 This is your host up in Bharti and today we have with us Hillary Carter VP of research at the Linux Foundation. Hillary is great to have you on the show. Thanks, Wab. It's great to be here The Linux Foundation recently launched resource division to basically explore open source ecosystem and impact Can you talk a bit about what is the genesis? What is the foundation of this initiative at the Linux Foundation? No pun intended. None taken at all. It's you know, we find ourselves in an incredibly exciting and challenging time and I think coming out of 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic, I You know, I think the world accelerated to digital and the need to on-ramp very very quickly to remote work and zoom conferencing and hybrid content delivery models and all of the fast-tracking To digital just highlighted how important software is to our our functionality and and to our ability to transact and to communicate and to stay connected and So that was very enlightening on the one hand on the other hand. We had a pandemic that also drove home the need to have functioning supply chains and technologies around those supply chains a shareable data frameworks consent frameworks around traceability of health records COVID notifications and so on and I think you know We also need software that is secure and having technologies that we trust will help us fight a pandemic more effectively than than not and so given the year that was and on the heels of the SolarWinds security breach and a lot of these pain points in our software supply chains and our Goods and services supply chains were exposed and so take those two factors into consideration and I think they were very Important in the context of setting up a research division that we needed to better understand the open-source paradigm and how it fits into the the global global software issues around supply chain security and Our ability to to fight a pandemic. I think that is those were two factors that that influenced The need to establish a research division when we do look at open source. I mean since it's so Pervasive everybody's using open source. So when you do talk about research into ecosystem, there can be so many things you can talk about We can talk about hey, okay companies are using open source But are they using some best practices? Do they have I mean you in this foundation also have the open source program office training? You know, are they properly dealing with open source? It can also be about a they're using the proper license It could also be about What kind of practices they have and of course it could also be about understanding? Hey, how companies are consuming open source. So this this is such a huge massive field So I'm just trying to understand that what exactly are you trying to achieve with this division? Yeah beyond the security project for example We have so much content that we can investigate and in fact the challenge will be to define the initial scope of the research Because as you say there are so many incredible topics that we can investigate. What is the path to open source ecosystems? How does an organization move from a closed innovation model to an open innovation model? What are the opportunities? What are the challenges? What is the role of the open source program office? How does open source collaboration? change business models and What open source ecosystems are more effective than others in both addressing some of the world's most critical challenges But also in applying some best practices Whose practices are working really well whose communities are inclusive whose communities are growing? So by no means are we limiting the research program to security I simply mean to say that it's one of the most important challenging challenges that research must address But the opportunities to cast the net really wide and to go deep into the subject matter are quite Phenomenal what is going to be the nature of this initiative is it a Foundation with a Linux foundation it is just a division because then we look at the format of Linux foundation They are foundations within Linux foundation So is this going to be yet another foundation or it's just one subsection of the broader Linux foundation? Yeah, we're not ourselves a unique foundation. We are a support project. So we are supporting the broader work of Linux foundation as a whole research will be available to Both Linux foundation members, but also the general public But yeah, we're not going to register ourselves as a separate entity We are a supporting unit of the parent Linux foundation has a massive family of companies other projects that so how are we Planned to collaborate with them or you're going to work like independently and collect all the data and analysis Or you are going to engage with the Linux foundation members Yeah, a wonderful question the objective of Linux foundation research Is to engage our ecosystem to engage our members to engage our contributor communities So that we can create a program that adds value across The organization across the whole ecosystem. We want to be able to determine collectively How can? Linux foundation research add value to the ecosystem and how can the ecosystem add value to Linux foundation research and so by working together with the specific project Leadership teams and to co-create research That is certainly going to form part of our program. We will have our own core research initiatives like our security project, but we will also work on a number of project specific research reports That that engage The broad ecosystem you did elite to that earlier, but I just want to go a bit deeper into what are you immediate projects that you will Start with so the first project. We actually have a survey in the field right now It is a collaboration with the soda foundation So software it is excuse me storage and data focused open source ecosystem and they want to explore trends in data and storage and Produce their findings our findings in time for the soda con Conference which takes place in july. So that's an example of one of the first collaborations that we will do with one of our projects Similarly, we'll be working with hyper ledger hyper ledgers are our blockchain focus project and hyper ledger turned five In December of last year and that ecosystem has grown tremendously They're conducting a brand study with LF research to better understand how well is hyper ledger known as leading blockchain open source community how well are the projects known there are Number of different frameworks a number of different tools that are available Are they recognizable? Are they confused perhaps with some crypto protocols? What are the opportunities and challenges so that's another project that is going to Come forward this year and similarly with Phinos our fintech and open source Project they are focusing on understanding Opportunities for the financial services sector and open source that is an incredibly burgeoning community and there are a lot of exciting opportunities that are just getting started within that industry So those are three examples of Project specific collaborations that we'll be moving forward this year. We will be exploring open source Paradigm the open source paradigm from the context of industry analyses technology horizontals and The ecosystem at large There has been a Cambrian explosion in terms of new projects that are coming Under the Linux foundation umbrella of two examples being the academy software foundation The fact that the film industry is working with the Linux foundation to create shared technologies for the entertainment industry is really something that that Most people would not equate with when you think of Linux. You don't necessarily think of the film industry Same thing for some of our climate initiatives or projects that are Dedicated to Solving issues around racial injustice and what are the what are the tools that we can create together For shared value to try to solve some of these really important social challenges not just technology challenges Hillary thank you so much for taking time out today and talk about this new initiative within the Linux foundation I fully agree with you that as much open source as we are creating Linux foundation is playing a critical role there. We do need to tap into collect some data that you know Yeah, it's about time that we should understand and help ecosystem with all the problem that you mentioned there So thanks for talking to me today, and I look forward to talking to you again. Thank you. Thanks so much swap It's been a pleasure