In part one of this blog, we learned that VMware is not only a technology pioneer and a leader in the multi-cloud space, but also a key influencer in many community-powered upstream projects. We talked to several VMware software engineers to understand their upstream contributions and the qualities that they find so compelling about working in open source communities.
In this blog, we’ll discuss VMware employees’ leadership roles in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) ecosystem, VMware-initiated open source projects, and other community projects such as Antrea and Harbor. We’ll also illustrate that working upstream isn’t just about code.
Leadership Roles in the CNCF Ecosystem
VMware employees working in open source are consistently recognized for their leadership in the community in roles beyond code, ranging from a governing board member to user group leads and forming an ecosystem of management. It’s an example of the fluid nature of community that allows movement between companies more easily and more readily.
This past October, CNCF, now home to 114 projects with more than 137,000 contributors from 186 countries, announced the 2021 Community Award Winners. The ceremony recognized the CNCF community members who are working the hardest to advance cloud native technology. Can you guess which company held the majority of the award recipients? VMware!
November 2019 — Pictured above are the Chop Wood, Carry Water Community Winners: The MVPs of Community Building at Seattle KubeCon, including former and current VMware employees: Tasha Drew, Nikhita Raghunath, Tim Pepper, Jorge Castro, Stephen Augustus, and Davanum Srinivas (Dims).
CNCF CTO Chris Aniszczyk emphasizes the effort that goes into winning a CNCF Community Annual Award, remarking, “These few stand-out open source contributors are the backbone of sustaining modern technological infrastructure and devote their work and passion to cultivating the cloud native ecosystem for the better.”
And what specific type of work is recognized for the Chop Wood, Carry Water award, you may ask?
It’s for those community members who are most capable of helping behind the scenes, dedicating countless hours to open source projects, hosting and building community meetups, and often completing thankless tasks for the benefit of the community.
This is exactly what award recipient Tasha Drew does as a Special Interests Group (SIG) leader. Tasha is a member of VMware’s CTO office and a co-chair for the Kubernetes multi-tenancy working group and SIG usability. Curious to know what it takes to fill her shoes, I reached out to learn the details:
“Being a SIG leader is an opportunity to help others in a multitude of ways. I facilitate assistance to those who have ideas and projects that they’d like to contribute to the upstream Kubernetes community and connect contributors with opportunities to share their ideas in our regular SIG meetings. I gather feedback and craft documents and blogs, kick off surveys and repos, and talk at conferences. By virtue of being around the Kubernetes community for a while, I know how to get things done that may seem confusing or non-obvious to newer people. My focus is on helping people figure out how to get done what they’re trying to do.”
In other words, Tasha is a steady source of knowledge, a conduit, and a facilitator who helps a motivated individual learn how to get from A to B within the Kubernetes community.
Nikhita Raghunath, VMware Staff Software Engineer and recipient of the 2021 Top Contributor Award, focuses on VMware’s Kubernetes open source strategy and contributions. She also served on the Kubernetes Steering Committee and is a Technical Lead for the upstream Kubernetes Team.
In terms of her contribution as a Kubernetes maintainer, Nikhita tells me she’s responsible for maintaining both the community health and the technical health of the project.
“I’m involved in setting the technical goals and direction in multiple areas, authoring and reviewing design proposals, and initiating, contributing and resolving discussions in GitHub issues, emails, and meetings. My focus is usually on identifying subtle or complex issues in designs and implementation code and most importantly, ensuring that this context is documented so that new contributors are able to get started easily.”
I love how she embraces inclusion:
“Making the Kubernetes project welcoming and inclusive is close to my heart. I’m also involved in building processes and mentoring programs so that contributors have places to be heard and be productive.”
To find out more about CNCF’s annual awards that recognize the outstanding work of community members for advocacy, contributions, and documentation in cloud native technology, how people are elected to CNCF roles, and the current honorees and requirements, visit the CNCF website or the repo.
VMware Community Projects
Building open source software and contributing to its many communities is part of VMware’s engineering and innovative spirit. In focusing the lens on individuals who contribute upstream but don’t write code, I talked to Susan Wu, VMware Senior Product Marketing Manager, a Cloud Native Ambassador and SIG leader for Antrea about her role. Antrea is a Kubernetes-native, CNCF Sandbox project that implements the container network interface (CNI).
When I asked Susan how Antrea works, she told me, “Antrea is used as the CNI in Kubernetes clusters. It enables pod networking and enforces network policies. It runs anywhere Kubernetes runs – on-prem or in a managed Kubernetes service on the public cloud.”
Susan contributes upstream, and like Tasha, doesn’t write code as part of her role. For instance, she recently worked with the AWS product team to get Antrea into the alternate CNI plugin list to run alongside AWS’s native container networking. As part of her ongoing role, Susan works to build the Antrea community with users from every continent and also manages administrative details for the project.
