 Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage here in British Columbia in Vancouver for Open Source Summit 2023. I'm John Furrier, host theCUBE, my co-host, Rob Streche here for three days, breaking down all the action. Open Source is the most important efforts going on in the industry right now as generations of success standing on the shoulders of giants. Rob, we are here in Vancouver and you can't believe the scene. We've got planes landing out here. It's a beautiful day here in Vancouver. Convention Center, epic views. It's unbelievable. I think it's great and highly distracting when you're sitting here. Yeah, I got a great view. Look at the guests, the planes are landing. It's like squirrel, planes are landing. It's really just beautiful. But beauty aside, great venue for the Open Source community. You know, the old expression, I remember the days when Open Source wasn't around. Proprietary software dominated. And then now the pioneers and the shoulders of giants they stand on. That's not true anymore. They're not shoulders of giants. It's the industry. Proprietary is dead. No one wants to bet against Open Source. We've been saying that. Believe it. However, Open Source is in trouble right now because of the AI wave. We're seeing a lot of signals where there are pressure points coming in this tornado of Open Source that puts a lot of things at risk. The organization structures, the project model, the license model, the people equation, machines and people, the human equation is super important and Open Source is facing trouble. Not because it's not working, but because it is working. So the question is, Rob, what will happen? We have to ask the questions. There are scenarios that this tornado could topple the generations of work in Open Source. What's it going to take to preserve it? We have to analyze that. I agree. And I think building off of what we saw at KubeCon with the CNCF and their efforts, and it was talked about a little bit this morning by Tracy when she was Tracy Regan who's a CEO of Deploy Hub. And she talked about her efforts within OpenSSF and how, and CD Foundation. I think when you look at some of the projects that are going on, they're really trying to understand, especially within DevOps is what she mentioned. A lot of how do you really get to AI? Because I think that is really, it's conflicting with how they develop today and how people actually use these projects today. Yeah, I say tornado, because I love the book by Jeffrey Moore, Inside the Tornado, which is an old school business book where he says, get inside the tornado, otherwise you're going to get spun out. And I bring that up because I believe that what I'm seeing, all the signals are all there, the capital markets. Bessemer, another VC from announced, they're going to put a billion dollars all in for AI, every other firm's doing it. The top alpha entrepreneurs are going into AI ventures. You're seeing AI code coming out. We call it code pollution at KubeCon. There's so much force coming in at velocity. Can the open source model, which was built on thin hierarchy at the top, not a lot of bureaucracy, very well-efficiently built and run projects with maintainers, all good. But will that withstand the pressure of this tornado coming? And how does management respond to it? What will the leaders think? We will ask these questions. Yeah, and I think what will be interesting as well is that there's a lot of contributors here that are from actual companies and users and consumers of this open source technology. And I think that when they look at it, how do they embrace it? Because as we've seen, and we talked about a couple of weeks back, a lot of people have actually banned using chat GPT inside those companies. And I think what will be interesting is how will they adopt it? Are they deploying their own foundational models and their own data sets to actually build on their code bases? Or how do they then contribute back into these open source communities? And to your point, I think it's going to be a real big topic this week about how is it being disruptive to the projects and all of the different pieces that are being pulled together here? Yeah, and I think, first of all, I'm above the belief that open source has won. Proprietary is dead. And you'll see some proprietary's software out there, maybe some differentiation, but ultimately open source is now the standard in the software business. It is the industry. So it's not just the corner case of a small little section. It drives everything, never bet against open. We've been saying it on theCUBE. However, the recent trends, just last week, Google's leaked memo on open source, you and I were discussing that prior to coming in, shows you what happened and then also meta released their leak planned or not. But what that's done is it absolutely created revitalization or renaissance of, it just created massive lift in the open source community, which by the way, large language models and foundation models, they were proprietary ones that were dominating. And then literally in a month and 60 days, open source has just catapulted to the front. And I think it's never going to stop. So this is an example of what's coming. What do we have to do to keep it going, keep it stable? The rocket ships blow up sometimes because it's too successful. So the question is, what does open source do? We're going to ask the leaders, how do they adopt to open source? Sneak just announced AI and their security product. I saw Manouche had a comment on that. I think you saw that too. Vendors are coming in, AI is here to stay. It's the number one question. Yeah, and I think, again, there's a lot of vendors that are here and a lot of contributors that are here that claim AI and their products already. And I think is it going from proprietary closed models to open models and how do they actually use that and how does that grow within those communities, especially on the security side. And I think, again, it was brought up multiple times during this morning's keynotes here that security has to be a focus. And I think to your point about being in the tornado and is open source at an inflection point and potentially screwed, I think security is a main feature of that where they, as they were talking about, have to kind of get grips on where AI can help and how it actually helps in these different efforts to keep things up-to-date, to keep things from an S-bomb perspective up-to-date more. We're going to have Ed Wanaki from Cisco, keep alumni going back to the days. He's going to go into security beyond the S-bomb. He had some things there. But I come back to the questions that need to be asked. We were to ask the leaders what they think about AI. We have to ask the biggest brains in open source what they think because open source will continue to thrive. The question is, what's it look like when the AI surge comes in? If you get inside the tornado, you know you're in it. You get the benefits of it. So the question is, how does open source reorganize or refactor, or if at all, do they refactor to this new way? Because you're going to have more code coming in that's generated by machines. You're going to have more, probably better opportunities to make projects more healthier. I mean, I think AI is an opportunity. So when I say open