Over the years, open source has become a way of working that allows people to modify and share designs to inspect, alter, and enhance source code. This has led to a range of benefits for users of open source, such as having more control over software, better security, more stability, and an inspired community.
Last year, Mark Boost, CEO at Civo, spoke with OpenUK as part of their yearly report to discover the UK’s journey with open source. This report looked at survey outputs, literature reviews, case studies, and different thought leadership to conclude the phases of the open source journey.
Throughout this blog, we will look at how Civo has contributed to open source and what steps we plan to take going forward.
How does Civo contribute to open source?
Since being formed, Civo has worked on a range of initiatives to contribute to open source. Mark Boost commented on this by saying, “I believe it’s important that we contribute to open source and give back to communities in general.” Civo currently contributes to open source through our free Academy, community-driven approaches, and open source projects outlined on GitHub.
Contributing to open source at events
Civo Navigate
In 2022 we announced our first tech conference, Civo Navigate, dedicated to exploring the latest trends and advancements in cloud native technology. Our first event in Tampa, Florida, featured over 50 expert speakers who presented on various topics, including open source, over the course of two days.
Robert Sirchia, Head of Community Evangelism at SUSE, led a workshop designed to assist developers in building applications for Kubernetes (K8s). This session equipped attendees with valuable insights into how open source tooling can streamline the process of building and deploying applications to K8s. Furthermore, Alejandro JNM from our Golang team discussed simplifying management across cloud platforms using OpenCP, our open source tool created to ease the deployment and management of Kubernetes infrastructure in multi-cloud environments.
To find out how we are focusing on open source at our next event in London, England, click here.
Civo TV
At KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, we launched Civo TV as a platform to engage with more than 100 individuals from the cloud native community, gathering their perspectives and insights. As part of this interview series, we released a variety of videos that provided valuable knowledge about numerous open source projects.
Check out the full playlist:
Civo’s open source contributions on GitHub
Civo's primary open source projects are accessible and open for contributions on GitHub. Mark Boost elaborated on Civo's use of GitHub, stating:
“In Civo today, we have a number of projects on GitHub that are open source and available to use. Some of those are quite specific to Civo, so you can only use them with Civo. But we’ve decided to open source and in theory people can fork that code, and use it for other projects."
OpenCP: Simplifying Multi-Cloud Management
Whilst navigating the cloud ecosystem, we faced challenges with fragmented tooling prevalent in deploying, managing infrastructure, and scaling to hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Despite appreciating kubectl's simplicity, we questioned the need for additional layers of abstraction, like cloud vendor REST APIs and CLI-based tools that require more learning and costly subscriptions.
Determined to streamline this process, Civo introduced OpenCP, a solution contributing to the open source Kubernetes ecosystem. OpenCP simplifies provisioning deployments across multiple provider endpoints by leveraging existing knowledge and practices within the Kubernetes community. This accessible and efficient tool empowers users to navigate the evolving cloud landscape with ease.
Key open source projects on GitHub
Civo users may encounter the Civo Command Line Interface (CLI) while creating a cluster, streamlining cluster management tasks. Then, when users create a cluster from the Civo User Interface, users may have seen Civo’s Marketplace, where third-party applications and databases can be installed and put into clusters. Civo Marketplace is open to everyone; as a result, users can create a pull request to showcase their own applications.
As well as this, Civo supports various open source projects, including the Terraform and Crossplane Provider for Civo, the Kubernetes Cloud Controller Manager, the Golang client, and many more.
Civo Academy: Free Kubernetes videos and tutorials
Civo has created over 60 free video guides and tutorials on Kubernetes as part of its Academy initiative. These resources are designed to help users navigate Kubernetes, from understanding the basic need for and function of containers, to launching and scaling their first cluster.
As part of Civo's commitment to open source, the Academy is completely free for anyone to access. Users can learn at their own pace and access the courses on-demand, making it easier to learn and develop skills in Kubernetes.
Civo Community
A key challenge identified by OpenUK for organizations during the recruitment process is the scarcity of coding skills and technical expertise. Mark Boost, shed light on how Civo approaches recruitment:
“The majority of our hires now originate from our Slack community, where individuals reach out to us, leading to successful employment. Witnessing these talented people voluntarily develop code and contribute to our projects is truly inspiring and powerful.”
Civo has cultivated a thriving Slack community of over 27,000 members, who engage in open source discussions and receive support for Civo's products and tools. This communication channel allows us to collaborate with users on enhancing our open source contributions, ultimately resulting in a superior user experience. According to OpenUK, 62% of organizations have recognized that community contributions are among the key benefits of utilizing open source software.
Moving forwards
Whilst Civo’s journey with open source is not complete, we are excited to continue contributing to the growth of open source. Mark Boost summarized his thoughts on Civo’s journey by stating:
“It’s been a lot more than just saying it’s open source software, it was a decision as a company about what sort of company we want to be.”
If you want to get involved and learn more about how we plan to contribute to open source, follow us on Twitter @CivoCloud or sign up to Civo to get the latest insights from our community and experience Kubernetes the Civo way!
