Techstrong Gang – March 17, 2025

Hello everybody, and happy St. Patrick's Day in Cade Alta, which is Irish for a hundred thousand welcomes. You're watching Text Day.

Hey folks, welcome back. I'm Mike Biard. Today we're gonna be talking about well open source AI coding tools around the horizon.

Then we're gonna have a chat about OpenStack is moving over to the Linux Consortium. And then finally, we're gonna talk about, well, what's going on with the Irish and technology? 'cause the president seems to be having an issue.

I want to introduce our guest today, starting with Tracy Reagan, who's joining us once again from New Mexico. Tracy, how you doing? I'm doing great on a St.

Patrick's Day, after all, with a name like Tracy Reagan. I should be doing great on a St. Patrick's Day.

And you know what tra, do you know what Tracy means? It means in Celtic it means brave defender. I always like that.

All Right. Brave defender of open source. Okay, I can go with that.

We shall see. So, Longman. Well, you know, we like to say on St.

Patrick's Day, everybody is Irish, but welcome to the show. How you doing in Ohio? Thank you.

Uh, good to be on the show, Mike. All right, and Guy for the day, O Courier, how are you? Good to see you once again, my friend.

Uh, I thank you. Good to be here again. Uh, on St.

Patrick's Day. Uh, all I've got for you is the usual green wallpaper, which you can see back here. So sorry about that.

But I left my green undershirt at home. No worries. I, I, I can represent for everybody.

But let's get started with what's happening with the Club Foundation. They have launched a project, and it may take a few months yet before we actually see the, the actual ides that they're gonna build, but they're saying that they're gonna deliver open source ides that come embedded with AI coding agents. And, uh, what they're trying to do is have something that feels like a deep seek moment for open source ides instead of getting yourself locked into an IDE provided by Open AI or Microsoft or whoever it might be.

Tracy, I know you've been following this DevOps ai coding space for a while, but what's your take on what's going on here? Well, you know, I, um, I did help start the Eclipse Foundation back in 2004. I was one of their first board members.

Um, and this is something, this does not surprise me. They have been very, very good at pivoting anytime new technology, uh, is, you know, shows up or is on the horizon, building, um, that platform to make it easier to use these tools has been always been a priority to them. So, yeah, this is, you know, this is, I hate to say it's more of the same, but it's more of the same of the Eclipse Foundation being able to pivot that IDE so that it can support, uh, new development practices.

Um, you know, I don't know exactly how to, what they call their, this AI platform, Thea, I believe, um, you know, and the ability to really develop software without, uh, any kind of lock-in has always been what they've talked about. I think the only lock-in that they want is the IDE itself, but everything around the IDE should be pretty open. So, you know, being able for developers to be able to continue using an IDE that they have known and loved for 20 years, and be able to start building, um, and integrating LLMs into that, that model and that IDE, that's beautiful.

So thank you Eclipse Foundation for doing that. And that team is an amazing team, and they have stayed relevant for a very long time, so kudos to them. That's what I think.

Yeah. I is, it is. I, I thought that, uh, part of what Eclipse does is enable developers to create their own IDs, though, or is that just a, um, a terminology?

You, in this case, you can do both, right? They have, um, licensed the core code. So in a way that if you're a vendor and you want to create your own IDE based on their ID framework, you can do that.

Or even if you're an enterprise and you're that ambitious and you want to create your own id, you can do that, or you can download what will be a more, um, ready to use ID provided by them, Which is why it's so, it, the adoption is so strong and it's so sticky, right? That, uh, you know, there used to be several different ides before the Eclipse Foundation, um, came about. We talked about a lot of different ides, and now, now we talk about too, pretty much Eclipse and Visual Studio.

Uh, so, so they, you know, they're staying frosty. They really are. They're, they're, they're starting to build in, um, the features that developers need and provide a framework for developers to be able to build AI apps.

And that's what they've always done. And there is also a bunch of other tools that have, uh, come into the market, like, uh, Microsoft Auto Jam, SL Chain, um, there is also Crew ai. They're all open source, and they are all supposed to help build agent AI applications on them.

You know, I've been told that a lot of those tools that have come into the market are essentially forks of BS code, which is open source for Microsoft. And we seem to have tried this MO movement where we were heavily in open source for our IDs, and then when the folks came along with all these AI platforms, they seemed to like, take a lot of open source code and wrap some proprietary code around it and try to pull developers into their own little ecosystems. That seems like maybe a replay of a scenario that we saw play out over the course of a decade that's now happening much more rapidly.

