1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,800 Welcome to the Cloud Native in 15 Minutes podcast. 2 00:00:03,380 --> 00:00:06,000 If you haven't listened before, the goal of this podcast is simple, 3 00:00:06,420 --> 00:00:10,300 to explain some complex but increasingly important and even strategic technologies 4 00:00:10,300 --> 00:00:13,860 and about the time it takes for a coffee break or a walk in the park 5 00:00:13,860 --> 00:00:17,220 or a short commute, whatever it is you do in 15 to 20 minutes. 6 00:00:17,740 --> 00:00:22,120 I'm your host, Derek Harris from Pivotal, and the topic today is open source, 7 00:00:22,660 --> 00:00:25,960 specifically how enterprises should think about open source software. 8 00:00:26,160 --> 00:00:33,520 Joining me to discuss that topic is Stephen O'Grady, co-founder and principal analyst of Redmonk, an analyst firm. 9 00:00:34,080 --> 00:00:41,300 We dive into a wide number of topics involving open source, including everything from, you know, 10 00:00:41,300 --> 00:00:45,540 the actual cost of open source, whether it's worth doing it yourself with upstream code 11 00:00:45,540 --> 00:00:50,360 or buying something from a vendor, whether it's worth contributing to open source projects 12 00:00:50,360 --> 00:00:55,340 versus just consuming them, how concerned enterprises need to be about some of these new 13 00:00:55,340 --> 00:00:59,540 open source licenses that have been sprouting up from companies the past couple of years. 14 00:00:59,660 --> 00:01:02,700 So really, really insightful conversation. 15 00:01:02,860 --> 00:01:08,560 Stephen's really informed on these topics and offers, I think, some good advice and good ways of thinking about it. 16 00:01:08,960 --> 00:01:14,160 And before we get into the interview, just a quick reminder, if you listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, 17 00:01:14,160 --> 00:01:17,120 especially, please give a review and a rating. 18 00:01:17,160 --> 00:01:17,760 It's really helpful. 19 00:01:17,900 --> 00:01:23,520 And also, if you like what you're hearing on the podcast and want to read write-ups of these podcasts 20 00:01:23,520 --> 00:01:27,460 and want to read more about digital transformation and some of the underlying technologies 21 00:01:27,460 --> 00:01:32,760 and cultural changes and just everything like that, you can follow the Intersect blog. 22 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:35,940 That's at pivotal.io slash intersect. 23 00:01:36,260 --> 00:01:40,020 We're also on Twitter at at intersect IT. 24 00:01:40,420 --> 00:01:44,100 And with that, here's Stephen O'Grady and me talking about open source. 25 00:01:45,040 --> 00:01:45,840 All right, Steve. 26 00:01:45,880 --> 00:01:50,520 So to start, can you talk about, like, as a general rule, how much weight companies should give 27 00:01:50,520 --> 00:01:53,300 to whether or not software they're considering using is open source? 28 00:01:54,300 --> 00:01:56,060 Honestly, I think it depends on the company. 29 00:01:56,780 --> 00:02:02,200 If I'm making the decisions, if it's a company that I'm running, open source certainly affords 30 00:02:02,200 --> 00:02:09,000 some advantages, you know, in the sense that it's sort of most obviously, you can, you know, 31 00:02:09,020 --> 00:02:11,520 potentially mitigate, you know, sort of the threat of lock-in. 32 00:02:11,920 --> 00:02:15,780 This is assuming, of course, relying on an open source project that enjoys support from 33 00:02:15,780 --> 00:02:16,520 multiple parties. 34 00:02:17,400 --> 00:02:19,620 In some cases, there are cost advantages. 35 00:02:20,300 --> 00:02:25,580 In other cases, you know, there are advantages in terms of being able to see the source code 36 00:02:25,580 --> 00:02:31,420 and, you know, sort of understand sort of what it's doing in sort of rarer cases, you know, 37 00:02:31,420 --> 00:02:33,480 sort of making fixes or contributions yourself. 38 00:02:34,120 --> 00:02:38,960 But the net is, is that, you know, there's no hard and fast rule that open source is better 39 00:02:38,960 --> 00:02:39,960 in every case. 40 00:02:40,900 --> 00:02:47,360 But, you know, sort of the landscape today is that the majority of infrastructure software 41 00:02:47,360 --> 00:02:49,460 tends to be open source, and there's a reason for that. 42 00:02:50,300 --> 00:02:50,420 All right. 43 00:02:50,440 --> 00:02:52,020 Yeah, you mentioned infrastructure software. 44 00:02:52,020 --> 00:02:54,280 Does it matter what layer we're talking about? 45 00:02:54,380 --> 00:02:57,920 Because there's, you know, there's obviously a difference between maybe an infrastructure 46 00:02:57,920 --> 00:03:01,580 software like Kubernetes, and you move up to the database layer where you're going to 47 00:03:01,580 --> 00:03:02,120 mix the stuff. 48 00:03:02,220 --> 00:03:05,080 And then like at the application layer, there's not a whole lot of open source, frankly. 