Open at Intel

Conversations on Community, Cloud Infrastructure, and Sustainability

Niki Manoledaki and Stephanie Hingtgen from Grafana discuss their open source community roles and contributions toward environmental sustainability. Niki serves as a co-chair of the Green Reviews Working Group within the CNCF Environmental Sustainability Technical Advisory Group, focusing on promoting energy and carbon efficiency. Stephanie works on both the open source Grafana project and Grafana Cloud, emphasizing the value of contributing to open source. We discuss the importance of energy consumption metrics in technology, the use of Kubernetes for event-driven auto-scaling through KEDA, and efforts to enhance operational and environmental efficiency. Niki and Stephanie share insights on scaling applications, the relationship between cost reduction and environmental sustainability, and introduce several projects like Karpenter and Kepler.

00:00 Introduction to Grafana's Community Engagement
01:40 Exploring Environmental Sustainability in Tech
04:30 Diving into Open Source Contributions and Projects
05:26 Scaling and Autoscaling: Insights and Challenges
12:56 Cost vs. Environmental Sustainability
19:06 Personal Journeys into Open Source Software
21:24 Closing Thoughts on Open Source and Sustainability

Resources

How Grafana Labs switched to Karpenter to reduce costs and complexities in Amazon EKS

Guests

	Niki Manoledaki is a software engineer, environmental sustainability advocate, keynote speaker, meetup organiser, and community facilitator. She advocates for environmental sustainability in the CNCF as a Lead of the CNCF Environmental Sustainability TAG where she co-chairs the Green Reviews WG.
	Stephanie Hingtgen is a Senior Software Engineer II at Grafana Labs. As a member of the Grafana as a Service team, her focus has been on orchestrating thousands of Grafana instances in Kubernetes for Grafana Cloud. Her previous experience includes developing a private cloud platform to provision Kubernetes resources for engineers at Comcast.

Authorization with SpiceDB

We spoke with Jimmy Zelinskie, Co-founder of AuthZed, about his significant history in the cloud native ecosystem and open source community. We learn about his start writing BitTorrent software in college and his eventual startups including AuthZed, which develops SpiceDB. SpiceDB, inspired by Google's internal Zanzibar system, aims to democratize complex authorization solutions for various applications. The discussion also covers the evolution of Kubernetes, the role of open source in fostering innovation, and the significance of community collaboration in addressing common challenges in authorization and secure system design. Jimmy's experience showcases the benefits of open source for solving intricate problems and his commitment to making sophisticated technology accessible to a broader audience.

00:00 Introduction
00:14 The Buzz of KubeCon
00:50 Introducing Jimmy: From BitTorrent to Kubernetes Pioneer
03:41 The Journey of SpiceDB: From Concept to Adoption
06:43 Navigating the Authorization Ecosystem
11:55 The Future of Authorization: Innovations and Roadmap
14:32 Personal Insights: Open Source Journey and Product Management
19:08 KubeCon Highlights and Kubernetes API Proxy Announcement

 

Guest:

Jimmy Zelinskie is a software engineer and product leader with the goal of empowering the world through the democratization of software through open source development. He's currently the CPO and cofounder of authzed where he's focused on bringing hyperscaler best-practices in authorization software to the industry at large. At CoreOS, he helped pioneer the cloud-native ecosystem by starting and contributing to many of its foundational open source projects. After being acquired by Red Hat, his focus shifted to the enablement and adoption of cloud-native technologies by mature enterprise stakeholders. To this day, he still contributes to cloud-native ecosystem by building the future on top of these technologies and maintaining standards such as Open Container Initiative (OCI).

User Experience and Open Source Software

We explore the importance of good user experience (UX) in open source software with Máirín "Mo" Duffy from Red Hat. Sharing her journey from an OG Linux contributor to her studies in Human-Computer Interaction, Moe highlights how her academic and professional path has been shaped by the intent to make open source software more accessible and user-friendly. She shares the unique challenges of integrating UX practices into open source development, the relationship between software developers and UX designers, and the impact of UX on software usability and adoption. Moe discusses her work on Podman Desktop, a tool aimed at simplifying Kubernetes environments for developers, and emphasizes the significance of education and accessibility in open source tools for the next generation of developers. The conversation also touches on the potential roles and benefits of AI in enhancing UX and solving human-centric problems within technology.

