Shuah Khan, The Linux Foundation | Open Source Summit Europe 2022

This is texturing TV. Welcome back to the open source Summit in Dublin Ireland. We're here talking with Shuah Khan who is a not only a maintainer of the Linux platform, but also is the head of the safety program for Lennox.

So we're gonna talk a little bit about what's the need for safety programs in the Linux environment and we're not talking about the operating system itself. We're talking about the use case for that inside of that particular Market segment, which is very complex and has a lot of deep requirements. So walk us through a few wood.

I know you have a project called Lisa. So what exactly is that at least a project about what does it do? And and why do we need it?

Right Elisa is enabling Linux in safety critical systems. That's what it stands for. What we're doing is we're bringing safety experts and relax kernel experts together to have evaluate safety Linux Cardinal and use cases when I talk about use cases it for example automobile use case.

So you have a Telltale that we look at and say how a safety critical application that is running on top of the Cardinal can be safely used. And also certified when you say safety certification comes in we don't do certification under Elisa, but we provide resources. For people that are looking to certify their platforms you safety critical platforms running on the next that's what we do.

So what that means is that we look at we have safety experts that are looking at the safety angle of it and kernel experts like myself looking providing the bridge between, you know, safety and Cardinal and say what are the gaps in the cardinal? Now for being able to do safety certification and then we provide resources resources processes and we say, hey, we'll make it easy for people to enable Linux on safety critical platforms and people been using Linux on those platforms already or is this represent like a new frontier for the operating system? Yes.

I know. I mean they have been using I mean, you know, if you look at SpaceX and you look at our Tesla's they have been running Linux, what is different about this is it's an open source effort that we are we are doing it under the Linux Foundation platform as an open source a project. And so we have we will be able to bring safety experts people interested in the companies that are interested in deploying these platforms and Linux experts together to collaborate in an open way.

Otherwise, each of them would have to reinvent the same wheel. Over and over again and there's a lot of duplicate effort. So it sounds like you're just trying to bring everybody together and say, you know, there's not a lot of differentiated value on these processes.

So let's just do them together. Exactly. And then that's what we do at the Linux Foundation, right?

We pour our provide this neutral platform. And Elisa is one of the projects that Linux Foundation. Do you think that in the future Regulators will be asking tougher questions about this because we are starting to see more use cases involving automotive and Healthcare and things that they typically get involved in.

So will the bar get raised as maybe some of the Regulators get more aware of these issues and start asking these more Difficult questions, shall we say right? So that's the process so that we are by the when Regulators ask the tough questions, they won't they want to ask. Us per se and Elisa but people that are providing those platforms deploying the platforms.

They will ask questions regulator will ask go and ask the product teams, right? So what we are here doing is that we are going to help the product teams and an integrators that do this work. So we are going to say hey here are the resources here are the processes you can follow to make that process of answering questions easier.

And as far as I know, it gets very expensive to answer those questions because there's a lot of lawyers involved and all kinds of people asking questions. So it's part of this goal is just to kind of reduce the cost of building platforms and for this use case. I wouldn't say reducing the cost per se making it easier.

Cost depends on a lot of other factors, right? So what is going going to into that product? And what are the components going into the product?

What is the maintenance look like but it making the process easier not necessarily reducing the cost. I mean using Linux itself reduces cost. It is Linux operating system.

You're putting it. I mean that in itself is the after that the what you build on top of that is the cost that companies. And a lot of item there's a lot of paperwork in that process.

That could be stream, right? Yeah, you're talking about the legal process. Yes.

So we Provide resources. So it is up to the memory companies or people that are using. The building them have to do you're kind of like the lending library for all this stuff and you can say to folks.

This is how you gonna figure out how to answer those questions. Exactly. All right provide.

Yeah, absolutely knowledge base. Now it's now you also do a lot of work where you're trying to recruit people to be part of the maintainers of the Linux. Kernel projects.

