101 on Getting Your Customers to Contribute

Learn how to transform enterprise customers from open source "takers" into strategic "makers" through this 42-minute conference talk from the Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit. Discover GitLab's Co-Create program as a proven contribution framework that enables heavily regulated industries like financial services and automotive to participate meaningfully in open source ecosystems. Explore how structured onboarding, engineering collaboration, CLA frameworks, and maintenance-free contributions create sustainable participation models that maintain regulatory compliance while driving innovation. Examine real-world case studies from Thales, Siemens, Scania, and FinOS members that demonstrate measurable value delivery, including how two developers saved time for 30 million users in just two months. Gain insights from 15+ years of open source community experience and learn how to reproduce this contribution model for your own OSS project or company, addressing the unique compliance, security, and innovation challenges that often exclude regulated industries from traditional contribution ecosystems.