But I don't know, Tracy, are we past the days where vendors can lock in developers? I, it seems like it's a pointless effort. I think it depends on what you're talking about, what, you know, what developer tool you're talking about.

Um, I don't think we're past those days. Those, no, I would not say that. Uh, I think there, the, uh, developers, I think what happens is that the, a culture begins to, uh, is built and an ecosystem is built around these developer tools, and that's what locks them in.

I don't necessarily think that they have to stick with them, but I do believe that there is camps, right? There's the eclipse camps, there's the VS camps, and I think we'll see that in, uh, these AI tools as well. And I think that the Eclipse Foundation is seeing that they need a, they should have a play in that.

So, no, we're not past that. I think that's, that's gonna continue. It's part of the, I think it's part of how developers work it.

I was gonna say, it's cultural, right? It's cultural, and you get, I literally, I, I'm not kidding you, I used to carry around a little disc yet in my briefcase. Well, we used to have to have briefcase that had brief on it.

I ha I talked to developers to this day that don't wanna do anything except vi right? The hardcore, really command line types. So, um, you know, that's a pretty heavy lock in when you carry your own editor around in, in your briefcase, where I would stick it in my purse.

So I always had it. Yeah, we, we, we, we talk all the time about, um, quote unquote religion in these, like, you know, the religious, uh, it's cultural, it's really cultural, but this, this idea that, uh, you know, uh, uh, each developer and sometimes developer teams or groups within like Cabals or something within the developer teams have their preferred language platform, you know, et cetera. Um, I don't think that, I mean, I don't think, uh, you know, the vs versus, you know, eclipse or whatever that it, it, it extends to that.

Although, Tracy, you would know better than me. But, um, there, there's real passion around what the right way is to do all of these different elements. And, you know, my sense is that, um, that it's really, it's more like vs and then everything else.

It's more like Microsoft and then everything else. Uh, uh, Microsoft has a very cohesive system in a lot of ways. I know I talked to a number of customers recently about, um, about, uh, how they're developing and even ones that are going, you know, cloud first open, whatever, um, if their management has a significant, uh, investment in, in Microsoft from whatever productivity or an enterprise software standpoint, they wind up being Microsoft shops and, uh, um, at development wise.

So I think that, uh, uh, what, what's really interesting here, um, is, uh, like you said, the, the quick moves, the swift pivot, um, of this open source community, um, to, let's say, you know, embrace and adopt and enable the use of ai, um, in an open and, uh, unstick way, except for, like you say, the stickiness of, of that particular project. Yeah. They, they started with, uh, they integrated copilot pretty quickly.

They didn't take much time to do that, for example. Right. So long now, maybe this is just my perception, but I'd love to know what you think.

Is the open source community catching up faster to these proprietary platforms? I mean, historically, we've always seen them kind of catch up and then eventually surpass the proprietary platform that they originally created some version of, but I feel like that's happening much faster in the age of ai. Yeah, definitely open source.

This, uh, the drive for AI is troubling, uh, open source even forward. Uh, it has brought it front and center, uh, especially for developers and, uh, people who are really involved with ai. The development of it and open source going forward is going to play a bigger role than it does right now.

'cause people are tired of proprietary technologies being expensive. And, uh, as you mentioned, the vendor lock-in is definitely an impediment there. And there are also certain data privacy concerns with, uh, proprietary technologies.

And not to mention that open source offers a certain, uh, flexibility and transparency, uh, which are highly coveted, uh, with AI development, It has a cycle, though. Open source has a cycle, um, and if we go into a recession, open source will be keying again, right? Every time we have a a boom and there's a lot of money in the, um, uh, in the sector, open source tends to be less, um, adopted.

And then when the economy goes, starts slowing down, then open source becomes more adopted. So there is a cycle to it. So the tools that stick like Jenkins are the ones that they're like, okay, we built, spent all this time building around, we're not going to cha we're, we're not gonna swap it out unless we really have a compelling reason to do so.

And it's sort of the same with the, the, uh, developer IDE tools. You really have to have a compelling reason. And that compelling reason may be we are a Microsoft shop, and I do see, you know, if they are, have been buying Microsoft Tools and they paid for a subscription, you're gonna use, uh, you're gonna use Visual Studio.

