Oxide and Friends

Oxide and Friends

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All we have to fear is FUD itself

/ 01:21:01/S4:E12
Bryan:

Alright. Not at all. Alright. And did did we exit our closed session? Should we do Yes.

Adam:

Now let's invite everyone back in. Yes.

Bryan:

Let's invite everyone. We're back over there. Hello, everybody. Alright. So what I I think I tried to resist hitting on this topic in the specifics of this topic are but you know what?

Bryan:

We're just gonna I'm gonna attack right into it. This is this lucky.

Adam:

I just wanna point out. We got lucky.

Bryan:

Oh, we got lucky. We did get lucky. You're right. We got lucky.

Adam:

We got lucky because we had we had Andres on, and that was a great distraction. Andres was terrific.

Bryan:

Terrific. Yes.

Adam:

And I don't have to tell people to go listen to that because everyone did. I can see in the data. And then we we have the Ballers, founders on, and I will tell everyone to go listen to that one because I can see I can tell that you're doing it.

Bryan:

I'll you know, but those of you who did, we know you loved it. I actually you know, I you know what I actually I was I was backpacking with my 19 year old over the weekend, which is great. And you were listening to that podcast as we were backpacking. It was very great. He and he was like, that was a really good discussion.

Bryan:

You really enjoyed it. So it's fun.

Adam:

Well, I will tell you, Brian,

Bryan:

I know that great. And it and I'll tell you that that listen doesn't show up in your numbers, mister. I've got all the numbers. So there.

Adam:

Well, not only my folks listen to both the XC and the the Womb Fund Race and the Ballers Podcast, but also Bill George, scorer of the longest game in baseball history, listened to the podcast. So we had a new listener.

Bryan:

My goodness. That is awesome. What do you think? Did he

Adam:

He was he loved it. Of course. We talked about him. He loved it.

Bryan:

Did this actually happen or are you just

Adam:

A 100% it happened.

Bryan:

Because this is this is bringing great joy into my life. I feel like this I've been touched by a celebrity. Right? It's very The celebrity I've already met, but I feel like I've been touched in a different way. This is it's just very flattering.

Adam:

I feel. It's very exciting.

Bryan:

I mean, the scorekeeper of the longest game baseball listened to our least listened podcast episode ever. That is that's awesome.

Adam:

Great. But our days of being lucky are over.

Bryan:

We did. So we were lucky because no. You're right. Because we we had basically these these prebooked slots while this whole mess was going on. Mhmm.

Bryan:

Now I think what we should do, which we have not always done, is provide context for the mess.

Adam:

That's a good idea. I like that.

Bryan:

Because I was relistening to the the the episode in which we were trolled by the Nate Silver tweet. We may need to go re like, we may need to go inject in the recording a reading of that tweet. Because I'm just like, what the fuck are we talking about? To read the will one of you jackasses please read the entire tweet aloud? But we're, like, too trolled to even read the tweet a lot.

Bryan:

Not that we need to do an entire reading of, of mad essays terrible story, but at least describe what it is. And Yeah. How events unfolded.

Adam:

That that's that's why we're here. I mean, I mean, much like we did for, for the New York Times. I mean, I feel like we did them the dignity of of reading our our most hated piece. But,

Bryan:

Yes. Yes. We did them. We we did, our our future selves the benefit of an out loud reading of Kevin Reuss's absolutely terrible piece. Agreed.

Adam:

That's right.

Bryan:

Kevin Reuss, you're still on our mind. Go ahead, Adam. That's right.

Adam:

So so, when was this now? Like, 3 weeks ago? So we we had a a a a great episode, I thought, about OpenTofu with the OpenTofu founders on for those just to provide even more context. Jeez. You know, HashiCorp, relicensed Terraform under the Busil, these open tofu folks, mostly from corporate entities, mostly using Terraform, Terraform code, and so forth.

Adam:

Forked it, got it into Linux Foundation, and that fork is it's it's cranking.

Bryan:

Now, obviously a great job. I think they've been doing a really I mean, tough situation, really admirable job. But Telfer folks have been I mean, they've been, catalyzing the community. It just feels like it feels like it's going in in all the right directions. Really grooving.

Adam:

Absolutely. So my experience of this, of of discovering this new incident is Matt Ace's article. I think I saw it from Adam Jacob posting

Bryan:

I saw Adam Jacob on Twitter.

Adam:

Yeah. Yeah. And the title of the article is something like Open Tofu, you know, maybe showing us how not to do open source or how not to do a fork. I'm like, okay. Like, what are we what are we talking about here?

Adam:

What what what is going on? And he goes on to describe how it appears to him that OpenTofu has purloined code from Terraform. So Terraform has added some new feature called the removed block, and that same feature compatible feature has appeared in open tofu, which, you know, seems reasonable. You don't wanna kinda keep the basis you have. You wanna say to consumers of these things that there's compatibility.

Adam:

You know, how sustainable that is, unclear. But same features appeared and based on his analysis of the code, not only is the same features, it's actually the same code. That the code was stolen, that the, license was changed in the files, and that they have done this this this grievous act.

Bryan:

The more or less. I mean, that's exactly what he's saying. I mean, in in the his, you know, tweet, not obviously not the, you know, the tweet is gonna be it's gonna deliberately be kind of clickbaity, but the tweet is really, pretty outlandish. I mean, Open ToFu seems to have misappropriated HashiCorp's IP by using removing the the the busil license notice and replacing it with the MPL. I like the fact that he misspelled the busil by by by Chuck and the u.

Bryan:

It's like, you kidding. Come on. If you're gonna, like, you can you at least spell this license correctly? And the, I mean, it's really bad. And I actually d m'd him privately, Adam.

Bryan:

Because I'd like to I would like to believe that one of the things I feel I have learned as I've gotten older is to exhaust private, exhaust, all private options before resorting to public shaming?

Adam:

Seems it's a lesson that we all take decades to learn. Agreed. But but, yeah, totally. Like, it's much easier to have a a rational conversation in private than when you're getting detonated and and everyone's instinct when getting blown up publicly is to dig in your heels.

Bryan:

And so I'm like just privately, I was like, what is going on? This is like a super serious allegation. And, you know, you look at the files, and in this in this article, he's like, oh, look at the files. And, Adam, I mean, it sounds like you did what I did, which is like Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan:

I I I did look at the files. I mean, did you look at the files? And you look at the files, and you're like, these this is this does not. It is not obvious to me that one of these was copied from the other, honestly. And there's a whole bunch of explanations that are possible, including that they have drawn for that and, I mean, obviously, it's it's first of all, it's go.

Bryan:

I mean, I know that well, that sounded really pejorative. Didn't it? I didn't actually mean that sound. You wanna try it again? Let's see.

Bryan:

Let me retake that. See, see what I mean, it's written in Golang. Is that better?

Adam:

Yeah. That was good. That was good.

Bryan:

That was good. Alright. So but the I mean, this is a language that is like, there's a lot of replication in Yeah. Go. And there's a lot of code that's going to look similar.

Bryan:

And, actually, you know what? In Ghost Defense, this is part of the this is a feature of Go from the creators of Go. They view this as a feature that and I think that that you get readability. You get easy learnability, readability because you've got these patterns that you're gonna see all over the place. Yeah.

Bryan:

And when I looked at that, I'm like, this this looks about as similar as I or similar or as different as I would expect Go code to look given that these things are implementing similar functionality.

