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Well, you do a lot of, let's say, work in the open source world.

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That's a very broad way of putting it.

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You're on, which UK board are you on?

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I'm on the board of Open UK, which is a nonprofit that's focused on bringing together open technology.

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So open source, open data, open hardware together in the UK.

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You know, before we get to our main topic, this reminds me of a question.

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So you're in the UK, you're, you know, you've been over there a while.

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What is, and I mean this in a good way, what is the deal with how chatty, like, UK government

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tech people are about themselves?

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Like, I often feel like they are the ones who talk the most, like over there in the GDS

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and other people, like, like, you know, in recent years, like Americans and Australians, I only

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read English, so I don't know what happens in like Italy, but it seems like the, there's

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almost like a culture in like UK government tech to talk about yourself a lot.

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Not, not in a, you know, bad way, but to kind of go over your experiences and document

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things.

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Is that a, is that just some weird thing only I see?

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Or is that, do you think that's an actual conscious effort?

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No, I think that's, I think there's a lot of truth to that, actually.

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I think it has, I think it has more to do with the fact that the UK government from, from

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quite a while ago.

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So before I moved here, I remember when I worked at, at Puppet, we worked with some people

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in government digital services, which was the group that at the time was doing a lot of

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the work in open source.

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And, and the UK government has embraced like doing all of their stuff in, in the open so

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that people can actually see it.

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And so they have this, they have this transparency and they've had that, they've had that for quite

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a while.

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And so I think that they really did encourage a lot of people to go out and talk about that

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because I, I used to see conference presentations all the time about people from the UK government

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coming out and, and talking about the work that they were doing.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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We were both at FOSDOM a couple of weeks ago and I, I just accidentally stumbled into

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a presentation from someone from UK.gov talking oddly enough or, or oddly enough from my stumblingness

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about like Cloud Foundry and Concourse and how they were using it.

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So yeah, they're, they're, they're just everywhere.

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It's a, it was exciting.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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So, so then also you, uh, uh, you work here at, uh, VMware having been pivotal.

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So why, why don't you, uh, what do you do around here?

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Give us a little introduction.

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Yeah.

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So I started at pivotal, uh, not quite a year and a half ago.

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And for the time that, uh, for most of that time, I've been focused on our open source

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Kubernetes contributor strategy.

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So I've been looking at, you know, various pivotal product strategies, looking across the

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whole Kubernetes project and figuring out where it made sense.

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For, for pivotal to put engineers working on open source Kubernetes.

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And so a lot of that, a lot of that happened in places like, uh, we, we added some people

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for cluster API and the cluster life cycle area.

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We had, uh, people working on API machinery, and then we have people working on more of the

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infrastructure stuff that benefits everybody.

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So things like, like release and testing.

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So we, we actually spent quite a bit of time working in, in release and testing.

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And so that's what I've been doing at, at pivotal so far.

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And then we're, we're still in the transition process into, into VMware, but I expect to be

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doing stuff that's more kind of, uh, more general open source community strategy as we transition

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into VMware.

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And then of course, your name is Don Foster.

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Just, just, just to make sure we, we, you know, had a disembodied voice.

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Uh, so, so like, like, I definitely want to go back to like, uh, like it's, it's, I've been

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looking forward to talking with you.

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Cause we, you know, you can give me kind of a overview of what's the deal with the Kubernetes

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community.

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Right.

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You know, just as far as the landscape of it and, and kind of like how they think and

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stuff, but, you know, given, given your history, you've worked in, I don't even know, you'll

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have to tell me what people call this corporate open source, like, like whatever that phrase

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is.

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And, and I wonder like, you know, whether you want to use like Kubernetes as an example

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or something like when you're, when you're working at a company and helping, you know,

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manage and input into and making sure they're doing well with open source, like, like, what

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do you start with as far as like why they care or why they should care?

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Like what is, what's, how do you connect to what that company wants to do to actually figuring

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out what, what you should, you know, should be happening in the open source community they're

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parts of?

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Okay.

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That's a really big question.

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I'll try to break it down a little bit.

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Um, so, so I have been working in open source for, for more than 20 years.

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So I actually started using open source when I was a sysadmin back in the nineties.

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And then when I, when I went to Intel, they were like, Hey, you know, some Unixy stuff,

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which is kind of like Linux and that's, you know, some open source.

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So, so here you go.

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And so since then I have been, that was about 2000, I guess.

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And since then I've been working almost entirely on open source software within companies.

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So basically I work at a company and I help them engage with, with open source communities.

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And that takes a bunch of different forms, right?

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So my, my approach tends to be a bit more strategic.

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And so what, what I tend to look at when I, when I join a company and start working on

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things is what, what is the company trying to achieve?

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And not just from open source, but what is the company as a whole trying to achieve?

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What are, what are their goals?

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And then I try to fit in the bits for, for what we need to do in open source in order

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to help the company achieve their goals.

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Because I have, I've learned the hard way that if you don't have really clear justification

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for the work that you're doing in open source and the work that you're doing within communities,

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and if you can't tie that back to what the company is trying to achieve, then it's something

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that's easy to cut, right?

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They're like, Oh, we don't need to do this open source stuff.

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I don't know why we're doing this.

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It's just all, it's all good for the community, but it doesn't benefit us as a company.

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So you have to be able to do both.

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And it's a real, it's a real balance because you can't, you can't just go into these communities,

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these open source communities, and just selfishly do whatever it is that your company wants you

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to do, because you're going to be seen as, you're going to be seen as selfish.

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You're not going to be seen as a good corporate citizen.

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You also need to do some, you know, you need to do things in a way that the community appreciates.

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You need to work in, you know, maybe in some other areas to help out.

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So maybe help out with the contributor experience.

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Maybe you help out with some docs or some release.

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And you do this kind of in conjunction with what the, what the company wants.

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So you have to be able to justify it back to the company, what you're doing, but you also

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have this balance between what the community needs and doing the, always doing the right

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thing for the community.

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So this is one of the things that I stress when I, when I talk to people about our open

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source participation, when I talk to individual engineers who are contributing in these big,

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especially these big projects, is that first you have to do what's right for the community.

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So if the company is asking you to do something that the community doesn't want, doesn't need,

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doesn't make sense, you can't, you can't just try to push that in, into the community and

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into the project.

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You need to, you need to go back and talk to your stakeholders within the company who

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are asking for this thing and explain to them that we can't do it in this way and talk about

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alternatives.

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So this balance between the two is really, really important.

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Yeah.

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Both of those aspects are really interesting, especially I haven't really thought so much

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about the first one, which is, which is you need to make sure the company's involvement

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in the open source world is sustainable.

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And one primary way of doing that is proving to the company that they should keep doing it.

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Right.

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I always love those.

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Back when I did strategy work, I went through a few like, I don't know, annoying phases where

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I finally learned that like part of the job, when you have a job sort of like this is the

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company hiring you doesn't actually really know specifically what they want you to do.

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And they want you to figure that out and then prove it back to them ongoing, which, which

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like, if you have the wrong, you know, kind of mindset is just like maddening to, to, to

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be, to be asked to do something and then have the person asking it, not really know what

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they're asking.

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And, and, and, and then, and then even more maddening, sort of like tell you that they're

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wrong if they don't like what you suggest back.

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Yeah.

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Welcome to almost every job I have ever had.

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Exactly.

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Yeah.

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But I think, I think that, that aspect is, is, is really interesting.

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Cause it gets to, you know, one of the, you know, back, back, back when I was way back

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when at like Red Monk and other places doing consulting as an analyst, like this was in

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the, uh, the late two thousands, kind of the heyday of like, we should do open source.

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And, and, uh, you're making me remember that.

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Yeah.

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A ton of it was just sort of asking the basic question of like, yeah, but what do you want

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to do?

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Right.

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Like, why, why do you care?

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And I, and I think, I think there's the easy one.

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I mean, tell me, it'd be interesting to know, to, to hear if you have some sort of catalog

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of what people would want to do.

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I mean, if I feel like the easy one is like, oh yeah, well, we want to make money.

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Right.

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So we, we, we'll call it the open core model, which, which can be like, you know, annoying

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or it could be totally legit.

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Right.

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Like we have this, this open source thing and there's stuff that we sell around it, but

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that's almost like a little too easy.

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Like, like, like, like the, you know, I, I feel like there must be other more, uh, complicated

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sort of reasons why people would want to be involved.

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Yeah.

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And, and one of the things that's really interesting about doing this is every job, every, every

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company I've ever worked for and every job I've ever done has been, has been completely

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different.

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So, so what an approach that works in one company, isn't necessarily the approach that's

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going to work in, in another company.

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And it depends entirely on, on what the company, what the company happens to need.

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I mean, when I, when I worked at, at puppet, it was all around, um, you know, kind of the,

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the open source puppet technology that we were building enterprise products on, on top of.

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And that was, that was my focus.

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And I spent a lot of time, honestly, they, they had all kinds of roadblocks for their

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engineers.

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They just weren't getting enough done things like, uh, you know, terrible CLA processes and

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things like that.