But there are a lot of places that are there, eclipse, they have been for a very long time, and they're using Eclipse, and they're oftentimes an IBM shop. So, there you go. It, it's an excellent point, Tracy, but I'm, I'm, I'm kind of wondering what's the, what's the consumption model for that open source?

Because there's direct use, and then there's via, you know, a partner, you know, I mean, the classic Red Hat example of using Linux, but you're paying Red Hat for, um, for, you know, management and, and, uh, you know, support and all that other sort of stuff. The reason I ask is, uh, direct use of open source may go up in a recession, but there's still a cost. There's a, there's an investment in talent and capability and that sort of thing.

Um, and you either invest it directly, um, with hiring and training, or you invest invested indirectly through the, the partner model that I just mentioned. And I think there's a fair amount of, um, enterprise level, let's call enterprise level activity, um, that doesn't do open source because they don't want to have that, uh, uh, investment burden. What, what, what's your perspective on that?

Am I, I, so I think it's who the, who the buyer is, right? When you're at, if you're, let's just, you know, I'll take the space I know the most development and DevOps, um, when you're at that level, you don't have budget authority, and your director might get money for you to buy additional tools, and you may have submitted for doing some, you know, purchase making these purchases. But if you don't get those, those funds, you're gonna go out and you're gonna start downloading open source tools regardless of what your, at the higher level, what they say.

Jenkins is a really good, uh, case study for open source because Jenkins was out there getting implemented while other competing tools that were trying to do. CICD had to go through this full process of being evaluated and having to be looked at by several different, uh, departments. There had to be a budget for it.

And in the meantime, they implemented Jenkins, right? So it, open source gets adopted regardless of what upper management might want to think or do, uh, because of that particular fact. If you don't have the budget and you can find something that will work in the open source world, you're gonna use it.

There is definitely a shadow DevOps phenomenon, but I also think that it's not too long before a project, if it gains traction, starts to benefit from that flywheel effect where the number of contributors start to increase, the innovations happen faster, and this single vendor who has, you know, limitations in terms of the number of engineers they can hire eventually falls behind. And I think that's what we're seeing in Linux, and I think we've seen now in databases, and it, I think that whole scenario is gonna play out in AI as well. But Guy, what do you think?

Oh, yeah. Uh, definitely. I, I, I think you're putting your finger on what was exciting to me about this particular news, um, I couldn't articulate until you just said it, which is, um, the, the, the force on our capability of, uh, a collaborative community.

I mean, open source is, is extremely well understood how it works, how it should work, how to govern it, um, how to focus it, so to speak, while enabling all this creativity and everything. And, uh, now that I think about it, uh, this is a terrific development in the, in the incorporation of use of ai, um, in, in coding, because so many eyes are gonna be on it. And all of these dangers and problems and issues that we've been talking about for what seems like over a year now, um, this is one way to, to address them for sure.

That's a really good point. And so long, and I could be crazy about this particular point, but I feel like the mystery around AI is starting to fall away. And I think people are starting to understand how it works, and they're not as shocked at odd.

And, and as that happens, more people are comfortable using it and contributing and being part of this community. So, have we crossed some sort of AI Rubicon here, or are we about to? Um, yeah, definitely AI is less mystifying to the people, uh, as it was even a couple years back.

People are starting to understand the way it works, uh, how best to leverage it, and, uh, uh, they're discovering new use cases, enterprise use cases, and how do we implement it? It's obviously there is still, uh, work to be done. Uh, but yeah, I feel like people are definitely, uh, have, uh, are crossing a threshold where they understand that AI can be valuable and, uh, the certain ways that it can contribute to business.

Yes. All right, Tracy, last question on this particular topic. Do you think anybody on Wall Street's gonna figure this out?

And there might be some impact on valuations as people start to realize, Hey, this AI stuff, it ain't that magical. Well, I think that they should be worried about the Tesla valuation before the ai, I'm sorry, that's like a 87 to one, right? Their PO their ratio is 87.

That's just ridiculous. I don't know what open, uh, what like, chat GPT is, but, um, I believe that the, those valuations will get, will increase as AI becomes more prevalent. And when you have a, uh, these IDs that are coming out to make it easier for developers to start using AI tools within their IDE, I think it's just gonna push the, um, the, the AI industry.