49 00:03:05,380 --> 00:03:06,800 So it seems like. 50 00:03:07,980 --> 00:03:13,560 Yeah, for a whole variety of reasons, you know, typically when we talk about open source within 51 00:03:13,560 --> 00:03:17,280 the enterprise, you know, we're typically talking about infrastructure, right? 52 00:03:17,280 --> 00:03:22,080 And, you know, while functionally, obviously, something like Kubernetes is very different, 53 00:03:22,080 --> 00:03:27,360 you know, than a database, in big picture terms, from an enterprise standpoint, there's 54 00:03:27,360 --> 00:03:31,960 not a lot of distinctions, you know, between them from an open source standpoint, again, with 55 00:03:31,960 --> 00:03:38,700 the exception that, you know, there are, I don't know, databases, for example, that are sort 56 00:03:38,700 --> 00:03:42,760 of backed by single entity rather than, you know, sort of a sort of wider community, you know, 57 00:03:42,760 --> 00:03:44,140 so that's something you have to take into account. 58 00:03:44,920 --> 00:03:48,360 But by and large, like I said, if you're going to be using infrastructure software, the odds 59 00:03:48,360 --> 00:03:51,580 are pretty good that you're going to be using something that at a minimum is based on open 60 00:03:51,580 --> 00:03:53,420 source software, if not open source software outright. 61 00:03:54,500 --> 00:03:54,780 All right. 62 00:03:55,860 --> 00:04:00,380 Is there, I mean, is there a reason that, do you think there's a reason why the infrastructure 63 00:04:00,380 --> 00:04:02,240 layer is so open source? 64 00:04:02,320 --> 00:04:06,480 Is it just a matter of like, you know, low, like less value add, I guess, or? 65 00:04:07,040 --> 00:04:10,720 Well, you know, I think there's, I think there's any number of reasons for that. 66 00:04:11,620 --> 00:04:16,420 You know, there are, you know, there have been sort of competitive drivers, you know, for 67 00:04:16,420 --> 00:04:19,500 people to contribute in this fashion for, for a long time, right? 68 00:04:19,520 --> 00:04:24,720 So in other words, if you, for example, if you want to go back to the rise of Linux, right? 69 00:04:25,480 --> 00:04:32,040 You know, Linux was, you know, sort of a combination of, you know, developer led in the early days, 70 00:04:32,240 --> 00:04:36,880 you know, where developers wanted to get their hands on essentially an operating system, you 71 00:04:36,880 --> 00:04:41,960 know, without having to pay for a commercial version, you know, something like Windows. 72 00:04:42,680 --> 00:04:48,460 And that was complimented sort of ultimately by companies, you know, that wanted to sort of 73 00:04:48,460 --> 00:04:53,580 decrease the, the stranglehold that Microsoft's enjoyed, you know, via Windows on customers, 74 00:04:53,740 --> 00:04:53,960 right? 75 00:04:54,520 --> 00:04:59,960 So, you know, that sort of ushered in an era in which, again, driven by different motivations, 76 00:05:00,220 --> 00:05:03,600 you know, sometimes it was primarily developer led, sometimes it was more commercially led, 77 00:05:03,800 --> 00:05:05,680 you know, many times it was a combination of both. 78 00:05:06,220 --> 00:05:10,820 You know, we've, we've had an era where open source software has been infrastructure, open 79 00:05:10,820 --> 00:05:13,780 source software, I should say, has essentially become the default. 80 00:05:14,960 --> 00:05:20,980 And as I said, there's no single reason for that, but, you know, over time, it also becomes 81 00:05:20,980 --> 00:05:26,500 a self-fulfilling prophecy in the sense that, you know, if you, if you have open source software, 82 00:05:26,740 --> 00:05:33,240 say at an operating system level and a database level, then the question becomes, okay, why 83 00:05:33,240 --> 00:05:36,460 wouldn't I have that for my orchestration, my container orchestration layer, right? 84 00:05:36,500 --> 00:05:38,280 Why would that sort of uniquely be proprietary? 85 00:05:39,060 --> 00:05:43,240 So, you know, basically what we've, what we've seen over time is, you know, sort of a mix 86 00:05:43,240 --> 00:05:44,900 of factors that led to it. 87 00:05:45,500 --> 00:05:51,380 And then, you know, as I said, it just became a, essentially a self-reinforcing cycle, you 88 00:05:51,380 --> 00:05:54,100 know, over time, you know, it has led us to where we are today. 89 00:05:54,860 --> 00:05:55,100 All right. 90 00:05:55,720 --> 00:06:01,080 You mentioned earlier the, that data, some database projects, for example, are ran by maybe 91 00:06:01,080 --> 00:06:04,280 a single entity or a company rather than, let's say a foundation. 92 00:06:04,620 --> 00:06:09,500 Do you see a difference or should companies think about a difference between something 93 00:06:09,500 --> 00:06:13,200 managed by a foundation versus managed by a single entity? 94 00:06:13,300 --> 00:06:14,340 I guess I can think of reasons. 95 00:06:14,560 --> 00:06:14,720 Yeah. 96 00:06:14,720 --> 00:06:18,820 I can think of examples, I guess, where foundations, you know, are, you know, are better sometimes 97 00:06:18,820 --> 00:06:22,860 where it's like, well, you know, that's not a very active foundation or that's not a 98 00:06:22,860 --> 00:06:23,580 very active community. 