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And I went in and my first, my first few weeks, I just talked to people and everyone I talked

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to was like, wow, the CLA process is really broken.

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If you want to fix something, that would be a good one.

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Um, and so, you know, I spent my first couple of months at puppet working on the, the CLA

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process, which was just bizarre.

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Um, when I was at Intel, I did community for, um, for Mego.

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If anyone remembers that it was an open source mobile operating system that Intel was working

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on jointly with Nokia as a Linux foundation project.

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Um, and the stuff that I, I did for that was, it was totally different.

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It was, you know, it was a little more, um, you know, trying to get people, trying to get

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people engaged in the community in a different way.

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And at the time I actually had someone who worked on my team as another community manager,

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uh, uh, Jeffro, Jeffrey Osier-Mixon, and he was working on Yocto.

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And even though we worked on the exact same team, he worked, he worked on my team.

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We did completely different things.

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Like what we did to grow a community for both of those projects was, was vastly different,

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even though we worked at the same company and on the same team.

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Yeah.

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Uh, and you, you know, another way of slicing it up that, that, that's always interesting

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is like the, the type of company that's getting involved.

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So like, I think, I think if you're a software company, that's sort of like, you know, to,

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to, to maybe make a 90% accurate statement, most open source is software and, and, and is

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driven by software, but you know, you, there are, you've, you've worked at hardware places,

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uh, that, that do open source.

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And I wonder like, what, what's the motivation for like hardware companies to be involved in

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open source communities?

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Like what are they, and, and, and it can go both ways, right?

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Like, why is a community interested in a hardware company being involved, being involved?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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There are a couple, a couple of interesting things there.

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Um, the first one is that, uh, hardware is, so without software, hardware is a doorstop,

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right?

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It just doesn't, it doesn't do anything.

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Um, so you have to have software that runs, that runs on top of it.

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The reality is lots of people use open source software.

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So Linux is absolutely prolific when it comes to lots of different environments, servers,

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and, you know, all kinds of embedded, all kinds of places.

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And if your hardware doesn't run screamingly fast and do exactly what it's supposed to

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do with, uh, when people are running those open source software technologies on top of

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it, um, then people just aren't going to pick yours.

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They're going to pick someone else's.

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They're like, well, this one, this one runs like crap, you know, when I run Linux on it.

225
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So I'm going to go, I'm going to go and use this other one that runs really, really well.

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And the reality is hardware, hardware is difficult because there's a lot of, there's a lot of

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secret sauce that goes into hardware.

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And it's really difficult for a lot of people to understand the technologies associated with

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a particular hardware platform when they're not intimately familiar with it.

230
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So the reality is when you work at someplace like, like Intel or AMD or any of these big

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hardware companies, your engineers understand how your hardware works and how to make it

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perform better than a lot of other people are going to be able to.

233
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So having your engineers embedded in these, um, embedded in these open source communities

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can really, can really help you basically make the software work well for everybody who's

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using your hardware.

236
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Yeah.

237
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I mean, I, I think, I think the, the most obvious thing that, that you put very well is

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like it, it would, well, the software should run on your hardware and, and, and run well.

239
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And, uh, so, so it's, it would be getting to that point.

240
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It'd be most beneficial if, if you're by your, I mean, if your hardware programmers actually

241
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worked with the community of, uh, whatever software you aren't running on it, whether

242
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it's like Linux or some open source thing or graphic editing or whatever.

243
00:14:11,280 --> 00:14:15,580
I mean, it's, uh, I imagine it's going to be a lot better than sort of reverse engineering

244
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in either direction or not even reverse engineering.

245
00:14:19,200 --> 00:14:23,940
That's, but just sort of like reading the documents and not like, uh, actually talking

246
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with people.

247
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Yeah.

248
00:14:25,580 --> 00:14:29,820
And I think the open source, most open source software communities, certainly the Linux kernel,

249
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for example, I think appreciate the work that the hardware vendors put into the software

250
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because it's, I mean, it's just, it's just a lot of work and it happens a lot faster.

251
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If you have, you know, employees from companies who know what they're doing, working on it,

252
00:14:44,100 --> 00:14:47,260
you're just going to get, you're going to get things, you're going to get things into

253
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the software faster.

254
00:14:48,060 --> 00:14:50,300
It's going to support the new hardware platforms faster.

255
00:14:50,460 --> 00:14:56,020
Everything is, uh, hopefully going to be accelerated by having, by having more people who are contributing,

256
00:14:56,020 --> 00:14:59,940
who, who understand what the, what the hardware does and what they need from the software.

257
00:15:00,320 --> 00:15:00,720
Yeah.

258
00:15:01,040 --> 00:15:03,140
It's good to have people who know what they're doing around.

259
00:15:03,600 --> 00:15:04,220
Yes, it is.

260
00:15:04,400 --> 00:15:05,500
Or who, who know a subject.

261
00:15:05,600 --> 00:15:10,480
Do you think there's a distinction between the idiom, know what they're doing and like

262
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are knowledgeable of a subject?

263
00:15:13,200 --> 00:15:17,940
Cause know what they're doing, at least in the tech world has this sort of judgy implication

264
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of awesomeness to it.

265
00:15:19,780 --> 00:15:21,640
I guess judgy is always negative.

266
00:15:21,640 --> 00:15:27,080
It has this sort of like, you know, they're, they're capable of doing something, not just

267
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like knowing something.

268
00:15:29,040 --> 00:15:30,280
Yeah, I don't know.

269
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I guess the distinction I would make between the two, um, having just come out of finishing

270
00:15:34,600 --> 00:15:38,620
my PhD and from, you know, spending a couple of years in academia, as I think of knowledge

271
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is something a little more abstract.

272
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Like you can know about something and, and maybe understand it and know how to talk about

273
00:15:46,780 --> 00:15:52,000
it from an academic sort of standpoint without actually knowing how to use it or what to do

274
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with it.

275
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That makes sense.

276
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Knowing what you're doing feels, feels to me like the people who, uh, you know, beyond just

277
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having this abstract knowledge, know how to implement it.

278
00:16:01,000 --> 00:16:04,080
So I see like one is like academic, no things.

279
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And the other is how do I implement something, um, to use that knowledge.

280
00:16:08,340 --> 00:16:09,960
It's like applied knowing.

281
00:16:11,120 --> 00:16:15,800
Well, well, you know, that's a good segue because speaking of things that I think I know about,

282
00:16:15,880 --> 00:16:18,900
but can't actually apply that we've got a Kubernetes.

283
00:16:19,340 --> 00:16:23,520
So I'm, I'm pretty sure I understand how that works technically, but I would have no idea

284
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how to do anything with it.

285
00:16:24,920 --> 00:16:27,800
Uh, which, which, uh, is, is thrilling for me.

286
00:16:27,800 --> 00:16:31,420
But so how, how long have you been involved in the, the Kubernetes community?

287
00:16:32,100 --> 00:16:36,040
I actually started getting involved in the Kubernetes community when I started at Pivotal.

288
00:16:36,040 --> 00:16:41,000
So it's, you know, it's been just, just over a year really that I've been kind of involved

289
00:16:41,000 --> 00:16:43,880
in, in what's going on with, with Kubernetes.

290
00:16:43,880 --> 00:16:47,120
So I'm relatively, relatively new to the community, I guess.

291
00:16:47,120 --> 00:16:53,320
Um, but it's, it's an interesting community because it is, it is absolutely massive.

292
00:16:53,660 --> 00:16:59,380
So, you know, you, you look at the documentation, you look at the code base, it's just, um, you

293
00:16:59,380 --> 00:17:00,960
know, it is a monstrous project.

294
00:17:00,960 --> 00:17:02,460
It's like looking at the Linux kernel.

295
00:17:02,600 --> 00:17:04,300
There's just a lot of stuff going on.

296
00:17:04,360 --> 00:17:05,640
There's a lot of people involved.

297
00:17:06,040 --> 00:17:10,040
There are, you know, a whole bunch of special interest groups that are all doing different

298
00:17:10,040 --> 00:17:10,860
things.

299
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But on the other hand, so like, so yeah, yes, it's massive and overwhelming, but on the

300
00:17:15,580 --> 00:17:22,440
other hand, they really spend a lot of time focused on how to onboard new contributors.

301
00:17:22,620 --> 00:17:28,640
So we have a whole contributor experience sig that is focused on nothing but improving the

302
00:17:28,640 --> 00:17:29,560
contributor experience.

303
00:17:29,560 --> 00:17:33,800
So we run the contributor summits at KubeCon the day before KubeCon.

304
00:17:34,400 --> 00:17:38,740
Um, and as part of those summits, we have new contributor workshops where we actually get

305
00:17:38,740 --> 00:17:44,560
people from, you know, here's, here's my first, first pull request to like getting things,

306
00:17:44,660 --> 00:17:46,340
you know, how do I get this pull request merged?

307
00:17:46,400 --> 00:17:48,420
How do I write my first bit of Kubernetes code?

308
00:17:48,880 --> 00:17:51,060
And then there's also a bunch of other programs.

