 Hi, this is Yoho Sapin Bahatia and today we have with us Hillary Carter, SVP of research and communications at the Linux Foundation. Hillary, it's great to have you on the show. So I'm now that's wonderful to be back. Thank you for having me. Linux Foundation, you folks do a lot of research, you know, on a regular basis, but what was the driver? What was the motivation behind these studies? Well, what's interesting Swap is that these studies began before there was such a significant economic downturn. We were planning to do these studies long before war erupted in Ukraine and before the inflationary situation became significant. And so that was, I suppose, a bit of good timing. These are questions that the open source community has wanted answered for some time. To better understand the impact of open source software in many different contexts, in the context of the economic value, in the context of the social value, and in the context of environmental value. And so we're just very fortunate that we were kicking off this research and one report really led the other. One report was survey based, it took quite some time to build and to have the survey peer reviewed and to launch. And then the other was part of a live round table, a qualitative study, really, that was able to dive into the realities of the day, which were we were facing this brink of potential recession and tech layoffs. And so really, the timing was right for both of these studies to publish. Based on these reports, what kind of findings were there where you saw that companies are seeing that open source can help them during these tough times? Or they're also releasing them. I just want to understand some of the key findings in the context of cost cutting, layoffs and open source. Yeah, so in this context swap, open source software is an enterprise's best friend. It is a valuable tool to continue to innovate in a cost effective way and stay competitive that the value that an organization will derive no matter the size of the organization is enabled by open source software. And particularly for small enterprises, open source software provides a faster time to build a faster time to market. That means a faster time to potential venture capital. For other organizations, it is especially those who have known open source and have been using open source software for more than five years. Those organizations really see the value now, perhaps more than ever. And they see that the value is increasing at an accelerated rate over the perceived costs. So no matter the size of an organization, whether the startup or the Fortune 500 enterprise, the value of open source software as a cost effective solution to create robust products and services. And also for the public sector, in a time where revenues are under constraint, where citizen centric services are going digital, open source software is a strategy, important pathway to delivering robust, for the most part, secure open source centric solutions. As we're also looking at cost cutting as the teams are getting smaller, do you think there might be an impact of how organizations contribute to open source or you think that it will actually accelerate their participation to open source projects? I think the cost cutting in the tech sector has been the result of overly excessive hiring during COVID. And so we see continued strength in open source contributions. We see contributor growth in open source projects. And so I don't see a correlation between tech layoffs and constraints around contributions. What we do encourage, of course, is continuing to grow that contributor profile to encouraging more and more contributors to get involved and advocating within organizations during difficult market times or more robust market times that what we want to ensure is sustainability for open source project communities that free ridership is not okay. We want organizations to give back and to make our projects stronger and more robust. So that desire to ensure open source project sustainability is not cyclical. It's a constant mission and goal, certainly at the Linux Foundation, to ensure that sustainability, ensure that contributor growth and the more the merrier. When you're doing these reports, sometimes what happens is that a lot of findings are that we expected, hey, this is what is happening. We know the trends, but then there are things that surprises. Was there something that surprised you? I think what surprised many who looked at the results when they first came out felt that it didn't reflect the value that we understand open source software to be that there is that we're even underestimating the impact. And the research, the ability to get an accurate valuation of open source remains challenging. And this research drove that home even more that our work continues to get greater clarity and to further define methodologies around how we evaluate the economic impact of open source software. I think one finding that was interesting was that the longer organizations work in open source, the better they understand the economic value. And so there's something to be said for longevity and encouraging more organizations to get involved and begin their journeys now because the value is unequivocal. And accelerating the perceived value to cost ratio is rising, which is great. When we look at these reports and with these findings, that also kind of help us plan the next step, some action, some reaction. So how is it going to reflect on a lot of projects, the Linux Foundation, which will also, hey, you were like, okay, we have identified this. Now let's do something about it. So is this report going to also help in some of the new Linux Foundation initiatives? We certainly hope so. I think every piece of evidence that we put forward through the Linux Foundation research publications will aid in organizations decision making to stay with open source to not just continue, but to make open source a part of their overall business strategy and to grow with us and allow open source to allow organizations to realize the full value of it. And so no matter the project community, whether it's LF Energy or LFAI and data or Hyperledger project, being able to show the impact of our work really helps to compel organizations why they should stay the course, why they should formalize their open source strategy, open and open source program office and so on. I think ascribing an economic value has been an approach taken across other communities like in climate, for example, being able to understand the economic value of natural capital assets has been important for the environmental movement because it has allowed people to understand the costs of inaction, better understand the value of a single elephant, excuse me, elephant to an ecosystem or reintroducing wolves into Yellowstone National Park and how that has a positive economic effect that we are so interconnected as a planet and it's no different in software. We are a community that needs sustaining and nurturing and allowing greater insights into our worth and our value and the value of open source software, open hardware, open standards and open data will, I think, encourage more organizations, governments, enterprises to get involved and to be stewards and to be contributors and not free riders. This is a commons in many ways, but on the other hand, the supply of pre-existing open source software is not like a commons, it is unlimited. And so, encouraging contributions back, encouraging sustainability is empowered and enabled when we talk in economic terms. I think money talks, Swab, and organizations respond to return on investment type intelligence. When we look at the whole, when we talk about open source, there is no community, there are communities, there are vendor communities, there are maintainers, of course, there are projects, there are companies who are consuming it. If you look at these research reports, what do you think, what should be the takeaway for, once again, depending on the community, the open source developers community, maintainers, vendors, so if I ask you, what do you want the takeaway from them? Yeah, I mean the response is different in terms of what different communities can take away from this research. I'm going to focus on the public sector, for example. What I hope will be a positive outcome for public sector decision makers, it doesn't matter which level of government, I think the open source opportunity has not fully been realized in the public sector today. And I would like to see the public sector become not just more active contributors to open source project communities, but to become model users of open source, and really the opportunities that they can create for digitalizing their economies and to really implement digital transformation in areas of government that are so desperate for that to take place is in value. I hope that contributors can take great pride in the work that they do and in the value that they create every single day, and I hope that enterprise decision makers stay the course. In fact, I hope they double down. You folks, you know, work on a lot of reports throughout the year. What other research works, what are reports out there in the pipeline, or we can expect to be released from the Linux Foundation in the coming months? Swap, I'm so excited about the different research projects that we have coming down the pipeline. Earlier in 2023, we had two different surveys that were fielded, one on the subject of open standards. The other is this year's the update on the jobs survey that we have done, or the jobs report. This year, it was called the tech talent report. And the findings from those surveys, the findings from both of those surveys will be available at Open Source Summit, North America. And during that event, we'll also be launching new studies, new surveys. I'm also excited about the LF energy event, which is taking place in Paris at the beginning of June. We will be releasing two new research projects specific to the energy industry, one on the opportunity for open source and microgrids, and the other, the results of our survey on energy operator readiness. What is the state of open source understanding to help transition the energy grid and to help us meet our carbon targets more effectively through open source software? What educational tools do we need to put into place to educate grid operators, regulators, energy constituents all over the world to help better onboard renewables? High impact projects and really hoping that research helps speed up the decision making in a productive way and really allows open source to be the solution to helping us solve some of these climate challenges. So lots of good things. So I hope I could talk all day about the research reports coming this year. But those are a few highlights that will come out in the near term. Hillary, thank you so much for taking time out today and talk about these reports, these findings and the importance of open source in today's economy, the value that it brings. Thanks for sharing those insights. And as usual, I would love to have you back on the show. Thank you. Swap, thank you. The honor and a pleasure is really all mine.