99 00:06:23,580 --> 00:06:26,240 So how do you weigh that element of it? 100 00:06:26,700 --> 00:06:30,440 Well, you know, I think, you know, very much like open source versus proprietary software, 101 00:06:30,500 --> 00:06:32,280 there's no sort of one size fits all, right? 102 00:06:32,380 --> 00:06:37,100 You know, so there are situations in which, you know, sort of you will be perfectly adequately 103 00:06:37,100 --> 00:06:40,820 served, you know, by a, an open source project that is backed by a single entity. 104 00:06:42,040 --> 00:06:47,860 You know, and the nature of open source is such that, you know, even in cases where, you know, 105 00:06:47,900 --> 00:06:53,760 for example, MySQL was primarily developed strictly by MySQL for years, right? 106 00:06:54,200 --> 00:06:58,240 And, you know, without getting into the minutia of the licensing and the dual licensing model, 107 00:06:58,580 --> 00:07:01,500 there were many sort of external changes available. 108 00:07:01,840 --> 00:07:07,200 But as if you're talking about vanilla MySQL, that was, you know, sort of a project that 109 00:07:07,200 --> 00:07:11,560 was developed almost entirely by MySQL, the company, at least in the, in the early days, 110 00:07:11,560 --> 00:07:15,940 it's, it's changed, you know, somewhat since then versus Linux, right? 111 00:07:15,980 --> 00:07:20,760 Linux was very much the sort of confluence and collaboration between lots and lots of different 112 00:07:20,760 --> 00:07:21,860 sort of commercial third parties. 113 00:07:22,580 --> 00:07:26,660 Both of those were, you know, very successful projects, you know, sort of in their own right. 114 00:07:26,860 --> 00:07:30,620 So there's no, there's no sort of, you know, sort of hard and fast, you must do one or you 115 00:07:30,620 --> 00:07:31,280 must do the other. 116 00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:37,420 Sort of the, the sort of one thing that does tend to, you know, point people towards foundation 117 00:07:37,420 --> 00:07:43,480 led projects is that you are theoretically at a decreased risk of being locked in, right? 118 00:07:43,820 --> 00:07:49,940 Because, you know, if you are sort of primarily oriented on a project that, you know, comes from 119 00:07:49,940 --> 00:07:54,860 one provider, then, you know, by, you know, sort of by virtue of being the sole provider, 120 00:07:55,120 --> 00:07:59,880 they're able, they're in a position to sort of more easily dictate terms to you, you know, 121 00:07:59,880 --> 00:08:03,820 versus, hey, I can theoretically get this open source project from any one of multiple 122 00:08:03,820 --> 00:08:04,220 players. 123 00:08:05,200 --> 00:08:09,580 In practice, you know, how does that really work is sort of an interesting question. 124 00:08:09,700 --> 00:08:12,220 But yeah, there's no, there's no one way to do this. 125 00:08:13,120 --> 00:08:13,300 All right. 126 00:08:13,780 --> 00:08:16,200 And you mentioned, so we've talked about, you mentioned locking a couple of times. 127 00:08:16,280 --> 00:08:18,960 The one thing we haven't talked about is cost. 128 00:08:19,020 --> 00:08:23,380 And I wonder, you know, I think this might just be, you know, element of maturation in terms 129 00:08:23,380 --> 00:08:25,680 of both buyers and, and the open source community. 130 00:08:25,680 --> 00:08:29,920 But I mean, what's a realistic way to think about if I'm a company or enterprise saying, 131 00:08:29,920 --> 00:08:33,860 hey, listen, we're, you know, we're committing to open source, you know, that, like, that doesn't 132 00:08:33,860 --> 00:08:35,000 mean free, right? 133 00:08:35,000 --> 00:08:39,700 So what, what's a realistic way to think about what, how does that cost structure shift as 134 00:08:39,700 --> 00:08:40,360 you make that switch? 135 00:08:41,240 --> 00:08:43,440 Well, a lot of it depends on the layer, right? 136 00:08:43,500 --> 00:08:46,980 You know, the layer that we're talking about, you know, the most important thing is exactly 137 00:08:46,980 --> 00:08:51,840 what you said, right, which is that open source is not, is not free as in, as in beer, right? 138 00:08:52,600 --> 00:08:57,600 And that has been a sort of less, much less of these days, but certainly years ago, people 139 00:08:57,600 --> 00:09:02,000 would sort of look at this and say, hey, I can sort of go get this off the shelf, you 140 00:09:02,000 --> 00:09:05,880 know, pick a category operating system database, whatever, and say, hey, I can use this for 141 00:09:05,880 --> 00:09:06,080 free. 142 00:09:06,320 --> 00:09:12,100 Well, at the end of the day, most businesses are not in the business of maintaining or developing 143 00:09:12,100 --> 00:09:14,980 software, and therefore, they need help with that, right? 