And I think that the AI companies are gonna probably have higher valuations because of it. And there'll be more out there and maybe, uh, fewer electric, electric car companies. Let you want fewer Anyway.

All, all right, folks, you heard fewer keep your eyes on this open source space when it comes to ai, 'cause it's gonna do some amazing things in the next couple of years. So Amen brother. Amen.

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Contact us today and tell your story to the world in the most powerful way with Textron Group. Hey folks, we're back. And we're talking about the move by the open infrastructure, uh, consortium.

Our open infra, who was the steward for OpenStack and a couple of other associated projects is now gonna become an arm of the Linux Foundation, which is the steward for, well, not just Linux, but Kubernetes, and of course as Cloud Native Computing Foundation as part of the Linux Foundation, as is the, uh, cloud Foundry folks. So, you know, if you look at the Linux Foundation, it's a, an amalgamation of foundations, as you might say. But one of the interesting things about all this is that it seems to put the OpenStack community maybe a little more closely aligned to where the maintainers are of Kubernetes and, uh, Linux itself.

And so when you look at this so salon and you think we might see a, a resurgence of OpenStack, is something going on here? Is this the early stages of it, or is this just another move to save some cash? Um, opens, uh, or OpenStack is in fact, uh, experiencing a resurgence, um, right now because of, of Broadcom acquiring VMware and then revising the pricing strategy.

So now, once again, people are out looking for open source options. So that caused, opens OpenStack to have, uh, a sort of like a, should I call it a, uh, ssociation of sorts. And, uh, uh, now that OpenStack projects are going to, uh, likely be a part of the Linux Foundation.

And, uh, it'll live more closely with, uh, Linux, Kubernetes and OpenStack. And even with the, when Kubernetes became a huge success, even then, um, it sidelined OpenStack for a while. So I think living closely with all the other big foundations, like you said, um, Kubernetes, then the CNCF, uh, arch Open search, it'll definitely help bring it back to the front and center of open source.

Yes. Tracy, are you seeing any more OpenStack out there as of late? What, what's, Um, I think it has a defined audience.

Um, I'm not sure it's growing, but, uh, you know, I'm not in the platform engineering space too much, so I can't tell you if that's the, that's true or not, but I can tell you that, um, I, it does, this doesn't surprise me. This, uh, this kind of new partnership because it's takes a lot of work to manage an open source, uh, foundation. It, it's, you know, it's, there's a lot of governance.

There's a lot of tooling that has to be done on the backside to make sure that developers are, um, trusted, uh, you know, CLOs and there, it's work. It's a, it's a, it's a ton of work. I don't think we would've ever pursued an open source project independent of, uh, something like the Apache or the Linux Foundation.

So the, but the one thing I can say, and it's a, it's wrong to assume that because it's moves over to the Linux Foundation, that new open source contributors will join the team. And sometimes as these tool, it, you know, I don't know how old OpenStack is, but it's gotta be 10, 15 years. I'm not sure It's 15.

Roughly. Yeah, 15. Yeah.

Rackspace, Rackspace originated it. So it, it, it, it, you know, you get a lot of people stop contributing to older projects that tend to be slowing down, right? Uh, and so if they, a lot of the believe that they're gonna get more contributors are wrong.

Well, that may totally be true. A lot of the, uh, continuing development of OpenStack has been in, from what I can tell, uh, hidden from the wider community. Uh, OpenStack at one time was, was, you know, the open source rival to, you know, Azure stack, eventually Azure, well, yeah, Azure pack.

Azure stack. So the Azure approach, the Mware approach, these enterprise approaches, um, not to mention, um, you know, that that was pre outpost, you know, before, uh, public cloud vendors started to provide on-prem, um, options. Um, so I'm probably forgetting, well, a major platform, but, you know, Microsoft and VMware were, were, were, were the main ones.

Um, and, uh, it, I would say around 2018, 2017, it, it, it underwent a marketing and a positioning shift, and it, it became, you know, so what happened was more or less private enterprise, um, to a large degree, um, went with, you know, sort of turned their backs on an open source approach to a cloud stack, and instead started to use VMware, the, the, the, uh, predecessors to VMware Cloud Foundation, VCF or more typically Microsoft. Um, so for on-prem class, such as they were doing, the implementations just weren't large enough. The technical, um, the technical, uh, needs were a little high.

