State of Open Source in 2024 with Perforce Software’s Javier Perez

This is Textron tv. Hi everyone. Welcome to another interview here on Textron tv.

Uh, my guest for this segment is Javier Perez. Javier is the Chief open source evangelist at Perforce Software. Javier, welcome to Tech Drunk tv.

It's great to have you back on. Thanks, Alan. I'm happy to be here.

Um, I don't think you've ever appeared on one of these interviews, but I know we've interviewed you at various, uh, open source, uh, conferences over the years, so it it's great to have you on in, in this kind of discussion as well. Javier, you're obviously passionate about open source. You've been involved in the open source world a while, but yeah, we'll give people a sense of your journey, of your career path, if you don't mind.

Sure. Uh, and I always happy to talk about open source. Absolutely.

Um, yeah, I mean, I have a career now that it's getting close to, uh, 30 years in, in software. Uh, I always worked on the kind of on the vendor side of software, uh, for, uh, selling to many different enterprises. And I've been across most areas of software, uh, more recently on, you know, SaaS cloud environments, um, mobile apps.

Um, I had my start with software for Telco. So lot of, lot of, uh, good stories about, uh, that industry. But, uh, uh, what I've been doing on, on on recent years and kind of a technical roles moving into sales engineering for, for a few years and then into product management.

And now in more recent years, I've been an an advocate and evangelist about all things open source. I've been working with open source for, for many years, uh, probably in the last 15 years, directly working, um, uh, with open source software and then being part of the communities around. So taking the next step and being contributors.

Um, had a stint at Red Hat, which obviously, uh, was, uh, great for me in terms of seeing how they work with all the different, uh, open source communities and, and their models to, to, uh, monetize and, and build a successful business from, from, from open source. Uh, and then I worked for other companies where, uh, focused on, uh, open source security, which has been a passion of mine now in, in recent years. Uh, all things around open source security and, uh, and, and now with, uh, Airforce, which I cover the, the Open Logic brand, um, you know, the dual role of, uh, chief evangelist and, and I also responsible for the Open Logic product line.

Excellent. So, I don't know if our audience is familiar with Open Logic. They may have heard their name Perforce, but Perforce has certainly changed and grown and added brands over these last few years.

Why don't we start with a little bit of the open logic background and then, you know, perfor and the greater kind of brand there. Sure, absolutely. So Open Logic, it's been around for now more than 20 years, and it's always been focusing on providing technical support for open source software, right?

As, you know, open source, you know, it's, it's free, it's available, but it's also self support, right? And, and you, you, you get help from the community, from discussion forums and so on. What we, what we do is we provide that enterprise grade technical support, right?

So if you, you are getting that commercial formal support with SLAs and different commitments, uh, on a variety of open source, uh, technologies. And over the years we have been expanding that and, and, you know, we cover more than 400 open source technologies where we provide direct technical support. And then in, um, recently, uh, we've been offering, uh, what is called extended long-term support for, uh, technologies that reach end of life.

And, uh, uh, the cases of angulars and CentOS more recent recently, uh, we're actually going and, and covering what the, the community stops doing, which is issuing releases, updates, and we take it from there, uh, for our, for our customers. So we've been very successful with those long-term support offerings. Uh, but the overall business is technical support and, and we're just one of the many brands, uh, uh, from Perforce.

Um, I mean, as you mentioned, Well, tell us some of the others. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, Perforce, uh, some people remember Perforce for the source control software, right?

Sure. Um, that, that area of, uh, that product of, uh, Perforce actually continues very successfully. Uh, it's called now Helix, and it's, uh, very, it's, it's, it's looking after a very specific niche, which is, um, uh, gaming development.

And when you're developing games, uh, it has a very different needs, right? To have the, the, the management of images and videos and all of that. And, uh, helix Source control, uh, it's kind of specialized on that specific niche.

So, so they continue to be very, very successful. Uh, but Perforce, it's owned by a private equity, and they have a really interesting model of a more of a portfolio company. And, uh, that portfolio has grown based on acquisitions.

Um, some of the most recent large, uh, acquisitions has have been, uh, puppet, um, it's been more than a year now with, with Puppet. Yes. Uh, some people might recognize Perfecto for, for testing.

Yes. Perfecto Mobile, uh, blaze Meter, also in the, in the testing, testing space. Um, Ana, IPI management and, and, and there are many, many more.

I, I, uh, clockwork for static analysis, also very specific to an niche, which is, uh, embedded systems. Um, um, and then we are doing really, really well that that business, uh, unit is doing really, really well on that specific space of static analysis. Uh, so testing all, all across DevOps, uh, portfolio.

And that's, that's perforce. Excellent. Thank you.

That was a good, that was a good background, Javier. So I wanted to jump into, uh, open Logic by Perfor. I guess we should add, uh, recent released, recently released their 2024 state of open source report.

Um, why don't you, if you don't mind, give us a little background on the report and then we could jump into like, what was some of the findings? Sure. Look, this is something that we've been doing for a few years.

Uh, this is my third year, uh, doing this project, which is, um, we put together a, a very complete survey. And that survey, it's a global survey, and we take, uh, respondents, uh, professionals in the industry, uh, from all over the world, across all industries. And, and the focus is the use of open source software in organizations.