144 00:09:15,180 --> 00:09:19,220 And so at some point or another, you're going to be paying for it, even if you're not paying 145 00:09:19,220 --> 00:09:21,860 for it in the form of an upfront license, you know, sort of as you're used to. 146 00:09:22,660 --> 00:09:27,700 So, yeah, in other words, that's, you know, that's the most sort of important change. 147 00:09:28,420 --> 00:09:36,640 Now, as I mentioned before, you know, with open source, you are, you can theoretically enjoy 148 00:09:36,640 --> 00:09:43,980 lesser costs in the sense that in many cases, there are multiple suppliers versus something 149 00:09:43,980 --> 00:09:46,580 like a Windows, you know, for example, where you can only get that from Microsoft. 150 00:09:47,540 --> 00:09:51,700 And even in cases where, you know, there is, you know, I mentioned MySQL earlier, which 151 00:09:51,700 --> 00:09:56,940 was primarily developed by MySQL, other people can pick up and support that code, right? 152 00:09:57,020 --> 00:10:00,820 So if you don't like the support or service that you're getting from MySQL, theoretically, 153 00:10:00,920 --> 00:10:04,400 you could go to some third party, you know, supplier or Percona or somebody else. 154 00:10:04,860 --> 00:10:09,600 So, you know, that has a, you know, sort of has the ability to, you know, sort of somewhat 155 00:10:09,600 --> 00:10:10,800 decrease your costs. 156 00:10:11,300 --> 00:10:14,740 But, you know, at the end of the day, you know, like I said, the most important sort of 157 00:10:14,740 --> 00:10:16,920 takeaways is that this isn't, you know, this isn't free. 158 00:10:16,960 --> 00:10:21,660 You're going to have to pay for software to be developed and software to be supported and 159 00:10:21,660 --> 00:10:23,000 serviced over time one way or another. 160 00:10:23,660 --> 00:10:24,180 All right. 161 00:10:24,460 --> 00:10:29,460 Yeah, I think, yeah, I think that the, I would ask, is there, do you censor the type of company 162 00:10:29,460 --> 00:10:33,860 or do you, when you're talking to clients, is there a type of company where it makes more 163 00:10:33,860 --> 00:10:38,080 sense maybe to do this DIY or do it yourself approach, right? 164 00:10:38,080 --> 00:10:42,380 Using vanilla open source, using, you know, upstream open source and investing in engineering 165 00:10:42,380 --> 00:10:45,240 versus saying, hey, there's an enterprise version of this product. 166 00:10:45,540 --> 00:10:48,180 That's probably where we should be investing. 167 00:10:48,600 --> 00:10:52,940 Well, I mean, you know, sort of the classic example that, you know, are some of the classic 168 00:10:52,940 --> 00:10:54,160 internet companies, right? 169 00:10:54,240 --> 00:10:59,080 In the sense that, you know, if you are in Amazon, if you're Google, if you're a Facebook 170 00:10:59,080 --> 00:11:05,100 or whoever, right, you're probably not, you're going to be operating at a scale in which licensing 171 00:11:05,100 --> 00:11:09,400 in sort of traditional, even if you're not paying sort of per license of software, if 172 00:11:09,400 --> 00:11:13,500 you're, if you're licensing for support and service on a sort of per machine basis, that 173 00:11:13,500 --> 00:11:14,400 just isn't going to work. 174 00:11:14,460 --> 00:11:14,820 Right. 175 00:11:15,260 --> 00:11:19,100 So at that point, you know, it's one of the reasons that, you know, sort of all of the 176 00:11:19,100 --> 00:11:24,420 above, you know, have invested heavily in, you know, developing, for example, and approving, 177 00:11:24,540 --> 00:11:27,060 you know, MySQL is one example, right? 178 00:11:27,140 --> 00:11:32,460 Google and Facebook, you know, in particular, you know, have had, you know, teams that have 179 00:11:32,460 --> 00:11:36,640 been very, very good at sort of building, maintaining, running that software, you know, 180 00:11:36,660 --> 00:11:38,420 but that's not most enterprises, right? 181 00:11:38,420 --> 00:11:39,620 That's not most businesses. 182 00:11:39,760 --> 00:11:41,780 Most businesses are not going to be anywhere near that scale. 183 00:11:42,620 --> 00:11:49,620 So, you know, I sort of put the sort of companies that are in the bucket of managed, you know, 184 00:11:49,620 --> 00:11:53,320 being in a position to sort of really invest in and manage their own open source software 185 00:11:53,320 --> 00:11:55,060 as a very, very small bucket. 186 00:11:55,180 --> 00:11:58,220 Everyone else for the most part is going to need help at least somewhere. 187 00:11:59,280 --> 00:12:01,860 You know, they may choose to run, you know, certain pieces. 188 00:12:02,600 --> 00:12:06,500 You know, if you are, for example, a small business, many small businesses rely, you know, 189 00:12:06,500 --> 00:12:11,220 historically rely on things like the LAMP stack, you know, to, you know, essentially to run 190 00:12:11,220 --> 00:12:12,440 websites and things of that nature. 191 00:12:12,700 --> 00:12:15,960 And that's not something where you need to go out and buy a license for, you know, say 192 00:12:15,960 --> 00:12:18,960 Red Hat or MySQL and so on, you know. 193 00:12:19,020 --> 00:12:23,240 So, you know, there are things where, okay, you know, this is not a huge area of focus. 