What are you looking for? What types of people do you need? And I mean, are you still looking for people or is this kind of a lot of I would think it's kind of a, you know a high honor to work on that.

So maybe you got to be a special talents to do it. So the it's I would say bringing new Talent diversity and talent into the into the Linux community and the other open source project making it easier for people to the new developers to access and resources to learn and improve their open source skills. And that's what we do.

We're providing. It's Linux Foundation mentorship programs. That's the umbrella.

I oversee the project at the Linux Foundation level, but we have lots of projects not just Cardinal we are we have cncf hyper Legend Network. I mean any open source project you can you can recruit new developers. So what happens is that we are as you know, Linux kernel all of the developers all of us, Are getting closer and closer to retirement.

So we need to bring new people in and what is the best way to it's the best way to do it is that is that we train them as experts we train them in how to participate in the open source Community because it's a different skill set being able to work, you know open source being able to learn to interact with open source communities and how do you get your code in? You know in companies right you new developer joins the new company, they'll show you the way how the company Works employee employee orientation what not right that that is well defined but open source, there is no rule book. And you start working and it is self-motivated self-selected group of people that come in and want to participate in open source.

So what happens as the result is a lot of people don't know where to start. So what we are doing is we are providing we provide three sessions spring summer and fall three months sessions and part-time as well. They work when they do part-time they work six months and when 40 hours 20 hours kind of situation and we provide that opportunity to for everybody even people that want to say they're doing web development, but they want to do kernel development.

So we say hey, come on boy. Come on on board as long as you know, you meet the requirements Bel the project for kernel, it would be knowing C language and you know is basically requirements you can you can learn and then we'll train you. So at the end of this program, then they can sit back and say when they come to an issue, they'd be like, well what what you would do and then I'm just follow the guidelines.

Right? Right. So I mean the program yes, we three months we work together, right so they fix bugs some of them fix bugs in the colonel and then they will have patches in the colonel so they will have authorship and and they will have signed offs in the kernels.

They can call themselves kernel downwards. And so yeah. Do you think a lot of people would contribute more but maybe they're just intimidated by the whole process.

So they don't know to your point where to get started and to your diversity point, you know, we need to figure out a way to maybe reach out and encourage them more to kind of volunteer because On their own they're not quite gonna go. You know, who do I call great? So that's really what it is.

Right? So we're we're saying we we're kind of opening that door for them little bit and say hey come on in. We have all these resources.

We have structured program that you can come in and do the work or we provide webinars series which are free webinars for cardinal space that we provide they can go and self. Study and and then at the end once a year, we do virtual mentis showcase. We connect the mentees come in and all the graduates come in and then they talk about what they have done and then we have member companies employers sitting in and watching so we are connecting that so we're kind of do all that are you finding more people in different geographies.

Maybe there's some brilliant kids sitting in Africa somewhere that nobody knows about but you know, are you going out looking for those types of folks that are all over the world, right? So we do Outreach. We we go and look for people last summer.

We did within us we did we went to statically Black colleges and then we did in Outreach and we do it's the world is getting out and then we are seeing more and more people from different geographies that we haven't seen before Africa Middle East and and China Japan and Southeast Asia. We're seeing more and more particip. But as Brazil, for example, we have a good group of students that students and participants that come from there.

So it is growing it's been three years three and a half, you know coming up on four. But yes, we are seeing more and more people coming in and then being being completing and then it changes their life because they some of them get hired on or they get opportunities. Open up for them and speaking of those opportunities.

So do you think that I mean people are contributing their time to an open source project, but as they put that on there resume will that get them more notice from other jobs that they're going to go do because people know that hey, you know, if you were good enough to contribute to these open source projects, then you know, you must know what you're doing. Correct. So what happens is it's a contributing to open source project.

It happens in open right? You don't have to write it on a resume and they can go check it you your current credentials are open. You just have to look at the colonel tree to see how many patches somebody submitted.

