Open source contribution and collaboration: How (and why) Netflix drives industry engagement

Netflix has become well known for its contributions to open source, creating and contributing to over 50 active projects. Dianne Marsh tells the story of Spinnaker to demonstrate how open source contributes to Netflix's success and vice versa.

Netflix has become well known for its contributions to open source, creating and contributing to over 50 active projects. But why the focused involvement in open source? Dianne Marsh tells the story of Spinnaker—an effort that originated at Netflix and has become an industry collaboration between several companies, including Google, Microsoft, Pivotal, and Target—to demonstrate how open source contributes to Netflix’s success and vice versa. Diane shares how the cross-industry team building Spinnaker balances what’s right for each of their companies versus what may be right for the broader open source community, how important Spinnaker is to the success of the respective companies involved and why are they willing to delegate this responsibility rather than holding tight to it, and whether the needs of the bigger companies drown out the use cases of smaller companies.