There’s no need to bury the lead here. Soumith Chintala is the central figure in a major transition in the world of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. He works at Meta where he’s the manager of PyTorch, an open source machine learning framework that was recently transferred to the Linux Foundation. PyTorch enables ML engineers to deploy new AI models in minutes rather than weeks. Soumith has been a community leader for the past decade, but he was a self-described introvert when he was...
Sep 22, 2022•33 min•Season 2Ep. 4
It’s a consistent pattern at most companies: High-value data and corporate memory are stored in isolated channels on disparate systems. Old processes are protected by those who have been there the longest. The problem is, the DNA of the company becomes lost as long-time employees depart, making it difficult for new hires to find what is available, why decisions were made, and who they can look to for answers. Michael Lewis talks about this in his podcast, “ Against the Rules ” in the series “Six...
Sep 15, 2022•30 min•Season 2Ep. 3
With major software vulnerabilities popping up on what seems like a weekly basis and government regulation imminent when it comes to providing a software bill of materials for any application sold to the United States government, collaboration on open source security is no longer optional. Large enterprises have come to realize that it's better to work together, to find common solutions rather than go it alone. Some financial service companies have been hesitant to embrace the inevitable move to...
Sep 08, 2022•31 min•Season 2Ep. 2
“I usually say that I’m a hybrid,” Ana Jiménez says. In this context what does that even mean, what is a hybrid? According to the Oxford Language Dictionary, a hybrid is “ a word formed from elements taken from different languages, for example television ( tele- from Greek, vision from Latin). ” If we use that as our definition, Ana Jiménez Santamaria has a good reason to call herself a hybrid; she can speak the language of the business world as well as that of the developer domain. Ana holds a ...
Aug 25, 2022•26 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Allan Friedman was one of the first, if not THE first person to talk with me about the need for a mandatory software bill of materials to be attached to all software back in 2017 when he was Director of Cybersecurity Initiatives for the US Department of National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). In today’s show we’ll do a deep dive with Allan, tracing his path from doing economic research at Harvard in the early 2000s, to becoming the country’s most recognized advocate on...
Aug 18, 2022•33 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Ahmedabad is the largest city in the state of Gujarat (goo jer raht) in western India. It has a population of over eight million people. This is where Arpit Joshipura, GM of LFNetworking at the Linux Foundation, was born and raised. The city of Ahmedabad is divided into two major sections, dissected by the Sabarmati River. The east side is what’s considered the “old” city, while the west side houses educational institutions such as Gujarat University, M.G. Science Institute, Government Polytechn...
Aug 11, 2022•27 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Technology influences every aspect of our life. It's hard to remember a time when analog was separate from the digital. How do we balance the pace of innovation with its social impact when everything is changing so quickly? For Daniel Krook, these two threads converged in 1995. Dan went to Trinity College, a small liberal arts school in Hartford, Connecticut. He wasn't sure what to major in, a common dilemma when making the jump from high school to college. The choice of a liberal arts school of...
Aug 04, 2022•26 min•Season 1Ep. 8
The Unreal gaming engine launched in 1998. It was a fun time. It was like, “Oh my God, we can build our own games and gaming maps!” But those earlier in the gaming cycle thought there was a better alternative already on the market: the launch of Quake in 1996. Royal O’Brien, currently GM of Digital Media and Games at the Linux Foundation was one of those. Royal O'Brien: Starting with the Quake Gaming Engine I didn't start writing Unreal mods until probably 2001, 2002. Until then I was writing Qu...
Jul 15, 2022•31 min•Season 1Ep. 7
"A lot of the companies I've worked for were trying to transition from proprietary or very siloed products, very black box products to more standards based products. And that seems to be a common thread that I've gone through even in proprietary companies. Avaya also was trying to move away from a very, very monolithic black box voice messaging system that they had millions of dollars invested in called the Octel Voice Messaging system. "They wanted to go to more of a standards based system wher...
Jul 08, 2022•44 min•Season 1Ep. 6
As Sara Chipps delved deeper into the world of open source and moved up into senior engineering and management roles, there was a specific skill she learned about how to work with and manage engineers. "This is something you never get taught in school. This is something we don't stress to junior developers. This is something that senior developers learn late in their careers, is that the ability to influence the opinions of others without conflict is a superpower . "By conflict, I don't mean not...
Jun 23, 2022•37 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Clyde Seepersad is the Senior Vice President & General Manager, of the Training & Certification Project at The Linux Foundation. He carries the idea with him that failure is temporary. Knowing that can help you get through some pretty intense situations. On the flip side, knowing success is temporary gives you a chance to store away some of those good feelings, which can be used to temper the struggles as the cycle plays itself out. "Life's a little bit like the stock market. Some days y...
Jun 16, 2022•35 min•Season 1Ep. 4
The first time Patrick Debois came into contact with Open Source was in the early stages of development of the Linux kernel, compiling it on floppies on his 486 machine. To tell you how long ago that was, the Intel 486 was introduced in 1989, It was the first chip in the line to include a built-in math coprocessor. Patrick was an early adopter of computers, but one thing he missed was a community. In those days he had to copy software over electronic bulletin board systems. But with the Linux ke...
May 24, 2022•30 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Brian Behlendorf came from a science and technology background. In fact, his parents met at IBM where his father was a Cobol programmer. During the 1980s, Brian was comfortable in front of a TRS 80 and a PC junior doing basic programming and term reports. He quickly found his way onto Usenet and participation on mailing lists around the band REM or the record label 4AD. This eventually turned into a dedicated mailing list focused on the rave scene in San Francisco. Through setting up the mailing...
May 17, 2022•52 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Priyanka Sharma has had a long career in tech. After graduating from Stanford in 2009, she worked at Google in the Online Partnerships Group, was a technical consultant where she onboarded new DoubleClick clients, and acted as interim Product Manager for internal insights tools. From there she moved to OutRight, leading the promotional launch for the GoDaddy Silicon Valley office, and continued by leading the Outright product integration into the GoDaddy sales team catalog. Priyanka noticed that...
May 10, 2022•29 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Open Source is embedded in every software application you touch today. It’s impossible to build a large scale application without it. The real question is, what’s the story behind that component, application, or framework you just downloaded? Not the specs. Not the functionality. The real story: “Who wrote the code? What is their backstory? What led them to the Open Source community?” From the Linux Foundation office in New York City, welcome to "The Untold Stories of Open Source". Each week we ...
May 09, 2022•9 min