194 00:12:24,080 --> 00:12:28,200 But for most businesses, you know, you're probably going to want to pay in something like a 195 00:12:28,200 --> 00:12:29,160 traditional enterprise fashion. 196 00:12:29,940 --> 00:12:30,060 Yeah. 197 00:12:30,140 --> 00:12:34,340 The one thing that struck me lately is looking at a project like Kubernetes, for example, right, 198 00:12:34,340 --> 00:12:35,940 and saying, like, this thing is being updated. 199 00:12:36,060 --> 00:12:38,260 You know, the new releases are coming out every quarter. 200 00:12:38,580 --> 00:12:38,900 Right. 201 00:12:38,960 --> 00:12:41,840 And the long-term support is not, you know, is whatever. 202 00:12:42,000 --> 00:12:43,940 It's like N minus two or whatever it is, right? 203 00:12:44,000 --> 00:12:48,600 And so basically, yes, if you fall behind real quick, if you're not used to, if you're 204 00:12:48,600 --> 00:12:52,240 trying to manage that and you're not used to that pace of change and updates and upgrades. 205 00:12:52,560 --> 00:12:56,740 Well, it's also, you know, is that a good area for you to invest in, right? 206 00:12:56,820 --> 00:13:01,560 In other words, you know, if you're part of your job, you know, is sort of building out 207 00:13:01,560 --> 00:13:03,460 an operating sort of infrastructure at scale. 208 00:13:03,460 --> 00:13:04,080 It might be. 209 00:13:05,080 --> 00:13:10,200 But if your focus rather is, all right, I need to develop, you know, essentially applications, 210 00:13:10,560 --> 00:13:14,740 you know, for my customers, whatever those are, and I don't care as much about the enterprise 211 00:13:14,740 --> 00:13:19,540 or the infrastructure rather, then, yeah, it's probably not going to be a good area for 212 00:13:19,540 --> 00:13:20,320 you to invest in. 213 00:13:20,440 --> 00:13:23,680 So, you know, it really comes down to, you know, sort of what are you doing? 214 00:13:23,740 --> 00:13:24,360 What are you providing? 215 00:13:24,960 --> 00:13:26,460 And what's most important to the organization? 216 00:13:26,580 --> 00:13:27,080 What's your focus? 217 00:13:27,860 --> 00:13:28,140 All right. 218 00:13:28,500 --> 00:13:35,240 And then how do you feel about or what's your thought process in terms of, you know, again, 219 00:13:35,300 --> 00:13:41,360 like if I'm in a large enterprise, you know, going with an open source product first, you 220 00:13:41,360 --> 00:13:43,380 know, that's coming from, even if it's an enterprise version, right? 221 00:13:43,400 --> 00:13:47,200 Even if I'm paying for it, that's coming from, say, a startup of which there are many 222 00:13:47,200 --> 00:13:51,000 or even a startup or, I mean, there are public companies, frankly, that are pretty small in 223 00:13:51,000 --> 00:13:51,720 this space, right? 224 00:13:51,880 --> 00:13:55,180 Relatively speaking, compared with an Elastic, perhaps, right? 225 00:13:55,240 --> 00:14:00,680 Compared with like an open source project coming out of Amazon or Google or Microsoft or one 226 00:14:00,680 --> 00:14:01,440 of these large vendors. 227 00:14:01,580 --> 00:14:03,720 Is there a trade-off there? 228 00:14:04,800 --> 00:14:05,980 Yeah, for sure there are. 229 00:14:06,640 --> 00:14:11,500 Typically, what you find is that, you know, the company, you know, taking Elastic, you know, 230 00:14:11,520 --> 00:14:14,760 they are going to be in many, you know, they're the ones who primarily develop the software. 231 00:14:14,760 --> 00:14:18,500 They employ the vast majority of the engineers in the planet qualified to develop the software. 232 00:14:19,120 --> 00:14:22,860 So for sure, there's going to be a, you know, sort of a technical distinction, right? 233 00:14:22,900 --> 00:14:24,700 In terms of sort of what they're able to offer. 234 00:14:25,860 --> 00:14:30,640 You know, so, you know, depending on what you need, you know, that may be sort of the right 235 00:14:30,640 --> 00:14:30,960 fit. 236 00:14:31,400 --> 00:14:36,220 In other cases, you know, it may be a case of, all right, well, the 20% or whatever the 237 00:14:36,220 --> 00:14:39,740 sort of actual technical delta is, you know, it's not super important to me. 238 00:14:39,780 --> 00:14:43,220 I just have some basic needs, in which case I'll go to a mega cloud provider, right? 239 00:14:43,220 --> 00:14:44,860 I'll go to one of the hyperscale folks. 240 00:14:45,440 --> 00:14:47,460 And yes, this is not going to be bleeding edge. 241 00:14:47,540 --> 00:14:50,360 And I may lack features A, B, and C, but I don't care about those, right? 242 00:14:50,420 --> 00:14:53,520 So again, it really comes down to what are you trying to do? 243 00:14:54,500 --> 00:14:58,860 And how strategic, I guess, is the asset in question? 