 Hi, this is your host up in Bhartia and welcome to T3M or topic of this month and the topic of this month is open source And today we have with us a lot been Israel CEO and co-founder of Monada a lot. It's great to have on the show great to be here Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's my pleasure to host you and before interview We were talking about the company how old is the company you folks are relatively new It's like around one year old though the focus today is open source and you folks You know recently open source programming language for the cloud called Bing Lang So which means that open source is critical to you folks as well So I would love to know just quickly about the company. What do you folks do? And you know what problem you're trying to solve for the cloud community basically what we're trying to do with with Monada and with wing the programming language is to Create a unified programming model for building cloud applications I think that the reality of the cloud today is that it's a super fragmented industry and You find yourself having to make a lot of choices too early in the game You have to decide if you're a Kubernetes shop or a serverless shop or if you're using AWS or using GCP And so what we're trying to do with with with wing Lang is we're trying to create this abstraction layer For the cloud the same way that you know high-level programming languages created abstraction layers for traditional computing And and but traditional programming languages are all designed around this paradigm that the computer is a single machine And so the reality of the cloud today is that we're when we're using these these traditional programming languages We have to stitch together all these disparate pieces in order to actually deliver a full application And so what we're doing with wing is we're creating a programming language that has a distributed programming model And it has first-class citizens for cloud resources across all types of cloud providers and cloud stacks With the idea of Basically elevating the developer experience of the cloud pun intended if you look at wing Lang It's you know, it's if I'm not wrong in alpha phase, of course It's an open source project. So it's hard to say, you know, it's the most open source project would happen release when ready. So but Can you talk about? While it is in alpha phase what kind of users they are which will help their projects to move to the beta and of course Generally will able deep. Yeah, so we released the alpha version in December so not all not long ago actually and I I you know, my philosophy is that You should release something to the open source as soon as your vision is set You don't have to wait until you have something completely ready and completely usable because the vision is what drives the Foundation of your open source community. And so if you are able to find your people, you know You have to find the people who connect to that vision Then they will be the best pep people to help you build the right product And the beauty of open source to me is that it's it's leaning into this idea that software is an organic thing, right like it evolves in an organic way and the more you're able to connect to your to users and connect to actual to people who are actually In the field, you know that are actually building real things with your with your project Or want to build real things with your project then the organism will grow in the right direction And so that's why we release it very early, right? Like when we release the project We said it's basically ready for the community, right? Like it wasn't ready for anything else besides people coming in and reading about the vision and reading about the architecture and and then starting to work with us on building it and it's actually been an incredible We've seen some incredible traction for the from the community at that early a stage because you can't really use Winglang yet to build real things, right? Like it's it's it's so early, right? Like there's there's still missing capabilities in the in the programming language, right? Like up until You know a month ago. We didn't have for loops So you can't really build real things with it We've seen people actually contributing substantial features to the language substantial features to the SDK documentation So there's something really interesting. It's kind of like this limbo situation where you have Community and contributors, but you don't really have users, right? and and beta for us is basically that right like the the transition from From this very early stage to a still early stage But but but at the point where people are gonna actually use this and build stuff with it And so we get more feedback about, you know, real-world use cases and Challenges around that why companies like yours are still doing open source in this cloud era open sources is is a methodology is a is a is a development methodology and it's an end-to-end holistic story right like it's not just about Getting people to help you write your code. That's actually not the primary reason to do open source In in our company, for example, we have the community the head of the community reports directly to me They're not part of the marketing organization, which is sometimes what people, you know, think about open source Yeah, that's a marketing tool So I to me my open source is about marketing. It's about product market fit. It's about correct engineering it's about Support and helping, you know each other. So it's like this end-to-end methodology for building software and I believe it's the right way to build software because as I said I think software is this organic thing and the more you're able to do it transparently and share and collaborate with the with users and with with people who are actually going to use this Project the more that that organism will grow in the right direction. So to me, it's not about, you know IP in a sense, right? I think it's about the right way to build software the previous project I worked on was the AWS CDK, which is this Amazon's one of Amazon's biggest open turned out to be Amazon one of Amazon's biggest open source projects and you know, I was younger, I guess and and night and It's not very intentional about many of the things that we did when we built the CDK And that's something that you can do when you're building something Like that from you know from Amazon, right? You don't have to be super intentional But in hindsight, I've learned a lot from that from that experience, right? Like I feel like I've been able to distill some principles and like what do what I think is Important when you're building open source communities and now applying them more intentionally and more explicitly In a different context is Is really fulfilling and it works really well. I feel now when we look at open source, of course The the whole model is also changing. I agree with you when you said, you know, it's mythology start I mean depending on who you talk to to a lot of companies It's purely a business or sorry marketing model. Hey, we do open source to come to us But for a lot of folks, it's like hey, we're collaborating and then of course Sales team will compete but the depth teams will collaborate But the fact is that Just because some code base is open source does not mean that that is the ideal solution for a company Just a baby when we look at any solution whether it's proprietary or not We evaluate whether it works for us or not We look at the vendor we look at support a lot of factors. So can you also talk about When organizations they they are looking at this whole ecosystem and there are so many players So many open source project What are the some of the criteria that they should look at Before picking an open source project just because it's open source should not make it an ideal candidate Yeah, sometimes it's actually Not the right candidate because it's open source right like I think sometimes it's even So I think I think that the thing to look for is the community again going back to this like foundation of open source is about this collaborative work And and when you look at the community, you want to see how many contributors you want to see the engagement in In forms and slack and on github issues and you want to see in my mind. It's also you want to see The culture behind it right like the way people talk to each other There is there, you know, whether they're respected respectful to each other and helpful