TypeFox: Innovating With Open Source — with Miro Spönemann

On the latest episode of the Entrepreneurial Open Source Podcast, Gael and Thabang are joined by Miro Spönemann, general manager and software architect at TypeFox, to discuss how contributing to open source projects like Eclipse Xtext has influenced his work at TypeFox, and how participating in open source communities has helped raise the company’s profile.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Thabang Mashologu:
Hello, and welcome to the Entrepreneurial Open Source podcast. A show where we discuss the power and practical value of Open Source in business and entrepreneurship with leaders and innovators from around the world. I'm Thabang Mashologu.

Gaël Blondelle:
And I'm Gael Blondelle.

Thabang Mashologu:
We've got a great show today. Miro Sponemann is joining us. Miro is the Head of Engineering and TypeFox in Kiel, Germany. TypeFox helps businesses and engineers to be more productive and innovate faster through custom developer tools and languages. Miro has been involved in Open Source projects since 2008 as a contributor, committer and founder on a number of projects. He's been with TypeFox since 2016 and he recently joined the leadership team there. Welcome to the show Miro.

Miro Spönemann:
Thanks.

Thabang Mashologu:
So Miro, tell us more about TypeFox and your business model.

Miro Spönemann:
Yeah. As just said, we started in 2016 and from the beginning, we have always offered services around platforms that enabled to build custom tools. So, the first major framework that we've built on was Xtext, an DSL engineering tool, but then later others came. We started Eclipse Theia and Eclipse Sprotty and more, so it's all about frameworks that we developed in Open Source and then customers approach us asking for support on these platforms and also asking us to build solutions for them. So, the range of services is very wide, starting from a few hours of support up to, I don't know, several hundreds of days of engineering work for large projects. So, it can be very different.

Thabang Mashologu:
I get it. So, for the benefit of our listeners, can you give us a sense of when and why TypeFox decided to get involved in Open Source and can you give us a sense of the importance of Open Source to your business?

Miro Spönemann:
Basically, all the engineers that were with us at the beginning when TypeFox was founded where they were all experts in the X techs framework. It was quite natural for us to take that as a platform to offer services on. And by that, we already had a lot of experience with cooperating on Open Source projects, contributing, doing the release cycles within the Eclipse Foundation and also communicating with customers about what they can do with the Open Source frameworks, what should be solved on the general framework level and what is rather something custom for their own code.

Miro Spönemann:
So, yeah. It came quite natural for us to take this Open Source platform and the projects that we're involved in within the Eclipse Foundation as a basis for all our business basically. So, we just went on with that approach over the years and it's turned out to work well, even in DS after.

Gaël Blondelle:
You have been part of the Eclipse community for forever, almost. And so that, yeah, you mentioned Xtext that has been one of the, and is still one of the very successful project of the Eclipse modeling community. And yeah, what I would like to know is what have you learned from your time when you were working in and growing the Xtext community and how do you use those best practices or this community of practice at the Eclipse Foundation in what you do today at TypeFox?

Miro Spönemann:
I would say a major point is always to have a sharp look into what other directions that take us into real innovation. So, I would say that's a very general thing that I've learned, especially in the last year. So, to really always go into the direction of real innovation that has value, that has business value for us, but also general values so that we don't get lost in building things that in the end are not really interesting to a lot of people, but rather stay focused on innovation, on frameworks that lead us further, lead us into the next steps. One thing that got us more into that was to invest more into Open Source libraries and tools that are built on web technologies. So, that was one main reason for to start the Eclipse Theia and Eclipse Sprotty, for example.

Miro Spönemann:
So, that enables us a whole new world where we can offer services that are built directly into a web page or more generally into a web application that consists of several services playing together. But, still there's the option to run them locally. So, running web applications embedded into a desktop tool is becoming more and more common practice, I would say, if there's a lot of criticism about things like electron and so we know that.

Miro Spönemann:
But, I mean, that is one approach and I bet there will be more and more ways to do that in the future. So, I think the general direction is to have a common code base for multiple target platforms, Cloud platforms and also desktop machines. I think this is something we want to continue supporting.

Gaël Blondelle:
Maybe one followup question on what you just said, about your entrepreneurial approach. I think that it deserves potentially more in depth answer. So, if I get it correctly, you said that it's very important for you to work on framework and on features that are useful for everybody. So, I guess that's certainly an implication in the way you approach the collaboration with your customers. There must be certainly some... I guess, some customers come to you and say, well, I want exactly this feature to work like that and I guess that must be at some point some fight to stay more generic and more for the general purpose of all the users, for example.