244 00:14:59,380 --> 00:15:04,360 And if the asset, you know, in question is strategic, then, you know, it's pretty reasonable 245 00:15:04,360 --> 00:15:09,940 at least to consider the people developing that asset as your first stop, you know, versus 246 00:15:09,940 --> 00:15:14,560 folks that are more in the business of, you know, essentially, hey, I run this, sort of 247 00:15:14,560 --> 00:15:15,740 then maintain this at scale. 248 00:15:16,200 --> 00:15:17,820 You know, those are meaningfully different things. 249 00:15:18,380 --> 00:15:18,660 All right. 250 00:15:19,020 --> 00:15:19,320 For sure. 251 00:15:19,660 --> 00:15:19,860 Okay. 252 00:15:19,960 --> 00:15:24,280 And then the other question, I mean, and speaking of Elastic, this is like, should 253 00:15:24,280 --> 00:15:28,360 enterprise users care, particularly their buyers care about, there's been a kind of a spate 254 00:15:28,360 --> 00:15:32,600 of modified open source licenses that have come out over the past couple of years. 255 00:15:33,340 --> 00:15:38,240 You know, my take personally, and I could be way off, is that this is probably more, and 256 00:15:38,240 --> 00:15:42,940 this is definitely an anti-competitive sort of maneuver versus something trying to, you 257 00:15:42,940 --> 00:15:44,880 know, lock in customers. 258 00:15:45,540 --> 00:15:47,520 But I'm curious what your take on that is. 259 00:15:48,440 --> 00:15:49,220 I would agree. 260 00:15:50,220 --> 00:15:54,980 I tend to think that, well, put it this way. 261 00:15:54,980 --> 00:16:00,840 I think the behaviors, the trend towards these sort of anti-compete licenses, you know, or 262 00:16:00,840 --> 00:16:06,660 hybrid licenses, you know, as I have typically referred to them, I don't think are going to 263 00:16:06,660 --> 00:16:10,960 yield the benefits, you know, that the folks employing these licenses expect. 264 00:16:11,560 --> 00:16:16,920 So I think from a strategic standpoint, these efforts are misguided at best and damaging 265 00:16:16,920 --> 00:16:17,460 at worst. 266 00:16:17,940 --> 00:16:22,640 As far as the enterprise buyers, you know, should they care, you know, the folks employing 267 00:16:22,640 --> 00:16:28,220 these licenses will tell you no, in the sense that, you know, look, you know, in many cases, 268 00:16:28,220 --> 00:16:33,500 if you're engaged in a commercial relationship, very likely you're buying your way out of, you 269 00:16:33,500 --> 00:16:36,080 know, the sort of the complicated license. 270 00:16:37,040 --> 00:16:38,820 And so therefore you don't care. 271 00:16:39,800 --> 00:16:43,260 My take is, is that that's incorrect for a couple of reasons. 272 00:16:43,400 --> 00:16:48,500 One, that assumes that you are aware of all the usage within your company, which tends not 273 00:16:48,500 --> 00:16:49,740 to be the case in my experience. 274 00:16:49,980 --> 00:16:54,800 In other words, you may be aware of, you know, sort of most of the usage, but if somebody is 275 00:16:54,800 --> 00:16:58,680 in an area of your company and is using the license in a way that is incompatible with 276 00:16:58,680 --> 00:17:02,840 these new provisions, then, you know, you may end up running into difficulties as a result 277 00:17:02,840 --> 00:17:03,160 of that. 278 00:17:03,660 --> 00:17:08,000 But also at scale, you know, it presents a, it presents a challenge for businesses, right? 279 00:17:08,540 --> 00:17:15,320 Because basically, you know, we have evolved into a world in which open source is essentially 280 00:17:15,320 --> 00:17:21,420 accepted at most mainstream enterprises because the licenses themselves are standard, predictable 281 00:17:21,420 --> 00:17:22,840 and understood, right? 282 00:17:22,860 --> 00:17:27,680 So over a period of, you know, better than 20 years, you know, these licenses have been released, 283 00:17:28,000 --> 00:17:34,560 embedded and, you know, have really stood a, you know, withstood a fair amount of legal 284 00:17:34,560 --> 00:17:39,560 scrutiny, both on a market basis and within sort of individual enterprise buyers, which 285 00:17:39,560 --> 00:17:44,780 is why most enterprises say, okay, we have a sort of approved list of, you know, you can 286 00:17:44,780 --> 00:17:49,040 use, you know, these licenses, you know, if the project you want to use is one of these 287 00:17:49,040 --> 00:17:51,180 licenses, you're fine and you don't have to come talk to us. 288 00:17:51,600 --> 00:17:56,360 And the difficulty is, is that with a lot of these modified open source licenses, they, 289 00:17:56,580 --> 00:18:01,640 you know, aggressively and in some cases intentionally blur the lines between what is open source 290 00:18:01,640 --> 00:18:03,320 and what is not, right? 291 00:18:03,320 --> 00:18:08,240 So, you know, one of the, one of the sort of implications of a couple of these is, well, 292 00:18:08,240 --> 00:18:13,100 you can't offer this as a service, you know, and the intended target there is Amazon or, 293 00:18:13,100 --> 00:18:16,280 or, you know, Microsoft or whomever, you know, any of the hyperscale cloud providers. 