>> Announcer: Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering DevNet Create 2017, brought to you by Cisco. >> Okay, welcome back, everyone. We're here live in San Francisco for theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Cisco's new inaugural event called DevNet Create, an extension, an augmentation, a community-focused event of their DevNet community, which is a Cisco developer community, now out in the wild. Our next guest is Steven Pousty, lead developer and evangelist at Red Hat, I'm John Furrier, and my co-host Peter Burris. Steven, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, thank you very much. It's exciting to be here. >> Great to have you on. We were just talking before on camera, getting all animated like, "Hey, turn the cameras on. "We got to get this conversation." We're talking about open source and really looking at some of the trends, but more importantly, the impact. >> Steven: Right. >> Also, we've had you guys on many times on theCUBE. We covered Red Hat Summit, Jim Whitehurst. So, abstractions layers in software, open source ecosystems, you have a background in nature. >> Steven: Yeah. I- >> And ecosystems, literally. >> Steven: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, actually I have my PhD in ecology. I'm actually a conservation biologist by training, but IT and computer programming pays the bills a lot better than-- >> Hey, anthropologists and ecologists do very well in the tech world, believe it or not. >> Steven: Yeah, I love big data. >> Peter: And philosophers. >> Yeah, and philosophers. Yeah, with all that logic and the ontologies and all that. >> Ontologies and symbiotics. >> Steven: Yep, yep. >> John: Okay, so I got to ask you, obviously Red Hat has been really the poster child for open source companies going public. We've heard since over the past generation, "The Red Hat of blank, The Red Hat of," and that got played. Certainly we downplayed that. People were trying to call Cloudera the Red Hat of Hadoop (mumbles) realizing that that's never going to happen. You were a once in a generational company, but Red Hat was a tier two company back in those days. Now, open source is certainly tier one software across the board, and I think this event at Cisco kind of amplifies that. Look at it, open source has gone a whole nother generation. A lot of young kids coming in. It's tier one software. The business model is open source. Four new companies just went public recently. So, done deal. >> Right, I mean, I think if you look in the technology ecosystem as a whole, if you don't start with open source you either have some incredibly magic sauce that no one else has or you're done. You couldn't even look at the movies... The arch enemy when I was growing up in software was Microsoft of open source, right? If you look at them now with Satya, they've made great strides to be part of the open source ecosystem at a real level, not like just lip service like they used to do sometimes. Like when I interact with some of our Microsoft partners, you can tell that there's a different change and they really believe in that open source-- >> Microsoft used to be known as lip service and vaporware and they used to kind of freeze the market with their monopoly power as some would say, but more recently they've... Back in the old days, Linux was a cancer. Steve Ballmer said, "Linux is the cancer to the industry." >> Steven: And so-- >> John: Now they're doing Linux with .NET. >> And so at the Red Hat Summit just recently I did the Microsoft keynote, I was the Red Hat person on the Microsoft keynote, and we demonstrated .NET Core running in OpenShift on Linux machines, we demonstrated SQL Server running in containers on OpenShift, and then for the end we showed some of the community work, because both of us are involved in Kubernetes. We actually showed a Windows container spinning up IIS being orchestrated from a Linux OpenShift. So, it was actually the Linux server, the Linux OpenShift server, was talking to Windows containers and spinning up Windows containers on the fly. So, I never thought that would've happened. So, it's definitely a sea change. >> And boy was that partly the sea change, we can encapsulate it, is that we used to think in terms of winners and losers in the tech industry, and now it's big winners and less big winners, but the question is how is, I think the realization Microsoft had, is that open source does not demarcate winners from losers. It demarcates, or rather suggests, a new way of thinking about how software gets developed, how software gets integrated and packaged, and ultimately how software gets diffused. So, talk a little bit about this notion of the new world of winners and winners and how this thing moves together, almost in an ecosystem type of way, so that the capabilities overall improve over time, because that's really where we're going is digital business being able to do more for customers. >> Right, and I think that's one of the things that you're seeing coming out from the open source world now is it's becoming less and less about I have this technology versus this is the technology, this open source technology, that we use to help solve your business problems. I gave a talk about this a couple times. There's a concept in ecology called, now I'm blocking on the word, but you probably came across it in school, probably even elementary school. It's the idea that you have bare earth, and then a few plants show up and they start