Adam:

Yeah. So the there are only 2 Go code bases I've really been in. One of them is Terraform. And I'm like, all of Terraform looks like this. Like, every every file ever we looked in in Terraform, I do love the the mouthfeel use of mouthfeel is next time.

Adam:

Let me hold on.

Bryan:

I do love the the mouthfeel use of mouthfeel is is next on. Let me hold on. Let me check that off on my on my oxide dust bingo card. Yep. I got my mouthfeel.

Bryan:

That's it. There we go. Okay. Perfect. I think it would be a big o today.

Bryan:

But if if someone could just say cackle bladder, if you use cackle bladder in conversation, I've I think

Adam:

Oh, it's been years since we worked that one in, but man, we've got the

Bryan:

Oh, we we worked it in so well though. They it's, cackle bladder's coming back. But the, so you you looked at the code, I looked at the code. It's like, this is kind of a crazy allegation. And like, where is this coming from?

Bryan:

But it but stands by the piece. I mean, and so I I would say that, you know, my advanced age has taught me to exhaust all diplomacy, but I then I I proceed to exhaust all diplomatic options within, like, 24 hours. I'm like, alright. Shaming it is. We try try to do this the easy way, pal.

Adam:

Alright. Now to plan a.

Bryan:

Right. Plan a and, of course, that that other part of me is like, well, are you happy with that? That's the the diplomatic route was really successful.

Adam:

It should be noted that also within 24 hours, I can't remember if it was before or after, Hashicorp files a cease and desist against OpenTofu.

Bryan:

Did we know that at the time? Or was that I didn't

Adam:

I did not know that. I didn't understand the ordering of these things. But I

Bryan:

because I know we know that now because open tofu the the open tofu folks describe the timeline. I'm not sure we knew that at the time that they had sent a c and d when the article was first published. I think in yeah. The some of the open tofu folks in the chat are saying that we did not. So I think at the time, we didn't know that.

Adam:

Yeah.

Bryan:

And which to me makes this, like, way, way dirtier, honestly, this whole thing. It's like I

Adam:

mean, yes. You have also just note about Matt about Matt, I say, works for MongoDB Yes. As the head of DevRel is my understanding.

Bryan:

That's right.

Adam:

And to, and that is a very

Bryan:

conflicted position.

Adam:

Yeah. It really is. Because MongoDB went through, I think, what is arguably a very similar license and change.

Bryan:

That's right.

Adam:

And, so to kinda be espousing all of these opinions without that being front and center. I mean, to me, you should like that that should just you should just recuse yourself from the conversation.

Bryan:

You should not be weighing in. I agree.

Adam:

Because there's just 100% of your you have so much economic incentive here. It's just impossible to be impartial and to not have that be front and center, which is gone.

Bryan:

Or at the very least, put it on a blog entry. You know what I mean? Like, put it in in a publishing vessel where it is very clearly mongo Mongo's position or it is your personal position. But it's operating in this kind of interstitial land where it seems to be an info world, not even an op ed, but an article. And people would be reasonable it's a reasonable info This

Adam:

is from the hard news wing of info world.

Bryan:

The hard news.

Adam:

Not the opinion wing.

Bryan:

This is from the InfoWorld foreign bureau in Moscow. They this is the Peter Jennings coming to us from the the from info. Yeah. This is the hard hitting journalism in the world. But it's it's not an unreasonable assumption that this is, like, actual journalism when it is when it is at best an unlabeled op ed, and it's an op ed that is is very conflicted and really should be under personal blog.

Bryan:

I mean, put it on your blog entry, dude. It's like which is also fine, but at least you're then you're not lending this kind of additional credence to it on really this very, very serious allegation. And so I so this kind of this kind of thing was sitting out there, and, there were a lot of people. I mean, you presumably also read the Hacker News comments on this thing, which were all, like, a bunch of people. Because I was like, alright.

Bryan:

I am curious to read the Hacker News comments. People are gonna go into this. Or am I missing something? And everyone's kind of going into it and coming out with the same conclusion, which is, like, not seeing it here. I I I do not see how one was copied from the other and I mean, I'll tell him that privately.

Bryan:

Well, it's like, go look at the I mean, you don't have a technologist that agrees with you. Does that bother you at all? I mean it's like every technologist that's going into this in-depth is coming away the same conclusion which is I don't see it. Certainly I don't see it to the level of this kind of allegation. I mean, you know, if you wanna ask a question, I guess, but you're not asking the question.

Bryan:

You're basically leveling an accusation, and seems pretty serious. But when it

Adam:

was really serious,

Bryan:

really serious. Yeah. And then he had the response from, I mean, the open tofu response, which, was I gotta say a great I mean, god, a great response. I mean, open tofu folks, you can be restrained so we don't have to be, because I your your restraint is really admirable in this where really going through laboriously because the other thing is, like, wait a minute like what is the what's the motive here I mean the idea that and did you read the cnd so that they post then the whole timeline and open tofu posts the HashiCorp c and d. And, I mean, did you I I mean

Adam:

It I so I I only looked at it briefly. It looked almost like a PR. Like, it looked like just a diff, but maybe there was more.

Bryan:

Oh, it it it more or less is. I mean, the c and d is comical. I mean, it is it is so bad. And the and the there's no I mean, it's very clear that this whole thing and the this whole the the the terrible piece by by Matt and the Open Tofu c and d, like or the the the c and d sent to Open Tofu is very clearly designed to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt. And this is like classic bud, I feel.

Bryan:

Adam, this is something we've had we've seen in the industry or, for a long time. I feel like FUD has existed as long as we've had computers more or less. It's like we we have had FUD and I so I don't I don't know what what your definition of FUD has been historically but I feel like there is an important because I feel is not merely, using kind of the abstract fears to go compete or do, you know, kinda say disparaging things about your competitor. To me, it has a little more of a specific meaning. Be curious if it has, like, kind of the same implications for you.

Bryan:

But for me, it is about an entrenched competitor trying to compete against an upstart by sowing fear about that upstart. There needs to be that that kind of that power imbalance to be, like, really pure or high grade FUD. Like, that that, you know, the pure

Adam:

stuff. And it's and it's not sort of, I mean, maybe this is this is the nature of of fear and nature of FUD, but it's not rational and it's meant to appeal to people's personal irrationality too. Where we say, look, open tofu looks good. Am I gonna get fired? Are there going to be implications for me personally if I make advocate these kinds of techno technology choices?

Adam:

So it's I I think it's intended to, almost speak to unvoiced opinions. Right? It it's not like the kind of, objection that you might hear aloud, but it's meant to plant very subtly these these hard to overcome hurdles.

Bryan:

That's right. And the and the truth so certainly, the truth doesn't matter. Like, the point is the fear, not the facts. Like, you have definitely does not stand for facts.

Adam:

And you,

Bryan:

what you are trying to do is get people to ask questions, kind of these emotional questions. And, you don't even want to I it doesn't, like, it doesn't matter what what the actual truth is. And in this case, it like the fact that and you you wonder if from a Hashi perspective, it doesn't matter that that Open Tofu has been vindicated by the facts. If from their perspective, it's like, well, we did what we intended to do, which is we've we've we've got this kind of, this abstract fear out there.

Adam:

And I So you're saying may maybe they view this even even the refutation as mission accomplished.

Bryan:

Mission accomplished.

Adam:

Yeah. If I do a casual googling and I say, hey, OpenTofu and TerraForm and Matt Isai's article pops up and I see the the headline. I say, woah, okay. Like, don't need to learn any more about that. Even though Matt has now sort of updated the article to include It's some, you know, additional information, being as kind as I can.

