Peter McKee, JFrog | Open Source Summit NA 2022

This is Textron TV. All right back, you're live in Austin for Linux Foundation open. Source, Summit.

We've got our Jay frog folks. We're back to back here. We're going to be doing a few interviews.

I want to introduce you. He's a new frog You tell he's not that green yet. Yeah, his name is Peter McKee and Peter.

Welcome. Thank you. com first time.

Yeah, you start I think we've only lost Well now we have but Peter why don't you introduce yourself to our audience? Yeah, my name is Peter McKee. I run the developer.

Advocacy team at jfrog Hardware to say I should practice it more. But yeah, I came from Docker was there for about five years ran the community and devrel teams there super excited to come over Jay for all great people great products. Absolutely.

It's funny. We would just talking our last guest was Jeff from IBM. And we did like a quick history of kubernetes and talked about Docker and swarm and all that stuff.

Oh boy, you know there was some history there. But anyway, you know, a lot of people look at this and say yeah Dev advocacy. A lot of us think that's the new sales people right?

Because you don't do sales people. We do devrel and devadricacy and and your job is to just make sure the software is delivering Delight. Yeah.

Yeah. I tell people I tell my Advocates I want people to know like and love you, right and yes or no like and love too. Well.

Yeah, okay. It helps spelling well and private school too. Yeah.

But yeah, and I think it's one of the best jobs in the world, right? You still get to talk and speak and connect with the community, but you can still also write code contribute to open source. Yeah, I think I think nowadays software's eating the world right and software Engineers of the new king makers.

None of my terms. And absolutely yeah, and is it liquid it better be it should be will be if we have our way you're gonna be here man. You got to be saying it will be that's it will be right.

com right? There are a lot of software companies that I'm fond of right who I think do a good job. Jay frogs wanted in my mind dollar for dollar does the best job of balancing being a for profit company?

While nourishing a thriving community and if you do it, right you can do both well and be successful at it and I think yeah Salome and Fred and yoaving the whole team. There have are a shining example of it. I'm interested to know you coming from docker.

Like what? Do you know about the jayfrag software What attracted you to this position? You know, it's not that they pay yeah a lot more than everyone else.

Does they do? No, I'm just really don't know. But yeah, well not number one.

The team is the phenomenal and then we had Art Factory at Dale. I was at Dale many years ago, I think an oh wait '09 we had artifactory which was completely A New Concept right? And to be honest, right?

It took a little bit. Why are we doing and until you get it then you get it. Right and I think it was that a combination of the products the people and then they're open source initiative right of Persia and a different Conan and different projects.

We're doing like you said, I think they have a great pulse on the community. They basically started the devops movement, right? It's kind of like Docker started containers movement change how we run our run times and devops has changed the way we deliver software.

Yeah, and I really it's a great Stable Company that I want to be part of take it to the to the next level, right? Yeah. That's right.

So I think of Jay Frog's Mission especially as it relates to open source. There's there's like two sides of that open source coin one is Jay frog does a really or tries to and I think does do a really good job of securing open source software. Mmm, right.

So a lot of the stuff in artifactory is open. Yeah, right and and using X-ray and other tools, you know, they're securing these open source software. At the same time Jay frog also and and I think more recently than in past has been.

A progenitor a producer of Open Source software right with some of the projects you just mentioned we're going to dive more into them with our next guy Steven but it's interesting. You don't see a lot of companies that play both sides of that street. Yeah, I don't think most companies understand that right.

They think they feel if they give away their technology. They're they're gonna lose right? They're gonna lose their advantage.

Yeah, I think going back to the dev Advocates too. Right? It's give back to the community make people happy and then when they have a choice, they're gonna come to you, right they start to see you as leaders in the industry thought leaders.

I hate that term but it's true. Right and I think Jay frog does a fantastic job about that especially around devops and other things is hey, we want to help you wherever you're at. And if you want to come to us and pay us we love that all so but we know eventually you'll find the right product and hopefully it's ours right but we want you to be successful first got it.

Yeah, I think that's given and that's that open source mentality that gives back to the community right actually, so you Forgot to hit the start button here, but I'm going to assume about where we are. Let me ask you what maybe seem like an obvious question, but not what are you doing here at the open? Source Summit.

I'm just here to support the community and yeah support our open source projects. I'm looking over at Steve. But yeah, I live here.

I'm here in Austin local so I can't can't miss the coffee. Oh you well. Yeah, you're here and come down and I call it, you know shaking hands and kissing babies and building relationships with folks.

Are you Up on what's going on with this software supply chain security and I am but I'm not a security professional so I got to be careful, but I am a developer right? It's interesting. You know back in the day.

We were just talking last night. So I worked on Dale Comm. We were on http.

Right. I've written software where you log in you're passing the the password and the username in the URL on your scripted. Right?

That's And how did yeah, yeah was in so I think it developers. We caused a lot of this for, you know, trust first kind of approach and now we're all now we're all need to go back and fix it. So I love to shift left because I think we caused a lot of it to developers and we need to be an integral part of fixing it, right?

