Open Source at OTTO: Transparency, Community & Innovation

Open Source Software offers numerous advantages - both for developers and for companies like OTTO. The most important at a glance:

• Transparency and Quality Assurance: By open-sourcing one's own code in public repositories, external peer reviews and public feedback can be used to identify weaknesses early and improve code. This promotes the security and stability of the software and strengthens trust in our systems.
  
  
• Cost savings and strategic advantage: For many, the most important reason for choosing Open Source is that it can be used free of charge, provided that the licence conditions are complied with. This saves directly on acquisition costs.  A Harvard Business School study recently revealed that companies without OSS would have to spend about 3.5 times more money on their software.
  
  
• Learning and Development Opportunities: The open exchange with the community fosters continuous learning. Developers benefit from insights into other projects and can adopt new techniques and best practices.

• Network and Reputation: Publishing one's own projects allows one to establish oneself in the open-source community. This not only strengthens personal and employer profiles but also opens doors for exciting collaborations and personal professional development. Our developers should be proud of their code and happy to show it.
  
  
• Creativity and Fast Problem Solving: Open source creates space for creative solutions. With the help of the global community, problems can be solved faster and new ideas developed – benefiting both individual projects and the entire company.
  
  
• Promoting Internal Collaboration: When developers provide their tools as OSS, other teams within OTTO also benefit. They can rely on proven solutions and work together on further development, which creates synergies and saves resources. Open Source also enables easy access to our shared resources.
  
  
• Documentation:  Anyone who makes code openly available on the internet is motivated to add good documentation on the purpose and use of the software. This makes it easier for others to use and ensures that it is found in search engines.

Authorities and companies are increasingly recognizing that it can be a good idea to consider open-source solutions as an alternative to closed systems. The keyword of the hour is "Digital Sovereignty." Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein are turning their backs on Microsoft and switching to Linux and LibreOffice, while the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) and the healthcare sector are increasingly relying on OpenDesk in the future. OTTO was also recently featured in the media regarding technology dependence and has long relied on open-source software.

Some well-known open-source products form the backbone of our shop platform, which is operated jointly by many teams with individually different tech stacks. An overview is provided by the many articles in our Tech Blog, which report, for example, on the introduction of Apache Kafka, Terraform, or the Togglz-Library that we use. 

However, this article is not about the use of open source as a free alternative to purchased closed-source software, but rather about how OTTO contributes to the community as an OSS provider and to what extent this represents a motivating addition for our developers to their daily work on internal systems.

Open source offers numerous advantages to OTTO and, above all, to our developers. For over ten years, we have been present as otto-de on GitHub as an organization and offer some of our projects as open-source Software. This increases transparency and enables more active exchange with the international developer community. By specifically publishing internal tools and libraries, we not only create a high-quality and well-documented codebase but also foster the path to innovative solutions.

We also welcome it when colleagues contribute to external open-source projects that are used at OTTO. Of course, this means a certain amount of extra effort, because every OSS project needs active maintenance and attention. Especially security vulnerabilities must be fixed quickly, but other bugs and feature requests should also be processed in a timely manner. However, we are convinced: This is worth it!

Our internal „Tech Rules of Play“ stipulate that self-created libraries used across teams should be published as Open-Source projects. This is done to ensure the quality and documentation of these tools. The consuming teams should be able to rely on finding the same quality as with other OSS projects. In some cases, where libraries relate to purely internal systems, an Inner Source project may also arise, to which we apply the same quality standards. 

Interestingly, this regulation represents a deliberate exception to the otherwise strongly anchored Shared-Nothing concept. Normally, we rely on this principle to minimize dependencies between teams and thus mutual blockages. This brings us high independence and speed. However, in cases where the shared use of software offers added value in terms of quality and maintainability and leads to avoiding duplicate work, the step towards open-source publication is a win – for the entire company, for other interested parties, and for the individual development of our developers. 

To better manage these diverse open-source efforts, we have established the Open Source Advisory Board (OSAB) at OTTO. The OSAB currently consists of eight developers from various departments, primarily working within their functional teams. Many of them manage one or more OSS projects and share the common vision of further promoting Open Source at OTTO and maximizing the benefits for developers and the company. The OSAB takes on the following tasks: 

• Contact Point for Teams and Developers: The OSAB serves as a contact point for teams and developers who want to publish software at OTTO. The OSAB also actively tries to identify interesting internal projects and motivate their publication. And, of course, the colleagues are happy to handle external inquiries at opensource@otto.de. 
  
  
• Provision of Practical OSS Guidelines: The OSAB ensures that open-source guidelines remain current and understandable and are easily accessible to all developers. 
  
  
• Optimization of Administrative and Security Processes: By coordinating OSS projects, regularly reviewing compliance with our minimum standards, and maintaining uniform and documented release processes, the OSAB significantly contributes to sustainable quality assurance. 
  
  
• Consultation on OSS Licensing Issues: Developers are supported with legal questions regarding open-source publication to ensure that all activities comply with legal requirements.