earlier.

Challenges around supporting open source products

Walid: We were wondering about the main challenges you faced when it came to open source support. What are we going to encounter as a real challenge on these subjects?

Jérôme: The problems we’re going to encounter are the problem of contribution, because the code is open: we’re already going to have to be able to understand this code, to dive into this code and to be able, once we’ve corrected it – because that’s the need – the first step, to deliver a corrective patch to the client, it works, But this patch must be made permanent.

And to make this patch permanent, the important thing is to understand how the community or the publisher or other is waiting for the patch to be able to integrate it into the main branch of the software, so that it is perpetuated and maintained. It’s an important job and that’s why we’re going to rely on it, when we’re going to respond to a support issue, we’re going to try to find who is the referent, company or independent or other, who has this knowledge, who has this culture, who has this expertise and this experience to be able to respond to the customer’s challenge.

Jérôme Herledan

The goal is not to answer everything, it’s not to say that we know how to do everything. In relation to a customer request, it is to say first, if we don’t already have a partner or other in the catalog, to identify if there is a partner or an independent person or a person who has the capacity to do it, and to validate with this person his expertise to be able to then bring this know-how and put us in touch with the customer, then we pose as an intermediary, interface between a customer need that is: “I have to have support, corrections, evolutions in relation to a software”, and a person who would not necessarily have had access to that customer. We’re going to serve as a connection, a binder for that. But what’s really important, and the problem that will be encountered, is how do we maintain this patch over time? Is it a financing that will be regular by the customer? Once it’s integrated, does it live its life within the framework of the product? There are as many possibilities as there are different software, somewhere.

Cédric: I would say… The issue, too, perhaps, how we organize ourselves. How to organize open source within an IT department. I don’t know if we talked about the OSPO, already, it’s an important issue. And then, did we also talk about the inner source or not at all?

Let’s say that we have three types of customers: those who are just consumers, they’re going to consume software, they’re going to consume expertise, they want to reassure themselves and they want a single point of contact. After that, we have customers who are indeed contributors, because they want to develop their own products, because they want to add features or influence the roadmap of a product. They ask themselves the questions that Jérôme explained. And we also have customers who manufacture solutions in which there will be software components, I’m thinking of manufacturers in the automotive industry, in defense, I’m thinking of this type of player who has a specificity and that’s why I was talking about inner source: in the end, it’s the open source model, but internally in the company, in relation to their developments.

Cédric Ravalec

And often, these are players who do inner source, and who have issues in terms of support in relation to the products they market on the market, because a player, an industrial company – I’m talking about an automotive player, for example – who puts a vehicle on the market, and in which there are open source components, It is up to him to do the support, maintenance, and updating. And so these are really special cases, but they are developing more and more. As I said earlier, in the embedded sector, in the industrial system, open source is extremely present, more and more present, and in the end, I would even say that these two worlds, the world of industrial IT and the world of management IT, are in the process of coming together.

In terms of services, we now have real servers in cars, just as we have servers to manage our emails or our websites in companies. We have real Linux servers in vehicles, so you have the same technologies that are coming, and so these players, these big manufacturers, have really very specific issues of reassurance, but also of problems, legal constraints and impact. It’s a pretty high stake for these customers too and we have to support them.

Finding and keeping the right skills

Walid: You said that there is a problem of keeping skills. Your problem is to find the right people who are able to contribute potentially over a long time on projects, it’s not necessarily always very obvious, I guess?

Cédric: In the long term, it’s not our job. it’s more the job of large IT services companies. We’re selling expertise, if that were your question.

Walid: expertise. What I mean is that you have to identify the right person and potentially, you have to make sure that the right person, you keep a good relationship with them so that if there are things, you can contact them again in the future. That’s what I mean, it’s not a one-shot?

Cédric: Not everything depends on one person, or if it does, there is still a risk on the use of the project. That is part of the criteria. And then we can fork. But yes, I think it’s important to play the open source game. That is to say, to contribute, to add value. And it’s also important to explain it to customers, and that is paid for indirectly.