There were a few vendors, like TIS is the main one I remember, that sort of took the Red Hat role for OpenStack and enabled OpenStack. They had to shift. So that market went away.

But what market stayed, the market that stayed was public, but to a greater degree, the telcos and the telcos have very large cloud implementations, um, where they are extremely technical. They have very high, uh, very high performance needs, extreme low latency, extremely high availability, all those sorts of things where, um, having an open platform that they could use and, and fuss with and everything was really important. Um, I am not, I don't entirely know how to interpret this, uh, move.

I think you have it nailed, probably Tracy, which is, um, running an open source project is hard. There has been no real vendor side like it vendor sponsor since Rackspace stepped sort of down and away from OpenStack. Um, none of the telcos are really gonna do it.

They're rivals anyway. Um, so in the end, this is probably smart, um, from a, like you say, a management governance tooling point of view. Um, and they can all con, continue to contribute.

And it may just be a little bit less public and obvious. I don't think this signals some kind of, you know, new adoption of OpenStack at all. No, I don't think so either.

But it will help them, like you said, the telcos, if the telcos become, you know, premier members of that new foundation and they're on the boards, then they can work together to move, um, you know, OpenStack in a direction that works for them as a, as a consortium. Um, and the Linux Foundation is a perfect place to do that, Right? I'm gonna argue the opposite of that.

And, and here's the three things that I think are gonna change that equation. One is, originally to guy's point, yes, the enterprise turned away from OpenStack. 'cause it was hard, it was complicated and it wasn't as easy to manage as VMware.

But to along this point, VMware pricing's up and people are looking for alternatives. And OpenStack's gotten easier to manage from the various distributions that are out there. The second thing is the AI community is looking for ways to, uh, maximize utilization rates of GPUs.

And one way to do that is to have some sort of framework for managing their usage, whether they're on premise or in the cloud. And they're not gonna pay for commercial licenses to manage that stuff at the scale that they do. So they're gonna go look for something that's open source.

And then finally, there is this whole movement towards, uh, data sovereignty. And, um, and that's pushing, you know, I wouldn't call it a major trend as yet, but there's a lot of repatriation of workloads around two factors. One is the cost of running them in the cloud, and the second one is a lot of organizations are getting pushed to run more workloads and keep those data that they have in some sort of either VPC that's in a specific geographic region, or heaven forbid, an old fashioned on-premise data center that they run and manage.

So I think there's upside here for OpenStack, but remains to be seen. And I could be crazy. I think you're Crazy.

I think you're crazy. So here's the thing. Here's the thing.

There is real potential in, uh, vendors that specialize in edge computing in one form another, to utilize this. I could see that the repatriation, in other words, when we're thinking on a sort of, let's say a cluster level deployment, um, for, uh, uh, an, an enterprise in the scenario you're describing, which is an increasingly common scenario, they want to bring the, the compute to the data, and they want to have control over the, the data, and especially sort of, let's say it's movement or what have you. That all makes sense.

I think that a great deal of that is going to be solved. Um, you know, using, you know, on-prem, um, and colo, uh, outpost, well, outposts without, without a capital o of, um, public cloud, uh, Microsoft already, this is a huge part of their business model, frankly. But Oracle is getting to this game as well.

Um, so that you get, there's, there's this sort of enterprise managed answer to that repatriation problem. Now, is that a lock-in type of scenario? Yes, it is, but we just circle back around to the original reason, um, for OpenStack, you know, pulling back from, you know, general enterprise adoption and use, which is, it's just a really complicated thing to deploy, run, and participate in.

And that doesn't change, Mike. So that I think is a more governing force, and therefore, you're crazy Dito guy. Ditto Crazy.

Come on, take it. No, I, I, I agree completely with what, what guy just said. Um, we both said you're crazy at the same time.

So, So, so an edge. So an edge vendor is still providing, it's, it's just not locking into a cloud stack, right? It's not locking into, they, they can do all the things they can provide turnkey or, you know, uh, o uh, what's usually called transparent, but frankly it's opaque integrations, integration.

You don't have to worry about or see your manage back to all three of the biggies and, you know, other clouds and all that other sort of stuff. The proverbial slide in, you know, switch it on, you know, stack. I mean, Kodi, uh, it's a Kodiak, uh, who is it?