Bryan:

Well, okay. So be less kind. Okay. Now now now do it again. I want you to do it again.

Bryan:

But now but but with without quite so much kindness.

Adam:

Yeah. I'm I I I wanna pull up his the exact quote on that because it let's see. It says, since this article was published, Hashicorp sent open tofu a cease and desist on April 3rd, expressing in greater detail the concerns raised. Okay. On the Okay.

Bryan:

So hold on. Stop. Like, you're in the first sentence of an apology. This does not sound like an apology so far. Right.

Bryan:

So far This an This this sounds like it feels like You have

Adam:

an update in apology. Update in apology.

Bryan:

Like, look. Okay. Look. Look. I've had plenty of of BS apologize.

Bryan:

I've had plenty of sincere apologies in my life. I know what I know what it looks like when it's more of an update than an apology.

Adam:

I was a kid.

Bryan:

I've had kids. Kid. I know how to use the passive voice. Come on. That's right.

Adam:

On April 11th, the OpenTofu maintainers responded with a detailed analysis of claims made about the removed block based on these documents, it appears that the OpenTofu community did not misappropriate HashiCorp's intellectual property. Okay. Like come on.

Bryan:

Okay. First of all, a lot then you you got, like, the double negative in there. Right? I mean, just like if you really wanted to, you know, really take it apart, it feels like, you know, that that you are still leaving, like, open tofu, misappropriate, Hashicorp, and intellectual property are all in the same sentence together still.

Adam:

That's right. Headline unchanged, like, you know, subheading unchanged, like URL certainly still unchanged. I don't know. It's just, it's just way not enough.

Bryan:

It's definitely not enough to me. I mean and I I can understand why, you know, the Open TOFU folks, maybe even the l f to to a certain because I gotta tell you, like, I I was just, like, look it up by this. I'm I'm like, this is which which one's written? Is slander written or libel written? Why can't I remember this?

Adam:

I think libel is written. Chat, help us out here.

Bryan:

Yeah. I mean, with whichever one of those, I think the bible's written. Right? Yeah. Bible's written.

Bryan:

Sorry. So yeah. Like, this is bible. Right? I mean, to me, this is, like, the fact that you're leaving this thing up is like it's libel.

Bryan:

It's damaging. It it it is continuing to damage OpenTokfu, and I can understand why the OpenTofu folks who are much more reasonable than I am on this and much more forgiving than I am, and, hey, you know, better human beings as a result. But I can understand why they're like, alright. Look. We we we've kind of got this thing.

Bryan:

But I this is where, like, I am the Curtis LeMay of open source. I'm like, drop the nuke. I mean, let's go put the bombers aloft Linux Foundation. This is what the LF is for, and there should be a there should be consequences for HashiCorp for this. Yeah.

Bryan:

And, like, you should not be able to come to LF events. You should I mean, look. There are things that they could go do to punish HashiCorp for this.

Adam:

I mean, why why don't they just charge them more? Wouldn't that be in keeping with DLF?

Bryan:

Oh, now see, I knew I phrased this the wrong way with them. Of course. This is why this is why I don't listen to Curtis LeMett. This is why I yeah. I shouldn't have been

Adam:

like a opportunity.

Bryan:

It's a revenue opportunity. Opportunity. It's a it's a repricing opportunity. They're so good. Why am I I'm so naive.

Bryan:

Yeah. They should I mean, at least be like, wait wait a minute. So I'm in there's platinum tier. There's there's crooked tier? What's crooked tier?

Bryan:

Oh, no. No. No.

Adam:

Now there's libelist?

Bryan:

Okay. Well, I don't know who are. Tell me okay. Do I have to so wait a minute. But I get a larger booth from libelist as well?

Bryan:

It's like, well, yes. We throw that out as well. If you're libelous, you actually get a larger booth. You you get more passes if you're libelous. You know?

Bryan:

Yeah. That's that's that's a much better way to phrase it. But the, you know, they seem to be, like, satisfied with the way this has ended, which is I think it's not okay because this attack is it is so poorly grounded. And it just reminds me of all of these attacks of these kind of FUD attacks on upstarts, on new ideas, on new things, on disruptive innovation. And the you know, it those these attacks are basically always wrong.

Bryan:

You know? I mean, the, and there's a there's a a a question in in the chat about the, to what degree, this is fallout from the the the sun Microsoft I I p lawsuit, from from years ago. And I, you know, I think that there is, I mean, to me, actually, it is more the the thing that this reminds me more of are the Halloween documents inside of Microsoft about open source and, and the the the disparagement of open source. And just the FUD that has been so let's go turn the way back to Allen FUD, though. Let's, maybe it's a way of cooling ourselves off.

Bryan:

We if we if we bring ourselves back to Amdahl, is that gonna work? No?

Adam:

Please please, just to Amdahl, I was googling FUD earlier and I found the term referenced in some 17th century text. So,

Bryan:

it's just awesome. It was Oh, that's even better. Well, I don't know. I don't know

Adam:

a milkshake duck this, 17th century document. And I think they had the the terms in in a different order, but that was that was, but Amdahl, I think, is the the contemporary modern technical, origin as far as I know.

Bryan:

So yes. So and, this is in reference to IBM selling against Amdahl. And the the Amdahl is the upstart, and Gene Amdahl has has left IBM, believes that, hey, we can make a faster, IBM's by insisting on doing everything in microcode, IBM is making this thing unnecessarily slow. We can make it faster by putting more of these instructions in in silicon, and taking them them out of of microcode. And IBM is as a tactic against Amdahl, IBM is using the the the fear of Amdahl.

Bryan:

And in particular, they are the fear of what IBM might do and of what the incompatibility will will mean. Because Amdahl is trying to be I be compatible with the the, with system 360 and, or system 370, I guess, at that point.

Adam:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Bryan:

And, IBM is indicating like, hey. We may we're gonna change our instruction sets kinda arbitrarily. And, Amdahl, you know, is never gonna Amdahl is an unsafe option. You you Amdahl has it may be faster, but, by the way, we, IBM, like, we're actually gonna make we're gonna make something that's faster, and they kind of preannounce things, and and there's kind of this vaporware angle. And this is where where Amdahl either coins or resurrects, depending on which text, I guess, you're going to, resurrects from the old from, from Chaucer, I guess, according to your source.

Bryan:

But resurrects the idea of of bud of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. And we certainly have seen that a lot. I feel like what are some of the times we've seen it in our careers?

Adam:

Oh, good. That's a terrific question. Because I I feel like you You you give an example?

Bryan:

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Bryan:

Yeah. Definitely. I mean, I feel that we have seen I mean, I feel like litigation is used often for this. Right? I think that, NetApp was infamous for or, you know, and, NetApp had a lawsuit against BlueArc, and that was very much designed to so FUD.

Bryan:

There was the SCO case, certainly Yeah. Where, and that was absolutely being used. I I I mean, that was being used by Sun too to to so FUD about the IP that is was potentially in Linux that had been

Adam:

Yeah.

Bryan:

Misappropriated in the Linux. And

Adam:

But you but you're right with with NetApp. Like, I definitely experienced it with with the CFS lawsuit, you know, these customers, and they'd kinda ask about it. Like, clearly, independent of any of the details or whatever that was breaking through. Right? People it it was sowing that doubt to say, okay.

Adam:

Like, do do I really wanna take this risk? What I think perceived to be a risk. Yeah.