And, and the key here is organizations, right? So it's very different when you ask, uh, you know, a developer, what you like, what do you use versus what do you use in your organization. So the focus on pretty much every question on the survey, it's about the use of open source software in, in the organization.

And that give us a very different perspective to other industry reports. Um, you know, as part of the putting together the, the analysis, the survey first is to, and, and that's something that I do anyway, that reviewing industry reports from, uh, you know, from foundations, from, uh, organizations, from other places, right? And, you know, you know, you get inspiration from the architect.

Some, some good ideas there, but our report, it's, it's about that. It's about getting the state of open source, right? What, what are, what are organizations doing, and then we obviously just split the, uh, for the different technologies for, you know, around things, around maturity, things about the challenges and so on.

So happy to chat about that. Uh, for this year, we, uh, run the survey just for six weeks, I believe it was five weeks, um, between mid-October and mid-November of 2023. And, uh, just with that, we get, we got more than, we received more than 2000 respondents, respondents from every ranger in the world from, uh, companies of all sizes.

It was actually very well distributed. And, uh, and then from there was the, the fun part for me, right? To do the, the slicing and dicing of all that data, right?

And comparing against demographics and, and all of that. And, uh, and, and we put together a, I think a, a, a very complete report. Uh, we also make available the, the dataset, the raw data for people that are interested on, on, uh, something very specific.

Uh, I mean, otherwise it could be on a, you know, a 200 page report. But, uh, some very insightful data there. Uh, um, you know, I'm obviously happy to chat about that.

Well, you opened that door. Let's walk on through what, what, you know, I always like to ask people what were the three big takeaways from this year's report? Yeah.

So that's, that's always the, the, the interesting part, right? So for me as a, as an open source, uh, uh, advocate and, and evangelist, um, obviously I'm always happy to ask. I, and I ask this question, and we, we've been asking this question for the last three years on the report, have you increased the use of open source software in your organization over the last 12 months?

Right? And we always get the yes. And then we ask like, yes, significantly, and we get that, right?

Uh, we get the, yeah. Or we more or less maintain the same use of open source. So between the maintain and yes, we increase the use of open source software, that's 95% of the respondents, that's 95% of the respondents, uh, and only 5%, and which was a little bit more than last year.

Uh, they said that they reduced the use of open source. And it doesn't mean that they don't use open source, it just means that probably they stopped using CentOS or maybe Angular JS or some, Well, they wouldn't be the only one stopping that, but Right. They wouldn't be the only one using stop using CentOS.

But Javier, you know, look, I, I follow the open source market myself. I, I wonder if this year some of the changes we've seen in open source licensing might might account for that. Well, I was very happy to mention that, right?

Because I said, well, look, you know, when that happened with the license changes, and, and, and I actually wr written a, a couple of blog posts about that because I got really passionate about that, the whole, you know, cycle of, of what I call recycle stories of, oh, you know, the end of open source and now everyone is gonna change their licenses. And, uh, you know, it is not, not, you know, companies are driving all of this and that. And, and one of the things on the report is showing, and first of all, you know, open source keeps growing, right?

And, and we show that some in some regions even more than in others, like, uh, uh, middle East, souther, uh, Latin America, uh, Africa, we saw an increase in use of open source software. So there's no stop on on that, right? From time to time.

We get news about that on the category, category of just to be specific category of, um, um, uh, configuration management, right? So Terra, uh, Terraform, Terraform pretty, pretty much kept the same, uh, usage. So when we ask if, do you use Terraform or on other, other open source tool, um, we got pretty much about the same percentage.

Uh, I'll get you the, the exact number in just a minute, but we very much did not change. So what, what does that tell us? That tell us that, at least for now, not Terraform has not been affected really in terms of usage, but we saw, uh, open Tofu, which is the fork from Terraform.

Again, interaction, I believe it's about 10% usage now. Now, we don't know if it's all testing or testing and production or more production than testing, right? But, but the fact that we see the fork growing, it's great.

And we've seen, uh, we've seen this over the years, over the last couple of years with, you might recall Elasticsearch and then the fork. Sure. Open search.

Yep. And Elasticsearch states more or less the same. And I, and I'm, I'm sure it's not just the open source usage, right?

It could be also the, the, the commercial usage, uh, and then open search, it's growing. Uh, so, so there's a space for everyone. com from time to time, uh, and they're gonna continue to happen, right?

But, but that doesn't stop. And, and I think there's a, there's a space for, for everyone here. Yeah.

So besides almost my, my background is in what we call Cyber Today Security info sec. And we went through a similar thing in security about 20 some odd years ago. Back then, you know, security had some really big open source projects.

Snort was an IDS source fire, Marty Rush, a clam AV was open source antivirus. Uh, perhaps the biggest Nessus was, uh, open source vulnerability scanning. And what had happened was, all within like a year to two years of each other, they stopped releasing an open source version of Tenable.

