 Hi, this is Yosemite Bhatia, and we are here at Open Source Summit in Vancouver, and today we have with us once again in regards to SVP of Research and Communications at the Linz Foundation. Hillary is great to have you back on the show. Thank you, Swap. It's great to be back. So first of all, it's good to be talking to you in person, and there is no screen between us like previously. So first of all, that experience itself is a bit unique. And now I want to talk a bit about, today we are going to talk mostly about the Sustainability Initiative that is there, you folks learned before we go into this specific initiative. I do understand when you talk about sustainability, what does it mean? Well, it means more than just climate and carbon. It's a holistic concept. It's about solving for a number of issues. And the best way that I think we can describe sustainability is to align ourselves with a widely recognized framework of what sustainability really means, and that's been established by the United Nations. And so the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, I think, are widely adopted and recognized framework for enterprises, for governments, and for society at large to think about sustainability in holistic terms. And so there are 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which identify urgent action items so that we can achieve economic growth and global progress without leaving communities behind, without it being at the cost of the poor, or the marginalized, or animal life. So to think about planetary sustainability and not just economic growth, that's really the objective of how we think about sustainability at the Linux Foundation. We were talking about the UN's, SDGs, the goals, sustainability goals. Talk a bit about what are the gas that you see that are there in open source as far as those UN goals are concerned. I mentioned previously where we're very strong, industry, infrastructure, and innovation. We're also really strong in areas around quality education, for example, in two ways, not just through events and training, free training programs, free research, case studies, and the knowledge assets that we co-create, but in our efforts to sustain the internet and the web and enable access to all resources through the internet, through mobile technologies, and democratize learning through learning infrastructure through two ways, look at education. So in those areas, we're really quite strong in open source. Where we did not have a lot of alignment with some of the goals was in the two goals specific to water. Clean water and sanitation did not line up as incredibly strong with many of our project communities, as well as life below water, our aquatic ecosystems. And this is somewhat alarming because the ocean is vital to our survival as a planet. 50% of the oxygen that we breathe comes from the ocean, comes from the phytoplankton that live on the ocean surface. And ocean life is under incredible threat, from chemical runoff, from rising ocean temperatures, plastic pollution, and overfishing. And if we do not maintain the health of our oceans, if there is no blue, then there is no green. And so this is part of the holistic view of how we look at sustainability. We can offset carbon. We can reduce our energy consumption. We can create sustainable infrastructure. We can build sustainable cities. We can create gender equality and good education, but we cannot forget the ocean. We cannot forget the source of 50% of one of our absolutely vital sources of sustenance on earth, which is oxygen. Do you think AgStack will play any role there or no? That will be totally differential and that is still outside of the scope of whatever the next foundation is to get the moment. That's an interesting question. I think AgStack will play a role because AgStack is standing out in terms of its ability to very accurately map boundaries and field mapping work. That's specific at an ocean context to identifying marine protected areas. What are the square kilometers of a given ocean ecosystem or a reef that needs to be protected? And how can we put an infrastructure like water-based drones and early warning systems and using technology to alert to poaching and to overfishing in these areas? So absolutely incredible opportunities to leverage technology to protect marine protected areas, to use monitoring systems and environmental DNA to actually count the fish that we have. So I see a huge role for AgStack. When we look at from the scope of Linux Foundation, which of these goals are aligned with this specific industry that you cater to, or you're like, no, our scope goes across all those 17 goals. Yeah, it's a great question, Swap. What is fascinating is that we do sustain the Linux Foundation infrastructure to support the global digital economy through open source software, open hardware, open standards and open data. And in this effort, we are driving forward industries, infrastructure and innovation broadly. And in that effort alone, just by way of our very mission, we are supporting SDG number nine, which is industry, infrastructure and innovation. All of our technical projects, because we provide infrastructure that is cost effective, that is robust, that is tried and true and widely available and accessible, we minimize duplication, we create opportunities for innovation all around the world merely by making code bases available. I think back to the pandemic and projects that were donated, pardon me, contributed to the Linux Foundation from organizations to help mitigate the effects of COVID-19 through COVID notification apps, a green shield in Ireland and COVID shield, which came out of Canada. And in making those tools available to other countries who didn't necessarily have the support of developers, dedicating their time and attention to working on them, by making those available, we were supporting good health and well being. So that is an example of how we can democratize access to innovative tools that sustain economic growth without duplication. And so that's incredibly rewarding. So right off the top, the work that we're doing lines up with the SDGs. What has been fascinating to uncover is there are certain projects at the Linux Foundation that were established with the objective of sustainability at its core as part of the project's mission and vision, a couple of examples being LF Energy or open source climate or Agstock Foundation dedicated efforts to align software projects with sustainable goals in mind. Carbon measurement, energy infrastructure that would help utilities and the energy sector broadly reach the climate goals, reach the very urgent carbon emissions targets. So we knew about these projects. What we didn't realize was the extent to which other projects that were born from emerging technologies, I'll give you an example, blockchain for example, it came out of a need for a new monetary system, but found its way into applications and supply chains and data transparency and the value that comes from shared data sets. However, these technologies have been applied in a sustainability context and in use cases that drive forward health and safety that allow for greater levels of poverty reduction and access to equal economic opportunities. When we talk about sustainability, a very good example as we were early days of Linux kernel, when the ARM community came and those ARM processors are very small and they mostly work on mobile IT devices, they were looking for more energy efficiency and all those big guys intel and we don't care about that, but when those code was merged suddenly the data center which is running on Intel chips, they were saving so much money on it to city that also the heat emission was also less. So sometimes there are indirect impact. So software itself can play, I mean, I was having a discussion a couple of days or maybe yesterday was a lot of languages, the amount of computing resources they consume is less, which means you're generating less heat, you're