Bryan:

Yeah. And it's always kind of interesting when you have one of these actions like NetApp initiating this blue art lawsuit, where all of a sudden it's appearing, like, how do all their customers somehow know about this? Do you know what I mean? It's like, oh, that's who the audience was. The audience is actually like, yeah.

Bryan:

Sorry, BlueArc. You're just kind of, like, roadkill here. Like, you're not actually you, NetApp, are not actually trying to litigate against BlueArc. You're trying to send a message to all would be startups and to your existing customers that, that they should be afraid of adopting anything else because you, NetApp, are gonna litigate against them, and you're gonna use litigation as a tool. And they certainly did that.

Bryan:

I mean, obviously, they did and then they did that later against us, against Sun. And so I think that that that's you know, the use of litigation isn't isn't often, is often an indicator that is FUD is being used.

Adam:

Another one that I don't know if this feels similar to you, but, Windows NT. Like, in the late nineties, the Windows NT, you know, put this in the kind of the vaporware category, was just going to be all things to all people. Everything else was dead. It it was a terrifically effective marketing campaign and that, like, folks really believed it. Like, you know, I I believe that I was a student and I was believing the hype.

Adam:

And I'm sure really put the hurt on a lot of Unix competitors at the time.

Bryan:

Oh, for sure. When I think that also you just you the the fear that you're creating is a very concrete fear, which is functionality is just gonna be incorporated into into Windows. And, you know, you if you've got on the personal computing side and then on the NT side, yeah, for sure. They were, and I think what mean the the FUD that Microsoft was using was, I think, less against the proprietary Uniseys, although maybe that a little bit too, but it then especially against Linux. I mean, there was definitely a I mean and there's all sorts of FUD that Microsoft was engaged in, and this could be kinda Halloween docs, go into some of their specific tactics, but it was all about creating her of open source and fear that open source is gonna be less secure, fear that it was gonna be that that you if you ran open source software, that that you would then have this kind of unbounded liability because of this this mysterious IP that was in there, and the owner of the IP would sue you as a user.

Bryan:

I mean, it was just like it was very lots of abstract fears around that.

Adam:

Yeah. You know, I I feel like I've got a lot of, suppressed, or, like, repressed FUD memories. As as you're talking, it's all coming back. When I was at when I was at Delphix, we were building a virtual appliance on top of ZFS to provision Oracle databases. And all of a sudden, we heard from many all of our customers were Oracle customers.

Adam:

Oracle owns ZFS. And our customers start saying things like, well, doesn't Oracle own EFS? And isn't that a problem for you? And, aren't you just a GUI on top of ZFS? Include like, this was FUD being generated.

Adam:

We we eventually got, like, some, some PowerPoint document that that someone had accidentally given to a customer handed to us. And we saw the way that they were fighting us, the way that they were disparaging, not, you know, head to head technology. In some cases, not even technology that existed, but stuff that they were maybe planning to do. And, you know, were there legal concerns that might cause problems for the customers that if they made those technology choices? It was really insidious.

Bryan:

Yeah. That is really insidious. And, again, because it's like because you're you're you're preying on on fear. And it's like I also feel that, like, it is it's another one of these words. Like, the legal system is this kind of shadowy thing that's out there.

Bryan:

You know what I mean? That's being used to to to feed this fear. I mean, as we're seeing in this case too, where it's like there's the c and d and, I mean, I think that someone in the chat is linking to this this Joe Duffy piece who very much is also I mean, I guess to to his credit is posting this on LinkedIn, not as an info world, op ed, or article, but also sowing a lot of fear, around like, hey, these all these developers are tainted and, HashiCorp is almost certainly patenting the stuff that open tofu is copying And you're like, stop. Do you actual sorry. Stop.

Bryan:

Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Like, do you are you I mean, like, can we go substantiate that?

Bryan:

It's like HashiCorp is almost certainly patenting the stuff open top who is copying. That's like a pretty dangerous line, but that's another one of these things. It's like, alright. This is, like, less, less malicious for lack of a better word. And the pen, mad assays piece, that's still a super irresponsible thing to say because it is, the the patent system was very grievously abused for a very long time, but then the then Rehnquist croaked, honestly, and, yeah, we should do it.

Bryan:

We should do it an episode on this, honestly, Adam. We we gotta get on on how exactly this is one of these things people don't really realize is that the Rehnquist court didn't take a patent case for whatever it was 3 decades, And then you have John Roberts who comes in and is, like, you know what? I'm, like, we need to there's a bunch of the technology has changed a bunch, and you have a bunch of courts that are interpreting what we said literally 30 years ago. Mhmm. And they took a bunch of patent cases that were dyno patent cases, which I think is, like, super interesting.

Bryan:

Right? I mean, so at at the time, like, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas agreed on something.

Adam:

You know

Bryan:

what I mean? It's like whatever that is, like, that's probably just, like, just right. Whatever that like, you you can you can kind of the and the 9 o Supreme Court cases are always interesting to me, and there were a couple of really important 9 o Supreme Court cases that really changed the way we think of patentability. And, the the the eBay case, case or Teleflex case or Teleflex changed what the obvious test is. The obvious test, was being interpreted to be, is this obvious to a stranger on the street?

Bryan:

It's like nothing's obvious to a stranger on the street. So everything is patentable, and everything was getting patented. But I think that this claim that that Duffy is making is that a hash scope is almost certainly patting the stuff that I'll do. They almost actually certainly are not patting the stuff. You would really wanna take that apart.

Bryan:

You would want to go look at what their patent portfolio looks like and, it is actually to me exceedingly unlikely that they are patenting the stuff. First of all, anything that they would patent, they would, they this is actually where you get super interesting into, like, what the busul, where the actual terms of the busul are because by the time that patent comes through I mean your public disclosure will be the public disclosure starts a clock and the, because they are still making this stuff available under the bushel, it's gonna complicate their own patent process. Like, I'll put it that way. And that's assuming that they're still patenting things, which is they they probably aren't. It's expensive.

Bryan:

It's time consuming, and it doesn't have much value or nearly as much value as it had like back in the day with the NTP case and RIM and all that stuff. It's like where you the the patent trolls could just go, that had kind of a hunting license. So I actually don't think, I think it is unlikely, that that they are that that there there's a bunch of of patent related stuff here. And also, I mean, of course, guess I'm an old school in this regard too. It's like, if there is a bunch of stuff that's patented, I would go fight the patents.

Bryan:

Mhmm. Because though you can probably get the those patents are likely gonna flunk the obvious test. Certainly, the stuff that I looked at. I'm like, I Well,

Adam:

I mean, the fact that the moved I mean, the removed block, both both, both in in open to in Terraform seem to have copied the moved block. It does suggest that removed is not going to be non obvious, in the in the presence of moved. But Yes. Yeah.

Bryan:

Yeah. And, like, go litigate that, you know? And, I guess I'm back to being Colonel May again. I guess I wanna go. But somehow, I got the bombers back aloft again.

Bryan:

Well, this is why I I you wanted but they just need to pay more. They need to pay more. They need to but you have to pay the patent troll. You have to be in the patent troll category. Libel is patent troll.

Bryan:

It's a different yet a different category of sponsorship for LF events. But so I think that that that is an that is a fear that I would be very surprised to to learn to substantiate it. Yeah. And, obviously, like, sure. Oracle v Google was, like, was bad news.