00:00 Welcome to KubeCon Fishbowl: A Dive into UX in Open Source
01:06 The Journey from Linux Enthusiast to UX Pioneer
04:20 Embracing Open Source Tools for Accessible Design
05:57 The Unique Challenges of UX Design in Open Source
08:57 Podman Desktop: Bridging Developers and Kubernetes
15:33 Exploring the Impact of Cloud Native Training on New Graduates
16:29 The Power of UX in Open Source Development
17:47 Practical Steps to Start in UX Design
20:28 The Role of UX in Software Development and Adoption
26:17 Leveraging AI for UX Design and Beyond

Guest:

Máirín "Mo" Duffy is a Sr. Principal Interaction Designer at Red Hat. A recipient of the O’Reilly Open Source Award, Máirín has over 15 years of expertise in UX & design working upstream in FLOSS communities. Her portfolio is wide-ranging, from OS management tools; to OS infra UIs; to the cloud-based medical image processing project, ChRIS; to the developer-oriented Podman Desktop. She has an M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction and a B.S. in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Better Than the Sum of Our Parts

Stephen Augustus, Head of Open Source at Cisco, and Liz Rice, Chief Open Source Officer at Isovalent, discuss Cisco's acquisition of Isovalent, which has closed since recording, bringing together two teams with long-standing expertise in open source cloud native technologies, observability, and security. The two share their excitement about working together, emphasizing the alignment of Isovalent with Cisco's security division and the potential enhancements this acquisition brings to open source projects like Cilium and eBPF. They explore the implications for the open source community, and the continuous investment and development in these projects under Cisco's umbrella. We discuss the ways this merger could innovate security practices, enhance infrastructure observability, and leverage AI for more intelligent networking solutions.

00:00 Welcome and Introduction
00:22 Cisco's Acquisition of Isovalent
00:53 The Excitement and Potential of the Acquisition
02:14 Strategic Alignment and Future Vision
04:03 Open Source Commitment and Community Impact
06:53 The Road Ahead: Integration and Innovation
19:49 Exploring AI and Future Technologies at Cisco
26:03 Reflections and Closing Thoughts

Resources:

Cilium, eBPF and Beyond | Open at Intel (podbean.com)

The Art of Open Source: A Conversation with Stephen Augustus | Open at Intel (podbean.com)

Guests:

Liz Rice is Chief Open Source Officer with eBPF specialists Isovalent, creators of the Cilium cloud native networking, security and observability project. She was Chair of the CNCF’s Technical Oversight Committee in 2019-2022, and Co-Chair of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon in 2018. She is also the author of Container Security, published by O’Reilly. She has a wealth of software development, team, and product management experience from working on network protocols and distributed systems, and in digital technology sectors such as VOD, music, and VoIP. When not writing code, or talking about it, Liz loves riding bikes in places with better weather than her native London, competing in virtual races on Zwift, and making music under the pseudonym Insider Nine.

Stephen Augustus is a Black engineering director and leader in open source communities. He is the Head of Open Source at Cisco, working within the Strategy, Incubation, & Applications (SIA) organization. For Kubernetes, he has co-founded transformational elements of the project, including the KEP (Kubernetes Enhancements Proposal) process, the Release Engineering subproject, and Working Group Naming. Stephen has also previously served as a chair for both SIG PM and SIG Azure. He continues his work in Kubernetes as a Steering Committee member and a Chair for SIG Release. Across the wider LF (Linux Foundation) ecosystem, Stephen has the pleasure of serving as a member of the OpenSSF Governing Board and the OpenAPI Initiative Business Governing Board. Previously, he was a TODO Group Steering Committee member, a CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation) TAG Contributor Strategy Chair, and one of the Program Chairs for KubeCon / CloudNativeCon, the cloud native community’s flagship conference. He is a maintainer for the Scorecard and Dex projects, and a prolific contributor to CNCF projects, amongst the top 40 (as of writing) code/content committers, all-time. In 2020, Stephen co-founded the Inclusive Naming Initiative, a cross-industry group dedicated to helping projects and companies make consistent, responsible choices to remove harmful language across codebases, standards, and documentation. He has previously held positions at VMware (via Heptio), Red Hat, and CoreOS. Stephen is based in New York City.

 

Optimization and Continuous Profiler: A Look at Granulate

We talked to Roman Yegorov, Director of Solution Engineering at Granulate, now a part of Intel. Roman discusses Granulate's role in Intel's strategy to monetize software through acquisitions aimed at enhancing its software portfolio with a focus on AI/ML and performance optimization. He highlights Granulate's expertise in improving application performance across platforms and their open source profiler, gProfiler, which aids developers in optimizing code efficiency. Roman shares insights into the potential environmental benefits of optimized coding, and the future goals of expanding educational resources on code profiling. Additionally, Roman recounts his career transition from networking to software and emphasizes the importance of fun and engagement in technical training. The conversation concludes with an emphasis on Granulate's holistic solutions for VMs, Kubernetes, and big data, encouraging community participation and contributions to their projects.