309
00:17:51,060 --> 00:17:55,840
So there's, you know, there are mentoring programs, there are office hours, there are all kinds

310
00:17:55,840 --> 00:18:00,000
of things that are really designed to bring new contributors into the fold.

311
00:18:00,620 --> 00:18:06,200
Yeah, you know, when I was at FOSDEM in that, in that, I mostly stayed in the, uh, that room

312
00:18:06,200 --> 00:18:07,960
you were in, is that, was that the community track?

313
00:18:08,260 --> 00:18:08,900
I forget the name of it.

314
00:18:08,900 --> 00:18:10,300
Yeah, the community, community dev room.

315
00:18:10,620 --> 00:18:11,200
Yeah, yeah.

316
00:18:11,240 --> 00:18:17,520
It was making me realize like how, how, uh, how far the open source world has come as,

317
00:18:17,680 --> 00:18:19,480
as far as like what you were just describing.

318
00:18:19,480 --> 00:18:24,380
Like all of the, uh, you know, all, all of the, the activities that people used to not

319
00:18:24,380 --> 00:18:27,540
talk about that were, are very important for like a thriving community.

320
00:18:27,540 --> 00:18:30,880
And there's, there's a tremendous amount more than that than there used to be.

321
00:18:30,880 --> 00:18:35,600
Like, I feel like way back when in the, in the two thousands, sort of like, uh, gardening

322
00:18:35,600 --> 00:18:39,820
the community meant like at some conference, you would sit at a round table and kind of mumble

323
00:18:39,820 --> 00:18:40,360
at each other.

324
00:18:40,820 --> 00:18:45,760
But you know, now there's, there's actual, uh, processes put in place and people who are in

325
00:18:45,760 --> 00:18:46,360
charge of that.

326
00:18:46,360 --> 00:18:47,280
And it's nice.

327
00:18:47,520 --> 00:18:52,240
It's like a lot more, uh, it brings a lot more people in and probably has much, much

328
00:18:52,240 --> 00:18:55,560
broader results than, uh, just little groups of folks.

329
00:18:55,960 --> 00:18:56,180
Yeah.

330
00:18:56,260 --> 00:18:57,160
It used to be a lot.

331
00:18:57,260 --> 00:18:58,360
It used to be a lot harder.

332
00:18:58,500 --> 00:19:03,260
I think the barrier to entry was a lot more difficult, you know, even, even just like 10,

333
00:19:03,780 --> 00:19:08,000
10 years ago, you know, it wasn't, everything wasn't on, on GitHub.

334
00:19:08,000 --> 00:19:12,660
It wasn't like, uh, each process had maybe, you know, each project had completely different

335
00:19:12,660 --> 00:19:13,220
processes.

336
00:19:13,500 --> 00:19:17,980
Most of them, a lot of them didn't even have contributor documentation, like they might

337
00:19:17,980 --> 00:19:22,800
have user documentation, but how to contribute, you know, a lot of projects didn't really have

338
00:19:22,800 --> 00:19:23,140
that.

339
00:19:23,820 --> 00:19:26,640
Um, and, and the process itself was a lot more difficult.

340
00:19:26,640 --> 00:19:30,720
You know, if you look at the Linux kernel process, it's, you know, do a patch diff and

341
00:19:30,720 --> 00:19:36,440
send it to a mailing list, which is a bit, uh, you know, a bit more, I don't know, daunting,

342
00:19:36,440 --> 00:19:40,000
I suppose, than, than a pull request on GitHub.

343
00:19:40,640 --> 00:19:40,860
Yeah.

344
00:19:40,920 --> 00:19:41,140
Yeah.

345
00:19:41,280 --> 00:19:41,500
Yeah.

346
00:19:41,500 --> 00:19:44,240
There was another talk earlier in the day that was like, I think it was earlier.

347
00:19:44,360 --> 00:19:46,460
That was basically, uh, I'll summarize it.

348
00:19:46,460 --> 00:19:49,380
It was, we should stop using IRC for open source things.

349
00:19:50,380 --> 00:19:55,340
There were a lot of other points in there, but like it was, uh, it was, you know, it was

350
00:19:55,340 --> 00:19:59,180
to that point of like, Hey, these tools used to be cool, but now there's, uh, other people

351
00:19:59,180 --> 00:20:03,360
and it's just like, doesn't need to be this difficult, which I think, I think, you know,

352
00:20:03,360 --> 00:20:08,260
that, that exact tooling aside, that's always a useful thing in a very complicated system

353
00:20:08,260 --> 00:20:12,380
to always say like, Hey, is there a better way to be doing these things than we've been

354
00:20:12,380 --> 00:20:13,800
doing for 20 years?

355
00:20:14,180 --> 00:20:20,100
Yeah, this is actually, this is actually something I think about a lot, um, because we, we have

356
00:20:20,100 --> 00:20:23,260
an aging problem within a lot of open source projects.

357
00:20:23,460 --> 00:20:29,140
So if you look at, you know, I'm approaching 50, uh, if you look at a lot of communities like

358
00:20:29,140 --> 00:20:33,280
the Linux kernel community, for example, a lot of the people are my age.

359
00:20:33,420 --> 00:20:39,120
We're not that far from retirement and we use tools that create these barriers to entry

360
00:20:39,120 --> 00:20:41,200
for, um, you know, younger people.

361
00:20:41,200 --> 00:20:44,700
They, they maybe aren't interested in doing patch dips on a mailing list and they might

362
00:20:44,700 --> 00:20:47,880
like tools that are a little bit more friendly.

363
00:20:48,040 --> 00:20:53,080
So we have a culture of people coming into the workforce who, you know, who don't like email,

364
00:20:53,380 --> 00:20:58,760
who just aren't used to kind of the old school tools that we use things like, like IRC.

365
00:20:59,100 --> 00:21:05,200
You know, it's just not, it's a, it's a different, different way of working and the, you know,

366
00:21:05,200 --> 00:21:06,540
kind of a different, different mindset.

367
00:21:06,540 --> 00:21:12,320
And if we aren't willing to kind of evolve and embrace that, this is going to continue

368
00:21:12,320 --> 00:21:13,200
to be a problem.

369
00:21:13,200 --> 00:21:19,780
And, and what happens when in 10 to 15 years, you know, half the people who work on open

370
00:21:19,780 --> 00:21:22,880
source are, are retiring or not working on it anymore.

371
00:21:22,880 --> 00:21:28,660
Um, or, or frankly, just like, you know, at that age, people, people die more often,

372
00:21:28,660 --> 00:21:30,520
you know, people dying of heart attacks and things.

373
00:21:30,520 --> 00:21:33,080
And, and this, this is something I worry about.

374
00:21:33,140 --> 00:21:36,020
I worry about the aging problem in, in open source.

375
00:21:36,660 --> 00:21:37,060
Yeah.

376
00:21:37,140 --> 00:21:40,660
Well, you know, we'll, we'll get maybe back to Kubernetes, but since, since you mentioned

377
00:21:40,660 --> 00:21:44,360
you worrying about that, like what, what's your, what's your deal with all of this open

378
00:21:44,360 --> 00:21:45,020
source stuff?

379
00:21:45,140 --> 00:21:47,660
Why do you, uh, why do you care enough to do it as your job?

380
00:21:48,460 --> 00:21:51,100
Yeah, I, uh, I absolutely love it.

381
00:21:51,100 --> 00:21:54,720
So it was something, like I said, I sort of got accidentally involved in it at Intel.

382
00:21:54,980 --> 00:22:01,120
And at some point I realized that, um, I was, I was meeting all of these really amazing people

383
00:22:01,120 --> 00:22:02,160
all over the world.

384
00:22:02,540 --> 00:22:07,680
And I've developed really deep friendships with some of these people that I've interacted

385
00:22:07,680 --> 00:22:10,000
with mostly, mostly online and at conferences.

386
00:22:10,460 --> 00:22:14,180
And I'm at the point now where I can, I can travel to almost anywhere in the world and

387
00:22:14,180 --> 00:22:18,720
find someone to get together and have coffee with, because I, you know, I know all of these,

388
00:22:18,800 --> 00:22:20,020
all these really amazing people.

389
00:22:20,020 --> 00:22:24,380
Like, you know, I, I grew up on a farm in Ohio, um, where there was no money.

390
00:22:25,000 --> 00:22:30,760
And like, if you had told 14 year old me that some company was going to pay me and fly me

391
00:22:30,760 --> 00:22:35,720
around the world, um, to do this really amazing job, I, I would have been like, that's not

392
00:22:35,720 --> 00:22:36,140
a job.

393
00:22:36,140 --> 00:22:37,380
I don't know what you're talking about.

394
00:22:38,160 --> 00:22:39,340
Um, that doesn't happen.

395
00:22:39,660 --> 00:22:43,420
Uh, and you know, and I really, I, I spend a fair amount of time like reflecting on this,

396
00:22:43,420 --> 00:22:48,920
like, you know, that, that I am incredibly fortunate to have met the people that I've

397
00:22:48,920 --> 00:22:52,220
met to be working in the space that I'm working in.

398
00:22:52,220 --> 00:22:52,900
And I continued.