Bryan:

And and I think that, like, the open tofu folks, I would assume I mean, I would assume though that I mean, whenever you're in a fort, you're gonna be careful about not you don't wanna don't invite anything like this. So I would assume the open tofu folks, are being very careful about what they're I mean, and because this other thing is like what is the what's HashiCorp's motivation here I mean HashiCorp's motivation is very clearly to imply that the that the fork itself, that there's illegality with the fork, which is just ridiculous. Exactly. So I've got, like so here's my kind of thought on on FUD as you kinda think about, like, FUD over the years. And, again, litigation often involved, and they, you know, you you are, trying to sow fear in customers of this thing that is disrupting the entrenched thing.

Bryan:

So here's like my here's like my after school special thought on on FUD. I think like the real fear uncertainty and doubt is resides with the entity that's sowing the FUD. You know what this is clearly clearly Hashicorp is afraid of open tofu. Yeah. Clearly.

Bryan:

And like, why would you do this if you were not afraid, deathly afraid, and suffering from your own uncertainty and your own doubt about the future? And you are because you, HashiCorp, are so gripped by fear. The way you are expressing that fear is by attempting to sow that fear in open tofu. And I think if you look at FUD over the years, it's like that's that seems to be kind of a true that that that seems to be kind of a theme.

Adam:

Yeah. You'll in in you're right. And it's born of a competitive pressure where it's it it there's kind of a disparity in both directions. There's on one hand, you've got entrenchment and power. And on the upstart side, you've got often a much more compelling case or or better technology or whatever.

Adam:

So, like, with with Amdahl, you know, faster processors, much faster processor, much much better price performance. And on the IBM side, you know, nothing coming down the pipe that was gonna take them on for a while. So what do you do? Like, you don't you know, all of your kind of marketing tools go out the window, and what you're left with is just disparagement effectively.

Bryan:

That's right. And I think that you you look at, yeah, Microsoft and open source. And, I mean, deathly afraid of open source at a deep level. And Mhmm. You know, as or as early as the mid nineties or late nineties, beginning get very afraid of open source.

Bryan:

And so, you know, what do they what do they do? They despair they they kind of they project their own fear on the world by sowing fear in open source.

Adam:

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So on this topic of fear, and we mentioned how we had Andrei on. We were talking about the XZ exploit and stuff.

Adam:

One of the things that has been so irritating about that is, you know, we we've talked on the show, we've talked elsewhere about how, how open source is tough. How you have folks out there who are often volunteers contributing time, you're not really recognizing effectively compensation commensurate with the value that they're creating. And that's, like, that's never gonna be a perfect conversion, but in some cases, you know, they're creating a lot of value and getting nothing in return. And and, you know, often they're fine with that, sometimes they're not. But either way, it's it's tough.

Adam:

What kills me is is the folks who see this x z situation and say, ergo, things like the busil are inevitable. That the only way that, you know, that open source is broken. And and and we can actually agree on some of the ways that's broken, but they're they're using that as a way to to FUD and disparage, in in fact, open source like, true open source licenses and saying Yes. And then using it as an opportunity to say these source of variable things are actually the the version that works. It just kills me.

Adam:

It it kills me to see that that argument kinda on the back of of of, you know, this this, like, this great event for I mean, this this great, find by Andres and this, this magnifying lens on on a real problem.

Bryan:

Yeah. And then but though I would you know, I think that this idea of putative open source companies flooding open source, I actually think is not new. Yeah. No. I think it did because I I think that this if you go back to, you know, as a employer, Mogo and the kind of some of the first dual licensing models where it's like this thing is going to be under the GPL unless you get a license from us, in which case and then they have incentivized themselves to give you fear of the a GPL.

Bryan:

In fact, if there were a crazier license, the AGBL, they'd use that one. You know what I mean? Like, they want, like, no. I want, like, I want a license that, you know, you can use this, but you have to make sounds like a duck if you use it. So,

Adam:

like, that's what I want. Yeah. I I was I was once working on selling a product to Apple and they needed to know if anything, anything inside the box had a GPL because if it did, they couldn't buy it. Oh, wow. Okay.

Bryan:

Is there, is there a single drop of crazy in here? And it did like and they probably have like a, you know, talking points from Mongo about, like, do you know, accept 0 drops of a JBL? And you're like, you do not want any of that crazy. It's like, aren't you what? What?

Bryan:

Did you choose all this crazy? Choose this?

Adam:

Weren't you serving crazy just, like, 20 minutes ago? Weren't you, like, saying how tasty

Bryan:

it was? I was serving crazy to crazy people. Are you a crazy person? I mean, that is that's the crazy side of the bar. You don't want that.

Bryan:

You want you know, you look like you're a you're an enterprise. Kinda kind of

Adam:

Yeah. You're more of a source of available type.

Bryan:

You are a source of available type. I can see by, based on the money you've got coming out of your pockets. You know, I can that to me, you know what that says? That says, I don't like crazy. I like paying for source available.

Bryan:

And I so I you know, I think that this is the again, this is not new, unfortunately. And it's it's and I think it's really tough. And, you know, Adam has said this before too. Adam Jake was just like it's really tough to make it as an open source company where you're a the a software product company, and it's all it's just like, you know, we've got a Immunox. I've got a tremendous luxury that like the thing we actually make is the computer and it makes it really easy.

Bryan:

And, you know, I mean, Amazon has it easy too. It's like the thing that we actually make is the service

Adam:

and yeah. Or even the thing you make is the service.

Bryan:

That's right. Yes.

Adam:

Yeah. I mean, whichever guys is part of the problem. But Right. But Right. Right.

Bryan:

For arbitrary you.

Adam:

Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan:

But do you mean just that that the I'm we are we've got this kind of modernization factor for the software that allows us to actually, open this stuff up and so I I think that this is the a real challenge of these pure open source companies and I think that, like, this is, like, we can expect, I think, more of this kind of okay. So I'm gonna is is FUD endemic and or worse or software? And it it because I mean, it certainly was born in in computing systems. And I'm sure that, like

Adam:

It feels so easy, doesn't it? Right? Like, feel so easy to just, you know, imagine, you know, imagine there were some upstarts saying, no. No. No.

Adam:

No. We've got that coming. That soft like, that feature or that product that you want, like, that's in the next release. You do not wanna get another vendor in your ecosystem.

Bryan:

These random it can be one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Adam:

Yeah. So it it just it feel it's gonna feel so tempting because software feels so kinda infinitely possible even in a way that, like, hard you know, hardware and the wonders of technology or whatever. You know, there there are some some pesky laws of physics that seem to bound it. Whereas, man, with software, it feels easy.

Bryan:

It feels easy. I also feel that with software, it is, we see almost endemic disruption. Mhmm. Chum Peters just creative destruction seems really endemic in software. And, you know, I think that you you can argue that happens for a bunch of different reasons, but there are very few I mean, like, very, very few.

Bryan:

Right? Like, kind of, you know, Microsoft and Red Hat. Very kind of few persistent software companies. And there are a lot of software companies that that make a product that that has success, and then they are wiped out by the next thing. And, you know, that was proprietary software companies being wiped out by open source, and now it's it's open source companies being wiped out by their own community, I guess, but I I I feel that that we are constantly, like, overthrowing the incumbents And I also feel that, like, if I wonder if this is part of the challenge of software where because we all know that, like, look, software is high gross margin, and that's catnip for investors at some level.

Bryan:

Right? Totally. And I did you ever did you ever ride into scooters, like a lime scooter?