Partner with OSE

Walid: And earlier, you said the word partner, from Open Source Experts. What does it mean to be a partner?

Jérôme: Being a partner of OSE means above all being part of a pool that you will be able to solicit. We will build up a pool of partners, so companies or freelancers that we will have to solicit to meet customer challenges. As part of our commercial prospecting or the responses to calls for tenders that we can make, we will identify a certain number of solutions for which we must put an expertise in front of us, and to do this we will look at the people or companies with whom we have already worked and offer them to be part of the response. We will be proactive in the sense that we will seek out existing partners to respond to a problem and there is the opposite, what we also offer is to say: “there you go, if we have a small structure that will identify a need of a customer, but for which we will have to work together, We will act as a link and make a proposal and support to respond to several.”

The example I want to give is to say that we are a little bit of conductors. We’re going to have different specialists in the different instruments – wind instruments, string instruments – and we’re going to play a score in harmony to meet the needs of the client, who needs to listen to an opera, for example. And if, at some point, in the context of a new score, there are instruments that are a little atypical – the triangle – we will go and find the triangle specialist to ask him if he would like to play in the new opera next week.

Jérôme Herledan

So, this partner side, there are two meanings: we will look for specialists and ask to work with them. And specialists can ask us to say: “I bring my expertise, but we need other bricks.” A simple example is a software publisher. The case of Nextcloud, which I know well, is several components: there is the server component, with the web server part, there is the database part, the software part, and these three bricks must work together to work properly. a publisher like Nextcloud is not going to be a database specialist, and so we will respond by saying, there you go, we have the Nextcloud publisher, we have the database specialist, for example MariaDB, we will take an integrator specializing in this solution, a specialist who is for the web server part, and possibly Arawa for the functional knowledge side of the software. And so there, that’s four interlocutors. And by adding OSE we make a link. It’s to respond to customers by saying: “Here, through OSE, you have access to these four areas of expertise, but it’s a conductor who will manage the coordination, the steering, the support so that everything goes well”. Because these are four different entities, which are not necessarily used to working together, we will play the facilitating side.

So that’s the partner side. What is important in the choice of partners is the knowledge and recognition by one’s peers in the open source community. That is to say, someone who claims to be an expert in open source must be recognized as such: that is to say that he is someone who is well established, who has had visibility for a long time, who we see at events or trade shows and who plays the game of open source, through, either patches, contributions that can be at the code level, but not only.

Jérôme Herledan

Contributions can also be documentation, articles, conferences that show know-how and recognized expertise. And that’s part of the selection criteria. and being a partner also means adhering to the Open Source Experts charter. we make it an “end chart”, it’s a bit like the ten commandments of OSE, among which there is the importance of adhering to the values of free software. and for example, being a member of April, the Association for the Promotion and Defense of Free Software, is an added value, or to sponsor non-profit events, as there can be in some places during the year, such as the Capitoles du Libre or the JDLL in Lyon. Being a sponsor of this type of event is to show that you are involved in open source communities. In the case of our answers, we also highlight this involvement in the open source ecosystem.

Support for Open Core solutions?

Walid: You mentioned Nextcloud, products that have a model that are not open core, but what about open core products on which there is a publisher behind it? Do you offer support through OSE on open core solutions with a publisher?

Jérôme: The idea is not going to be to replace the work of publishers but to work in good understanding with the publisher. What we’re going to tell customers is that there are open core solutions or others, where the publisher has chosen, as a business model, to have a subscription model. We will be able to connect, for example, and work in good intelligence with these economic models, saying that it is the publisher who provides support for the pure software part of his business, but we will be in support for the building blocks around it. Because, inevitably, this software-business part runs, as we said earlier, on an infrastructure that can be 100% open source: the database, web servers or others. And so, it’s really about trying to have a mix and to support the customer in the right choice, with the side, subscribing to a publisher, but also having support on the side. In fact, it’s trying to have a little bit of the best of both worlds. It’s not necessarily easy, publishers won’t necessarily subscribe to it, but it’s something we think about and aspire to.