So as an example, we have had somebody that work with us last graduate from last year. They were trying to go find a position within within their company doing Colonel development and the program brought them from they were able to successfully do the transition within their own company going into another organization and being able to do cudnament. So so even within the organization sometimes this gives just that little bit of a lift to say Hey you prove to yourself.

So come on, you know, you can come in and work in the cuddle team. For example, are there attributes of those people that you look? Or things that you wish that they would do more to be prepared for to be in the mentorship program.

Something that's happening is universities and such. They are not we do see so a lot of the universities are not teaching c as I think the us a lot of that happening but in some places they do so it would be I think it's a process a lot of students. They already know see they come in and they come in and do that.

I don't know if you need a special preparation for that. We also screen them and we give you you need you need to meet basic requirements. So for kernel I would say if you are really looking to get into the kernel development spend a little bit of time ahead of time learning C and Shaolin so you can kind of fly through and go through the and be able to do the colonel down my stomwell this morning at the event was kind of signaling his Affinity at least for us.

So is that something we should be thinking about going forward? Yes. I mean, that would be something I think some.

All of us including me. I mean I have done a little bit dabbling, but I'm thinking I need to start doing that if I'm getting rust patches. I need to be able to go review them.

So, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So as we go along there's always this focus on you know, do we have enough Talent?

Do we have enough skills out there. Do we need to do better education, you know, not just your side of the training but I mean all across the schools and universities. Are you feel like we have enough Talent or we just too short and we don't know it and we're not really driving enough people into the stem programs and we're not really doing this in a proactive way that we should so yes or no.

I mean, there are people um, I would personally I would like to see more diversity especially gendered our city. We are primarily if you look at the Cardinal we're primarily North American Centric, you know, there's a lot of Europe North America and then we are adding other diversity but General diversity was we are we are we do better we have about 10% which is in the Cardinal which is much better than a lot of the other projects. But we can do a lot better.

So how do you do that? That's a complex question. I think that it has to start in schools, especially middle and high schools.

And that's where the stem is making in roads. Is it enough that? I don't know.

I think there got to be a lot more of that happening in high schools. And I the local school district that I have. I keep going to the their career.

I volunteered on their career forums and then I go in there and talk about hey, you know, you really need to think about open source because that's we're already there. And then if you don't educate your I mean you can educate there are a lot of career focused programs even in high school, you know, but open source is something that you want to put it on make it a priority to talk about and some Are doing that but I think there has to be a lot more of that happening. Some of this is even down at the grammar school level on the way.

We teach math girls start to check out around the seventh eighth grade. And then the reason for that isn't the math. The reason for that is just kind of the way that the culture of the class is structured and you know more often than not the teachers male and the guys are much more zoned in on that from their families or whatever reason it is.

Is there some way to talk about math and computer science differently so that we're not turning off 50% of the population so early in the cycle when they could be, you know contributing as well as anybody else. You have to do that. Yeah.

Definitely we have to start at that very early age. We need to encourage more and that's where stem is coming in and some of the stem programs. Now, I'm seeing that they some schools and such when they they're starting stem early earlier even in kindergarten and I have two boys, there's spread seven years apart, but I could clearly see how soon they're starting stem my when my second one came around seven years later, they were starting in fifth grade and fourth grade so which is great, right?

And then also I'm also seeing that some stem classes they are saying It's for girls only. So I guess that is kind of promotes them to be speaking. They are not intimidated.

Maybe I don't know. I haven't observed in the classroom. I don't know how that affects them.

But there has to be definitely. Definitely has to be a mindset shift in in not pigeonholing people and saying okay, you're good to do this or you're only good for this kind of thing. And then there has to be more support system, too.

All right, folks regardless of race Creed gender you too can grow up someday to be a Linux Foundation fellow. You just kind of have to get started somewhere along the line and they're trying to make it as easy as possible. Hey, thanks for being on the show.

Thank you. Thanks for having me and we'll be back in a couple of minutes.