
Deutsche Bank makes source code publicly available for the first time - Khaine
https://www.db.com/newsroom_news/2017/deutsche-bank-makes-its-computer-code-publicly-available-for-the-first-time-en-11674.htm
======
mihaifm
This is mostly a PR move. I currently work at DB, I can say that they make it
look nice from the outside, but when you get here what you find is a large
mess. It's a big difference between a bank and a company that actually ships
software. Most of the work here is done in interfacing systems together, and
moving data from one place to another. There is no focus on quality, just
patching things together and making them work. This is no surprise when a lot
of work is done by contractors hired for 6-12 months. Software and tools are
old , but I guess this is a know fact. There is a lot of duplication, there
are usually 3-4 systems that can do the same thing, when a high level
executive decides that then need to create a new one from scratch. Sure there
are exceptions, there are people who work on trading algorithms, but these are
rare occasions.

These are some of my impressions after some time spent at DB, sorry if it
sounds too negativistic.

~~~
Horusiath
This is not only a DB specific, a whole banking industry works like that.
Systems that have <10 years are considered new ones. To keep things working,
just produce 5x more services created solely to move data from one place to
another. No focus on programming discipline or sense of purpose and constant
fear to change anything, because that could break things and we have not
enough tests or monitoring infrastructure to even detect that. But in
finances, IT is not on a focus. After all, we're just a "cost center" ;)

~~~
posterboy
It's a fact that you can't ever have enough tests, because, for one, the tests
are not tested.

~~~
Smurfix
Of course the tests are tested – by the code they're covering, which is also
covered by other tests.

------
cbcoutinho
Get ready for a data dump of 40 year old COBOL code /s

But in all seriousness, this is a great step forward in institutional
software. Open up software to further progress towards standardizing an
industry's software interface.

~~~
skissane
I would love for a few banks to dump all their old COBOL code on to GitHub.
Not because it would necessarily be useful for anything, but simply because it
would be fascinating to read... There is actually very little open source
COBOL code available, of the massive quantities of COBOL code written over the
decades the vast, vast majority of it remains closed source.

Sadly I think a lot of it is just going to be lost to history... at an old
employer of mine, I remember we had a store room full of old 9 track mainframe
backup tapes – the mainframe had been retired and we no longer had a 9 track
tape drive to read them with – I wonder if they are still there now – ideally
they'd be sent to some sort of archive – they couldn't be released now without
vetting because they would have contained confidential information (e.g.
employee payroll information, customer data), but a century from now when all
of us are dead who cares if our confidential info gets released to the public
then?

~~~
neuronexmachina
> a century from now when all of us are dead who cares if our confidential
> info gets released to the public then?

I'm reminded of Vernor Vinge's far-future scifi "A Deepness in the Sky," where
"programmer-archaeologist" is one of the occupations. (along with "programmer-
at-arms")

~~~
tetha
As I keep saying. Some people chuckle about Warhammer 40k Techno Priests. The
only people in the warhammer universe with some chance to understand the
centuries old compuer systems and machines. Other people work with legacy
systems.

~~~
ENGNR
It's pretty genius how they've turned ancient maintenance routines into
prayers and rituals in order to preserve the knowledge and scale out the work
force

~~~
posterboy
it might lead to cargo culting though, already hoards of programmers are
chanting refrains of "_ considered harmful" and "_ is the root of all evil"
... ;)

~~~
eru
It's deliberately _worse_ than cargo culting in Warhammer 40k. That universe
is deliberately set up to be as bleak and cynical as possible. Partly just for
fun, partly to serve the game a justification why any faction would get into a
skirmish with any other faction (including itself).

------
lucb1e
Great move. I really believe in the "free software, free society" idea of the
FSF. After this batch, I'm sure there will still be a lot left to open source,
but it's definitely a big step! If we're fortunate, others will follow suit.

Germany is a great country for stuff like this. They have a relatively high
share of Linux users, OpenStreetMap usage, etc. I feel like they're very
critical towards their own country and don't take things for granted (not the
"we're so proud of our country" idea). As a Dutchman, I like Germany.