“Some of the Antrea engineers are from China, learning from the Harbor team.” (Harbor, also originated at VMware and a graduated CNCF project, is an open source cloud native registry that stores, signs, and scans content.) “We’re hosting meetups in China, gaining users, and hosting office hours and presenting in KubeCon China. We’ve implemented a way for Antrea users to showcase their support on Antrea.io with a simple pull request. We encourage everyone to join the Antrea community and join Antrea Live on Youtube.”
VMware Senior Open Source Community Manager Nanci Lancaster, supports the community for the Carvel and Pinniped projects. Her contributions include updating the GitHub repo with community related information to keep all informed and engaging with users and contributors of these projects to support them in any way she can. Additionally, she works with the maintainers on sharing their knowledge of the tools they work on to benefit other developers in their work, whether that’s through blog posts, presentations, demos, or online conversations.
When I asked about her role, she says, “I get my energy through understanding, interaction, and bringing people together. I enjoy the work that I do because I get to meet, support, and connect developers from all around the world in their quest to build better, interesting products.”
Nanci’s enthusiasm for supporting and bringing people together to innovate is rather refreshing, isn’t it?
More on How Working Upstream Isn’t Just About Code
VMware Staff Engineer Jay Vyas works on various upstream projects in the sig-windows and sig-network areas. He’s one of the three serving Technical Leads of the SIG who establish new subprojects, decommission existing subprojects, and resolve cross-subproject technical issues and decisions. Jay’s job is 50% coding and the other half is pairing people to enable them to write code. He also has experience working on parts of the Kubernetes scheduler, and on various NetworkPolicy related things in the upstream Kubernetes space. “Everything I do is focused on hacking with other people and building fun-loving communities where contributors don’t feel intimidated and are comfortable asking questions.”
In fact, Jay encourages everyone to get involved with Kubernetes and recommends a new contributor to pair up with someone. “People’s expectations tend to center around innovating from the first day they start something — sometimes the easiest thing to do is to buddy up with someone.”
And what if contributors are looking to get in on the team vibe or looking to do something more interactive? “Reach out directly to the sig-windows group or attend the KPNG Group meetings,” Jay says. “They pair programs in both of those groups so you can get started on day one.”
Volunteering at Open Source Events
VMware Open Source Engineer and one of our bloggers John Hawley reminds us that open source isn’t always about the code. “It’s about helping the people who want to contribute,” he says. “In my case, I help run the Python Google Summer of Code program.” GSoC is a global program that offers post-secondary students an opportunity to be paid for contributing to an open source project over a three-month period.
John also co-chairs tutorial tracks at various open source events, like Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE), and the Embedded Linux Conference (ELC). “One thing to remember is that most conferences tend to target audiences who have a mid- to high-level of understanding of writing code, and this can leave folks who are just beginning their journeys at a huge disadvantage. Helping to curate agendas and giving tutorials bridges the knowledge gap.”
An additional part of John’s role is providing infrastructure support. In his words: “Someone needs to be the point person in keeping the lights on and the disks spinning, and for a few projects I make that happen.” He also takes the time to fix something that’s broken, and document and file bug reports, which is critical to the project’s ongoing maintenance. “You’d be surprised at how often this type of thing gets overlooked as a valuable contribution. You won’t always get the bug fixed, but you can usually start a conversation and a tracking place for others to find the problem if one doesn’t already exist.”
In summing up his contributions to open source projects, outside of writing code, John says, “I’d like to think reporting bugs, providing infrastructure, or passing along knowledge to the next generation fundamentally benefits the entire community.”
Listening to Others and Being Open to Change
In my conversation with John, there was one thing I had left to pick his brain about. I asked him, What’s the key to success when working upstream?
“Listening to others within the community and being open to change is key,” he answers. “The way you see things may not always be the way the rest of the project sees things, but if you can listen, and be open, you can usually come to an understanding and find a mutually beneficial way forward.”
Nigel Brown, VMware Open Source Community Manager, has something to say about that too. At All Things Open 2021 in Raleigh, North Carolina, he delivered a lively talk entitled “LGTM,” articulating the language barrier he’s identified in working in open source, despite ubiquitous efforts to make the industry inclusive.
“The barrier,” Nigel notes, “is the wealth of acronyms being used in the community, which makes it increasingly difficult for everyone to contribute — some people don’t understand what the acronyms mean.”
Nigel’s presentation cites personal examples of misunderstandings and how the open source community can collectively move forward by including more contributors with diverse skill sets (e.g. not just software engineers), thereby creating solutions that apply to a much larger cross section of people and proliferating innovation.
It Takes Different Roles and Diversity to Make Communities Become Stronger, Better, and Smarter
Most of the VMware employees we heard from in this blog are providing their skills in working upstream, without writing code, to support and teach others how to excel in open source communities. By advocating good listening, being more understanding of others and using a more universal language, we can steadily learn and grow and become better versions of ourselves.
Stay tuned to the Open Source Blog and follow us on Twitter for more deep dives into the world of open source contributing.
