(soft rock music) >> Announcer: Live from Los Angeles, it's theCUBE. Covering Open Source Summit North America 2017. Brought to you by the Linux Foundation and Red Hat. >> Hello everyone, welcome to a special Cube coverage here in Los Angeles, California for The Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit in North America. I'm John Furrier, co-host of The Cube. This week I'll be co-hosting with Jeff Frick and Stu Miniman who will be here shortly. He's out getting data from the keynotes and scouring the community for information. Two days of coverage of line up here. Open source is changing the world. More than ever, open source is continuing to accelerate. Over 23 million developers now actively programming with open source. Where the world economy is now based on open source, relies on open source, and where open source and code is changing culture. Jeff, had a great keynote from the Linux Foundation open source community, and really this is an accumulation of many, many years of coverage for us in the developer community. Kind of sitting above all the different communities like Stack Overflow, all the different source foundational communities: Open Stack Summit, Cooper Netty's, KubeCon, now CNCF, a variety of other shows, and obviously industry shows. And this is now, we're seeing where open source is becoming so mainstream on a global scale, we're seeing something unprecedented in the history of the computer industry and that is the role of open source in society. And I think the number one message we're seeing is that the Linux software has been around for 25 plus years. Linus Torvalds was on stage today kind of like reminiscing. He's been Time Man of the Year, he's won the Nobel Prize in Computer Science, the Millennial Award I think it's called. Essentially the top award. 17th most important person in this decade. Linux is now a main force. People are relying on open source, and then look no further than the Equifax pact that has changed 150 plus million people in terms of their, potentially identity fraud out there. It's from open source software, so you're starting to see the reliance of open source, where a sustainable ecosystem is continuing to grow, but security is a concern, and which projects to join. There's so much action, I called it open bar and open source. There's so much goodness flowing in from Google, IBM, you name the companies out there. People are being paid to learn and write code at this point in history. This is a historic moment for the open source community. As society starts to be molded by the shape of code in the keynote they call it a Do-Acracy. For doers and builders who are changing democracy on a global scale. This is the big theme and obviously a slew of announcements on a project basis: Certification for Cooper Netty's, new people joining, the CNCF and a variety of different projects. But certainly from our standpoint and theCUBE, we covered a lot of the game of this past eight years. Certainly the Cloud and big data, and the software ecosystem. Software-defined Data Center to software eating the world, Data Science eating the world. This is only going to continue with things like Blockchain, virtual reality. And as fake news and bought networks in the cloud continuing to change the notion of what the source is, not just source code, source of information. More than ever, the role of communities will play a front and center role in all of this. >> Yeah I think that's as big of a deal as the software piece, John, is the role of communities that open source creates. And it's a different way of thinking about things. It's a different way of trying to get more innovation. It's acknowledging that the smartest people aren't necessarily in your four walls. So it's really an attitude, but I want to get your take 'cause there's a couple models of stewardship in the open source world. We're here at Open Source Summit in L.A. Linux Foundation event. Linux Foundation is taking on more and more of the stewardship of many of these projects, kind of bringing it under one roof. We see another model where the stewardship is kind of driven by one particular company, right, that's trying to build a commercial business around an open source stack, but there's a couple companies that have become almost the defacto steward for a new and evolving open source space. How do you see the pros and the cons against those two models. Ya know it's great is you got a great steward, it's maybe not so great is the steward is not so terrific and you get a conflict between the steward of the technology and the actual open source project. >> Well, Jeff, and this is the fundamental question on everyone's mind here, as we continue to see the communities grow. And also the scale out of communities as well as the number of overall lines of code. So a couple of key things, one is: We call it the ruling class, that's the elephant in the room here at the show is, we see it in politics, identity politics shaping our national level and certainly on a global scale. China blocking all block chain, ICOs, and all virtual currencies as of today. You're starting to see the intersection of geopolitics with code. Where the notion of a democracy, or democratization, or do-acracy, as one of the speakers has called it. You can think of code, lines of code, as a vote. You