Um, there's a great vendor out in, out on the west coast, I'm gonna remember their name too late, that does this sort of thing. Um, and, uh, uh, you know, they can, all those folks can run OpenStack and, and invest in OpenStack and be part of the OpenStack community and the, the, the, the end customer there doesn't really need to concern themselves with it. Um, uh, oxide computing is the one I'm thinking of.

Um, so that is possible. Um, and I think there probably will be some edge companies that take that approach, but it's not gonna be so significant from a market standpoint. All right.

I, I, yeah, I and Tracy are beating me up. Can you help me out here, or no? Well, I'm with you on the fact that, um, yeah, OpenStack, the OpenStack ecosystem itself has like, sort of come into back into focus since, um, especially with the telco companies in the recent years.

Uh, be especially driven by, uh, VMware's price increases. Uh, and, uh, yeah, definitely. Um, it may not necessarily become the thing or, um, you know, like, uh, it's not probably gonna be, um, gonna catapult, uh, in, in a, in a, in a significant way that would, uh, you know, um, get, uh, sidelined other solutions that are out there.

But yes, open source is, is not easy. It is, it is a lot of work. Uh, but I still think, I still believe that, uh, it is, uh, sort of coming into the limelight once again.

And people are looking for alternatives. And either it's driven by, uh, cost concerns or, uh, data privacy. Uh, it is definitely, uh, going to be, uh, more in prominence, uh, especially with, uh, AI being in the mix.

All right, well, hopefully somebody will come along and make OpenStack even easier than it has been of late. Hey, I can see a world where maybe those AI agents are making OpenStack easier to deploy and manage. So who knows?

We'll see what happens. But just keep getting Crazier and crazier. Mike, come on.

It's not, it's possible. I don't know. Would that be so open question?

Would that be a good thing? Do we care to make OpenStack easier? I mean, I, I, I love OpenStack.

I, I, you know, help build and market solutions, um, based on OpenStack, and I loved working with engineers and product managers. It certainly helps some small companies. If OpenStack were easier to implement it, It definitely would.

Yeah, Definitely would. So, uh, let me come halfway to Mike. Let's, so let, let's say this, let's say that AWS and Google, and, you know, these cloud providers continue not to help us manage our costs, right?

We've talked about that before on the gang, the hidden costs and how hard it is to manage those costs, be able to figure out what director, you know, is using the funds and more companies start going to privatizing their environment. Then I'll give OpenStack, um, some breathing room, because that would probably be the tool that most people would use if they are not going to an alternative. But I think that this point, the cat's out of the bag, and most companies are going to, uh, use an alternative like AWS or Azure or Google Cloud, and then it's not even a question for them.

As guy pointed out, they're not having to deal with the, you know, their own, I don't know, persistent storage or, you know, for VMs, for example, right? So that's, they don't even have to think about it anymore. And that's kind of the point.

All right, I'm gonna quit while I'm ahead 'cause I'm only half as crazy as I was two minutes ago. So that's, Wait, I have something more to, no, go ahead. All right, folks will be back in a minute.

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All right, folks, we're back. And we're gonna be talking about, well, there's a big conversation going on in Irish circles these days, and full disclosure, that's Michael Patrick bazaar to you. So, you know where I might be coming from on this particular topic, but, uh, the president had the t-shirt of, uh, Ireland over T Shook is, uh, Gaelic for Chief, which is their equivalent of a prime minister, and, uh, berated him along with the rest of Europe for quote unquote stealing US companies and specifically citing, uh, pharmaceutical companies.

But tech companies are also in there. Uh, there's a lot of European, uh, operations for US companies where they, uh, store their tax dollars. 4 billion or some big number like that.

But, um, the point is, is some people are saying that Ireland is a tax haven. The Irish respectfully disagree. They're just operating advantage taxes that are at a lower rate.

And it's actually US law that enables all these companies to set up these operations in Ireland or elsewhere. And it's not their fault. They say, if you wanna fix it, you gotta fix it.

On the US side, um, this has been going on for a while. Accenture, I don't know if you know this guy, but the worldwide headquarters for Accenture is in Dumbo, and they have like six, uh, The worldwide headquarters for Dell Technologies, where I used to work, uh, is or, or was quite some time in Dublin As well. Yeah, the, the European headquarters is over there along with Google and everybody else who's got, uh, a US operation or, or US company.