Miro Spönemann:
Yes. I would say being in the position that we both offer services based on these platforms and also are committers and project leads in these Open Source projects, we are in a position where we can say, well, for these particular features, we suggest implementing directly in the base frameworks, so that can be maintained there. Usually for customers, it's really the best approach so that they pay us for implementing certain things. So, it's directly paid Open Source work, which is then used by those customers. Their benefit is the maintenance will then happen in the context of the Open Source framework, of course. So, they don't have to re-base some internally undeveloped feature on your versions of the Open Source framework.

Miro Spönemann:
But, in other cases, we would rather say, well, the Open Source framework has some APIs and interfaces you can attach to them, then we can work together on using these extension points to build your solution on them. Or maybe even if it's something that doesn't really fit at all, well, we can say let's discuss alternative solutions or yeah, or at least tell them how what kind of efforts we would see in building things that are, in a way, that are not meant to be like that are so. But, we can be very flexible about that.

Miro Spönemann:
So, of course, there are some... Many customers do not have this good overview of what the Open Source framework can do and partly that is also because they are conceptually quite complex, like Xtexts, DSL engineering, that's just conceptually it's a hard thing, no matter how the implementation looks like. So, in some cases we really need to understand what is the problem they want to solve. Then we say, okay, this is the solution they approached us with, but actually I think this other solution would, even if it doesn't really fit with what you want it in the beginning, might match better what the long term goal of what you want to solve. So, it's really about understanding things in depth and being able to provide consulting on a high level and then also go into the details and implementation work.

Thabang Mashologu:
Now, Miro, does Open Source come up in your conversations with potential customers and if so, how? Is it something that helps? Is it beneficial to be actively engaged in Open Source?

Miro Spönemann:
Yeah. Certainly. I think having several people from our company engaged in Open Source work has certainly helped build up a reputation for our whole team and for our company. So, just by having this level of engagement in these communities, I mean, or you could say in the Eclipse community, but it's mainly one umbrella community with several sub communities. So, by being engaged in that, I think we have gained a reputation that brings us into a position where many customers, we've never heard of before, just approach us and we quite often, we don't know where they come from. They have heard about us. They have maybe talked to others about us and then have had recommendations to approach us and so on. So, yeah. It makes marketing work easier. I would say it's a special form of content marketing. Also, so investing in good content in the Open Source world, is like connecting these high quality content with our name and that it has already brought us a lot of excellent business.

Gaël Blondelle:
One question you mentioned in that Xtext DSL technologies, and I think that's so true for us here. You mentioned Xtext is something that is not easy to understand and also you mentioned that in theory, you use this concept of extension points. So, I like the idea that extension point is that so you're... Provides you some degrees of freedom from about how to do your business. The question is that it's both very, I would say, complex computer science topics, DSL engineerings and good IT architecture. So, how do you recruit people to join your team? How do you find them? Do you find them, or do they find you?

Miro Spönemann:
I think mostly they find us actually and that is another positive aspect of the Open Source work, that while we have a job offering on our webpage, but just by having a job offering on our webpage, we have seen quite excellent engineers approaching us, just because they have connected our TypeFox with these Open Source technologies. So, in that way, we have reached engineers who were highly motivated to get into this kind of development, to get into this Open Source engagement and this is actually one of the keys for us to build a team that is capable to do these things. I think it's a lot about the motivation and about a lot about excitement of building innovation, building new things.

Gaël Blondelle:
Just one short question. Do you have Kiel located team, or you have a remote team with your best contributors everywhere in the world?

Miro Spönemann:
We started with a team and an office in Kiel, so that was the beginning. But, quite soon, extended the team with others. We're looking at other places in Germany and so there was kind of remote culture already starting to evolve from the first year.

Gaël Blondelle:
Okay.

Miro Spönemann:
Yeah. I think since last year, this has changed a lot more, of course. Another aspect to that is that the product [GitPod 00:14:37] has evolved out of TypeFox. So, now it has been separated into a different company, but the work on that product also demanded a better coordination of remote work because being a product and an online service, it has a different way of... It's a different business model and different way of working together and cooperating. So, I think we have also learned a lot from that.

Miro Spönemann:
Now, they are going their own way kind of but still, I think it's the work on GitPod has left, it definitely left a lot of impact within TypeFox and the way we work. On the other hand, we are still in a process of improving remote culture, remote working ways, trying new tools. Looking for a good remote culture is definitely one of our priorities. But, on the other hand, we still have the office and anyone who's nearby can use it and so we can still meet there and see each other face-to-face.

Thabang Mashologu:
Now Miro, are there any commonly held misconceptions about operating an Open Source based business that you'd like to address? And is there any advice that you can share with our listeners about developing and executing an Open Source based strategy?