breaking it up, and those plants create a condition where new trees come in, and then it just keeps going and going and going, and then you finally have a rainforest at the end, right? >> Peter: Diversity? >> No, it's-- >> Anyway, we don't want to put you out. >> Yeah, I'm stuck on the word and I can't remember-- >> Here's an ecology question. I saw a Facebook thing where in Yellowstone National Park they introduced four wolves to the ecosystem, and all of a sudden the rivers are no longer wide, they're tighter, there's pools. So four wolves create dynamics. So there's a coexistence, but there's still wolves. >> Right, and so the-- >> John: Who's the wolves in the industry? >> See, that's the thing, it's not that. Just because there are wolves in the industry doesn't mean that they control the entire ecosystem. So I think what I say at the end of this talk is there is no right or wrong about where you are in the ecosystem or in your evolution as an ecosystem, right? There is what is right for your business problem. So, we have this in our, especially in the United States, we have this idea of you're either the winner in this space, you're the cloud solution and you're the winner, or you're not, you're nothing. It's like the Talladega Nights, "If you're not first, you're last!" >> He runs around in his underwear. That's your outcome if you have that strategy. >> Great strategy. >> It was such a good movie. But so the point that I was trying to make in this talk is there's lots of different... So like with bird species, when they need to share a tree, there can be six different species all in the same tree, and what they do is what's called niche differentiation. That means, "Oh, I'm going to specialize "in the tops of the trees "and I'm going to only eat this type of caterpillar." And the one on the bottom says, "I specialize on beetles and I do this." And I think what you're seeing with the open source stuff is all these things can coexist. Like GNOME versus KDE. Everybody was claiming GNOME or KDE was the winner for forever. They're still around for forever. So, what I think with this cloud software as well where everybody is like, "Oh, this is the one winning," or this is the, there's a whole host of places for them all to live, and with open source I think things just live forever. >> John: What's your ecosystem analogy that coexistence is actually a better philosophy looking at the big picture than some dominant wolf or whatever. >> That's right, it's the diversity, it's the mutualism, it's the coevolution, it's the right diversity. Like a desert is actually a beautiful place if you go to it. Like we like to pick on the desert, but if you actually spend time in the desert it's gorgeous. There's nothing wrong with the desert. So, if you're some company who doesn't need Kubernetes and all the other pieces in this huge cloud environment, don't feel like that's something you have to take on. >> Peter: But they are the desert. >> That's right, but they are the desert. But, all my PhD research was in the desert, and I used to hate it, because I started this little rolly polly in the desert, and by the time I left I was like, "Oh, I miss the desert when I don't have it." >> John: The sunrises are beautiful. >> Sunrises are beautiful. You can see forever. If you actually pay attention to the small things... All I'm trying to point out is people live in Kansas, people live in New York, people live all over, and they usually find where they live, unless it's some disgusting dump, they say this is a beautiful-- >> Peter: They find beauty in it. >> Yeah, and I think it shouldn't necessarily be everybody has to get to the same place and use all the same technology. There's technology reasons for everything. >> So, I want to pick up on that concept. So the industry used to be pretty much structured around asset specificity. This asset does this for you. As we move more to a software orientation that notion of asset specificity starts to blend away. I think that's one of the seminal features of digital business and digital business transformation is the reduction of asset specificity, but it does mean that increasingly we need to focus on what I'll call value specificity, that we're moving away from the asset being the dominant determinant of structure and how you do things to the value that's being generated and the value that's being presented in any number of different fashions, and that becomes what dictates or describes who you are, what you do, both as an individual, also as a company, as well as a piece of software data. So talk a bit about kind of this notion of niche specialization being more tied to the value that you create as opposed to the asset that you bring. >> That's right, and we're seeing this a lot with our customers, who... You know, OpenShift is based off of Kubernetes and Docker and all that stuff, and containers, and so what we're seeing is a lot of companies come to us and say, "Well, I want to use OpenShift for this. "I want to use OpenShift for that." It's no more that we go to customers and say, "Here's OpenShift and you will use it "for purposes X, Y, and Z." What it is is well, that IT group might say well I've got three different business groups that I have to produce stuff for them that they can use. And they'll say, "Can I use Kubernetes for this? "Can I use, oh, I can't? "Well, then I'll get something else for this, or can we adapt-- >> Or complement it. >> Yeah, it's about creating value for