399
00:22:52,900 --> 00:22:57,240
So when I was, you know, I kind of dropped out of, of work for a couple of years while

400
00:22:57,240 --> 00:23:01,240
I got my PhD, I still did some minor consulting and things, but I continued to go to all the

401
00:23:01,240 --> 00:23:05,660
open source conferences because all my friends are there and I really like it and it's fun.

402
00:23:05,660 --> 00:23:07,100
And I, I enjoy it.

403
00:23:07,100 --> 00:23:12,200
So, you know, I paid to set myself to a bunch of conferences because I, because I like it

404
00:23:12,200 --> 00:23:12,800
because I enjoy it.

405
00:23:12,800 --> 00:23:13,260
It's fun.

406
00:23:13,740 --> 00:23:18,080
And, and by working at different companies on different projects, I get to do lots of

407
00:23:18,080 --> 00:23:18,600
different things.

408
00:23:18,600 --> 00:23:22,780
So it doesn't, it doesn't get boring because every, every time I do this is different.

409
00:23:22,780 --> 00:23:24,880
So, you know, at pivotal is one thing.

410
00:23:24,880 --> 00:23:28,120
And as we're transitioning into VMware, it looks like I'm going to get to do something a little

411
00:23:28,120 --> 00:23:28,560
bit different.

412
00:23:29,000 --> 00:23:34,120
So it's, it's always this, this constant, constant change and constant evolution.

413
00:23:34,580 --> 00:23:36,920
But it's still, it's still a lot of the same people.

414
00:23:36,920 --> 00:23:43,660
And I'm always, I'm always amazed by how many people I ran into when I joined a new project.

415
00:23:43,660 --> 00:23:47,240
So, you know, I started getting involved in Kubernetes and I was like, oh, there's George

416
00:23:47,240 --> 00:23:47,640
Castro.

417
00:23:47,800 --> 00:23:50,560
I remember him from like config management stuff back in the day.

418
00:23:50,660 --> 00:23:52,000
Oh, and there's Janice Roseland.

419
00:23:52,080 --> 00:23:56,400
We worked together on some, some puppet stuff that he was working on when he was at EMC.

420
00:23:56,400 --> 00:24:01,280
And so there, there were this whole, you know, set of people, you know, Josh Burgess, I know

421
00:24:01,280 --> 00:24:02,100
him from other things.

422
00:24:02,600 --> 00:24:07,100
So there are all these people that I knew from sort of past lives in these new communities

423
00:24:07,100 --> 00:24:08,260
that, that I joined.

424
00:24:08,260 --> 00:24:11,960
So you keep running into the same people and you, you build these, you know, these great

425
00:24:11,960 --> 00:24:12,700
friendships with people.

426
00:24:12,700 --> 00:24:15,540
And it's really, it's really an exciting space to work in.

427
00:24:15,600 --> 00:24:15,980
I love it.

428
00:24:16,500 --> 00:24:16,800
Yeah.

429
00:24:16,980 --> 00:24:17,180
Yeah.

430
00:24:17,180 --> 00:24:22,100
That's a, that's a, that's an interesting explanation because it's purely like to keep

431
00:24:22,100 --> 00:24:25,980
using this word, like it's a nice community to be in.

432
00:24:25,980 --> 00:24:29,760
Which, which, you know, people will say that about companies that they work for, which,

433
00:24:29,880 --> 00:24:32,660
which can also be nice, but then also like a company is nice.

434
00:24:32,660 --> 00:24:34,520
Cause you get a paycheck, right.

435
00:24:34,540 --> 00:24:40,980
Versus, versus like sticking to a group of P of, you know, a professional community.

436
00:24:40,980 --> 00:24:41,380
I don't know.

437
00:24:41,420 --> 00:24:45,860
There's, there's weird phrases for this kind of stuff, but like for, for its own right

438
00:24:45,860 --> 00:24:50,180
and being kind of rewarding to be involved in is, is it's nice as well.

439
00:24:50,400 --> 00:24:54,920
I guess maybe like, like neighborhood sports teams can be a bit like that too.

440
00:24:55,320 --> 00:24:56,300
I, I don't know.

441
00:24:56,460 --> 00:24:58,940
Well, so, so, so then back to the Kubernetes stuff.

442
00:24:58,940 --> 00:25:03,500
So like one thing, one thing I, I, in thinking about talking, I was interested in hearing is

443
00:25:03,500 --> 00:25:09,720
like, so how would you describe like what the Kubernetes community like wants, like what's

444
00:25:09,720 --> 00:25:12,080
it's desire, right?

445
00:25:12,080 --> 00:25:15,320
As far as like the different people it would work with.

446
00:25:15,480 --> 00:25:21,000
And like, I don't know, like, how does it want the world to like interact with it?

447
00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:24,000
I, I, I hesitate to use the word mission, right?

448
00:25:24,040 --> 00:25:28,800
But like, but like, but like if, if, if I was just like a random, not random, if I was

449
00:25:28,800 --> 00:25:35,180
a highly selected, awesome, like developer or like an operations person, or even like, I

450
00:25:35,180 --> 00:25:42,140
don't know, vice president of some interesting IT thing, like, and, and I go to like a Kubernetes

451
00:25:42,140 --> 00:25:46,800
EBC, like what does Kubernetes want me to do with it?

452
00:25:47,920 --> 00:25:50,580
Yeah, that's a, that's a really hard question.

453
00:25:50,680 --> 00:25:54,000
I'm not, I'm not sure that I can, I'm not sure that I can answer it fully, but I would

454
00:25:54,000 --> 00:26:01,420
say that the thing that, that, well, the thing that I see is that what we really want is

455
00:26:01,420 --> 00:26:07,460
for, for Kubernetes just become this sort of ubiquitous layer that we build on top of

456
00:26:07,460 --> 00:26:11,660
the sort of infrastructure layer that you can, you know, all these different technologies

457
00:26:11,660 --> 00:26:16,300
can build on top of, of the same, the same layer that is, is Kubernetes.

458
00:26:16,700 --> 00:26:21,860
So the idea would be that, you know, you can, you can use just, you know, the, the Google

459
00:26:21,860 --> 00:26:23,660
stuff, you know, you can use the Google cloud.

460
00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:24,860
You can use the Amazon cloud.

461
00:26:24,980 --> 00:26:30,120
You can use the, you know, some of the VMware technologies and all of these, all of these

462
00:26:30,120 --> 00:26:34,240
could run on top of this sort of common, common infrastructure platform.

463
00:26:34,500 --> 00:26:39,860
And so I, you know, I think it's kind of, I mean, I sort of think of it as sort of analogous

464
00:26:39,860 --> 00:26:41,660
to like the, like the Linux kernel.

465
00:26:41,920 --> 00:26:46,300
So like all the, all the Linux operating systems, and it's gotten to the point where almost all

466
00:26:46,300 --> 00:26:50,220
of the operating systems, you know, full stop, at least on the server side run on top of this

467
00:26:50,220 --> 00:26:50,840
Linux kernel.

468
00:26:52,940 --> 00:26:57,300
And so I see it as, as trying to become sort of this ubiquitous, ubiquitous layer.

469
00:26:57,660 --> 00:27:02,960
With that, there's an awful lot of work that has to go in around it because it's, Kubernetes

470
00:27:02,960 --> 00:27:06,280
is, has a lot of really amazing potential.

471
00:27:07,040 --> 00:27:11,260
I would say that we're still working on what I would call sort of enterprise maturity.

472
00:27:11,260 --> 00:27:16,740
So like, you know, there's still, they're working really hard on cluster life cycle.

473
00:27:16,940 --> 00:27:23,760
So cluster API and being able to, you know, really robustly manage your, the whole life

474
00:27:23,760 --> 00:27:28,220
cycle of your clusters, the upgrades, you know, everything and be able to do that in a way

475
00:27:28,220 --> 00:27:30,960
that, that enterprises see as, as reliable.

476
00:27:31,820 --> 00:27:36,820
The APIs are also a big focus right now so that lots and lots of different companies can

477
00:27:36,820 --> 00:27:42,820
build on top of Kubernetes using this robust kind of, kind of API layer, you know, kind

478
00:27:42,820 --> 00:27:47,360
of what they're working on within the API machinery sake and others as well.

479
00:27:47,420 --> 00:27:52,380
I mean, it's, there's, there's still a lot of work going on to make this really robust

480
00:27:52,380 --> 00:27:56,140
for, for engineering and, you know, kind of enterprise needs.

481
00:27:56,560 --> 00:27:56,960
Yeah.

482
00:27:57,080 --> 00:27:57,280
Yeah.

483
00:27:57,280 --> 00:28:00,880
I mean, I mean, I think ubiquity seems like a good way of summarizing it.

484
00:28:01,040 --> 00:28:06,140
You're also reminding me that like, as, as I've been trying to be more

485
00:28:06,140 --> 00:28:11,600
knowledgeable, speaking of knowledgeableness, like, like about Kubernetes, I've been

486
00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:15,120
realizing, I don't know, tell me if there's a name for this, that, that y'all in the

487
00:28:15,120 --> 00:28:21,560
Kubernetes community have, but there's like an implied, uh, system architecture and

488
00:28:21,560 --> 00:28:26,660
application architecture that like, it would be really cool if you followed, if you

489
00:28:26,660 --> 00:28:27,880
want to run on top of Kubernetes.