~~~
482794793792894
> Germany is a great country for stuff like this. They have a relatively high
> share of Linux users, OpenStreetMap usage, etc. I feel like they're very
> critical towards their own country and don't take things for granted (not
> the "we're so proud of our country" idea).

This is especially also the case, because of the post-WWII history of East
Germany. The Stasi managed to subdue the entire population, mainly with
surveillance methods.

And this was before the internet. When they still had to actually go out and
infiltrate people's homes in order to place down bugs (microphones).

The worst part about this for me, is that this is not just an unfortunate fate
that Germans in particular have to be worrisome about. The only reason other
nations are less worried, is because they're collectively less aware of this
having happened, of it being entirely possible for this to happen, again.

~~~
disiplus
tbh i think that germany is lagging in digital, its a shift that if they dont
take right now could cost them long term. something that event merkel
commented recently.

mobile internet is very expensive, 20 eur for 5gb, there is almost no street
view, blocking content on youtube. high percentage of german startups are just
copying ( famous rocket internet ). that are just some examples, that are not
so great starting point to become leader in digital.

~~~
marenkay
I have to agree. Add a lot of stock listed large companies which have not
invested in IT and infrastructure for the past two decades apart from
compliance enforced maintenance and Germany is basically 3rd world... startups
also are lacking value. Looking at Berlin you kind of say „oh this is a copy
of ...“ most of the time.

------
kayoone
I went to a Deutsche Bank Hackathon last year in Berlin where they announced
opening up their apis. [https://developer.db.com/](https://developer.db.com/)

They touted it as being innovative and open but in the end all Banks are
required to open up when PSD2 comes into effect next year. Seeing this
release, maybe they have honest intentions for being more open, but it being
Deutsche i still have my doubts.

~~~
rjzzleep
I used to walk around other countries bragging about German online banking,
given that we have a standard that has been iterated upon (HBCI/FinTS) over
decades and you can pretty use any online banking software with any bank.

A few years have passed since then and most germans banks are still the same.
Meanwhile you get instant wire transfers in a few countries.

When I think Deutsche Bank and innovation, I think of my phone calls with
Deutsche Bank about disappearing money and them telling me that I shouldn't be
surprised if the online banking doesn't actually reflect my real balance and 3
day same country wire transfers. A friend of mine has a consulting company
that claims that theyre trying to change their internal structures though.

I think of shitty support and paper faxes because of "security". The latter
might actually be a prevalent problem in german society though.

I work in Gvt. Healthcare. They've been spending 1 year trying to define an
API for activating the new healthcare smartcards. It has 3 API calls, it's not
done yet, and it's SOAP only. And then the leadership has been trying to get
government support to mandate by law the forced usage of their crappy APIs.

Germany is a digital dinosaur, no matter how much these old tycoons come to
the bay area with their newly appointed chief of innovations for a week they
won't get it, because they never had to compete on anything to get it.

User experience is a completely foreign concept to them.

~~~
robert_foss
Having just moved to Germany the obsession with physical paperwork for various
reasons is somewhat astounding.

~~~
biztos
Germany requires a lot of high-touch interaction to get anything official
done, but in Hungary I have to sign seven (seven!) pages in order to send a
DHL letter. So it can be much worse. :-)

~~~
robert_foss
When receiving packages from outside of the EU, you'll have the pleasure of
going to the Zollamt in Germany.