the business unit, and it's becoming more and more that now. I think it's an evolution that we've seen, again, this evolution of stuff with the shadow IT and all that stuff. It became less about you're some sort of specialized high priest with this special asset that only you know how to control, I know how to do GIS software, I know how to do big data, no, what value do you produce for me? I don't care that you can buy these kinds of servers and provision them. If I can't use them, what does that do for me, right? So I think we see that at Red Hat a lot where we were the enterprise Linux company, and I think our leaders have done a really good job of saying, "Yeah, that's a good place "where the puck is right now, "but that's not where the puck is staying. "It's moving towards value, "it's moving towards integrated solutions." Go ahead. >> Let me extend this a little bit. So one of the things that we've observed within (mumbles) SiliconAngle, and we've talked to some other people today specifically about this, was the idea that open source has done a really good job of looking at a thing, a convention, that's well defined and well established and then building an open source variant of it. Open source has not been as successful, for example, in the big data world, where the use case or the definition of where we're going is amorphous. Instead, a lot of open source development ends up looking at each other saying, "Well, I'll fix your problem and you'll fix my problem, kind of. Nothing wrong with that, but the vision of where the industry is going to go. How are different companies, what will be open source leadership at redefining where this industry goes so that the open source developers can both be free to do what they need to do, create value as they need to, but at the same time, share a common understanding of where this ends up? >> So I think this goes back to what you were talking about with value, right? So I think what ends up... I'll use the example of big data. So I did a lot of statistical analysis for my PhD, and back then you used SAS or S-PLUS, both proprietary solutions. I think what has caused some of the explosion in big data is that you had these data scientists, the statisticians, intermingling, fertilizing with the computer science people who were handling these other really big problems. So what comes out of that, this is that margin thing again, right? You have statistics and-- >> Peter: Diversity and interesting things happen in the margin. >> At the margin. So what you have is these two groups come together, and suddenly you have the computer science people saying, "Oh, well I know a lot about algorithms "and I'm going to help you figure out "how to get value of what... "You're trying to solve this statistical algorithm, "I'm going to help you build distributed software that does that and that's where we get that happening. >> So the collaboration at the edge, the fringe, the lunatic fringe, or whatever you want to call it, the margin, is where the innovation is. >> I think that's where the innovation is because that helps avoid the navel gazing, right? Like, "Oh, I'm looking at what you exactly built, "and I'm going to build a slight variation on it." Well no, I actually need some, when you bring other disciplines in they say, "Well, this is the problem I'm going to solve," and the computer science person or the other side will say, "Well, that sounds "kind of like this thing, but let's try," and then suddenly new ideas come up and new ways to handle things. So I think, again, switching to value rather than what technology am I going to build is what's going to actually drive like, we need something to handle our big data. That's what's going to drive the vision. So you see in the big data world you see Spark, you see Zeppelin, you see all these different things competing, but what they're all doing is trying to drive how do I analyze big data efficiently? So you get some competing solutions. Then over time I think that's the vision that they're driving. >> I got to ask you, so like naval gazers is one dimension, but also there's the rearranging the deck chairs, like someone says, "Let's move things around "and magic will happen." Well you're pushing a whole nother concept, which I think is legit, which is as you put people together it might be uncomfortable, but then innovation can come out of it. Okay, so here's the ways. Computer and science and cloud computing, all that great stuff is happening, compute, storage, algorithm, etc., data, now society. So now society has issues, because what's the societal impact? These are first generation problems that we're facing, which side of the street does the cards drive on? Who gets hit first? They have to make these decisions. You see all these new issues, from even younger kids, cyber bullying, online behavior, across the board, societal impact. We are those margins. >> So I think for me tools... I thought about this a lot, right, because in the college I was kind of a tools person, and I think tools are value neutral. Any tool can be used for good or for bad. So, what we're doing right now in the open source world is develop, and in IT in general, is developing new tools, and what usually ends up happening is society develops norms after the tools have been created. In some ways, I think... I some ways, I kind of... It's a hard one. This is a much longer discussion and probably would involve some sort of alcoholic liquid or something to draw it