Walid: In this case, in the open core model, the customer, if he has a bug on the tool, on the software, he will contact the publisher’s support. I was wondering because depending on the publishers, having relationships and being able to submit patches and have them accepted, it can be more or less complicated, or even some who don’t want to, in fact.

Raphaël: What I understand, in fact, is that in your partners, you have several types, just as there are several types of actors and communities. And so what you’re going to do is hide this diversity a little bit from a customer to offer them a one-stop shop or a single point of entry. How do partnerships work? Is it custom? Do you discuss every time? Do you have any models that you push forward?

After that, maybe it’s after a year, you may be clearing all that again. It was to find out a little, is each partnership discussed anew? Do you have any standard things?

Cédric: There is no contract, if you like. There is no notion of a contract. The contract only exists when you enter into a contract with a customer. It is rather to adhere to a charter in terms of values: that is an important point. We have the same values, the partner and OSE, especially in terms of contributions, that kind of thing. After that, it’s to see if there’s an interest for them – and most of them, it’s yes, it’s positive – to go through OSE for certain projects, because they’re all looking for activities, they see an interest, because open source isn’t just a single brick that you put in place in the IS.

Often, we have to work with other colleagues, other skills, that kind of thing. Rather, it is to make known to an ecosystem that is very fragmented in France. There are a lot of players in France and Europe and it’s really about promoting and starting to win projects with them.

Walid: You said that there is no contract with the partner. Is the contract when you sign a contract with a customer?

Cédric: The contract is more about adhering to a charter. That’s what’s important. That is to say, this is how we want to operate. We defend the same values, for us it’s extremely important.

Then, there is a relationship that can be a commercial relationship, but for that, there is no need for a contract: we will move forward on accounts together, for example, to try to make the client more mature, so that projects emerge, so that they are more global projects. Rather than a client contracting with ten different players, we will rather get them to say to themselves, to work with these players, and to say: it might be more relevant for everyone if there was a single contract, which includes all the services, that kind of thing.

Cédric Ravalec

So there, there is a commercial relationship between us and then, afterwards, there is a contractual notion: it is with the customer and us, afterwards, with the partners. When we respond to a case together, saying, “we respond quickly with you, you respond quickly with us, and indeed, if we win, this is the perimeter on which you will intervene”, that kind of thing. But this is only done with regard to a customer.

Walid: Is it subcontracting? Is this co-contracting?

Cédric: It depends. That depends.

Walid: Ah, can you have co-contracting there? I thought that precisely, OSE was the bridgehead, and that the others… Okay fine.

Cédric: I’ll give you one of the examples, for example, on very large projects, we are co-contractors with very large IT services companies, for example.

Raphaël: But I understand, diversity is also linked to customers and their needs. In the end, you fit into that framework.

Cédric: Yes, but the customers, they understand it well. Frankly, they find that the offer, they understand the value, clearly and they appreciate the fact that there is no bias, because most of the players who are on the market are not totally objective, because they themselves publish, they themselves have competence in this or that field. So they will rather push the vision of competence, or rather push the product they publish. Whereas we’re really extremely objective and we’re going to listen to the customer, understand their needs and, in relation to that, go and see the right solution and the right player, let’s say, in the open source ecosystem. And I don’t think there was that type of player, and it really meets a need, in addition to the single point of contact side.

Sharing value with partners

Walid: And how do you share the value generated by the contract with your different partners? Because they don’t all intervene at the same time.

Cédric: As we said earlier, we’re not the ones who produce, okay? We’re conductors, we’re going to steer, we’re going to say. After that, it’s our partners who intervene.