At the Zollamt you'll get to enjoy standing in at least 3 separate and
consecutive lines. Only to pay import taxes. Something that could have been
done faster, cheaper and more conveniently by sending an invoice.

~~~
kogepathic
_> Something that could have been done faster, cheaper and more conveniently
by sending an invoice._

This is how it works if the seller fills out CN22 properly and the customs
officials believe the declared contents/value.

I have several times received packages with duties that I paid on delivery. No
need to travel to the Zollamt.

I have also been to the Zollamt when they suspect the package contains
something else than what is on the shipping manifest. They're always quite
giddy to catch you doing something not allowed and always end up terribly
disappointed and grumpy when it's exactly as described and then you just pay
VAT.

------
thomasdziedzic
Link to code: [https://github.com/symphonyoss/plexus-
interop](https://github.com/symphonyoss/plexus-interop)

~~~
jackewiehose
I don't know C#. Should I assume this is the way to write comments? That's
just terrible.

    
    
      /// <summary>
      /// Log a message with the specified <paramref name="logLevel"/>.
      /// </summary>
      /// <param name="logLevel">The level of log entry.</param>
      /// <param name="exception">The exception to log.</param>
      /// <param name="message">The format of the message object to log.<see cref="string.Format(string,object[])"/> </param>
      /// <param name="arg1">The first argument for message formatting.</param>
      [StringFormatMethod("format")]
      void Log<T1>(LogLevel logLevel, [CanBeNull] Exception exception, string message, T1 arg1);

~~~
almenon
Yeah, that's the standard way to write comments. It looks terrible but it's
not bad to write because Visual Studio auto-generates the comment skeleton for
you.

~~~
jackewiehose
Embedding XML inside a C-comment (as a standard) is just fucked up. Do you
have correct syntax highlighting with that? (I don't. But even if emacs would
understand this, it's still wrong)

~~~
_dcwr
C++ with Doxygen and Java with Javadoc are much saner formats for this
purpose.

What's even worse is that Visual Studio 2015 just vomits out that the XML is
malformed when I have C++ headers with Doxygen style comments in them. It
detects the three slashes and tries to apply C# XML docs parsing to them and
that of course fails. Meanwhile NetBeans can handle them no problem and
display parsed docs in pop ups.

------
hitekker
On a side note, I find the design of their website to functional but tasteful.

Their promoted research-paper is also more engaging (and less bloviating) than
I was expecting:

[https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-
PROD/PROD000000000045...](https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-
PROD/PROD0000000000452422/Can_markets_withstand_the_removal_of_QE%3F.pdf)

>Ironically, the political compulsions imposed by the aging population are one
reason for this. For starters, 56 per cent of Germany’s voting population is
above 50 years of age. The members of the major political parties are on
average 60 years old. This has led to an implicit consensus between the
government and the people, to maintain the cosy status quo for as long as
possible, hoping the day of reckoning might only affect following generations.
A literal endorsement of Keynes’ maxim, “in the long run we are all dead"

I'll have to read through all of it before I can tease out its agenda.

------
aryehof
What a misleading title, instead ...

DB is releasing a small program for interop into the public domain to
encourage others to use it too.

------
TimMurnaghan
One of their competitors, Dresdner Bank, did something similar in 2001 when
the open sourced their messaging middleware code as Openadapter.
[https://github.com/openadaptor/openadaptor](https://github.com/openadaptor/openadaptor)
It's pretty good and I actually used it at a commodity trader, but this kind
of integration is pretty niche and while Openadapter is still around it never
caught on in a big way. I expect that this will be similar - hardly anybody
else will have the same mix of systems to connect to and it's unlikely to have
a very big impact.

~~~
johnny_reilly
Flashback! I worked for Commerzbank back in the day (which ended up absorbing
Dresdner). Anyway, I had to work on plugging various CB systems into the
Dresdner openadaptor. I met the guys behind it (they were on the floor below
me) Really nice chaps. If memory serves they ended up leaving essentially due
to the merger but they were really helpful in the time before they left.

------
lifeisstillgood
Even the largest banks are hurting maintaining proprietary software across the
compete range of businesses - there is a multiplier effect as one proprietary
piece demands another close to it, and eventually devs get sick of seeing the
OSS world acclerate Away.