Adam:

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I I, I just very quickly, I rode one to the office. I that's how I learned that some of these scooters aren't allowed in Emeryville because as soon as I cross them,

Bryan:

I moved

Adam:

this the scooter powered out, and I got an alert telling me to walk it back to Oakland. Thank you very much.

Bryan:

It's like, okay. Your funeral, pal. How lucky was it's like, you know what? You're not hey. In Emeryville, you're not gonna be thrown into Lake Merritt.

Bryan:

You know? I'm trying to save you over here, but, like, fine. So I remember the first time I rode a lime scooter. I'm like, man, this I can see this is gonna be wild because on the one hand, this is an asset that just makes money. I mean you've got this capital asset that has no humanity associated with it if you assume, you know, assume that the software is all written and there's no ops team and everything assume a bunch of things that aren't true but you have this like this this zero human layer zero human labor asset that just sits there and, like, prints cash.

Bryan:

And from an investor perspective, it's gonna be like, wow. That's attractive. Then you're like, yeah. But okay. It's also because it's unattended, it is gonna be thrown into Lake Merritt.

Bryan:

So you've got that that whole issue. Right? Like, you've got you you you've got to deal with, like, the theft and the strip downs and everything else. So you've got you've got that issue. Then you also have the issue that it's like you're not the only company that's gonna see this and a bunch of other companies are gonna see this.

Bryan:

And I just felt like the first time I wrote a line, it's good. It was, like, super early after it happened. I'm like, I can just see it all unfolding. I can see massive amounts of capital funding many different companies going to absolute war with one another and then the space being wiped out, which I think is more or less what happened.

Adam:

I think so. And You know, another another interesting one is, I you know, they they, there are humans involved in terms of charging them. So I don't know if you've seen these folks in vans kinda going around, scooping up scooters.

Bryan:

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Adam:

Because they gotta they gotta bring them somewhere to charge them. Yeah. And then, apparently, one of the problems is they are charged in really unsafe ways, like, with, non UL certified. Although, maybe UL is, like, just flooding these, these other chargers or whatever. That's right.

Bryan:

Are you reading that there? Do you read that UL piece and info world? Like, first of all, you should know that that's not an article. Weird. That's actually true.

Bryan:

And that's the ULCTO that wrote that, by the way.

Adam:

That's right. Big illumination. Yeah. But apparently, like, stacking all these batteries on top of each other, which creates heat problems, fires, and whatever. Anyway, so there are so, yeah, I'm I'm I'm anti scooter too.

Bryan:

Well, I'm not necessarily it it just like I just realized that this was gonna be impossible for capitalists to resist at some level Yeah. In the abstract and kind of impossible to win. And what you you had these things that, like, you were were just gonna be irresistible, but also going to make it, I I I didn't see how you could build a persistent business there because I just felt like you you were going to get wiped out by it all. And Yeah. I mean, that's more or less what happened and I mean I think that they you know they'll find some other kind of but I feel like the software's got that same kind of problem where it's like it's irresistible.

Bryan:

I mean, but and and the kind of the doom of software companies is, like, slightly different where it it it you get entrenched. And once you get entrenched, it's, like, too tempting to effectively sell that to do what Mitchell has done. Right? And, like, it's like I get it. It's like, it's great.

Bryan:

Like, you get to, like, you know, fly your admittedly extremely nice aircraft and write, like, terminal programs. Like, I I'm not sure that I would do any different if, you know, given given you know? It's, like, more power to him, but, like, Mitchell's not involved in HashiCorp anymore. Right? And it's been sold, and it's been sold more or less to private equity.

Bryan:

I mean, it hasn't been sold to private equity, but, like, it might as well be. It's been and it are it's been it is now in the hands of rent seekers and not interested in in really being innovative, more interested in kind of monetizing. And they actually don't care about how few customers they have if they can monetize the hell out of them. And it's kinda like the fate of VMware too. Right?

Bryan:

VMware in Broadcom's hands, same kind of thing.

Adam:

Yeah. And I mean, it's a I think it shows you how an act 2 is. Right? Like, because, man, VMware's act 1 was terrific. And I'm sure, you know, NSX and some of this other stuff, they they they had great additional products.

Adam:

But, it's hard hard to keep that innovation cycle going.

Bryan:

Oh, it is really hard. It act act twos are and this is where, like, you have to give, I mean, total respect to Microsoft has had a really has had a bunch of I mean, it's had a couple of act twos. I mean, they honestly, under the Ballmer era, the the company was just kinda, like, slowly losing altitude, and they found a bunch of different ways in part because they tacked in open source. They stopped fighting open source. They stopped fighting Linux, and they they finally, like, started actually realizing that, like, we we can actually be open source, not just open source advocates, but real leaders.

Bryan:

And I think that's when it really began to turn is when they really started being a leader in with respect to open source. I mean, like and I mean, it's tons of stuff, but, you know, TypeScript and Versus code, like really going back to their dev tools roots and but with with an open source spin on everything. And, you know, it's been really commercially successful for them. So they they had a really good act too. But, yeah, I you're right.

Bryan:

That, like, that second act is really, really, really hard. And it's because you also need to, like it's just hard to it's hard for a company not to hand itself over to the rent seekers once it's been successful. Yeah. You know? And the and the rent seekers are don't actually, the rent seekers end up creating the resentment that creates the forks and the open source alternatives and I mean they they they create, they sow the seeds of their own disruption by being absolute rent seekers.

Bryan:

And I feel like that's the cycle that this is, like, really locked in to software. It's really hard, it feels like, to get out of that.

Adam:

Let me try something else, Neil, with regard to software, which is, you know, very, you know, high margin, But also, like, it ossifies very quickly. Right? Like or you can build something great that lots of people love, and upstarts can come up and outpace you in part because they only have to build 20% of what you've done. They they know what works. They know what doesn't.

Adam:

And they don't have these organizations that they that have kind of found some local maximum of competency and dysfunction. So it's it's kinda easier to run some of these folks down.

Bryan:

I think it is. Yeah. I think you're right. And I think then also the the the the high margins, I think, are not unlike folks in the chat are asking, like, well, why is software different? And then other and I think that part of the reason it's different is because because those margins are high, it's well, the costs are low.

Bryan:

And you like, once someone has something that does, Adam's, you're saying kinda like 20% of what you do, but it's the 20% that everyone wants, They can, like, price that in a way that's very disruptive often by making it open. And the you know, it's just ends up being kinda wild. It ends up being kinda locked into locked into disruption. It feels like over and over and over again. And which makes it interesting, I think.

Bryan:

I think it makes it good. I think it makes it good for good for for customers and users. Yeah. I think that's something we don't really necessarily talk about that frequently, but it's like, it's it's actually a huge win for for for the people to break rent seekers and to get them disrupted. And it's like, what we have to kind of like the the the cost that we need to pay or having this kind of the the this amazing constant bounty of creative destruction is we get this, like, little FUD text that we've got to go deal with when we're to to get us to try to to try to lose our nerve when, when one of these entrenched players is, is about to be eaten by economics.

Bryan:

Feels like that's Right. Yeah. That's just, you

Adam:

know right? Yeah. No. Totally. I mean, it makes sense why they turn to FUD when a new product shows up.

Adam:

I've got my organization that it keeps you know, can't ship the next feature. In the meantime, these folks have never heard of, have brought us down. You know, they tell me, you know, our engineering team says that the the best they can do is 6 months from now have something that can compete. So what do I have left? What I have left is, you know, my my brand, my incumbency, and I gotta just hold on to that for dear life and with the tools that I have, which are not honorable necessarily, but you do what you can

Bryan:

do. And I guess the question is, like, does it work? I feel like it it doesn't work in the limit because it you you can't use fear to prop up inverted icons. But but, you know,

Adam:

it doesn't need to work in the limit. And that's that's the thing that Amdahl Yeah. You're right.