The economic model, once we enter into a contract, is that by going through us, we take a margin that we carry, which is 10%. Normally, in our businesses, the margins are more like 20 to 30% most of the time, with the big players. So, we take a 10% margin that will pay for the investment we can make, trade, that kind of thing. By contracting with a client through OSE, they will intervene and we have a margin of 10% in the total business, which allows us to finance the solution.

Cédric Ravalec

Jérôme: And in fact, on the side, in the system, we will eventually sell, in the overall service, support, project management, which will be valued and rated at a particular ADR [Average Daily Rate], as part of the service. And the expertise carried out by the partner or service provider is clearly indicated to the customer. So if we make a breakdown, there will be, out of a price of 100, there will be 10 who will be taken as the administrative side, bear responsibility for the contract, etc., the pre-sales efforts that may have been made, and then, if out of the remaining 90, there may be 30, 30, 30, because we have three different partners who intervene on behalf of a third party, a third, a third. there may be 50% for one partner, and then a few days for another, and OSE, which is in charge of the project at two days a month. And it’s an equation that we’re going to present to the customer by saying, look, in the system, you have such and such a person, and if, at some point, our customer realizes that, in the end, there is no more added value from OSE because the database works perfectly, the web part works perfectly, There is only a need to contract with the publisher, we will get out of the system and then he takes a classic support contract with the publisher if that is his economic model.

In fact, we don’t force you to stay with us at all times. It is really when there are several interlocutors to say: we add an OSE layer that simplifies the contractual relationship with our customer. And it is also to make key accounts understand that they have similar needs within different entities, and by coming together within the same market, they will be able to access these same service providers via OSE. There are several of them working with the same entities that are our partners. So, that’s as many contracts and administrative work for them to say that we’re going to create a simplification: you keep the same markets, you keep the same expertise with these service providers and we’re going to provide a link. And maybe there, you put 100, 100 and 100, you put a little more, but you simplify at the administrative level and you also pool and rationalize the uses of your open source bricks. In a way, there is also in-depth work to be done with these large groups.

Walid: Just for listeners who don’t know, ADR, average daily rate, is the rate at which, in companies, a day of service of a resource is sold. Let me understand, because it wasn’t very clear to me, the distribution between the partners is made when we sign the contract. Let’s say, when we sign the contract, there are 100, we take so much, and then the others, depending on what we consider to be the volume, you take so much and so much.

Jérôme: Or it can also be as it happens, that is to say that depending on the needs expressed by the customer, in fact, we can have a basic contract, a financial base, and then there are services that will be requested. he’ll say: “hey, I need to set up an SSO “. We’re going to say “ok, to respond to your problem, we’re going to make a proposal”. The proposal is a timetable, an issue, a perimeter, and to respond to this challenge, there are so many such companies. And so, we offer a costing, we make tailor-made quotes as we go along. So, we don’t necessarily have a commitment, at the beginning, it depends on the amount of money that will be provided to our service provider, it’s to say when the customer expresses a need, we will ask you to support us in the response, because we are not going to make a technical response without the approval and expertise of our partner. He is really the one who tells us “the perimeter is this, the possibilities and the limits, and the timetable, the stakes”.

Once we have all this information, we bring the writing of the quote to our client and we play our role as a facilitator for it. If the customer challenges, we will go back to the partner and say “here, do we reduce the scope? Is the timetable tight?” In fact, we can’t make everything fit. Nine women don’t have a baby in a month: it’s going to be our job to be frontal to make the client understand this, but always involving the expertise of our partner who knows how to make a baby and he knows that it’s in nine months.

Walid: Raph, do you have any questions?

Raphaël: No, that’s clear. I can see the editing, etc. What will ultimately make the difference of OSE compared to perhaps other players who are more generic, etc., is this knowledge of the open source ecosystem, of good practices, hence the charter that you are putting in place. And so, there is this contribution aspect that we have already talked about: how does it work, precisely? Do you have any constraints, elements of strategy that you have put in place to ensure that customers have already understood and want to contribute through OSE or through OSE’s partners? And how does it follow? Do you follow up? Is this one of the things that OSE also brings, as an overlay on top of the partners?