------
c-smile
"Computer code of Deutsche Bank" sounds so German and so cool :)

~~~
pavlov
The bank has the distinction of being mentioned in Kraftwerk’s 1983 song
_Computer World_ :

”Interpol, Deutsche Bank, FBI, Scotland Yard, Flensburg und das BKA, haben
unsere Daten da.”

~~~
odiroot
The rest I understand but why Flensburg?

~~~
whyever
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_system_(driving)#Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_system_\(driving\)#Germany)

~~~
odiroot
Thanks!

------
cutler
ProtobufTransportProtocolSerializationProvider

Enterprise OO Garbage is alive and well.

~~~
stephengillie
How would we prevent this? Asking for a friend.

~~~
cutler
Just refuse to play the insane Java/C# Enterprise OO game. Kotlin would be a
good alternative but my preference would be Clojure where brevity and
simplicity are valued.

~~~
BoorishBears
Or just don't be redundant in any language. Unless there are multiple types of
a "SerializationProvider", the name could be shortened to
"ProtobufSerializationProvider"

And if there are multiple types of "SerializationProvider" (ie. there's an
unrelated "CachingSerializationProvider ") then the name is unfortunately
long, but accurate

~~~
smnplk
I think the main problem is not in the name of that class, the name is just a
side effect of a bigger deeper problem.

~~~
BoorishBears
What problem? DI is really useful if you're pragmatic about it, misuse is not
really a property of a particular language

------
dogruck
Can someone please give a few specific examples of what this software does?

~~~
cjbenedikt
Autobahn is a realtime platform to buy and sell currencies.

~~~
dogruck
Thank you, but I did read that summary in their press release.

For example, what features does it have that would let me buy and sell
securities?

------
osullivj
Looks like Plexus Interop is yet another middleware abstraction layer.
Dresdner did something similar 15 years ago when they open sourced Open
Adaptor. There's no special source here - no interesting pricing, risk
management, quoting, order management or hedging functionality. The source
code to Autobahn should be more interesting if it ever gets released since
it's DB's single dealer platform across all asset classes. It should include
some interesting trading logic.

------
mallet
I can tell you that this is probably in response to the massive law suits
banks are dealing with because of how they have cheated using their software.

[article]([https://www.law360.com/articles/943847](https://www.law360.com/articles/943847))

------
wklm
Well, I was trying to submit an issue, but got this:

```

We're writing to let you know that the group you tried to contact (plexus-
interop) may not exist, or you may not have permission to post messages to the
group. A few more details on why you weren't able to post:

* You might have spelled or formatted the group name incorrectly. * The owner of the group may have removed this group. * You may need to join the group before receiving permission to post. * This group may not be open to posting.

If you have questions related to this or any other Google Group, visit the
Help Center at
[https://support.google.com/a/symphony.foundation/bin/topic.p...](https://support.google.com/a/symphony.foundation/bin/topic.py?topic=25838).

Thanks,

symphony.foundation admins

```

~~~
mindthegab
Folks,

Thanks for raising the issue - we have fixed the mailing list (google groups)
so now posting is allowed even for users that haven't yet joined the list.

For completeness:

\- This is the mailing list archive
[https://groups.google.com/a/symphony.foundation/forum/#!foru...](https://groups.google.com/a/symphony.foundation/forum/#!forum/plexus-
interop) (fairly new, but we can't wait to see your traffic) \- To subscribe
to the list just email plexus-interop+unsubscribe@symphony.foundation

We will follow up with a much more comprehensive set of technical information,
but in the meanwhile all docs are hosted at
[https://symphonyoss.github.io/plexus-
interop/](https://symphonyoss.github.io/plexus-interop/).

------
ucaetano
Worth noting this part:

> The bank will put over 150,000 lines of code from its award-winning
> electronic platform Autobahn into the public domain

If this is indeed correct, there's no licensing BS, no control of what you can
do with it like most free software. This is pure and simple public domain.

~~~
kuschku
Not exactly. Public Domain doesn't exist under German Law, so they did the
next best thing: Apache2.

------
9900
As someone who works in what I believe is one of the more progressive software
development teams here at DB, there's definitely a desire to open source more
of the work that happens here. The issues are inherent to any company
employing ~100k people, however: bureaucracy, regulation, and general internal
conflict.

There some higher-ups that seem to understand the benefits of a more
progressive approach, so I do think you will see more of this sort of
activity, however, it'll take time before this becomes widespread within the
company.