out. >> It's a double edged sword, or tool, depending on how you look at it. We got to see it first before you can problem solve it. >> But the problem is-- >> You can't problem solve vapor. >> That's right, but on the other hand, sometimes you can see if you stopped and aren't so enamored with the latest and greatest tool without thinking about like, "Oh, well what are actually the implications of it?" I was going to say, I think the Europeans do a little bit of a better job of putting a little bit of foresight into tools when they come out saying, "Hold on, let's take a look at this." >> John: At the impact? >> Yeah, at the impact. >> So let me add one more thing to the conversation, because I think you're spot on, that the tools may be value neutral, but the impact, the transaction cost, of doing certain types of work in a different ways, and some work, and work is not necessarily value neutral. We may look at some tools and say, "That work is not good. "This tool reduces the transaction cost "of performing that work faster "or more completely than that work, "so that tool is going to have a less positive impact--" >> Impact on society as a whole >> "Than some other tool." And I think we can start introducing that kind of an analysis into it. >> I think so. I think that was... I live in this area, like I'm in Santa Cruz, so when I want to I say I'm not in the Valley, but when I want to I say I am in the Valley, I think the Valley is particularly enamored with the toys, or the tools, that it produces, and how technology will solve all our problems, and technology is great, and it is inherently good, and I like to say, "No, it's a tool, "and so a tool could be used for good or for bad." Like one example is ride sharing. Everybody was like, "Oh, this is the best! "This is awesome!" One of the things I thought of, my father is an immigrant, so I'm first generation on my father's side, and he wasn't a taxi driver, but I know how hard it is for first generation immigrants if you don't speak the language really well. So what used to happen with those ride shares is you had to have the capital to acquire a car before you could actually do ride sharing. So what you were basically doing was disenfranchising people who didn't have the capital from actually having this as a source of income when they came to the country. So, I was very conflicted about it to start with. Now, I'm less conflicted. I actually don't think ride share, given the economics I've seen actually play out I actually think ride sharing is not as big of a market and as game changing as everybody was making it. It was just some funny economics. >> Well Steven, certainly the conversation is very awesome. We should have you at the studio in Palo Alto next time you're in the Valley. >> Sounds great. >> You have plenty of tools and shiny new toys. >> Go by the Baylands and then go birding together at the Baylands, or maybe some fishing. >> Let's bring theCube over to Santa Cruz for a couple days. >> We should go down. >> That's great. >> Chill in Santa Cruz. Surf those waves, cloud, data, society. >> There you go. >> theCube on the boardwalk. >> Final question for you. Cisco is trying to push the margin with this event. It's a new event. It's an extension. It's outside their comfort zone. They had some projects that were kind of dismissed, interclouding, other things, this is a statement. Your thoughts on this show, because they have DevNet, why DevNet Create? Your thoughts. >> I think DevNet Create is a great opportunity for Cisco. I've been to the Cisco, is it Cisco Live, the huge gazillion people event? And there's a lot of energy around that, but that's mostly like network engineers and people who were bread and butter Cisco people. I really like that Cisco, that blurring between software and hardware means that Cisco really should be pushing people more in the, "We're going to help you create really interesting solutions." The more they make that easy for the developers... I think some developers are hardware hackers and love it. I am not one of those, and there's a lot of us who are not, and the more you make it easy for me to use software to create really interesting hardware things, the better it is for us. >> It's a classic case, the data scientists meets the algorithm guy. >> Steven: Exactly. >> So they're trying to bring these margins together where it might be awkward at first, but magic can happen. >> If I got to sit with some hardware people and like, "You need to make it so that I can write in Python "and do a whole bunch of neat networking and stuff "so at my house I can keep track "of how many birds are coming to my bird feeder "because I want to do this really cool experiment, "make that easy for me." >> By the way, you got camera, so you got bird recognition software. >> Steven: Exactly, exactly. >> A new feature on AWS. >> Yeah, I've seen demos of that. It's incredible what they can actually pull out now. >> Steven Pousty, Lead Developer at Red Hat, thanks for coming on theCube. Great conversation. >> Thank you very much. >> We'll have to continue it in Palo Alto. More live coverage here at Cisco Systems' DevNet Create. It's their inaugural event for developers. It's where IoT and app developers meet infrastructure, application infrastructure (mumbles). I'm John Furrier, Peter Burris with theCube. We'll be right back. Stay with us. (techno music) >> Hi, I'm April Mitchell, and I'm the Senior Director of Strategy & Planning for Cisco DevNet.