source is in trouble, I mean, if they don't do anything, Rob, I see it toppling. Okay, there's a scenario that is there that you could look at and saying, the AI tornado could topple generations of open source work and turn it into a fragmented world. I mean, new developers that are coming out of school, they weren't around when they, and the Giants were loading Linux on servers. Right. Yeah, and I think that you have a great point there and it would be interesting to hear over the next couple of days where people think they can adapt. And I think it's all about how do you adapt to AI into open source? Because if you don't actually embrace it, I think, again, I heard the message again during the keynotes this morning again about basically asking people to contribute. Well, you hit the nail on the head. They're going to be contributing via AI-based projects. And I think that's how it will go forward, how they get across the skills gap, even discover who was on an angel who's heading up their open source activities with Discover's Technology Academy, talked about how they have to upskill people. That is a great place where AI will be able to contribute and what they then contribute back into the community, how that gets integrated in, not to mention all of the licensing aspects of it that will have to be foreseen. And there's a book signing on some of the legal implications later today on the floor here. So I think it'll be very interesting to see because I think there's some big things they have to tackle as a community to really get past that. Well, I mean, the thing is, is that Angel Diaz, a CUBE alumni, by the way, was formerly with IBM. He knows his open source. Obviously, he's been in for a few of those guys that's been around for generations like us who've been in there from the beginning. And I think the real questions come down in a few areas. One is the organizational model. Organizations were built, they didn't want the bureaucracy of corporate meddling. So it was built around the people, the contributors, and that was really, really important. And it was thin at the top, lightweight management style, very, very small, executive team, put the power in the hands of the people. Love that. How does that work? They were not stable. The project model, more and more projects are coming in because it is the industry, Rob. I mean, open source isn't just a community. It is the software industry. If you believe that to be true, then everyone's a contributor at some point, or participant. So it becomes really interesting on the project model. Of course, the licensing model, we saw with ChatGPD and other open AI stuff. And now with the leak from Meta and the Google leaked memo, you see a meddling of potential licensing problems. And then of course, the people, the new generation of developers coming on scenes. They're unconsciously confident. I just want to code. I don't have legacy dogma. They don't want to just get in and start coding. So these are all forces that could either go one way or the other. What is your read on that, those areas? Yeah, I think that the good thing that I heard this morning is that they're considering it. I think they're going to have to move faster to catch up, to really understand how it impacts the different projects. And I think they have to take a big 10 approach, but they need to really nail down. This is what it means to use AI within open source. These are some of the guardrails we're going to put up. And I think, again, as we talked about, how do you avoid code pollution, license pollution, and how do you also build it out so that there is an ecosystem? Because again, you start to look at it and say who's going to be the next Red Hat? Who's going to be the next big open source contributor in open source company out there? Yeah, I mean, that's always the question. Dave and I have been talking since 2010 when Padoop came on the scene. Can there be another Red Hat? Unique situation. Docker has an interesting perspective of what they're doing with containers. And now the team over there is very Red Hat-like, very open source. I know the folks over there are very pure open source. I don't think there could be another Red Hat. I'm not sure there could be. However, there is an operating system model emerging with distributed computing with public cloud on premise and edge. That feels very operating system-like. We can look at some of the things around where Kubernetes is going and the roll of containers, coming off bare metal and virtual machines. I can almost see a new kind of operation. Now the question is will Red Hat take that down? Because they're already there working it, or will someone else come out? I don't know. I will tell you this. I think that the entrepreneurs, the starting companies, and the companies that want to innovate with open source, and then the non-profits or public sector, these are the three areas that will be leveraging the value of open source. They will want to just take advantage of it so that you have those three pillars. Start-ups thrive on open source, okay? And so what are the top entrepreneurs doing right now? That's a question we're going to look at. And then what are the companies doing? Amazon's accuses tripmining open source. They're contributing a boatload back. So is that good? Where's Google? And then non-profits, they just have to get the code. So I mean, there's so much in this, besides just open source. There's the leverage of what people are doing with it. And to me, what startups do is a tell sign. Yeah. I agree. And I think it's a, how do you use it, but how do you also have an operating model where you can make money and you can grow your company? I think there's going to be a balancing act going on, especially for the startups that are leveraging this AI and leveraging these open source pieces as foundational to them. Well, I'll tell you right now, one of the things I've learned in covering open source over the years and being part of the community is never bet against open. And the people in the community are very entrepreneurial. They're technical. They understand waves and shifts. They can sniff out BS and they can get on the right side. I think, you know, open source may look like they're in trouble, but ultimately they've got a land on the right area because the entrepreneurial equation will drive a lot of the innovation in terms of business model. I think companies will have a kind of nice balancing act that'll always be that, you know, balancing act of where they play, vis-a-vis the entrepreneurial and then the entrepreneurial. So I think we're going to be fine and, you know, but we're going to ask the questions. We want to hear what people think. Every guest will have a question on AI. We'll find out what's going on in their world. And of course, the cube for many, many years, 13 years covering this market, we will have all the answers for you. We'll ask the questions here in Vancouver. Beautiful wide shot. We can get a shot of the wide shot here. I want to see if we can't get, let the folks see what our office is today. We're looking at a beautiful harbor in Vancouver, right with the glasses here in the convention center. Awesome. We're looking good there. Okay, we're looking great. We'll be right back with our next guest. Enjoy the view. This is the cube.