Yeah, but you know something I've so So I was never developer I come from security. I make a confession. I used to think developers didn't give a crap about security now.

We're getting into conversation. Right? Yeah, and so are you still think that will never have good secure software because developers don't give a crap about security.

But since my time in devops will last eight years, whatever nine years. I've come to the realization that no one raises their hand and says I want to deliver insecure software right? I can't wait to develop some software that's full of holes, right?

Everyone has pride in in their Orphans of you know ownership of what they do. Yeah. It's just a question of what your priorities are and what the state of the art is.

Yeah, you talk about passing stuff in in the URL, you know change. That was the state of the art then people wearing thinking about wow men in the middle attacks. How do I jump that?

You know all of these things and and I eat not to cut sorry. No don't think about the Internet Explorer right when you used to download we do demise the genetics players. They should blown that thing out.

But yeah, and yeah well down something just automatically executed because it's good for the end user. That was great for my parents, you know, 30 years ago when they were computer people. Now it's horrible, right?

We again set ourselves up for it. But yeah, I agree. I think the honestly I didn't give to pennies about security when I was you know, 15 years ago Frontline developer was worried about hitting my features and my deadlines and then then the security then you folks would walk in we're going to production the day of the launch, you know go.

Oh, you're not wait a minute. We didn't do all the security stuff right compliance issues here. Yeah.

You want to go to jail? Yeah. Yeah.

I was one of those guys. Yeah, and it was an adversarial like very much roles, right? And yeah now I think that's starting to blend and we do software differently to your point.

We are very well. I think that's been the yeah, so that's you know, when we look at what's going on at this show and it's a little quiet now because it's later in the day, but look every person we're talking to is talking about so forth supply chain security and the OSF and and all of these things. In my mind, none of that's possible without what devops is done to change the way up and we build software.

We we went from people like you just sitting on coding like building what we call let's get called a bespoke software right custom written software for giving project to a factory to assembly line to a pipeline right where we we just add in third-party Parts. Like we're building a car right Deming and and all of that, you know, leanite and lean manufacturing if you didn't have all of that you wouldn't have an open ssf you I didn't have what you didn't have a software supply chain. So what do you guys worry about?

Why change security? Yeah. That was me.

It was me. Yeah launching into production and then fixing it well into production. I was selling security back then and you know, we had a vulnerability management tool that I was trying to convince people that you should scan your infrastructure once a year once a year and it was a hard fight.

It's all right. It was a hard sell. Yeah that you know because they just thought it was a bad news generator.

They didn't want to know about yeah until you know until crap hit the fan then they wanted to know about it. But you know it I I really, you know, I blamed devops. Yeah, and I I think it's a good thing.

Yeah, it accelerated it made things easier and then it then exposed. Oh, wait a minute. We got to get better at plugging holes attacking security.

But yeah. on some sense software Engineers come easier But then on the other sense, it's become way way more complex. Well, I think the screen which draws on the developers back today.

Yeah. Yeah, right. There's one production code the cloud, right?

Yeah. No, it's it's a big thing. We haven't even look you're gonna start seeing Edge stuff come in and all of this other stuff.

Let me ask you another question. How long you with Jay Park? What about eight weeks now?

Okay now, yeah. What is if I'm talking to you six months from now? What is success look like for Beyond saying, oh the company sold more software or something.

That's obvious. But yeah, what is success for you? Personally.

Look for me personally right now is to have our free product everybody using artifactory go. Try it out get a free trial use it understand why you should use it and bring that into your devops practices, right? Try it out.

And eventually you're gonna love us. You're gonna like us You're Gonna Come purchase. But just use the software as you do now if I can help get more people to know like and love our products get to use them.

Maybe not even pay yet. There's a sales folks will take care of that down their own right? But if we have really good technology and people are using them they're gonna stick around and pay right?

And so I think my team's job is to show people that right. So if we can do that and I can help raise the weekly users of our free tier. Successful, that's what yeah.

It's one of the key things. After eight weeks biggest difference between the culture Jay frog and die and I'm not asking you to bed now. Yeah, but differences between Jay frog and darker being friendly to everyone.

Yeah, I mean, I mean Stalker is a phenomenal company right phenomenal people. I didn't stay there. As long as I did.

I mean the technology was incredible. But yeah, the folks were wonderful. I mean smart empathetic people and I found the same at Jay frog probably even more so Jacob folks are awesome.

Yeah, I mean that culture they they care about their people truly care about their people not only you know, are you productive and happy but are you happy then you will be productive right? It's it's a subtle difference but I think it's key, right? Yeah everybody I've met at the company's fantastic.

Oh man. All right. Peter was a pleasure meeting you best of luck with Jay frog man you with some good people.

Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it.

We're gonna come have you come back and six months and tell you how you did you see if I hit my cave. Yes. Well, whatever makes whatever makes you happy or show me one of the other.

All right Peter. Thank you for selling for advocate here at Jay frog we're gonna take a quick break. We've got it my friend Steven coming in next and we're gonna learn all about Persia.