294 00:18:16,480 --> 00:18:21,600 But what if you're in a scenario where a centralized IT, you know, runs, you know, sort of the 295 00:18:21,600 --> 00:18:25,800 software and then offers it up to divisions as a service, do you trigger that license or 296 00:18:25,800 --> 00:18:26,140 not? 297 00:18:27,320 --> 00:18:31,100 That's something that previously you would not have had to worry about because we, we 298 00:18:31,100 --> 00:18:32,640 understood the boundaries of these licenses. 299 00:18:33,860 --> 00:18:35,240 Now, maybe you do. 300 00:18:35,940 --> 00:18:41,540 And, you know, what we've seen, you know, to date is, is that, you know, each new sort of 301 00:18:41,540 --> 00:18:45,880 hybrid or, or sort of non-compete license seems to encourage the next. 302 00:18:46,480 --> 00:18:51,720 And that can lead to, you know, sort of what is called license proliferation, which is something 303 00:18:51,720 --> 00:18:57,080 that the OSI, you know, has, has fought for years, you know, many, many people who have 304 00:18:57,080 --> 00:19:00,420 tenure in this industry on the open source side have fought as well. 305 00:19:00,640 --> 00:19:05,620 And what that essentially means is that, you know, licenses work essentially, if we have 306 00:19:05,620 --> 00:19:10,700 a, a more limited set of understood licenses, if everybody starts coming up with their own 307 00:19:10,700 --> 00:19:15,880 license, then every sort of license consideration is a one-off, right? 308 00:19:15,880 --> 00:19:17,500 And that just, that just doesn't work. 309 00:19:17,880 --> 00:19:22,580 So in other words, if I have the GPL or the Apache license and they apply to whole swaths 310 00:19:22,580 --> 00:19:27,340 of products, I can evaluate a license once and then approve dozens of these things. 311 00:19:27,760 --> 00:19:32,380 If every, you know, if, if every sort of new vendor comes out with, here's my license and 312 00:19:32,380 --> 00:19:35,900 here's my license and here's my license, you know, that's not good for the vendors. 313 00:19:35,980 --> 00:19:38,860 It's certainly not good for the businesses who are going to be, you know, basically having 314 00:19:38,860 --> 00:19:39,720 to review more licenses. 315 00:19:39,720 --> 00:19:44,060 So yeah, I am, I am very strongly against these licenses. 316 00:19:44,060 --> 00:19:46,420 I have recommended against them both publicly and privately. 317 00:19:46,420 --> 00:19:51,660 Um, but at present they seem to be, they seem to be rowdy, uh, for better or it might be 318 00:19:51,660 --> 00:19:52,080 for worse. 319 00:19:52,220 --> 00:19:53,860 Great news for legal teams though, right? 320 00:19:54,420 --> 00:19:54,660 Yeah. 321 00:19:54,660 --> 00:19:55,220 It never stops. 322 00:19:55,280 --> 00:19:56,400 More work for them. 323 00:19:57,400 --> 00:20:02,120 And then finally, Steve, like, you know, so the other, so there's obviously the consumption 324 00:20:02,120 --> 00:20:06,840 side of open source, but how do you think, how do you think organizations should look at 325 00:20:06,840 --> 00:20:09,560 like the contributing side of open source, right? 326 00:20:09,600 --> 00:20:13,860 Whether it's contributing back to projects they use or whether it's, you know, actually, 327 00:20:14,040 --> 00:20:17,760 you know, starting their own projects and open sourcing them, is there value in doing 328 00:20:17,760 --> 00:20:18,040 that? 329 00:20:18,860 --> 00:20:19,760 Yeah, for sure. 330 00:20:20,140 --> 00:20:22,460 Uh, you know, the effort there is high, right? 331 00:20:22,460 --> 00:20:26,920 The education side is, is, uh, non-trivial, um, for sure. 332 00:20:27,100 --> 00:20:28,660 But in other words, like, think about it this way. 333 00:20:28,660 --> 00:20:34,380 If you, if you, um, you know, if you're an organization of sufficient size, you know, that 334 00:20:34,380 --> 00:20:39,500 you run some open source piece of infrastructure and you have a patch, you have a fix, you have 335 00:20:39,500 --> 00:20:42,800 a, you know, sort of whatever, something, you know, to potentially contribute back to the 336 00:20:42,800 --> 00:20:45,780 project, uh, you know, essentially you have two options, right? 337 00:20:45,820 --> 00:20:50,940 Which is, uh, you know, try to contribute that back upstream to the project, um, and have 338 00:20:50,940 --> 00:20:57,640 that become part of the core or, uh, essentially applying your unique patch every time a new 339 00:20:57,640 --> 00:20:58,880 release is, is come out. 340 00:20:59,020 --> 00:21:02,640 And in many cases that'll void your, your support, your warranty, right? 341 00:21:02,780 --> 00:21:07,060 And that doesn't seem like a terribly complicated choice, you know, to most people. 342 00:21:07,700 --> 00:21:13,180 Um, so that's why we're seeing sort of more, more thoughtful policies about contributing 343 00:21:13,180 --> 00:21:14,340 back to projects. 