And then what they do is they keep the revenue from Europe there, and they don't repatriate that back to the us. So it's not subject to US taxes. And this is an ongoing conversation.

Now, the Irish have benefited from all of this because there's now a reasonably thriving, uh, software ecosystem of Irish companies. There's at least a couple of hundred out there. They're small, but they're fledgling, but they, what's your take on all this guy?

Are we gonna see the US kind of try to essentially put the screws to the Irish here on St. Patrick's Day? What's going on?

Maybe not on St. Patrick's Day. Um, maybe tomorrow, maybe we'll just announce it today and do it tomorrow.

Um, the US administration seems to be intent on putting the screws on everybody. Um, so sure I could see that happening. Um, and, uh, depending on the reaction from, let's say the markets or something like that, or with the specific companies, uh, you know, I could see them withdrawing any screws that they put to, uh, uh, the Irish or the EU in this, in this, with this approach.

Um, I have three reactions to this. Um, the first one is, uh, um, tax Haven or No Tax Haven. That's kind of a semantic discussion.

Um, Ireland had three and has three terrific advantages, one of which was a more favorable tax policy to corporations there. And the lack of a requirement, as you say, to, um, uh, unlike, unlike US citizens who have to report their personal global income, uh, companies who are based out of the United States do not need to do the same. So they didn't need to report revenues and profits from Europe or anywhere else in the world outside of the United States.

So that was one advantage. The second advantage was, uh, at the time that a lot of this investment started, um, the, you know, overall Irish economy and, and, um, I don't remember this economic terms for this, but uh, the, the, the labor and the various costs were fairly lower than certainly the rest of Europe and, and less than Canada and the United States. So it was at attract, it was, you get sort of more bang for your buck investment there, whether it was hiring or building or renting office buildings or any of that other sort of things.

So that was the second advantage. And the third advantage was a highly educated pool of, you know, a potential workforce. Um, and Ireland very rapidly, uh, uh, became one of the world leaders, particularly in software development, I think, but also in other areas of tech development as well as in pharma and, and other sectors.

So it had all those advantages and the capitalist system we work in that advantage, those advantages are going to attract investment, but also, uh, because of the first reason, you know, companies went over there. Um, so if Trump is blaming them for companies, being over there and paying taxes over there and not paying them here, blame the Irish that is guilty is charged, and we should be proud of that. I'm not Irish, but I'm proud of it for the Irish and for you Tracy, for Sage, and for everybody else who loves Ireland.

My, uh, second and third reactions are pretty simple. The second reaction is, uh, you know, um, our own domestic policy right now, um, doing, for example, threatening the CHIPS Act that was intended to bring a lot of investment onshore and capability onshore in the United States, threatening to bring it to an end one way or another that's gonna push business and work overseas. So we're doing lots of things like that right now.

It has nothing to do with it's Ireland or China or anybody else. So we are making other places attractive to build and sustain business. And, uh, the third reaction is I never really know on, uh, what the current administration means or doesn't mean.

Is it messaging? Is it, uh, some, it all has strategy and policy implications, but to say that there's a policy going on here and to make predictions about what the outcomes are gonna be, it seems to me a be a fools there end, at least at this stage. Maybe later this year or next year or something, things will solidify, but right now things are changing too much.

So I wouldn't make any bets one way or the other right now. In fact, I think like a lot of folks in the market right now, I feel like we just certain of need to retreat and protect ourselves. Yeah, Trump, yeah, Trump himself once said, you know, he was asked, you know, something about the fact that he really didn't pay any taxes.

And he said, that's because I'm smart, right? So smart people are just taking advantage of these tax laws and they go between countries and states, right? States do this.

Uh, you know, there's been counties who have have said, we're gonna charge a less tax in our county if you open up a a business here. I am sure that Donald Trump himself have gotten tax breaks from, you know, Chicago and New York when he built, uh, properties there. So he knows this game and he understands it.

And as Guy has pointed out, why is he just not playing the game? Why penalize anybody for playing the game? Why doesn't he just play the game better?

And we already have some, you know, uh, budgeted, uh, policies put in place to better play the game, like the CHIPS act. And he is, he doesn't wanna pursue it. So it's very, I find it very frustrating.

I really do. And, um, you know, maybe island's a good place for deploy, But, but to guy's point, That's a threat. Tax code's a mess.