490
00:28:27,880 --> 00:28:32,320
Now, as, as, uh, one of my coworkers, Paul's likes, Paul likes to say, you know, you

491
00:28:32,320 --> 00:28:34,020
can put any garbage you want in a container.

492
00:28:35,460 --> 00:28:38,140
And, and, and that, that will be supported.

493
00:28:38,340 --> 00:28:43,100
I think you can put garbage in any type of container, real or metaphoric containers or

494
00:28:43,100 --> 00:28:50,260
anyways, but, uh, but like, for, for example, like there is like, like if, you know, the,

495
00:28:50,260 --> 00:28:55,020
the, the way that, uh, uh, Kubernetes will want to like, you know, pull out your configuration

496
00:28:55,020 --> 00:28:59,580
and have you put your containers in a pod and kind of group them together and things that

497
00:28:59,580 --> 00:29:04,620
are, they're situated with each other and describe, uh, their, what their healthiness

498
00:29:04,620 --> 00:29:08,840
is and how many replicas that you want, like all of these sorts of things that Kubernetes

499
00:29:08,840 --> 00:29:09,500
can do.

500
00:29:09,660 --> 00:29:14,680
It sort of has this implication of like, and this is the type of architecture your application

501
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:15,400
should have.

502
00:29:15,460 --> 00:29:20,500
And then also this also implies that like, if you're an operations person, like here are

503
00:29:20,500 --> 00:29:21,760
the things you worry about.

504
00:29:21,760 --> 00:29:22,200
Right.

505
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:28,280
And it's, it's, I feel like, like as I'm, as I'm listening to myself going over this, like

506
00:29:28,280 --> 00:29:30,760
there's almost like this book that I'm always missing.

507
00:29:30,760 --> 00:29:35,540
That's sort of like the Kubernetes way of thinking about your data center, right?

508
00:29:35,540 --> 00:29:41,240
Like how, how it is one, we want operations people to think about what they, what they're

509
00:29:41,240 --> 00:29:42,360
doing and what their jobs are.

510
00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:46,440
But then the one that's always really elusive is like, so then what are developers supposed

511
00:29:46,440 --> 00:29:46,900
to do?

512
00:29:46,900 --> 00:29:52,980
Like, how does this mean that they architect their applications and like, I mean, you mean

513
00:29:52,980 --> 00:29:53,500
all this stuff.

514
00:29:53,500 --> 00:29:55,620
And, and, you know, just as an example, right?

515
00:29:55,620 --> 00:30:02,620
Like in theory, if you were doing like Java enterprise development or Ruby on rails development,

516
00:30:02,620 --> 00:30:08,700
or I'm sure nowadays reactive development, like those sort of are open-ended, but they

517
00:30:08,700 --> 00:30:13,700
also sort of imply a way of doing your software that you should follow to take advantage of

518
00:30:13,700 --> 00:30:13,920
them.

519
00:30:14,280 --> 00:30:14,440
Yeah.

520
00:30:14,780 --> 00:30:19,220
And I would say, to be honest, like I, I feel like this isn't something you're missing.

521
00:30:19,220 --> 00:30:20,980
I feel like it's something that's still evolving.

522
00:30:21,440 --> 00:30:25,460
So I think that the Kubernetes community is still in the process.

523
00:30:25,460 --> 00:30:29,480
of figuring out like the Kubernetes way to do things.

524
00:30:29,900 --> 00:30:30,420
Yeah, there you go.

525
00:30:30,560 --> 00:30:33,720
And I think we're certainly converging on a, on a few things, right?

526
00:30:33,760 --> 00:30:37,920
So there's been a big focus on APIs so that people are using this kind of like the same

527
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:40,320
layer to, to build on top of.

528
00:30:40,460 --> 00:30:45,000
And, you know, there's a lot of traction around things like the, the CRDs, the custom resource

529
00:30:45,000 --> 00:30:52,280
definitions and building operators to, to do a lot of the, the work on top of Kubernetes.

530
00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:57,960
And so I feel like they're converging around some of those technologies, but I feel like

531
00:30:57,960 --> 00:31:00,520
it's been, you know, it's, it's been an ongoing evolution.

532
00:31:00,520 --> 00:31:05,780
And as, as the technologies mature and get better, you know, we continue to improve them

533
00:31:05,780 --> 00:31:09,320
and continue to find new and better ways of, of doing things.

534
00:31:09,320 --> 00:31:14,580
And so I think this is a symptom of it still being, you know, a little bit, a little bit

535
00:31:14,580 --> 00:31:16,200
immature from an enterprise standpoint.

536
00:31:16,200 --> 00:31:20,640
It, it just, Kubernetes hasn't been around like, you know, like some of the other things

537
00:31:20,640 --> 00:31:25,100
that you mentioned, you know, like Java has been around for ages and it's sort of stabilized.

538
00:31:25,340 --> 00:31:26,560
People know exactly how to use it.

539
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:27,840
And there aren't a lot of changes.

540
00:31:28,360 --> 00:31:31,120
And Kubernetes is still, you know, it's still evolving.

541
00:31:31,260 --> 00:31:31,820
It's still growing.

542
00:31:31,960 --> 00:31:32,640
It's still maturing.

543
00:31:33,080 --> 00:31:37,340
So do you think that like, and I don't mean this in as silly as it sounds, but do you think

544
00:31:37,340 --> 00:31:41,480
that like books are still valuable in, in, in this space?

545
00:31:41,480 --> 00:31:45,520
And, and I say that cause like over the years, I've always suggesting like, you know, what

546
00:31:45,520 --> 00:31:49,280
we should do is like, we should make a book where we write all of this stuff down.

547
00:31:49,280 --> 00:31:53,040
And then people often will be like, oh, we've got these articles published here and we've

548
00:31:53,040 --> 00:31:53,640
got this here.

549
00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:57,320
And, and I always think they're like, yeah, but if you had a book that has like the beginning

550
00:31:57,320 --> 00:32:03,480
and the middle and the end, you could like read it and then know, like, now I know how

551
00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:05,060
to write software for Kubernetes.

552
00:32:05,420 --> 00:32:12,560
I mean, just to pick that example, but I, I don't know if people use books anymore like

553
00:32:12,560 --> 00:32:12,880
that.

554
00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:14,380
It's always a mystery to me.

555
00:32:14,780 --> 00:32:15,260
Yeah.

556
00:32:15,460 --> 00:32:19,960
I think it's, I think it would be, I think it's really hard because the technology evolves

557
00:32:19,960 --> 00:32:25,560
so quickly that anything that you wrote might be in danger of being out of date by the time

558
00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:29,960
you actually got through the, the publishing process because the publishing process is slow.

559
00:32:30,320 --> 00:32:30,720
Yes.

560
00:32:31,220 --> 00:32:34,880
Whereas, you know, blogging, podcasting, you get the information out there right away and

561
00:32:34,880 --> 00:32:35,600
it's still fresh.

562
00:32:35,840 --> 00:32:40,440
So I think, you know, I think there are people that would like to have a book that does that,

563
00:32:40,600 --> 00:32:43,520
but I think that the shelf life of that book would be quite short.

564
00:32:43,860 --> 00:32:44,220
Yeah.

565
00:32:44,340 --> 00:32:45,620
You'd have to update it all the time.

566
00:32:45,800 --> 00:32:45,960
Yeah.

567
00:32:46,040 --> 00:32:48,280
It would just be out of date so incredibly quickly.

568
00:32:49,380 --> 00:32:49,740
Yeah.

569
00:32:49,880 --> 00:32:51,600
So, so then, so then also related to that.

570
00:32:51,680 --> 00:32:56,160
So, well, you know, we could start with like the Kubernetes community, but like communities

571
00:32:56,160 --> 00:33:01,500
in general nowadays, and we've alluded to this, this a little while, but like, so there's

572
00:33:01,500 --> 00:33:07,500
the role of the developer in a community, but there's a lot of other roles and, and, and

573
00:33:07,500 --> 00:33:08,620
things, things for people to do.

574
00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:13,640
Like, what are, what are, what are those other roles that isn't necessarily just like writing

575
00:33:13,640 --> 00:33:17,240
code or even being like a lead on, on writing code?

576
00:33:17,320 --> 00:33:18,660
What, what other things that people do?

577
00:33:18,800 --> 00:33:20,220
Oh yeah, absolutely.

578
00:33:20,220 --> 00:33:24,500
So, so there are lots of important things that aren't, aren't strictly development.

579
00:33:24,740 --> 00:33:26,920
There are ones that people tend to think of.

580
00:33:26,920 --> 00:33:32,760
So like documentation, you know, good tech writers, that's, that's a real skill.

581
00:33:32,760 --> 00:33:37,860
That's a technical skill that has to happen that not, not all engineers are great at writing

582
00:33:37,860 --> 00:33:40,380
things in a way that can be easily understood by lots of people.

