 Hi, this is Abhinavarthya on behalf of the Linux Foundation. And today we have with us Ricardo Neri, a Linux kernel engineer at Intel. Ricardo, first of all, welcome to the show. And also congratulations for your code contribution that has become one millionth contribution to the Linux kernel. Hi, thank you. Thank you very much. Ricardo, so first of all, tell us a bit about yourself. Your journey, when was the first time you came in contact with open source or Linux in general? That was, I think, in 2008. At the time, yeah, I started. It was the time when the iPhone came out. And, yeah, at the time, I used to work in Symbian. But then because of the iPhone came out, Symbian sort of died. So I was transferred to a new team, which was working on audio drivers for Linux. And, yeah, so maybe by chance I landed on that team and that's how I started 12 years ago. You had a personal interaction with the kernel community. How was that interaction? It was very daunting because I had hard hair that it was really hard to convince maintainers to take your code and also, I don't know, maybe intimidating because the people in the community was very smart and also they had strong opinions for various things. So, yeah, maybe I'd say it was intimidating but exciting at the same time. And also, yeah, it was a new world to me. So, yeah, I'd say it was good. It was interesting, but also intimidating, I'd say. You have been involved since, as you said, you know, iPhone days or 2007 or 2006, whatever the year was. How have you seen the community? I'm not talking about the kernel, the project itself. I'm talking about the community. How have you seen the community itself evolve over time? Just building on my previous comment, I saw at a time that maintainers, they cared deeply about the quality of the code that maybe dropped them to make harsh comments on the code from people. And maybe that was like a sort of a barrier for new people to start contributing. But I have seen a change in the last years in which there have been things such as new codes of conduct and, yeah, rules that are agreed upon for people to, maybe to, if they are hesitant or they are not so sure about the quality of their code, just to take it out there and maybe not, they will not have such a harsh reply as it used to be in the early years when I joined the open source community. So I think that is a change that I have observed. Another change that I have observed is more companies embracing open source because at the time the industry was still dominated by closed source software. But now I have seen companies building more and more business model around open source software which the value of the product is not the software, both the things that you do with it. What role do you think Linux has played in kind of, as you're talking about proprietary software, in kind of democratizing software development where you don't have to prove yourself before you get involved? Like you send a patch, if the patch is good, either Linux or Greg, they will take your patch. If it's not good, they will not take it. They don't have to look at your resume or CV that, hey, have you done any work before or not? So how much role has Linux played in kind of democratizing software development itself? Yeah, I think it has played a big role because as you say, you don't have to have a college degree or a computer science degree to start contributing to it because the currency, as you say, is a quality of code. So I have seen, I myself, I am not a computer scientist or a software engineer. My background is electrical engineer. So probably it can be a good example of that, that you don't need to go to college for five years and study computer science to start contributing. Anyone can, with the interest to learn and to do something can start contributing. And I see, and I am not the only example, there are other people that I see that have, for instance, they have a biology degrees and by, I don't know, life through them, through this path and they now have become key contributors to Linux. So I say it is, as you say, you can just go to the Linux kernel mailing list, create the patches, maybe contribute your own reviews and maybe start sending your pass all you need is essentially a workstation with the compiler and the source code and you can find a bug or an improvement and you can just do it. You don't need anything more than that. Have you attended any of these Linux plumbing or any other conferences and events? Yes, actually, I was just attending the Linux Plumbers Conference a few hours ago. I was in the power management micro-conference and yes, in previous years, I have also been attending LinuxCon, which what used to be LinuxCon, which is now the open source summit, yeah. So I have been every now and then in those events. So as you said, you know that when you interact with the kernel community over email, it hit a bit daunting and you felt intimidated because you don't know how they will respond to the patch, but when you go and meet these developers in person, when you sit down for either breakfast or for beer in the evening, you suddenly find that they are as human as we are. So when you meet them in person, how does chemistry that trust the relationship changes? Yeah, that is very true because, yeah, as you say, when you read only if you interact with these people only through the mailing list, you can only see written words without any context of it. And as you say, this is prone to misinterpretation on both sides, but actually as you say, when you meet with them in maybe in a virtual event or in person, you see that they are actually friendly. So as I say, they do care about the quality of the code, but they are approachable and friendly in my experience. And that is also the experience that I have heard from all of my coworkers who are also sort of new to this community. They have the same similar feedback as I do. We have talked about the community. We have talked about the project. Let's talk about your contribution. What was this code contribution that historically became one millionth contribution? Talk about that code. That is related to the work that I do with Intel in which I am part of the CPU enabling team which whenever Intel comes up with a new feature in the process or the team to which I belong, you're responsible of taking that new feature and make it consumable by the Linux kernel. So in this particular case, we were, this is for a new instruction called serialize which essentially serialized execution of the code. It puts like sort of a landmark which all the execution before that instruction gets done before starting executing the code after that instruction. And that was solving problems that we had in the past because for instance, you can achieve the same goal using an instruction called CPU ID or return from interrupt. But those instructions have a certain side effects and can have also a performance penalty. So this serialized instruction allows you to, as I said, divide the execution of code without having to those side effects that you will need to fix up in the software. So it helps to make the software simpler and maybe, and you have a performance bonus as a result of it as well. It was a part of a series and also probably I should mention that this patch came as as, Andy Dutomirski, which is a well-known contributor to Linux kernel suggested us to use this new instruction in a code path in the kernel in which the kernel needed to do this kind of serialization. So, yeah, this patch was part of that series and that maybe is a good example of how the community having so many eyes from running at the code and participating in the mailing list, you can arrive to new ideas that you probably didn't have on your own or maybe your company alone will not be able to have. What role has open source played in as we were talking earlier that you don't have to prove yourself, you don't have to be in a specific region to get involved at the same time, not only you become a contributor, you can also get access to a lot of technologies which may or may not be available wherever you are or whatever your background is. So talk about what role has open source played in creating a level playing field in giving access to underrepresented minorities and give them not only tools, but also a voice. I think that the, yeah, probably what I, it's similar to what I was saying in the beginning that in the traditional model we're not so traditional anymore in which you have to go to college and then spend four years there and not work and have good grades, all of that you need to have certain opportunities in life to be able to do that, to have the luxury of attending college for five years and gain a degree in software, for instance, you don't need that, all you need is to, the willingness and the, yeah, just the willingness of learning and contributing to it. So I think that for folks of underrepresented minority groups, I'd say that, yeah, statistically, they have less a chance of attending college and gaining a degree. So, and I have seen also companies realizing the fact that you don't actually need to be a computer scientist to start a writing software. So that has open doors for people of different backgrounds and very diverse backgrounds in which you don't have to be part of a certain career path or school path that can land you a job in this industry. You can just start wherever you want. And I also seen efforts, I think that from genome that they have scholarships to help to recruit people from underrepresented groups to start contributing and they get mentoring, because that is an important point. The software is free and anyone can contribute to it, but if you have a mentor, if you have someone that can help you how to navigate the an open source software community, it will help you a lot and it will go a long way to get you established in that community. You can start contributing very simple patches for overtime, you have that guidance, you can optimize your time and your effort to make the things that will have an impact and will maybe someday make you a key contributor to the community. Ricardo, thank you so much for taking your time out and talking about your contribution and also about the evolution of the community and the project itself. And once again, congratulations for your contribution. Thank you. Thank you very much.