So of course, you, uh, of, of Nessus, tenable stopped it, and you could still use the old version, but it was old with Snort, they kept it open, but the signatures that you needed to keep it current, they, they stopped making those. Open source was kind of weird, you know, again, excuse me, change in licensing. Um, and then the same company, Sourcefire bought Clam AV and kind of built that into A-A-U-T-M, right?

A a edge border device. So, but the interesting thing is just like, now we, we saw the blogs. Is this the death of open source and open source security, and oh, my, oh my, the sky is falling and there were poor, there were, uh, forks of Open Vast was a fork of Nessus, I believe open VAS and others.

But it really doesn't, it doesn't derail the train. The train keeps a rolling, right? And, and it's bigger now than it ever was.

So, you know, I, I think those kinds of things tend to be momentary blips. They are, and they're very specific, right? So, I mean, understandable from both sides, right?

So as a company, you know, you want to protect your investments. You are, you have full-time engineers working on open source software, and, and that's important part of your business. Um, you can understand those things.

I, I actually like the, I mean, there's room for everyone, and I actually like the fact that there's interest, uh, on some licenses to, you know, maybe restricted now that's the, the business, uh, software license. But, but we'll open source, you know, in, in a few years, right? Uh, or, or with the promise that it's gonna be completely unrestricted in a few years.

Uh, I think, I think there are different ways to do it. And, and, you know, there's also, also obviously the challenging of commercializing and, you know, building business, uh, on, on open source. But again, as you said, like that train, I mean, that, that, that, it's, there's no more, there's no more questions about, you know, why open source, open source has been used.

And actually that brings me another, another interesting highlight there on the report over the years. Uh, but the last two years, we said, well, the number one reason why organizations use open source software is for access to, uh, innovation, access to new technologies and innovation and cost cutting, or basically price, or because it's free, it was down, it was not even the, even the top three, uh, this year, it actually went to number one across all regions, right? And, and it was very interesting to see.

So in Europe it was a little bit more, always more on the reason why was cost cutting, right? Because it's free now across the board. And that also tells you, uh, and, you know, we, we have a few ideas there, but that in, in the report, but that also tells you about, you know, the, the difficult changes in the economy, global economy, right?

And, and, you know, looking to, um, I mean, there was many cases for, um, layoffs and things like that. So, so it was probably more top of mind. And yes, we'll use open source because people, us access to the latest technologies, but also because it's free in, and we can do it, uh, we can do it, we can do it, uh, without significant budget, right?

So, you know, a lot of, a lot of good, good, interesting things. Uh, before I forget, I wanted to mention, you've mentioned ex that example for, um, uh, security tooling or open source security tooling. We added a question this year, this brand new question for this year's survey.

And we listed what, uh, we considered like the most used or most popular open source security tools out there, and we provided a good list. Uh, I think there were like 20 different options. And, uh, the result is that there's not enough awareness.

Very few people using those open source security tools, um, the, the number one at only 19% was Nmap, which is for low ba uh, balancing. Um, sure, I know Nmap well, That that was the number one of the, the older ones listed, right? And, and there, I mean, as you know, there are some with a lot of investment now for organizations like Open SSF, open Source Security Foundation and others that were listed there, and very small percentage, right?

So, so one of the things for me is, you know, hopefully with a report like this, we provide more awareness, right? What happens in open source and in software in general is if you don't know it exists, you know, you're never gonna find it, right? So it's more about the awareness and taking advantage of that.

Uh, you know, people might be thinking, well, if it's for security, I prefer, you know, proprietary software. Well, we go back to the, the conversation. Well, all the proprietary software is using open source software anyway, right?

All the building blocks, Well, the components, so, yeah. And, and that, look, I mean, our audience gets that. 'cause our audience is a technical audience, right?

Um, and they're, they're using this all the time. But, but certainly for people who don't know, look, they, they estimate 70 plus percent of all the components in the applications you use are open source these days. Javier, we're, we're almost outta time for people who wanna maybe go grab a copy of the report, dig in a little bit, where can they go?

com. Um, okay. Can also follow me on, on LinkedIn.

I'm constantly posting there. I, I, um, we have the report, we have a blog post. Uh, we're doing a webinar in a couple of weeks.

Actually, I forgot to mention very important that this year we, uh, it was not just open logic. We collaborated with OSI open, uh, the open source initiative and, uh, with Eclipse Foundation. Um, and, uh, they help us, you know, with, you know, putting together the report and distributing and, and, and all and so on.

I'm, uh, doing a webinar, uh, a panel with, uh, Stefano M from OSI, the executive director of OSI, uh, also from, uh, one of the leaders at, uh, eclipse Foundation. And we're gonna be talking about this, right? com as well Here.

Uh, and we can, we can send you the links in in a couple of minutes. Yeah. Fantastic.

Javier, I've gotta run, we've got someone in the green room it looks like for our next interview. I want to thank you for, uh, coming on and, and giving us a little information behind the, the, uh, 2024 state of open source report from Open Logic by Perforce. And hopefully we'll see you an open source event soon.

Will do. Thank you. All right, Javier Perez, chief Open Source Evangelist Perfor software here on Tech Drunk tv.

We're gonna take a break. We're gonna be back in just a minute with our next guest.