consuming less electricity. So when that code is running and the, so if you look at the large picture, so even these projects, of course we can talk about AgStack, but we can talk about LF energy, but there are a lot of other ways we can do that. So if you look at the holistic picture, do you see that making software also more optimized held that? Oh, absolutely and making better hardware as well. When we think about consensus mechanisms, we think about cloud computing and to offset the energy consumption through smarter, more modern and efficient technologies. The design, we're seeing excellent design work in networking technologies in cloud, there was a great presentation by Caradelia in Amsterdam at Kupkon, talking about measuring cloud energy consumption and the importance of that in the ecosystem. I should also add, Swap, that the community thinks about a different kind of sustainability, which is equally important and does play in, but it's about project sustainability and succession. And that is, it's all about people and it's about education. It's about training and it's about codes of conduct and inclusivity. And how do we ensure that we have enough contributors to these essential infrastructure projects going forward? So it does mean a lot of things. It's not necessarily just environmental or planetary. It's about ensuring sustainable technologies. Do we have enough funding? Do we have enough resources? Do we have enough tools to make sure that the developer experience is optimized? When it comes to the sustainability of a community, what efforts is Linux Foundation making to make that the community is diverse, inclusive, welcoming? So talk about those initiatives. Well, two years ago, Swap, I co-authored a report on the state of diversity, equity and inclusion in open source. And it was an eye-opening experience about the extent to which we need to ensure that our communities are welcoming, that they are diverse, that we represent diversity of thought, diversity of region, diversity of gender, every element of diversity in our communities so that they can continue to grow, so that people know that there's a place for them in open source. And that is absolutely vital. And there are efforts, there are SIGs, all across Linux Foundation project communities. So two questions we asked in our initial sustainability research. The first focus on the technical stacks and how do the technologies themselves create sustainable infrastructure and in what ways? The second question is, to what extent are community efforts leading other elements of sustainability like gender equality, like inclusion initiatives, like reduced inequalities? And most projects have efforts in or leaders who are taking a personal interest to advance and measure their progress in this area. The Software Diversity and Developer Initiative is actively looking at launching new research to measure which projects have implemented best practices to ensure sustainable and welcoming and inclusive communities. What tactics did they deploy and how effective were they? What can we learn from those projects who made great gains in these areas? So we want to be able to support that initiative this year and continue to amplify the efforts of those organizations, Academy Software Foundation, FIENOS, all of these working groups, the efforts of Linux Foundation events to create inclusive event environments and partnering with Chaos to earn badges for keeping diversity equity inclusion at the forefront of everything a project does. It's about so much more than code. And I do remember the Linux Foundation, if I remember Open Source Summit before that Linux gone, I used to bring my son who was like four or five years old and we used to talk to him about he showed a picture is that your son. So I think it was very welcoming community usually when you go to these corporate events, no, no. And you folks also started child care. So you can bring your family started to stay. So a lot of several things, but the whole purpose is that you don't have to separate from your family to come to events like that. And these small, small things, the quiet room, even, for moms breastfeeding and also these small, small things matter, but that also comes when you have the empathy towards the community. Otherwise, these things will not happen. I would add just to say how nice it has been to be here in Vancouver and to meet the children of some of our community members and also at KubeCon, both in Detroit and Amsterdam. It was nice to see young people and the children of some of our community leaders and get to know them and say, hey, it's great to see you again. And, you know, we are responsible as leaders in the community to, to send the elevator back down and make everybody feel welcome and set that right tone so that those people have an enjoyable experience and see themselves in open source someday. Now I also want to talk about the second part of the sustainability which was commercialization and you folks, you know, the membership, the vendors, which is also important. So can you also talk about the importance of, you know, the commercial support because open source solves day one problem, day two is where the challenge starts. So when we look at sustainability, can you talk about the sustainability projects? How do you ensure that those projects are sustainable because you folks have funds, but you can do only so much? Yeah, I think commercialization and the support that we receive from enterprises and from government grants. We look at what's just happened at OpenJS Foundation. You know, a billion euros goes a long way to ensure sustainability in our communities. It's absolutely crucial because we are commons. Everything that we do is freely available to the world. And so we suffer from not so much the tragedy of the commons, but free ridership. And it is a moral responsibility for those who have the means to contribute in the way that they can. There is a moral obligation that is associated with the sustainable development goals. We cannot leave our poorest people behind as we make economic gains, gains for some in the long run. They're not as meaningful if people are left behind. And so I am very grateful to those organizations who partner with us. I'm grateful to those organizations who join us as members, who fund our research, who allow us to do the privileged work that we do because it is so important. Through resources, through government grants, and through partnerships, we would not exist. And it's very rewarding when those organizations see value in joining us in our effort and being such long-standing partners. And I'm very committed to returning as much of value back to them through insights, through data that can help them grow their businesses, that can help them convince their boss about this is the economic value of the open source projects that you're contributing to. Here are some others that you might want to get involved in and to spread that word and really add that value. But we would be nowhere without our partners' swap. Hilary, thank you so much for sitting down with me and talk about not only UN Sustainability Goals, but also what Linux Foundation is going to kind of fill some of those gaps. And also, as we were talking, we realized there are a lot of projects that can actually already contribute. And there are some gaps that we can fill. But thanks for sharing the whole discussion of sustainability, which is not just about planetary, it's not just about social, it's about economy. A lot of other things also. It's a very complicated topic, but I'm so happy that you discussed it. And as usual, I would love to have you on the show again. Thank you. Thank you, Swap. I really appreciate the opportunity to describe the work that we're doing and to encourage people to get involved in different ways, whether there be financial contributions or code contributions or knowledge contributions. It's all very much welcome to buy us. Appreciate your time today.