583
00:33:40,660 --> 00:33:45,100
So, you know, having really good tech writers and documentation, I think is, is really important.

584
00:33:45,300 --> 00:33:47,000
And that's something that anyone can contribute to.

585
00:33:47,120 --> 00:33:51,420
So like, even as you're brand new to a community, you start to step in and you're going through

586
00:33:51,420 --> 00:33:53,280
the documentation and getting things installed.

587
00:33:53,360 --> 00:33:56,040
You'll look at things from a new perspective and you'll notice mistakes.

588
00:33:56,220 --> 00:33:57,860
You'll, you'll see things that could be clearer.

589
00:33:58,240 --> 00:34:00,360
And so that's a really good way to contribute.

590
00:34:00,660 --> 00:34:09,740
Um, one of the other things that I think is also probably under, uh, underutilized in a

591
00:34:09,740 --> 00:34:15,280
lot of communities because developers are really busy, but mentoring, mentoring is really important

592
00:34:15,280 --> 00:34:18,720
and bringing on the next wave of, of developers.

593
00:34:18,720 --> 00:34:23,200
But the problem is you have these really busy developers who are barely keeping up, uh, or

594
00:34:23,200 --> 00:34:24,540
not keeping up as it is.

595
00:34:24,540 --> 00:34:27,200
And then you're asking them to mentor someone, which takes even more time.

596
00:34:27,200 --> 00:34:31,740
So it's, it's a little chicken eggy, um, but it's, but it's important.

597
00:34:32,260 --> 00:34:37,580
Um, there's lots of promotion and, and marketing stuff that goes in around open source projects

598
00:34:37,580 --> 00:34:42,540
and, you know, just communicating all sorts of things like, you know, changes that are made

599
00:34:42,540 --> 00:34:50,900
in the latest release, for example, um, the release process itself is not really a developer

600
00:34:50,900 --> 00:34:55,160
task, but it's more of a, more of a process program management task.

601
00:34:55,680 --> 00:35:01,060
Um, and the release process within Kubernetes is actually really interesting because they,

602
00:35:01,340 --> 00:35:06,160
we do frequent releases and they form a new release team for every single release.

603
00:35:06,340 --> 00:35:11,340
And they have leads for, I think almost a dozen different things like enhancements and,

604
00:35:11,340 --> 00:35:14,460
um, you know, patches and like all, all kinds of stuff.

605
00:35:14,580 --> 00:35:16,600
They have different, different leads for different areas.

606
00:35:16,960 --> 00:35:18,820
And each of those leads has a shadow.

607
00:35:19,700 --> 00:35:21,400
Or actually usually multiple shadows.

608
00:35:21,620 --> 00:35:27,380
So these are people who are basically shadowing the person and learning what it's like to lead

609
00:35:27,380 --> 00:35:31,760
this area with the idea that they would eventually, if, you know, if it goes well, lead,

610
00:35:32,060 --> 00:35:34,300
lead that area in a future release.

611
00:35:34,300 --> 00:35:39,820
So we've actually had a couple of those, um, release leads from, from Pivotal, for example,

612
00:35:39,820 --> 00:35:40,680
in the past.

613
00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:43,660
And it's a great way to get kind of engaged with the entire process.

614
00:35:43,660 --> 00:35:47,540
So like the, you know, being able to do these releases, this is another thing that you need

615
00:35:47,540 --> 00:35:49,520
people who aren't necessarily developers for.

616
00:35:49,880 --> 00:35:53,160
And then there's all sorts of like infrastructure operations stuff.

617
00:35:53,980 --> 00:35:57,920
So there's a whole like Kate's infra working group within Kubernetes.

618
00:35:58,300 --> 00:36:00,500
And these are the people that sort of keep everything running.

619
00:36:00,500 --> 00:36:01,640
So they administer GitHub.

620
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:06,720
They, you know, they work on like, you know, testing infrastructure and all of the stuff that

621
00:36:06,720 --> 00:36:11,380
needs to happen for, you know, for a project like Kubernetes to even, even run.

622
00:36:11,440 --> 00:36:15,800
And those tend to be more, you know, less on the developer side and more on the operation

623
00:36:15,800 --> 00:36:16,220
side.

624
00:36:16,220 --> 00:36:18,840
And then there's also lots of community tasks.

625
00:36:18,840 --> 00:36:24,600
So like moderation, you know, on Slack, like kicking out the person who's spamming people

626
00:36:24,600 --> 00:36:32,540
and, um, you know, moderating mailing list posts and discussion forums and bug triage and

627
00:36:32,540 --> 00:36:37,540
all, all kinds of things that aren't necessarily developers that, that there's just work that needs

628
00:36:37,540 --> 00:36:39,700
to happen in these open source communities like Kubernetes.

629
00:36:40,200 --> 00:36:42,300
So it's basically a software company.

630
00:36:43,440 --> 00:36:44,300
It is.

631
00:36:44,300 --> 00:36:46,060
It is basically a software company.

632
00:36:46,260 --> 00:36:46,520
Totally.

633
00:36:47,940 --> 00:36:49,580
All the similar roles.

634
00:36:49,720 --> 00:36:51,840
And that's actually not a bad way to think about it.

635
00:36:51,840 --> 00:36:58,320
Like anything that you would need for your company to release a software package or release

636
00:36:58,320 --> 00:37:03,720
a software solution under any other license, you need to do all of those things for open

637
00:37:03,720 --> 00:37:04,380
source projects.

638
00:37:04,500 --> 00:37:06,420
That doesn't just, it doesn't just magically happen.

639
00:37:06,720 --> 00:37:08,160
You need to know who actually do those.

640
00:37:08,820 --> 00:37:12,600
You can't, you can't just put your stuff up on GitHub and then you're done.

641
00:37:12,600 --> 00:37:18,140
No, no matter how awesome the, the, the actual code might be or terrible or middling or whatever.

642
00:37:18,140 --> 00:37:18,620
Yep.

643
00:37:18,940 --> 00:37:19,260
Yeah.

644
00:37:19,580 --> 00:37:23,080
Well, so you, so, so finally, I think, uh, uh, let's see.

645
00:37:23,640 --> 00:37:26,360
KubeCon Europe is in the beginning of March.

646
00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:29,780
If I remember, is that no, at the end of March, the end of March.

647
00:37:29,940 --> 00:37:30,240
That's right.

648
00:37:30,300 --> 00:37:30,640
That's right.

649
00:37:31,060 --> 00:37:35,860
And, uh, so you have a, you have a talk coming up there about being a, uh, like a good corporate

650
00:37:35,860 --> 00:37:38,480
citizen in, in the Kubernetes world.

651
00:37:38,480 --> 00:37:42,920
Like what, uh, yeah, give us kind of a summary of that.

652
00:37:42,980 --> 00:37:46,040
Like what is, what does that, first of all, what does that mean to be a corporate citizen?

653
00:37:47,500 --> 00:37:48,320
Yeah, absolutely.

654
00:37:48,520 --> 00:37:53,360
So the way I think of being a corporate citizen in open source projects is, again, it's this

655
00:37:53,360 --> 00:37:59,900
difficult balance between doing the right thing for your company and keeping your job and doing

656
00:37:59,900 --> 00:38:06,320
the right thing for the community and, and walking this, this fine line between community

657
00:38:06,320 --> 00:38:07,640
and, and company.

658
00:38:07,640 --> 00:38:11,280
And so this is, this is something that's, it's always a little bit difficult.

659
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:16,020
It can be a little bit tricky, but what, you know, it's, it's basically what I'm going

660
00:38:16,020 --> 00:38:20,520
to talk about are ways that you can, ways that you can walk that line, ways that you can do

661
00:38:20,520 --> 00:38:24,720
things that make your company happy, you know, like, you know, working on some features

662
00:38:24,720 --> 00:38:29,160
that, you know, I don't know your company needs because they're building something on top

663
00:38:29,160 --> 00:38:33,400
of Kubernetes and maybe there's some, you know, APIs that they need to perform better.

664
00:38:33,540 --> 00:38:38,420
Maybe you're working on some specific scalability issues or some specific performance issues.

665
00:38:38,420 --> 00:38:42,400
And you can justify that back to what the company wants, but at the same time, you also need

666
00:38:42,400 --> 00:38:47,640
to be doing things for the, for the community and, and representing your company in a, in a

667
00:38:47,640 --> 00:38:48,080
good light.

668
00:38:48,080 --> 00:38:53,300
So, you know, being, being kind to people and working with people in ways that make people

669
00:38:53,300 --> 00:38:59,140
continue to want to work with you and continue to have respect for the company that you're

670
00:38:59,160 --> 00:39:00,240
that you, that you work for.

671
00:39:00,340 --> 00:39:04,680
And so doing things in a way that, that makes sense for the community and that makes the

672
00:39:04,680 --> 00:39:05,440
community stronger.

673
00:39:05,820 --> 00:39:10,440
And sometimes that also involves doing some other things like, you know, helping out with

674
00:39:10,440 --> 00:39:15,460
docs occasionally, or maybe helping out with some infrastructure things or doing some presentations

675
00:39:15,460 --> 00:39:18,120
to help promote some specific part of the project.

