Stories
June 9

A lawyer and an engineer walk into a bar and talk open source

Northwestern Mutual has been in technology since 1960. As we moved our workloads into AWS/Kubernetes, there were many unique challenges we encountered with the Open Source Maturity Model. This talk describes some of those challenges and the lessons learnt from that experience—some of which can help other companies in a similar boat to navigate these unpredictable waters safely.
Talk abstract

Open-source software has become ubiquitous. A recent Gartner survey found that 90% of enterprises used open source and that 96% of codebases included some open-source software. The same survey also found that less than 50% of the companies have a formal open-source management program. 

There are several security, ethical, legal, and compliance implications that create perceived hurdles as well as opportunities for collaboration between engineers and lawyers. At Northwestern Mutual, we pushed through the institutional challenges relating more to the culture of how things have always worked in the past. This transformation developed through education, collaboration, and critical thinking to modernize how one company changed their perspective on building and using open-source technology. 

Join us, as a lawyer and a technologist come together on stage to break it down and take you through the journey of a 160-year-old Financial Services company that ventured into the open-source wilderness.

‍

Ravi Devineni
Sr. Director of Engineering, Northwestern Mutual
Shantanu Singh
Assistant General Counsel, The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company

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