Bryan:

Caught us. Right?

Adam:

That, like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. IBM didn't need to maintain this fiction that micro coded processors were better. They didn't have to maintain that fiction for decades or even years.

Adam:

Right? It it was only enough quarters to put the hurt on Amdell's business to to cause it to be, you know, self propagating FUD. Right? I think their business is shaky, and then their business becomes shaky, and then it becomes something that I can't invest in as a customer, and then they go out of business.

Bryan:

So that is truly true when you're competing against Omnoll where you've got a a, like, a company. It's harder though when you're competing against an open source project.

Adam:

Yeah. Good point.

Bryan:

Like, oh, like, Open Tofu can't go out of business, really.

Adam:

That's right.

Bryan:

And I mean, it's I guess, like, you know, what are you gonna, like, fund them for, you know, being slow on the Estonian locale or something? I don't know. I mean, it's a you you you're having a and I'm so so sorry for the good people of Estonia. That was not meant to disparage you at all.

Adam:

Yeah. We don't have listeners in Estonia. I've I've just checked the numbers. Okay?

Bryan:

No. Okay. Okay. No. Okay.

Bryan:

You know what? If we do have listeners in Estonia, I'd actually like them to clear something up for me because I the you know, we we have neighbors. My my dumbass cat, what it stay with me. My dumbass cat, decided to, didn't come in last night because he had wandered into a neighbor's garage that had been closed. So we we can't find the cat in the morning.

Bryan:

We're kind of freaking out. And if we find the cat several houses away in a last name that I'm like, oh, that's interesting. I knew it was spelled that way. Clearly a Finnish name. And my wife's like, well, it's Estonian.

Bryan:

I'm like, well, that's basically the same. I mean, there's there's there's a there's a great kinship between Estonians and the Finns. This is what I have to say. This is very controversial at my house this morning. I would like to say that I I would say Estonians, let me know what would how do you feel about Fins?

Bryan:

I say kinship, but you may say rivalry. Let me know. So as you're upset about My disparaging remark about the Estonian locale and and open tofu, please, in your letters, please include whether you, maybe had a baby, but you know what? I'm actually just gonna edit this out. We're actually gonna put this, go put this back in.

Adam:

No, it needs to. This means it's on micro episode. Are you kidding me?

Bryan:

It's so Brian Brian weighs in on various nationalities to see this. No. It's like that episode killed. It got a lot of numbers on that one. I gotta tell you.

Bryan:

I mean, they're not happy numbers. I got to tell you.

Adam:

I've also compiled all of your legal advice too. What is liable and whether something is obvious from a patentable sense. It does have to be tempting to say, to like add features to your now o source available product and say, good luck, open source. Like, go chase down that, you know, feature Right. Parody or whatever.

Bryan:

That's right. And I think we and I and I kinda like larding it up with, you know, larding up these releases. I actually do hope that one of the things that the x z episode teaches us and again that that terrific terrific at, conversation we have on trace. But I think that, you know, part of that was this, getting them to issue a release, went out of their comfort level be for no other reason than just, like, it's time to issue a release. It's like, well, these aren't crops.

Bryan:

Like, there's not, like, a season for it. You know what I mean? Like, we don't need to bring in the harvest here. And we can actually it's actually okay for a project to actually move actually a little slower and with great reliability. That's actually fine.

Bryan:

Mhmm. So the the I would hope that but I think you're right. It's gonna be very tempting for or for any for other folks for whom this happens because we've we've seen this as well with with Redis and Valky, right, which is, another you know, and Redis, I'm going to say, looks a lot more like a a private equity play because it's, you know, the the original folks are not associated at all with with Redis, and Redis the company. It was another company's name that's kinda renamed itself Redis, but, that has now, turned into to a to a hard fork, and and Valky. I think Valky is going to I mean, I don't know.

Bryan:

What's your take on on

Adam:

that? Well, can you tell us can you talk more about Redis? Because I I admit that, like, I saw this license change go down and I can't remember. I I think I was on vacation or something, but just, insulated myself from it. So what exactly was it as simple as that that Redis just changed their license and and that spawned another fork?

Bryan:

Yeah. Well, so the this is the 2nd time they changed the license. So they changed the license for, you know, and whatever it was, like, 3 years ago or 4 years ago. I can't remember exactly what where they were like, we are, you know, changing the license for all of our modules, but not the core. The core remains unaffected.

Bryan:

And it's like, now they're like, actually, the core is affected. You know what? Forget that stuff that we said a couple of years ago. That was just all a bunch of bullshit. So that no.

Bryan:

No. No. Actually, the court is affected. And it it's so, they have now just, like, changed the licensing for I don't I mean, Redis is effectively all under and now under this Busil either Busil like license, I think it's actually the SSBL, but, you know, same difference.

Adam:

Same idea. Right?

Bryan:

Same same idea. It it basically a a limited use license. The, I mean, are you really making me do this? That the, are you really gonna make me? Of course.

Bryan:

There there is a mad asset mad essay piece on this as you might imagine. The, the headline headline, like, it's not an op ed is Redis versus the $1,000,000,000,000 Cabals. So clearly, no, you know, which side he's on.

Adam:

It was in

Bryan:

yeah. It's just it it it's just crazy. And it's, like, I mean, the thing that is so this is actually kinda a little bit interesting, and, I gotta say this piece is not aging real well at all because there's this kind of idea that, like, well, you know, the the if the the the large, cloud giants contributed more open source. And I feel like this is not a criticism that I think is well grounded at this point because I think that there was a time when you could really make that Chris, especially of Amazon where it's like, hey. You are you're consuming all this stuff, which has been absolutely essential for your business, and you're not contributing anything back.

Bryan:

I don't think that that's fair to say right now. It's certainly not fair to say of Google. Like, they're it just, like, flat out. Like, that it would be it it that is comical. You can level plenty of accusations, plenty there are plenty of valid criticisms of Google.

Bryan:

Google has made a lot of stuff open, and it's stuff that's super important for all of us. So, like, just, like, forget that. So maybe when you say cloud giants, maybe you're not good at Google on that, but it's, like, the also the reality is AWS has put a bunch of stuff out there and it's really not fair to AWS to say they have anything out there. But by by by saying that, like, well, no. No.

Bryan:

This is punishment for you, the $1,000,000,000,000 cabals for not open sourcing things. It's like, well, you're actually, like, you are now really incentivizing them to contribute to their fork and to contribute to Valky. And Yeah. The, you know, and this idea I mean, in this this piece by asset is just, like, totally upside down where it's like the this idea that, oh, you know, Amazon is, like, you know, strong arming others because they don't wanna pay for the cost of this thing. It's like beat the room, man.

Bryan:

And Valky, I think, is going to very quickly, become dominant. I because I think also think, like I mean, okay. Sorry to say this, but, like, the what Redis is doing is important but it's also I mean we're not splitting the atom here you know what I mean this is like this is not like oh my god red there's so much stuff that's not yet done for Redis to fulfill its vision for itself. That that that's probably the most charitable way to say, you know what I mean? It is Right.