676
00:39:18,280 --> 00:39:22,600
There's, there's lots of things that, that you could do to help improve the, improve the community

677
00:39:22,600 --> 00:39:26,220
while at the same time, also working on the stuff that your, your company is, you know,

678
00:39:26,460 --> 00:39:28,000
realistically kind of paying you to do.

679
00:39:28,500 --> 00:39:28,700
Hmm.

680
00:39:28,960 --> 00:39:29,360
Yeah.

681
00:39:29,360 --> 00:39:35,800
It seems like, at least in the way I would think about it, there's, there's, as a corporate

682
00:39:35,800 --> 00:39:42,440
citizen, there's some analysis you could do about like the, the stuff we think would be

683
00:39:42,440 --> 00:39:43,640
good and helpful.

684
00:39:44,480 --> 00:39:49,660
And, and then, and then the second thing out of three is like the stuff that like the community

685
00:39:49,660 --> 00:39:51,280
thinks would be good and helpful.

686
00:39:51,540 --> 00:39:55,260
And then there's this third bucket of, of like, I guess there's the stuff that doesn't

687
00:39:55,260 --> 00:39:59,900
overlap and, and kind of what you're saying is like sometimes to contribute back, like

688
00:39:59,900 --> 00:40:03,680
you just go do these other things that may be not like perfectly aligned to whatever your

689
00:40:03,680 --> 00:40:08,940
quarterly MBOs or whatever nonsense you use are, but it may not be directly related to,

690
00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:14,700
to the, the corporate-y stuff that you have, but it's something that like you should spend

691
00:40:14,700 --> 00:40:18,820
the time to, in the other meaning of this, do some community work, right?

692
00:40:18,820 --> 00:40:23,760
Like help go pick up some litter and, you know, think things like that to, to contribute back.

693
00:40:23,760 --> 00:40:28,180
And, and I, and I think, I think, you know, you're making me think that like part of that

694
00:40:28,180 --> 00:40:32,980
analysis is that like, if we're going to be part of this community, like we need to just make

695
00:40:32,980 --> 00:40:34,160
sure it's good in general.

696
00:40:34,320 --> 00:40:39,660
So like, we don't know, we don't only, we don't only have like our, our, you know, mercenary

697
00:40:39,660 --> 00:40:44,360
interests that we go in and do things like make sure that some exotic storage device is supported

698
00:40:44,360 --> 00:40:45,540
on this infrastructure.

699
00:40:46,500 --> 00:40:50,820
But we also just want to make sure that, you know, if this community is doing well, we'll

700
00:40:50,820 --> 00:40:53,660
be doing well because we depend on it, it running well.

701
00:40:53,820 --> 00:41:00,060
So we should go like moderate some comments or, or, or like spend time to go to present on

702
00:41:00,060 --> 00:41:00,460
something.

703
00:41:01,220 --> 00:41:01,360
Yeah.

704
00:41:01,800 --> 00:41:02,160
Yeah.

705
00:41:02,220 --> 00:41:08,400
And the other, the other thing to think about too, is that open source projects tend to be

706
00:41:08,400 --> 00:41:10,700
they're, they're built on reputation, right?

707
00:41:10,700 --> 00:41:16,780
So, so I come into a community and if I, you know, if I'm not doing things in the right

708
00:41:16,780 --> 00:41:20,360
way, people, people won't have this, won't have respect for me.

709
00:41:20,380 --> 00:41:23,260
And I won't, I won't be able to build the reputation that I need to build.

710
00:41:23,900 --> 00:41:28,060
And, and it's not like, it's not like working at a company where you can be like, that guy's

711
00:41:28,060 --> 00:41:32,920
a jerk and I'm going to go talk to his manager or HR and, you know, I'm going to, I'm

712
00:41:32,920 --> 00:41:35,700
going to fix this because they're open source communities.

713
00:41:35,780 --> 00:41:36,940
You don't, you don't really have that.

714
00:41:37,000 --> 00:41:42,480
It involves a lot of negotiation and involves a lot of, a lot of using your reputation for

715
00:41:42,480 --> 00:41:42,760
stuff.

716
00:41:42,820 --> 00:41:47,560
And, you know, initially when you first start in a community, you almost kind of have to

717
00:41:47,560 --> 00:41:51,260
start with like stuff that, that you don't care that much about, not, not that you don't

718
00:41:51,260 --> 00:41:54,740
care about, but isn't, isn't necessarily important to your company, but things that you're good

719
00:41:54,740 --> 00:41:55,000
at.

720
00:41:55,000 --> 00:41:59,020
So, you know, documentation or maybe release process or some things where you can sort of

721
00:41:59,020 --> 00:42:02,880
get your foot in the door and learn how things work in a way that's going to make

722
00:42:02,880 --> 00:42:08,760
it easier for your company to get stuff and, you know, included later because the, you know,

723
00:42:08,760 --> 00:42:13,100
the reality is like now I know lots of people within the, within the Kubernetes community.

724
00:42:13,100 --> 00:42:17,600
And if nobody's responding to my pull request, I know people that I can escalate things to.

725
00:42:17,680 --> 00:42:20,260
I know people that I can talk to and get reviews from.

726
00:42:20,260 --> 00:42:25,080
And, and you learn how to work within the community by using, by using your reputation

727
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:30,460
and by knowing who to talk to and knowing what the channels are and that takes time to build.

728
00:42:30,620 --> 00:42:34,900
So the other mistake I see companies making is that they, you know, they pull people in

729
00:42:34,900 --> 00:42:37,380
and off of these projects, these open source projects.

730
00:42:37,380 --> 00:42:39,520
And that's not the way, that's not the way this works.

731
00:42:39,520 --> 00:42:44,580
People, people tend to work within open source communities for periods measured in, in years,

732
00:42:44,580 --> 00:42:47,520
not, you know, I need to get this one feature in this one project.

733
00:42:47,520 --> 00:42:50,680
And I'm just going to, I'm just going to do this little thing and then I'm going to bug

734
00:42:50,680 --> 00:42:51,620
out and do something else.

735
00:42:53,220 --> 00:42:59,900
So it's, it's, yeah, this whole like reputation and longevity involved in these communities is

736
00:42:59,900 --> 00:43:00,560
really important.

737
00:43:01,240 --> 00:43:01,640
Yeah.

738
00:43:01,760 --> 00:43:08,520
You know, it seems like over the years, like corporate people or, you know, corporate interests

739
00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:09,520
involved in open source.

740
00:43:09,520 --> 00:43:16,700
One, one of the things that's often an attribute of successful ones is the longevity, longevity,

741
00:43:17,020 --> 00:43:18,500
they're involved a long time.

742
00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:22,680
And, and they, they have this assumption that like, you know, we're going to, we're going

743
00:43:22,680 --> 00:43:27,460
to commit to being involved in this and, and have, have these, these people working on it.

744
00:43:27,460 --> 00:43:33,480
And, you know, I, I think, I think on the corporate side, especially in, in software related

745
00:43:33,480 --> 00:43:38,640
stuff, whatever you may be doing, the, the temptation is always to like borrow those people's time

746
00:43:38,640 --> 00:43:39,840
to work on something else.

747
00:43:40,040 --> 00:43:45,520
And so it's, it's always, you have to be very mindful of as, as a company, if you have like

748
00:43:45,520 --> 00:43:49,460
people working on software across all the roles that like, you know, you can't like really

749
00:43:49,460 --> 00:43:50,700
just like borrow them.

750
00:43:51,100 --> 00:43:53,020
They need to focus on that thing.

751
00:43:53,020 --> 00:43:57,040
And I imagine in a corporate context, it's really easy to, to forget that.

752
00:43:57,040 --> 00:44:00,880
Cause you know, you constantly feel like your hair's on fire to go chase like a business

753
00:44:00,880 --> 00:44:06,660
opportunities, but with, with that long-term commitment, you'll hopefully be more disciplined

754
00:44:06,660 --> 00:44:08,180
to not mess that up.

755
00:44:08,860 --> 00:44:08,960
Yeah.

756
00:44:09,040 --> 00:44:12,500
And the other things, the other thing that companies can do related to this is that, you

757
00:44:12,500 --> 00:44:16,740
know, we were talking about the kind of the, the problem of getting, getting new contributors

758
00:44:16,740 --> 00:44:21,440
and getting people involved in the communities and, you know, kind of the aging out problem

759
00:44:21,440 --> 00:44:22,680
that I was talking about before.

760
00:44:23,120 --> 00:44:27,460
But the other thing that companies can do is once you get a few people who are embedded

761
00:44:27,460 --> 00:44:31,740
in the community, who know what's going on, you can use your internal engineers to help

762
00:44:31,740 --> 00:44:35,600
mentor new people, to bring new people into the community from, from your company.