write a line of code, that's a vote into an ecosystem. And we're starting to see these notion of distributed labor, distributed control changing the face of capitalism. Ya know, it's really happening, and the value that corporations are creating in this new model is a real dynamic. And really what's happening is the change from a ruling class, even in the software world. The success of open source has always been based upon self-governance. Self-governance implies a group collective that manages and approves things. That group collective, some would argue, has not been inclusive over the years. Certainly the role of women in tech has been an issue. And so what you have developing is the potential for a ruling class of what shapes the future culture. Certainly there's a no-brainer with women in tech that there should be more women in tech because half the people in the world are women. They're users of software. Software is going to be relied on by all aspects of our world. Not just in Earth but also in Space. So, the notion of ruling class is changing and the inclusion is a huge deal. Onboarding new people. Building on individual successes, and building it together as a group relies on inclusion. It relies on inlcusion of people, and requires inclusion of how the self-governance goes forward. And again, this is a major concept in this world as it evolves because like I said, open source is relied on, people are leaning on it at a tier one level. Software that's powering the telescope in the North Pole, in the Antarctic to Space stations all use Linux. And this is, again, what we're seeing. Getting technology in the hands so people can use code to shape culture. That is ultimately a big thing, we're at a tipping point right now, were at an inflection point, whatever you want to call it. Open source is continuing to grow, and that culture-shaping notion of code equals culture, is really what it's all about, and the role of community is more important than ever. And inclusion is the number one factor in my opinion. >> The other interesting thing to get your take, John, is Android. So Linux has been around for a long time, everybody knows about Linux, and there was lots of flavors and it all kind of aggregated. Android is really growing as a significant factor, and I think it was announced here that Samsung has now joined the project. And there's a really interesting little gizmo now that you can take your Samsung phone, stick it in a docking station, and have it power a big giant screen and a keyboard. And so, ya know, as Android has developed as the power in the handheld devices, it's closer and closer, it's not surpassing what we have in these things. It's another big kind of shot in the arm towards the open source ecosystem that really wasn't as significant as it is today. >> Well I mean the Android Operating System is again, just an operating system in the minds of the tech world. Obviously consumers use it, device, huge market share iOS Android and even other operating systems. Who knows, maybe it'll be the year of Linux on the phone, at some point. But you're starting to see software powering devices. This is the internet of things phenomenon. This is where you start to see trends that build out of that notion, like Blockchain, like A.I. are going to start impacting lives. And that's one thing that Linus Torvalds was saying on stage was, the most rewarding thing in his career with all the accolades aside; the fact that he's had an impact on people's lives has been the number one thing that motivates him. That's what motivates most people. So I would say that the Android significance is one of pure numbers. More market share, more penetration for the user experience. And the user experience is a cultural issue. Back to culture equals code. And, inclusively powering everyone to get involved and be part of it, either as a user or a participant in the community or a coder, really is about deciding the future, and if people do not get involved and are not included, then the ruling class will decide what's best for the culture, and that is not the theme here today. The theme here in open source for the next level is letting the code and the technologists in an open collaborative self-governing way be in communities, be inclusive and shape the culture, letting the code shape the culture. And Android, again, is another straw in the camel's back that allows for more penetration and more influence. More relevance, and continued relevance of technology. Providers, coders, communities and certainly individuals. And again, collective intelligence is a group phenomenon. That is a community powered theme. That is what's going on here and again, this is to me, is very radical disruption to the global society. >> Get your take John, 'cause then you get kind of forking and things kind of move and groove, it's kind of like a river, finds another path, right. And you had the container and docker really drove a lot of activation on the container side. Google comes out strong with Cooper Netty's, another open source project that we just heard at the VMworld a week ago. Pivotal get on stage with Michael Dell and Pat Gelsinger talking about kind of a new derivation that they're kicking out that's not Cooper Netty's. I forget what it's called, a different, cube-something >> John: PKS. >> PKS. >> John: A little container service. >> Continues to evolve and kind of fork. So what's your take on kind of how these things continue to morph. >> Well that's a good point, I mean you're talking about vendors in industry. Industry is a term that they use here it's kind of a polite term for saying companies with a vol for capitalism. And capitalism, one of the factors involved in what's going on here: corporate value is not a bad thing. But capitalism driving the culture is not what it wants. Distributed labor, distributed control, changing the face and capitalism is about the role of open source. So there's a role for industry and corporations. The issue is that as vendors, in the old model, which is put stuff out there, control the standards bodies and influence the industry through their proprietary mechanisms. That's changed and they don't have the proprietary nature but they can try to use their muscle and money. That's not happening anymore, and I think forking, as you mentioned, the ability to take a piece of code and build on it, whether it's a framework or libraries out there. And writing custom code is what Jim Zemlin was talking about with us is the code sandwich. That 90 percent of the software out there is open source and only ten percent is highly differentiated. That is the programming model. So, to me I think forking is a wonderful democracy dynamic in open source. If you don't like it, you can fork it. And if it doesn't make it, then the Do-Acracy voted with their code. So, this a term you call voting with your code. We can use the term in marketing called people vote with their wallet, vote with their feet. In communities, in open source they vote with their code. So to me, forking if a good thing that provides great opportunity for innovation. The issue of vendors pushing stuff out there is what I call the calling the bullshit factor. Communities that are vibrant and sustainable they can call bullshit on this right away. So, companies can't operate on the old model, they have to ingratiate in, they have to make real contribution, and they have to be community citizens. Otherwise you're going to get called out for pushing their vendorware. And that is interesting, and I'm not saying that they are doing that but Pivotal is a great example. Ya know, Pivotal put out a pretty good service, makes Cooper Netty's manageable, Google Cloud engines tied directly to it. So any updates coming from the Google Cloud engine gets updated into Pivotal, that's the value to users. If it sucks, if it doesn't work well, people won't use it. So, voting with your code, voting with your feet, is what people will do. So there's now a new level of triangulation or a heat shield if you will from vendor dominance, throwing their muscle around and even Microsoft is here with Linux. It's a huge testament to the success of Linux, and that's really what it's all about. >> Yeah, Microsoft is here, Intel is here. A lot of big companies are here and a lot of, in the early days, people had issues with the big companies coming in. But, clearly they're a huge part of the ecosystem, they write big checks, they help fund nice events like this. So the last question for you John, before we get into it: Two days of wall to wall coverage, what are you looking for? What are some of the questions that you've got on top of your mind that we'd hope to get some answers over the next couple weeks, or couple days, excuse me. >> Well I saw a great quote up on stage, was called May The Source Be With You. And, it was kind of a Star Wars reference: May the force be with, may the source code be with you, if you will. I'm looking for things that changed people's lives, 'cause the theme in open source now is the reliance of code in all aspects of global life here on earth and in space now as we see it. That the quality of life for society depends on open source. And again, 90 percent of most great software is written in open source, ten percent is differentiated and unique. That's the model they call the code sandwich. It's easy to code, it's easier to get involved. There's more communities that are robust and vibrant. If it impacts the quality of life, so that's one thing. The second thing I'm looking for is, we're looking at some of these new future trends and I've been really thinking a lot about lately as you know in theCUBE, is the role of Blockchains and these really disrupted technologies. We've started to see the power of the user in communities where there's technologies empowering the individual at the same time creating a group dynamic where the groups can build. So, individual success can be part of something that contributes to a group that can build on top of it. That's an open source flywheel that works great. I'm looking for Blockchain, I'm looking for those new technologies that are going to be in that vein. And of course, the outcome is: Does it impact lives, does it make the quality of life better? >> Alright. Well you heard it there, we'll be here for two days of wall to wall coverage. We're at the Open Source Summit North America in L.A. It's pretty funny, right next to Staples Center. John, I don't think we've ever been right downtown L.A. You're watching theCUBE, we'll be back with our next guest after this short break, thanks for watching. (light electronic music)