344 00:21:14,760 --> 00:21:19,220 And it can be difficult in some circumstances because, you know, what you hear from, from 345 00:21:19,220 --> 00:21:23,800 enterprises is, I don't want to subsidize the development of, you know, you know, this 346 00:21:23,800 --> 00:21:25,080 vendor's product and so on. 347 00:21:25,480 --> 00:21:29,240 Um, but we're, we're sort of gradually getting people to the, to the point where it's like, 348 00:21:29,280 --> 00:21:31,340 look, this isn't, you're not paying to develop it. 349 00:21:31,380 --> 00:21:33,820 You're paying not to have to repatch this thing over and over. 350 00:21:34,160 --> 00:21:34,600 Right. 351 00:21:34,660 --> 00:21:38,820 So, you know, progress I think is being made there launching their own open source projects. 352 00:21:39,060 --> 00:21:43,160 Um, it, that is a more complicated question. 353 00:21:43,260 --> 00:21:44,620 It can be a very, very good thing. 354 00:21:44,620 --> 00:21:48,180 Uh, you know, Capital One has done this with, you know, things like Hygieia and so on. 355 00:21:48,700 --> 00:21:53,660 Um, it's harder simply because, you know, basically launching a project, you know, takes a fair 356 00:21:53,660 --> 00:21:54,580 amount of time and effort. 357 00:21:55,220 --> 00:22:00,480 Uh, and that may or may not be of, of, you know, sort of benefit, you know, uh, to the 358 00:22:00,480 --> 00:22:01,340 parent organization. 359 00:22:01,840 --> 00:22:07,180 Um, but in some cases, you know, if the, if the software itself is valuable, uh, and, you 360 00:22:07,180 --> 00:22:11,960 know, sort of meaningfully, um, you know, received by the market, you can find, uh, you 361 00:22:11,960 --> 00:22:15,560 know, homes, you know, in, in the form of foundations that will take on that code for 362 00:22:15,560 --> 00:22:15,800 you. 363 00:22:15,800 --> 00:22:21,140 And therefore you get to offset some of the, oh, legal trademark IP validation, et cetera. 364 00:22:21,540 --> 00:22:23,660 Um, overhead, you know, of maintaining these projects. 365 00:22:23,660 --> 00:22:24,880 So there are benefits. 366 00:22:24,880 --> 00:22:28,380 That's a, that's a more complicated question though, than just sort of contributing fixes 367 00:22:28,380 --> 00:22:29,140 and patches back. 368 00:22:29,400 --> 00:22:29,480 Right. 369 00:22:29,540 --> 00:22:32,620 And kind of the implicit benefit too, is, is recruiting. 370 00:22:32,880 --> 00:22:33,240 Correct. 371 00:22:33,300 --> 00:22:37,760 In the sense that one, one, you look cool and two, but if, but two, if you're, if you're 372 00:22:37,760 --> 00:22:42,560 using this and contributing stuff, you actually, you, you're, you're a pool of talent to come 373 00:22:42,560 --> 00:22:43,260 work on your stuff. 374 00:22:43,420 --> 00:22:45,740 It's just immeasurably larger because there's the learning curve. 375 00:22:46,800 --> 00:22:46,900 Kind of. 376 00:22:46,920 --> 00:22:47,120 Yeah. 377 00:22:47,200 --> 00:22:49,520 The learn, the learning curve is, is, is for sure better. 378 00:22:49,520 --> 00:22:53,780 And you can also recruit, you know, sort of in many cases, uh, better talent because, 379 00:22:54,260 --> 00:22:57,980 you know, if, if, you know, like if I'm a talented engineer and I can pick between two 380 00:22:57,980 --> 00:23:01,920 options, you know, one in which I write a whole bunch of code, nobody ever sees it, or 381 00:23:01,920 --> 00:23:06,120 two, I write a whole bunch of code, uh, you know, on behalf of an enterprise and it makes 382 00:23:06,120 --> 00:23:11,080 its way into, um, you know, sort of these, these sort of public, uh, open source projects. 383 00:23:11,360 --> 00:23:13,760 I'm more marketable, you know, sort of in the second example. 384 00:23:14,040 --> 00:23:17,260 So, you know, yeah, it certainly, you know, it helps with recruiting. 385 00:23:17,260 --> 00:23:21,240 It helps with, um, you know, sort of the, the talent, uh, that you can recruit. 386 00:23:21,360 --> 00:23:23,020 It helps for retention in many cases. 387 00:23:23,840 --> 00:23:24,080 All right. 388 00:23:24,180 --> 00:23:25,300 It seems like a great place to stop. 389 00:23:25,380 --> 00:23:25,760 Thank you. 390 00:23:26,600 --> 00:23:27,180 Not at all. 391 00:23:27,240 --> 00:23:27,560 My pleasure. 392 00:23:27,900 --> 00:23:28,560 There you have it. 393 00:23:28,620 --> 00:23:29,740 I hope you learned something. 394 00:23:30,380 --> 00:23:36,300 For more information about Redmonk and to read the analysis from Steve and his crew, you 395 00:23:36,300 --> 00:23:38,400 can visit redmonk.com. 396 00:23:38,480 --> 00:23:41,860 That's R-E-D-M-O-N-K.com. 397 00:23:42,240 --> 00:23:49,380 And you can also follow Steven on Twitter at, at S-O-Grady, the letter S-O-G-R-A-D-Y. 398 00:23:50,120 --> 00:23:55,460 For more about Pivotal's broad suite of products and services, you can visit pivotal.io. 399 00:23:55,980 --> 00:24:01,800 And again, as I mentioned in the intro, for more information about, or for more content, 400 00:24:02,040 --> 00:24:07,540 frankly, on, on all things digital transformation and some of the next gen cloud native technologies, 401 00:24:07,540 --> 00:24:14,960 you can visit pivotal.io slash intersect or follow us on Twitter at, at intersect IT.