to each other Because the power of choosing something that that's choosing an open source project Is that community right like when you're using open source and there's an there's a healthy welcoming Professional community around the project. That's the that's the trust right like that's where you can say okay Now it's not just this company, you know, this startup company doing something It's also this community that's building around the project That's part of the value that I get from from choosing that project And so to me, this is the differentiator right like it's not about the fact that the code is is public Right like that's almost the mechanical aspect of it one more aspect Which is really important for the health and sustainability of open source is Commercialization without commercialization open source can solve day one problem. You can get started But you know, you need feature you need support and not everybody Open source may look free on the face value, but it can become very expensive When you have to put all the developer resources into actually managing and keeping that project running So commercial players play a very big role and if you look at the whole community ecosystem That's successful because there are a lot of winners there So also talk about the rule of commercialization of open source Which has also played a very important once again Rule in popularity of open source. Yeah, I think I think that's that's the reason open source has become So prevalent and so successful is because we've as an industry we've kind of found managed to find some some balance between the the the collaborative nature and the um Non, you know for profit activity that people are doing when they're collaborating over open source and the business That you can create above above above the open source or around the open source and uh, you know 15 years ago The only business model for open source was support, you know, it's the redhead kind of the redhead model and today we see more and more Complementary salute, you know complimentary stories where there's open source But there's also a good business that's built around these open sources And and there are multiple models and I think like we can see more and more of them kind of pop up You know the the classic one is the the open core model where You know, you're building open source and you're publishing it and then you're hosting a managed solution of that of that Project and the value that customers pay for Is the managed experience and you know the operational burden that they that they don't have to happen me But there are there are many other Directions for example in our story Winglang is an open source programming language and is licensed under the amit license Always going to be open source. I believe that, you know, a programming language needs to be Owned eventually by the community right that uses it And and our commercialization story and you know, we're very early on in the project So it's probably going to change like a two million times in the next few years, but our current commercialization hypothesis is that we can we believe that If users or if developers will use wing We can build great operational tools and production tools for the cloud that will give them much better Productivity at the downstream and so when you're using when you're developing your code You're going to be able to use open source and free tools and you're not going to need to pay I believe development should always be something that has the minimum amount of barriers right for for the engineers And then when you go and deploy this to production and you want to create preview environments and you want to operate your system You're going to be able to use tools that we then that are that are not going to be open source Are going to be Services that you use and you pay and and it's based on your production users on the value that you create for your users And so I think like creating this alignment between The value of the customer is getting and the value that the customer is creating This is where commercialization Of open source can happen and it's a natural place right like that's not You know, that's that feels like the right place to create that The connection what role do you see foundations play in popularizing or you know increasing adoption of open source because sometimes what what happens is that when Codebase is owned by a single company though. Google can be an exception because chrome Microsoft is using edge, you know They're using android, but it does breed some confidence You know because kind of creates a label playing field You don't have to worry about that company changing the license tomorrow just because they felt threatened by you um, so what I want to understand is that The rule foundations have played in making some of these projects More popular and you know increase their adoption. So I think I think there are multiple dimensions One dimension is the value that the tool The the the the project Creates right like I feel like that's almost sometimes we forget to talk about that But that's that's the foundation right like is like you have to create something that adds value to that creates value to your users Right like that's the it's it's and in open source. It's actually More than in any other type of of software distribution or software development methodologies. That's The biggest percentage is like if you're creating something that brings value that helps your users You're you're going to get the best chance of large adoption through through open source because that's creating this cycle, right? And so first first and follow it needs to be something that people Love and that people Enjoy and and it creates value for them and I think the other part is being intentional about community building and and creating a community that basically Is involved and and really be open to be to involved and I think You know google and kubernetes and the linux foundation are amazing examples of that right like linux foundation has been doing this for many many years right like with the the the dna of linux and The collaborative collaborative nature of these projects and they they have these amazing playbooks on how to create open source projects And how to create govern community governed projects And I think those are not necessarily the same thing right like you can publish open source But that doesn't mean that the project is governed by the community or is led by the community And and you you don't you'd also don't have to create governed you know government community governed projects are A mature, you know, you get you need to be a very mature project in order to be able to actually You know have the community govern it and and so there's a whole life cycle That these projects go through um And but the seed of the community creating something that creating a community that's healthy as I said earlier That's healthy and welcoming and and collaborative is incredibly important. I think the other interesting part is potential Contribution opportunities and that's what I what I mean about that is that some open source projects are Don't have a lot of opportunities for contribution because The the way they're structured is that there's you know, maybe they're a simple tool Right, like if I create a simple tool that solves one symbol problem It could be a very very successful project and very Largely adopted project, but there's no opportunity for The community to contribute because they're the surface area is very small And and I think again, it has to be a very organic thing But in projects like kubernetes, for example, or in the project that we're working on or in the cdk project Those projects have a very large surface area and the the fact that there's a large surface area linux is another example That's a great platform for contributors to participate in And so I think that's another interesting dimension We are building open source to be aware of and understand like is this do we have opportunities for for contributors to be involved? Or are we creating something that's like this really small core? And and again, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, right? Like that's definitely a Great thing to do as well. Vlad. Thank you so much for taking time out today and talk about not only company but also Open source and thank you for sharing all those insights and I would love to chat with you again soon. Thank you Thanks for having me