Jérôme: That’s something we’re going to ask our partners.

It is to say in the context of the achievements that you are going to do for the client, give us proofs. It can be links to commits or others, contributions that you may have made, so that we can capitalize on that, to be able to communicate via social networks or others in a public way, by saying that there is money that has been invested, it has made it possible to improve or contribute to this software. And in the project management part, we will make the client aware of, during the major fortnightly meetings, which we call COPILs, steering committees, we will have a presentation component to say: your money, how it was invested and what it gave rise to concretely, without necessarily going into detail, since a great CIO or a great manager commits, he doesn’t need to.

But materialize through indicators, diagrams or others, the benefits obtained through the money that has been invested. And to make them understand that it’s not just code, it’s also a reputation, which is actually important for the company in terms of image, in terms of HR. that is to say, there you go, this company has open source tools and solutions within its IS. So, there is an attractiveness side, to say to yourself, well, if I am going to work in this company, I will use free and open source software. There is also the side: it plays the open source game by getting involved, by contributing, there is a positive side in terms of image. And that’s something that we’re going to try to materialize in indicators with management.

Jérôme Herledan

Walid: When the partner makes commits for a particular client, does he mention the contract or is it just his usual job? Because I know that sometimes, you can say, it was done as part of a thing.

Jérôme: It will be submitted to the customers for approval. If we want it to be public knowledge and visibility, we will ask that there be in the commit label that this work has been financed by such and such an entity. Afterwards, if they feel, for security reasons, that they don’t want us to know that they are using such and such a version of this software, because it’s complicated to write it in their name, we won’t mention it. But we’ll still have an internal trace, because the added value of OSE is also to capitalize on the knowledge of the company’s IS. And the more we work with a customer, the more we will capitalize on the knowledge of their IS, knowing that they have such and such Linux distributions, that they have such and such tools, etc. So that the day there is another speaker who intervenes, that he knows the context. Always the same, I used the Nextcloud image. if we use other bricks to interconnect with the Nextcloud, for example BigBlueButton, to have knowledge of what the versions of Nextcloud are, the Linux distributions underneath, etc. and that, as part of the development of its digital workplace, the customer now wishes to integrate BigBlueButton, we will bring this added value of knowledge and capitalization on the knowledge of the customer IS. In fact, that’s what we’re trying to get across as a message, it’s: compensation is used to create a knowledge base of a client’s open source context, so that when there is a new expertise that is brought in, at a given time, it arrives on familiar ground with prerequisites, knowledge, there is not everything to reinvent and discover. And so, it saves time and efficiency also in solving a problem or in providing expertise. This is also the added value of OSE: it is the knowledge of the global context, and therefore, it is what is done over time and the work carried out with a client.

Evangelization and promotion of free software through OSE

Walid: I wanted to ask you, is there a notion of promoting free software, evangelization, promoting certain solutions, replacing proprietary solutions, in the context of these markets?

Jérôme: Yes, in fact, that’s really our core business. It is really to support the use of free software solutions as an alternative to proprietary solutions. Afterwards, depending on the level of maturity of the client, we will adapt the speech. That is to say, if he is aware and has a strong culture, he knows how to differentiate free software from open source, we will rather use the terms free software. If, as you say, it’s just open source, we’ll use the term open source. We can also use the term digital commons, which is also another approach that goes beyond the simple code aspect. In fact, open source is the code. We will adapt the discourse to the customer, and now, we will also focus our communication a lot on sovereignty and governance. in fact, it is this appropriation of the IS, this independence through free software. Only free/open source software allows this appropriation and independence.

Sovereignty through free software

Walid: Do you have people who have contacted you in recent weeks who are a little worried or wondering how to be more sovereign?