~~~
mindthegab
It's a massive challenge but one that finally the industry is waking up to.
It's not easy but having a massive support from the industry
([http://symphony.foundation/#members](http://symphony.foundation/#members))
definitely tells me we are on the right path.

Said that, we need all the help we can get, so we'd love to see such passion
consolidate in the Community we are trying to build.

We'd love to hear from you in any of our lists
[https://groups.google.com/a/symphony.foundation/forum/#!over...](https://groups.google.com/a/symphony.foundation/forum/#!overview)
and even better we'd love to see your issues / patches / comments at
github.com/symphonyoss.

------
geocar
Heh. [https://imgur.com/TlyTwXG](https://imgur.com/TlyTwXG)

I love bank "security".

------
SeriousM
Now we can seen how to implement a atomic transaction which is bank-safe

------
d--b
Sorry, if I don't share the general enthusiasm... Making it opensource mostly
helps DB and malevolent people. DB can get bug fixes for free, and malevolent
people can now make fake versions of Autobahn that MITM every orders that the
traders make. There is no benefit whatsoever for clients...

~~~
mindthegab
I completely disagree, but that's you would expect as the Executive Director
of the Foundation ([http://symphony.foundation](http://symphony.foundation))
that is trying to drive these banks in embracing open source and open
collaboration as a better way to build technology.

I do believe that end users will benefit by these firms not reinventing the
wheel and building innovative, more interoperable and ultimately better
technology.

I, my team and I know I speak on behalf of our Community are committed to this
level of transparency.

Finally the beauty of open source is that you don't have to trust a PR
article, just go look at the code at [https://github.com/symphonyoss/plexus-
interop](https://github.com/symphonyoss/plexus-interop) and decide for
yourself.

And if unsure reach out to the plexus-interop@symphony.foundation mailing
list, it's all in the open!

------
forapurpose
Does anyone know what license they plan to use? That could make a big
difference.

~~~
mindthegab
Apache v2 - see [https://github.com/symphonyoss/plexus-
interop/blob/master/LI...](https://github.com/symphonyoss/plexus-
interop/blob/master/LICENSE)

------
Magical
This is their foreign exchange trading platform. It is very high volume.

------
subroutine
I did bother to read the 7 paragraphs.

My question is basically that - OSS existed for decades; why only now in big
finance?

That their clients wanted such a trading platform... is that the reason you
are saying was plainly stated?

------
unixhero
Where is the code?

------
subroutine
I wonder if the openness of cryptocurrency and blockchain tech prompted this
in any way.

edit: can someone explain why I'm getting downvoted?

~~~
icahnvalyou
That + bloomberg hate + symphony's ridiculously good reception in the markets.
Symphony's starting look like it could be finance's heroku/slack.

~~~
jgalt212
Bloomberg hate is really only the management level. At the user level, it's
mostly love. Of course, by and large, the user does not directly foot the
$20K/year bill.

~~~
icahnvalyou
truth (and Stockholm syndrome).

------
guest
Aren't banks allready shifting over in larger scale to quntum computing? Would
also explain the openess from a bank. Though national banks and nation state
backed banks are imo often quite a few steps better than the rest - then again
at times even though publically supported f __ks up like Nordea.

~~~
TuringNYC
I have not seen any evidence that banks are shifting over to quantum
computing. As far as I can see, quantum computing itsself is far from useable
in any production setting -- it is mostly in early R&D stage.

~~~
adrianN
It's not exactly "computing", but you can buy some quantum crypto systems for
doing key distribution:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_key_distribution#Comme...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_key_distribution#Commercial)