00:28 The Intel Acquisition: Granulate's New Chapter
01:18 Granulate's Performance Improvement Mission
01:45 Open Source and Community Engagement at KubeCon
02:48 The Evolution of GProfiler
04:53 Future Plans and Environmental Impact
08:32 From Networking to Software
10:02 The Art of Technical Training and Keeping It Fun
14:38 Explaining Gprofiler with Legos
17:34 Granulate's Holistic Solution and Community Invitation

Charting the CHAOSS: Insights into Open Source Health and Viability

Dawn Foster, Director of Data Science for the CHAOSS Project, joins us to discuss the pressing issue of open source project health and sustainability.  Dawn offers a look into the CHAOSS Project, aimed at improving open source project health through analytics and metrics. She emphasizes the importance of community participation, the challenges of maintaining project health, especially in the face of single organization dominance, and the issue of contributor sustainability. Dawn also touches on her academic research on the Linux kernel, exploring communication and collaboration within the project. The conversation underlines the significance of strategic contributor engagement from businesses to ensure the longevity and success of open source projects that are vital to their operations.

00:00 Introduction
00:17 Open Source and Data Science
02:25 the CHAOSS Project
03:22 Identifying and Addressing Project Health Red Flags
05:33 The Elephant Problem: Navigating Single Organization Dominance
09:32 CHAOSS Project Tools: Augur and GrimoireLab
12:56 The Importance of Data and Privacy in Open Source Communities
13:55 Insights from Research on the Linux Kernel Collaboration
21:24 The Future of Open Source: Sustainability and Viability
27:47 Closing Thoughts on Contributor Sustainability

Resources:

Home - CHAOSS

Guest:

Dr. Dawn Foster works as the Director of Data Science for CHAOSS where she is also a board member / maintainer. She is co-chair of CNCF TAG Contributor Strategy and an OpenUK board member. She has 20+ years of experience at companies like VMware and Intel with expertise in community, strategy, governance, metrics, and more. She has spoken at over 100 industry events and has a BS in computer science, an MBA, and a PhD. In her spare time she enjoys reading science fiction, running, and traveling.

It's All About Observability: Jaeger, OpenSearch, and OpenTelemetry

In our conversation at KubeCon in Paris, Jonah Kowall of Aiven discusses his extensive background in observability, his role at Aiven overseeing product management, and his active involvement in open source projects such as Jaeger, OpenSearch, and OpenTelemetry. We also touch on software licensing and Redis's shift to proprietary software. We explore the challenges of maintaining project sustainability, attracting new contributors, and the importance of cross-project collaboration within the open source community. The discussion encapsulates the vibrant dynamics of open source development, the evolving landscape of observability tools, and underscores the collective endeavor to foster innovation and sustainability in this space.

 

00:00 Introduction

01:19 Deep Dive into Jaeger: The Observability Tool

02:21 Exploring OpenSearch and Its Ecosystem

03:27 The Impact of Licensing Changes on Open Source

06:20 The Challenge of Sustaining Open Source Projects

09:36 Fostering New Contributors and Community Engagement

12:30 Observability Trends and the Future of Open Source

19:25 Enhancing Collaboration in the Open Source Ecosystem

20:55 Final Thoughts and Advice for Aspiring Contributors

 

Resources:

Jaeger: open source, distributed tracing platform (jaegertracing.io)

OpenTelemetry

OpenSearch

Guest:

Jonah Kowall, computer scientist and open-source contributor to OpenSearch, Jaeger, OpenTelemetry. A technical leader across startups to large enterprises specialized in operations, security, and performance. Led Gartner research on monitoring. Product leadership at AppDynamics, Cisco (post-acquisition), Kentik, Logz.io, and is current the head of product management at Aiven building tomorrow’s open source data platform for everyone.

The Future of Security is Open

Loris Degioanni, CTO and founder of Sysdig, shares his open source story, from his work on Wireshark to pioneering cloud native security platforms with Sysdig and Falco. Sysdig is a universal system visibility tool with native support for containers, while Falco, now under the CNCF, provides real-time anomaly detection in containers and Kubernetes. We discuss the evolution of network security with the advent of containers and Kubernetes, highlighting the shift from packet-based to system call-based security through eBPF technology. He also underscores the importance of community collaboration in enhancing security measures and is optimistic about the role of open source in shaping the future of security.

00:00 Welcome and Introduction
01:34 The Evolution of Sysdig and Falco
02:37 Connecting the Dots: From Wireshark to Falco
04:37 eBPF Technology
09:18 Falco's Impact and Unexpected Uses
11:24 The Importance of Runtime Security Detection
13:11 Empowering Developers for Better Security
17:41 Excitement in the Open Source AI Ecosystem
21:04 Closing Thoughts and Future of Security

 

Guest:

Loris Degioanni (he/him) is the Chief Technology Officer and founder of Sysdig. He is also the creator of the popular open source troubleshooting tool, sysdig, and the open source container security tool Falco. Prior to founding Sysdig, Loris co-created Wireshark, the open source network analyzer, which today has 20+ million users. Loris holds a PhD in computer engineering from Politecnico di Torino and lives in Davis, California.