Cédric: I think there are several things to what is happening. I already think that the general public, we are part of it, we have all become aware that we have a very strong dependence. So, already, we learned during covid, that we had a very strong dependence, really on medicines, with Asian countries, it’s crazy.

And now, we realize, the general public realizes the dependence we have on the United States, in Europe, in any case, the dependence we have on the United States, on defense, but also on digital technology. So, there’s not a day, there’s not an hour, there’s not an article on LinkedIn that doesn’t talk about the subject. Of course, open source players promote independence, but CIOs take the easy way out, which is also normal. We’re not going to throw stones at them, it’s not that easy to go out like that.

The actors, they are very good in terms of sales, marketing speaking: everything has been done to make us linked. But we are also all in something when we have Android or iOS phones.

But it’s certain that what is happening there, I think the general public is aware of it. CIOs are asked to look at alternatives, business leaders, politicians, everyone is aware of this, and that’s good news. Frankly, in all the bad news in the world, I think that for all of us, not just for our IT professions, but it’s good news, because I think we can’t go on like this. It’s not possible, we can’t have that dependence, it’s too strategic.

Cédric Ravalec

So, it will take time, it’s like defense. But little by little, I think that things will indeed change. And yes, we have recently been asked by large groups to support them on strategic visions. How can they industrialize all this? Because until now, it was a few solutions, a few services that were open source, but can we go further? Can there be a dual sourcing strategy with open source? And then, even if only identifying dependencies? I don’t think there are even any tools: as much as we have tools to manage our software, our contracts with publishers, there are plenty of solutions that exist for everything related to asset management , but there is no solution that manages dependency. An IT department doesn’t know how to say, or a manager doesn’t know how to say, to what level I’m dependent, and on which actor I’m dependent, and how much it costs me, and how much it costs me to get out of it. I think that these are new services that will arrive, new tools that will also arrive, which will make it possible to map in the IT departments the technological dependence that we may have, what is the impact of that if tomorrow, we cut these services. I think so, we are starting to be solicited, and I think that this is a subject on which all IT departments are working.

Walid: I see it as a great opportunity to seize this moment. To indeed, as the French and other free software companies do, to go and do political lobbying to say that the time is now. We need to support the entire ecosystem.

Cédric: Yes, and even French publishers, even if they are open source, it’s not a big deal. French and European, and we realize that we have a lot of publishers who have a lot of value. If it can help them repatriate our engineers as well, because they are all in the United States, not a big part. When you go to Facebook and Google, there are a lot of French people: we have extremely competent people in France and in Europe.

The major trends to come in free software

Walid: ok. The last thing I wish I would have asked you is you spending a lot of time in open source ecosystems. What do you see as a future trend? There, we talked about all the geopolitical problems, but are there other trends? Are there other things you’re looking at? What do you think will impact all free software businesses and communities?

Jérôme: The big unavoidable trend is AI, artificial intelligence, where we see that everyone is asking themselves the question of how to use AI. The first issue is what is open source AI? we see that OSI, the organization of the Open Source Initiative, has tried to define what an open source AI is, with the problem of, the data on which it is trained must itself be free data.

This also poses problems in terms of GDPR, etc. And this is a vast subject in itself. Afterwards, once we have this engine that allows us to do things, how do we use it in a final software? So, all publisher software solutions based on open source ask themselves the question of how can I integrate AI to solve problems in my end use? I am an email solution, how can I use artificial intelligence, and what artificial intelligence, to facilitate email writing, for example? I am a collaborative solution, like Nextcloud, Nextcloud says that ethical AI must be used to facilitate the use of documents. I am a search engine, like Datafari, which is a partner, published by France Labs, the problem of using AI to search among my documents, make syntheses, etc. That’s really something very important.

In fact, it’s how to integrate AI, because it’s something essential, but use it intelligently, not put AI for the sake of putting AI, but put AI so that it has an added value in the context of the service I provide via my software. And that’s a pretty strong issue: which AI should you focus on? And so the answer is to have a layer of abstraction, to say: “I have my functional business problems that I’m going to address, and the AI engine must be likely to change”.