763
00:44:35,600 --> 00:44:40,440
So bringing in, you know, kind of the next wave of open source developers is something

764
00:44:40,440 --> 00:44:44,760
that, you know, I also think that companies should be, should be doing more of and not relying

765
00:44:44,760 --> 00:44:49,600
so much on just the community to mentor, you know, people into the project, but also

766
00:44:49,600 --> 00:44:53,840
companies can take some of this and it benefits, it benefits the company because they're, you

767
00:44:53,840 --> 00:44:58,280
know, getting more people involved in a way that, you know, makes them look good, but

768
00:44:58,280 --> 00:45:02,560
it, you know, it benefits the community as well because they're getting lots of, you know,

769
00:45:02,560 --> 00:45:03,220
new contributors.

770
00:45:04,220 --> 00:45:04,460
Yeah.

771
00:45:04,740 --> 00:45:04,920
Yeah.

772
00:45:04,980 --> 00:45:06,120
Well, well, great.

773
00:45:06,200 --> 00:45:06,540
That's good.

774
00:45:06,600 --> 00:45:11,060
You know, you know, one is probably obvious to yourself and other people, but like, I think,

775
00:45:11,120 --> 00:45:15,080
I think, I think one of the major things that, that that's come out of this discussion

776
00:45:15,080 --> 00:45:21,060
is like the open source community itself has to do a lot of managing itself, right?

777
00:45:21,100 --> 00:45:25,620
Like there's not, you can't, you can't, you can't just rely on some, you know, chatter

778
00:45:25,620 --> 00:45:29,320
here and there on a mailing list and kind of figuring out like technically what needs to

779
00:45:29,320 --> 00:45:34,500
happen, but there's a lot of, uh, we need to, we need to sit around and decide how we're

780
00:45:34,500 --> 00:45:37,400
going to manage the overall community and the processes in it.

781
00:45:37,400 --> 00:45:38,660
And like, what are we going to do this year?

782
00:45:38,720 --> 00:45:42,060
And the year after that, and how do we just like a software company, right?

783
00:45:42,060 --> 00:45:45,900
Like someone, some people have to sit down at a software company and figure out the strategy

784
00:45:45,900 --> 00:45:50,040
and what that implies for operations and all sorts of things like that.

785
00:45:50,540 --> 00:45:51,140
Yeah, absolutely.

786
00:45:51,300 --> 00:45:53,060
And then there's just like the day-to-day stuff.

787
00:45:53,060 --> 00:45:56,740
Like there's just massive amounts of pull requests that, you know, somebody needs to review

788
00:45:56,740 --> 00:45:58,260
bugs that are filed.

789
00:45:58,560 --> 00:46:02,800
It's, um, open source projects are, are frankly, it's, it's a lot of work.

790
00:46:02,800 --> 00:46:06,840
And, you know, Kubernetes, one of the things that they've done is they, they have a lot of

791
00:46:06,840 --> 00:46:07,300
automation.

792
00:46:07,860 --> 00:46:12,920
So, so they have all this stuff like built into GitHub that kind of, uh, automates a lot

793
00:46:12,920 --> 00:46:14,620
of the sort of mundane tasks.

794
00:46:14,900 --> 00:46:20,140
Um, but even, even with that, the people who are, you know, reviewers, approvers, kind

795
00:46:20,140 --> 00:46:25,780
of owners of certain chunks of code are still incredibly overloaded and, and need help.

796
00:46:25,780 --> 00:46:30,520
So it's, it's one of those things like you can, you can automate so much of it, but you

797
00:46:30,520 --> 00:46:33,860
know, at the end of the day, somebody still has to review it and give it the thumbs up.

798
00:46:34,420 --> 00:46:34,780
Yeah.

799
00:46:34,860 --> 00:46:39,900
You need a lot of community reliability engineering, make sure, make sure you automate all that

800
00:46:39,900 --> 00:46:40,220
stuff.

801
00:46:40,420 --> 00:46:40,940
Well, good.

802
00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:44,760
Well, well, thanks for being on is, is, is fun to, uh, go over all this stuff.

803
00:46:44,800 --> 00:46:49,220
Is there, uh, if people wanted to like check out more stuff that you have, where, where would

804
00:46:49,220 --> 00:46:49,740
you point them?

805
00:46:50,740 --> 00:46:51,500
Uh, yeah.

806
00:46:51,600 --> 00:46:57,320
So if you want to learn more about me, you can go to my blog, which is called fastwonderblog.com.

807
00:46:57,320 --> 00:47:02,280
Or if you, if you Google Don Foster and, and something related to tech, you'll get me instead

808
00:47:02,280 --> 00:47:06,980
of the Don Foster that works at the Guardian, which is my, my name nemesis.

809
00:47:06,980 --> 00:47:08,960
I used to be first in the Google results.

810
00:47:09,100 --> 00:47:10,060
I don't think I am anymore.

811
00:47:10,640 --> 00:47:10,760
Yeah.

812
00:47:10,860 --> 00:47:11,020
Yeah.

813
00:47:11,060 --> 00:47:14,200
I w I w when I was looking around earlier, I was wondering why you were involved in so

814
00:47:14,200 --> 00:47:15,520
many Brexit conversations.

815
00:47:17,520 --> 00:47:17,880
Yes.

816
00:47:17,920 --> 00:47:19,140
That one's not me.

817
00:47:19,200 --> 00:47:21,260
It was less confusing before I moved to the UK.

818
00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:22,160
Exactly.

819
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:24,620
It got more confusing after, after that.

820
00:47:24,780 --> 00:47:27,240
So, you know, that reminds me over the years, I've always wondered.

821
00:47:27,420 --> 00:47:32,060
So when it comes to fast wonder, does that mean that it's quick to have wonderment or that

822
00:47:32,060 --> 00:47:33,640
it's a fleeting amount of wonderment?

823
00:47:35,080 --> 00:47:36,540
Uh, here's the funny thing.

824
00:47:36,700 --> 00:47:38,500
Uh, it's an anagram of my name.

825
00:47:39,220 --> 00:47:40,480
Oh, even better.

826
00:47:42,720 --> 00:47:46,480
I sat down and I was like, how can I rearrange the letters of my name to come up with something

827
00:47:46,480 --> 00:47:50,400
because I need a domain name and I'm not, I'm not that creative.

828
00:47:51,900 --> 00:47:55,660
Well, you, you don't suffer from that problem that I have where like every, every few weeks

829
00:47:55,660 --> 00:47:59,920
I have to decide if I want to renew one of my like, you know, tens or a hundred or so

830
00:47:59,920 --> 00:48:02,480
domain names where I just, uh, Oh yes, I do.

831
00:48:02,540 --> 00:48:04,200
I just, I, I have them on auto renew.

832
00:48:04,300 --> 00:48:08,600
I pay way too much for crap that I'm never going to use.

833
00:48:08,700 --> 00:48:08,980
Yeah.

834
00:48:09,000 --> 00:48:09,240
Yeah.

835
00:48:09,320 --> 00:48:09,500
Yeah.

836
00:48:09,500 --> 00:48:12,420
You, you might be like me where like when, when, when I, when there were first domain

837
00:48:12,420 --> 00:48:16,500
names, they were so scarce, like they would, they used to be like 70 or a hundred

838
00:48:16,500 --> 00:48:20,300
dollars and it just seemed like such a, such a precious commodity.

839
00:48:20,300 --> 00:48:24,020
And then, and then once I had the ability to actually like just register them chiefly,

840
00:48:24,020 --> 00:48:29,300
like I felt like I was, uh, benefiting from it, but really I just create more expense and

841
00:48:29,300 --> 00:48:30,160
problems for myself.

842
00:48:30,160 --> 00:48:31,160
There's no benefit.

843
00:48:31,160 --> 00:48:35,060
I have some, some ridiculous random idea and I'm like, I should buy a domain name.

844
00:48:36,000 --> 00:48:36,360
Yeah.

845
00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:38,760
So I buy all these domain names and then never do anything with them.

846
00:48:39,120 --> 00:48:39,440
Yeah.

847
00:48:39,880 --> 00:48:44,300
Well, speaking of, we should go check up on those, see, see, see how they're doing.

848
00:48:45,180 --> 00:48:45,740
All right.

849
00:48:45,900 --> 00:48:49,900
Well, well, uh, well with that, this has been a, uh, I think, I think probably when this

850
00:48:49,900 --> 00:48:51,960
comes out, we'll still call it a pivotal conversation.

851
00:48:52,060 --> 00:48:56,660
Speaking of naming, I think, I think when, whenever we get around to it, we'll actually call it

852
00:48:56,660 --> 00:48:59,380
Tansu talk, which I think will be fine.

853
00:48:59,380 --> 00:49:03,300
And always, every time I say that it's going to remind me of UHF where they had town talk,

854
00:49:03,300 --> 00:49:05,720
uh, and, and, you know, spatula city.

855
00:49:05,720 --> 00:49:10,600
Uh, but if, if you want to, um, get, get the show notes for this and other things, if

856
00:49:10,600 --> 00:49:16,460
you go to pivotal.io slash podcast and some future magical address that says Tansu in it,

857
00:49:16,460 --> 00:49:18,040
uh, then you can go there.

858
00:49:18,040 --> 00:49:19,840
But with that, we'll see everyone next time.

859
00:49:20,100 --> 00:49:20,620
Bye-bye.