Miro Spönemann:
I'm actually not really aware of misconceptions that we are facing directly with our customers on a regular basis. I mean, of course there are well known problems with Open Source projects in general, where I mean, this tendency of Open Source maintainers being thrown at with complaints about this not working, that not working. That's a general aspect of Open Source work, I would say. But there, I would say it's important for us as a company engaged in this to, just to focus. So, we need to know what are the things that are valuable to us now in the short term, but also in the longer term and so on. And yeah, we need to be bold in also saying no to things, of course. But, at the same time, also be kind and respond to questions and respond to requests, so also building a supportive culture around the Open Source work.

Gaël Blondelle:
The question that, in my opinion, is very important when you consider doing business with Open Source projects, is what do you decide to keep proprietary and what do you decide to put in Open Source? How do you do this mix? Is it one person in your company? Do you have some kind of product marketing manager? Is it you and the rest of the leadership team? How do you find this balance?

Miro Spönemann:
Well, actually right now, I think we don't have any proprietary code that we need to keep secret. At least nothing that is worth a mention. I mean, we've had some, for a while, where we have been building GitPod, but even that has been made Open Source last summer. It's the only IP we are generating, generally, belongs to the customers we're working with. So, so far there is not really a need. There's not been a need for us to build internal IP besides what is already open in the Open Source projects and what we are building specifically for the customers. But of course, since they pay for that, it belongs to them. Yeah.

Gaël Blondelle:
Okay. So, either it's in the Open Source project at the Eclipse Foundation or it's IP owned by your customers and I guess you have support from and try to keep those customers to sustain their project?

Miro Spönemann:
Yeah. I mean, yes. I mean, of course, if we get new ideas on building something in a closed source level where it would make sense for us to do that, that could be an option. But, it's not that we have a general process for this, because it's not in the core of what we are doing. Our core is really serving customer needs and supporting the Open Source projects and so there's no owned IP involved in that.

Thabang Mashologu:
Right. What words of practical wisdom and advice would you have for a company that's getting started, based on your experience?

Miro Spönemann:
Okay. I would say two things. One is, investing in colleagues who are really motivated for this. So, looking after motivation that is genuine and then giving them freedom and time, all the resources they need to really spend time on Open Source work. Of course, combined with strategic direction. So selection of projects, selection of focus, of course. Of course, it needs some coordination, but more above all, I think it needs engagement from these colleagues and motivation that comes from within. I think it shouldn't be something that is just forced from above.

Miro Spönemann:
The other point I would say is, really considering doing that in a collaboration with an Open Source foundation, because that opens up a whole new ecosystem. So, for us, the Eclipse Foundation is an ecosystem of Open Source habits, Open Source approaches, like dealing with IP and making sure that the Open Source frameworks are clean in a way that can be used without risk and so on.

Miro Spönemann:
Then, also, using these platforms to share what the high level goals are and getting engaged on that level. I think it's both this individual coworker level, so having people who are really into that and are able and willing to do such kind of work investing to them and then also getting in touch with people like you and giving away the code in a way so, or at least control about the code, but then also getting as a return, this ecosystem that also takes over a lot of responsibilities that otherwise you would need to take care of yourself.

Miro Spönemann:
I mean, there are other approaches. I already mentioned Microsoft who are investing a lot in Open Source. They have several teams building Open Source software, like TypeScript, Compiler and the [VS Code 00:22:46] and so on, but it's really controlled by them. So, it means they are the only ones who can make strategic decisions. It seems to work well for them, but I think in general, most companies are better off cooperating with foundations.

Thabang Mashologu:
Yes. We certainly hear that a lot from our guests on this show and of course, there's a growing body of evidence that backs that up. Now, switching gears slightly, but still on the topic of collaboration, I read somewhere that you and your wife are planning on releasing an album of German Christmas songs. Can you tell us more about that?

Miro Spönemann:
Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So my wife is a singer and last year she made a project with a piano player from Hamburg. So yeah, it's about traditional Christmas songs, German, traditional German Christmas songs, but played in a rather light and modern way. Everything that is creative is, for me, it's a really good thing to do in free time. So, and yeah, about the recordings. They are available on all major platforms, Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Song. So, just search for [inaudible 00:24:04] or Judith Sponemann, so my second name and then you should find it.

Thabang Mashologu:
That's wonderful. I'll certainly check that out. On that note, thank you Miro, for coming on this show. If you want to connect with Miro, you can find him at @sponemann. That's S-P-O-N-E-M-A-N-N and of course, you can visit typefox.io.

Thabang Mashologu:
That's about it for this episode of the Entrepreneurial Open Source podcast. You can find us online at entrepreneurialopensource.com and @OSSforbus on Twitter. We'll catch you next time on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or any other place you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.

Thabang Mashologu:
The Entrepreneurial Open Source podcast is sponsored by the Eclipse Foundation. The Eclipse Foundation provides a global community of software developers and organizations of all sizes across industries with a business friendly environment to collaborate on Open Source software innovation. Visit eclipse.org to learn more.