I mean, that's why there is a game, there's a game in the first place. 'cause the US tax code is a mess. So why don't we just fix the tax code and then all these other issues will take care of themselves.

But we don't seem to have any political will to do that guy. Uh, no, we don't. I, I comment on that.

That's why we obvious. Uh, So, so we'll just keep playing this game and forever because nobody wants to address the core issue. So lemme ask you something.

Do you think that the US is becoming less attractive place for IT professionals to wanna come to work from around the globe? Right? There's been a history of, uh, people come here to go to college and they get educated and a there number of them stay and take jobs and generate a lot of taxable income.

But I feel like, you know, more and more of those folks are coming to college and going home right after, Right? Um, there's been a lot of tightening of regulations around student visas, what they can or cannot do, or if they can switch over to another kind of visa that would allow them to work in the United States. So that has definitely dampened the enthusiasm, um, anywhere in the world.

And, uh, students who are, who have formally wanted to come to the US study in an US university and then eventually find work here and make a life for themselves. Um, so it's really, it's coming back to the Ireland discussion. It's really not.

Ireland is the same reason any, anywhere in the world. Companies have set up shops. Uh, ES Island has the lowest, um, uh, corporate tax rates, and then it has, uh, easy availability of, uh, highly skilled, uh, workers.

It's the, uh, it's same with, uh, China or India. 'cause for years, uh, companies have, uh, you know, set a basis in those parts of the world where there's easy availability of talent and, uh, the cost is cheaper. And so, uh, yeah, I feel like there would be, uh, as much as the, uh, attempt is to bring back business, uh, to the US soil, I think, uh, it would the US would benefit if they, uh, fix their tax, uh, regulations in such a way so that companies find a reason to set up shop here as opposed to going offshore.

And, uh, definitely right now, the thing that is happening with all the visas and stuff, it's definitely giving re people less and less reason to come in And less reason to invest here, right? Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Chaos, you know, there disruption in chaos and, um, the not knowing, uh, is in the future, if we keep up this pace in the next four years, we won't have a lot of new investment coming from outside of the us.

There's lack of certainty. Uh, which is also one of the things that's discouraging a lot of people to really turn to the US as a favorable place to put their money in right now. And meanwhile, if you look over in places like Ireland, they have many, many, many more job openings than they have ability to fill them.

So you might see a lot of folks stopping to go work there. And if I can put a, uh, a, um, a rosy spin on all of this, or, or the silver lining, if you like, um, which is really unusual for me, I don't know why I'm doing it. Um, the, the, the supply chain problems we experienced during the pandemic that caused this sort of, uh, anti-globalization set of policies and politics too, actually, and it, or at least accelerated those, um, don't apply quite as much to the digital economy, if at all.

Um, certainly you need physical cables underneath the ocean to, uh, take the Irish work product, uh, in software, in the software sector, just to take a simple example. Um, so you need something, but you don't need shipping. You don't need things that are as vulnerable to, um, as vulnerable, not invulnerable, but as vulnerable to things, you know, global disruptions like the pandemic had on global shipping and so forth.

So, um, the point is this, this allows, uh, US companies and US organizations and US individuals, even if the investment is not happening here in the us, we can still take advantage of, uh, that work product. Um, except for one thing, of course, which is tariffs, which just makes me exhausted, even say the word. But, uh, the, the, I think the tariff scheme, again, won't know in a year what, where that's really gonna shape, uh, shake out.

Um, but my point is that, you know, I think slog me, you're, you're perfectly right about like sort of the dangers within the US for vendors, producers of this same kind of service and product, but the consumers of it in the United States, um, are probably going to be able to take advantage. And that's a good thing. All right, folks, back in the eighties, the Irish government used to run ads in publications like Business Week, and they would have these pictures of these newly minted graduate students and their gowns, and then the, the, the coffee underneath it said, hire the Irish before they hire you.

Well, here we are, folks. I wanna thank you all for being on the show, guy. Thanks for your insights, slog, Sloman, good to see you as always, Tracy.

I, I, I, I don't know about you, but in about 30 minutes, I'm gonna be marching up fifth Avenue in Manhattan, so I'll see you later. Aw, that sounds like fun. That's, enjoy your Irish day.

All right. And as they say in Ireland, slang goole, which is galing for goodbye, until we see you again, thanks very much.