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Securing Technology Investments

Securing Technology Investments

This is a talk I gave at EmberFest 2023 in Madrid. I talk about how the status quo of the Ember ecosystem puts investments that companies that have built on Ember have made are at risk. It also is a call to action to address those risks and together ensure a stable future for the project.

The ecosystem has been losing momentum for some years, the pace of progress has slowed down significantly and hugely important initiatives like Embroider take forever to get released.

Yet, companies have made huge investments by building on Ember for many years with large teams. The worst case scenario is having to eventually rewrite potentially. There is a simple business case for those companies to invest just a little bit more now to secure their investments and avoid potentially having to invest a huge amount later in case they indeed have to rewrite.

I present the Embroider initiative that we started with some sponsors that is a first step towards improving the situation and ensuring a stable future for Ember. My hope is we can grow that into a long-term sustainable funding model for Ember and allow companies that have invested in Ember and depend on its sustainability to actively contribute to that goal.

Marco Otte-Witte

September 25, 2023
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  1. • Maintain an open source project and o ff er

    consulting and support services around it. • Consulting revenue funds work on the project. • The company is motivated to maintain the project to sustain the consulting/support business. Consulting/ Support Business Models
  2. • improve documentation • teach and onboard new contributors Product/SaaS

    Company • Use an open source project as an on-ramp for your product. • Product income funds works on the open source project. • The company is motivated to maintain the project to drive sales of their product.
  3. • A group of individuals works on a project out

    of enthusiasm, shared values with the community, or to advance their careers. • The projects depend on people investing (part of) their spare time and lives. Individuals 👩💻🧑💻👨💻
  4. …in the worst case, we end up here https://xkcd.com/2347/ The

    app your 50 people team build over the past 10 years a project some random person in Nebraska has been thanklessly maintaining since 2003
  5. • improve documentation • teach and onboard new contributors Risky

    Business https://unsplash.com/de/fotos/bEY5NoCSQ8s Big investments are based on fragile foundations, e.g. depending on individuals that could abandon projects at any time.
  6. Ember isn't a single dependency several levels down the stack

    but a whole ecosystem. https://xkcd.com/2347/ ❓
  7. Would you like to be part of our professional frontend

    framework? https://xkcd.com/2347/
  8. Companies have built applications with Ember over many years with

    dozens or sometimes hundreds of engineers. Yet, investments have been made
  9. • Hiring for Ember is hard and doesn't get easier.

    • Ember lacks capabilities and features other frameworks have. • Ember's tooling is lacking, making it less e ffi cient to work on compared to other frameworks. • Might Ember become legacy tech eventually? …but these investments are at risk https://unsplash.com/de/fotos/HWzv8HgYXPQ
  10. Give back to open source on Giving Tuesday – Here

    are 18 ways to support and donate to free and open source organizations for Giving Tuesday.
  11. …is a team of people working on major initiatives full-time

    as their main and only priority, pushing the ecosystem out of the pit of incoherence and beyond.
  12. Thanks! [email protected] +49 89 452 139 03 Mainmatter GmbH Managing

    Director: Marco Otte-Witte Hans-Sachs-Str. 12 München, 80469 Germany Court of registry: Amtsgericht München Registration number: HRB 217887 EU VAT ID: DE299706241