Jérôme Herledan

That is to say, today it is that of so-and-so who is fashionable, tomorrow it is another. I’m going to have an abstraction layer that will allow me to interconnect with the right AI at the right time, which can be shot, either in the cloud, or shot locally or whatever. So, there is a real challenge to jump on the AI train without creating too strong a grip on… how can I put it, I’m dependent on such and such an AI solution that is American or Chinese, and tomorrow, it closes itself off to me, it no longer exists, my AI no longer works within my software. So, it’s a fairly complex issue of which AI to focus on, how to integrate it, is it relevant or not, because putting AI for the sake of putting AI, there is no interest, because we know that it is also a source of energy consumption, because there is the creation of the AI itself, but after running it on a daily basis, It adds a dependence in terms of machine power and energy. So, it also has a cost for the end user. That’s really what I’m talking about right now: AI and governance. It is independence, on whom does it depend? Is it from the U.S. government? Is this a purely Chinese solution? Because China does a lot of open source. But what does this solution mean too?

Final Words

Walid: All right, we’re coming to the end. Before we leave, I’m just going to ask each of you to give me a final word. If you have a message to share, it’s now. Cédric, to you the honor.

Cédric: Walid, Raphaël, are you looking for a new opportunity in a great company?

Raphaël: (laughs) he’s a sales manager, it’s not for nothing.

Walid: (laughs) I’m happy where I am, even if I don’t necessarily do open source. Is that your last word?

Jérôme: A little bit of humour.

Cédric: So, the last word, listen, I had a great time with you, it made me very happy, very happy to see you both again, and available to do a podcast again on other topics around open source. And I think that in 365 days, in a year’s time, for the two years of OSE, I think the world will have changed a lot, and for the better, thanks to open source and the efforts that we all make around IT.

Walid: Jerome?

Jérôme: I would say that we are looking forward to the relaunch of QSOS. there was a conference that was held at the Open Source Experience last December, with potentially the involvement of Open Source Experts as contributors to revitalize and participate in the community that will be created around QSOS, because it is a tool that we use, and therefore a good player in open source, It means using the tool, but also participating in it, getting involved to possibly influence its development.

Raphaël: Yes, on that, I’ll answer. Good news, good news, it’s coming! We are in the process of laying the foundations of the reboot and we wanted, before opening things, to have something to share so as not to start from scratch or from bases that are too old and that would have bothered us too much. I think that for Solutions Linux [former name of Paris Open Source Experience], we’ll really have things to present and probably before that, we’ll have things to share. So, it’s in progress.

Walid: Raphaël, is that your last word?

Raphaël: yes, finally, my last word, that’s it and I’m happy. 15-20 years after I started working in these environments and in this type of activity, to realize that it’s still there, that there is all the more need with all the discussions we’ve had at the geopolitical level, AI, sustainability, dependence, etc. That open source is all the more key today and makes the world go round, and will continue to make it work. We hope so in the future in the right way. That’s my last word.

Walid: ok. My final word is also geopolitical, it is indeed, I think there is a real opportunity to also show our solutions, our ethics, the way we see things, the way we do open source, etc. We have a real chance now to be able to do it: there’s really a kind of momentum, so it’s really great, and I think we’re going to talk about it a lot on the podcast. I have a lot of other ideas on that, precisely, on these subjects. Thank you to all three of you, it was a great pleasure for us to talk about this subject. Thank you very much, be well. For listeners, as usual, share the episode with others. If you want to make comments, it will be with great pleasure. Thank you, good evening.

Raphael: Hi.

Episode production

• Remote check-in on March 26, 2025
• Basis: Walid Nouh, Raphaël Semeteys, Cédric Ravalec, Jérôme Herledan
• Editing: Walid Nouh
• Transcript: Walid Nouh

This article has been automatically translated from the original language into English.

License

This podcast is released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license or later