Bryan:

It's like, no. It it, like, it's a key value store, and it's good. And it's like, yeah. You know, there's work to be done, I'm sure, but it's like, it's not Valky, I think there's every reason to believe that Valky is going to surpass Metis, and I think that that the term Metis is gonna be lost history. I think it's gonna be I I I think that that this is gonna be Hudson.

Bryan:

I honestly think that Valky is gonna be the Jenkins. You know? And I yep.

Adam:

Let me try something else on your work because because actually a lot of things you're saying, I'm less familiar with Redis. Like, I've never used it. But, you know, a lot of what you're saying feels familiar with Terraform. Right? Like, I've been a Terraform user for a long time.

Adam:

It it again, useful, not splitting the atom, but but also maybe maybe both of these technologies, you know, progressed to a level of maturity where, yes, there were still features being added and problems being solved and so forth. But not so many that the the primary sponsor was able to reap the benefits for those. And not so many that, you know, other folks kind of participate in the community aren't weren't building additional value now on top of that as a foundation. It became such a stable foundation that others felt comfortable building on top of it and extracting or or building additional value beyond that. So I wonder if that's the heart of this life cycle where, you know, when you've you've got some open source technology, you're unsure of its utility.

Adam:

Then it turns out to be incredibly valuable and incredibly useful and popular and so forth. And it keeps on maturing, but a there's this point where it is not done, but, there are diminishing returns significantly diminishing returns, and the value to be added is elsewhere. Is

Bryan:

elsewhere. And I think you're exactly right.

Adam:

And that's when you get that temptation where you say, you know, where where the rent seekers, you know, come in or where you stop seeing the growth. And this is, you know, one of the one of the tools in the tool belt when growth runs down.

Bryan:

I think you're exactly right. And it's like, what you should say is like, hey, you know, congratulations. This is great. Like, that is now sedimented in the foundation, and you what you need to use is the dividends from that to move to the next layer. You gotta move on.

Adam:

Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan:

And you I think that that that constant motion is like you can't sit still. You can't be like, oh, no. I actually you know what? I actually don't wanna move on. I just wanna sit here and monetize this.

Bryan:

It's like, well, no. You can't do that. That's not gonna work because the that's not where the value in the differentiation is anymore. And you've succeeded. And because you've succeeded, you need to move on.

Bryan:

And, you know, and this is where, I'd and I gotta say this, like, the semiconductor companies are good at this. Right? You don't have a semiconductor company that's, like, you you know that makes a part and they're like hey, like great we've succeeded it's like no no no sorry like now we've got we're gonna be on a different process right or we're gonna be like you gotta move on. You you you have to get a road map. You gotta go on to the next thing.

Bryan:

You can't sit here and sell a part that's 8 years old and expect to kind of to monetize it. And in software, people do expect to do that. And it's like and the other problem is, like, it that doesn't totally not work. You know what I mean? Like, yes.

Bryan:

You will be able to have 1 1 hundredth of your customers, and you'll be able to monetize them 10 x what you're monetizing today. The problem is that that's a much smaller business. Right. And, like and but it's a it's a high margin business, and I guess that's what and so you you end up with these kind of forces that that do, I think, result in these cycles, these kind of FUD cycles over and over and over again?

Adam:

I you know, this this feat is reminiscent of Sun open sourcing, Solaris, arguably much too late. You know, I think that

Bryan:

Yeah. Yes. You

Adam:

know, maybe not arguably. Yeah. But but but, you know, there's a world where, you know, Solaris was open source much earlier. And I don't think that someone was getting a lot of direct value on Solaris anyway at that point. Would have been a great thing.

Adam:

I've almost often wondered an alternate history where VMware, you know, open source the hypervisor. But, like, you know Oh, for sure.

Bryan:

Took for sure.

Adam:

You know, KVM, Hyper V, all this other stuff kinda never happens. And in the meantime, VMware was already building higher level software on top of it. So would that have sedimented their their dominance rather than, you know, let and they have a Broadcom? Or maybe it just would have been in Broadcom earlier, and there's a reason I never

Bryan:

went to business school. So Well One

Adam:

or the other.

Bryan:

Yeah. I I think no. I think you're exactly right. And I think that that's a really good example where I think that if they certainly it feels like they could have opened all of the things that Broadcom is killing right now. You could have actually opened all of those things and you would have delivered more ultimate value because you would have assured that these things become in certainly more value to humanity.

Bryan:

But value to humanity is not something that ranks. I don't think that that's very important. This is why you and I are our business school blockouts. Right. We we care about this value to human anything, and it's like that that seems to be like not I kinda don't understand why not actually, why that's not on the you know what I mean?

Bryan:

It's like it just feels that the isn't that the humanity? It doesn't that feel nice? I guess not. Whatever. I mean,

Adam:

only when humanity are common stock shareholders, like, as a fiduciary. Yes. Right.

Bryan:

I guess that's it. I guess

Adam:

that's it. Portion of humanity. Sure.

Bryan:

Let's keep them all together. Right. Right. Right. If you're talking about the humanity of my investors, like, yes.

Bryan:

I think it's great, but, like, I also think you can do right by your investors and to do right now. I know. What now? It's now I'm just talking crazy.

Adam:

Right. I was just

Bryan:

but if you guys

Adam:

do my soul dream.

Bryan:

I think that they they absolutely could've opened it, but they didn't. And I think that Sun for sure could have opened source earlier, but was never I mean, that would I think that happened about as fast as it was going to happen because the game was so disruptive internally. I think the thing that the where things do get interesting, but, again, they I feel they've the world just has a slightly different complexion. I don't know if it's fundamentally different, is that if there's no AT and T lawsuit, right, against the BSDs and exact that is let me talk about, like, some of the original FUD. I mean, the the the lawsuit that was hanging over the BSDs made it really hard or, I mean it was a made it really hard, I mean, that's another example of of kind of litigation as an arm of FUD that just, you know, that this thing could not, actually grow until the lawsuit was settled.

Bryan:

So I think that that, you know, I didn't had a really it it had a prolonged adverse effect. I'm you know, I I am I do think it's actually important that we've had a real revolution in a flowering of entirely open languages that are unencumbered, unencumbered VMs, and so on. Unencumbered run times, I think, is is very important to get because we we need to get out from underneath these threats and taxes and so on. And in order to build the kind of the the next layer, and and move up the stack, which ultimately but but, you know, people don't, you know, they don't it's it's work. They'd rather rather seek the rent, I think.

Adam:

Yeah. Well, and it's it's also very, understandable. You know, how Mitchell started writing Terraform, and it it succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. And so he didn't really have a plan for, you know, as Adam Jacob, but counsel for what the distinction between what's open and what the distinction between enterprise, salable, the high value products look like.

Bryan:

Yeah,

Adam:

maybe we're getting smarter as an industry. You know, maybe open source is becoming more aware of those things from the outset. But I kinda doubt it be in part because I don't think anyone knows what is gonna hit and what's gonna miss with regard to open source. You know, what what's the GitHub project that has, you know, 3 likes and one dependency? And what's the one that becomes load bearing for the universe.

Adam:

Pretty hard to tell at the outset.

Bryan:

Well, and I also think that, like, being load bearing for the universe, I think there's this been kind of this conventional wisdom that if I build software that's open source that is used by many, many people, I can monetize that directly. And I and it'll be a high margin, high growth business. And I think that that's tough. It's not impossible, but it's really, really tough.

Adam:

I don't even know that there are many examples that, that back that up. I mean, I just, I, I feel like there's my hope now is that folks have realized that there is not that alchemical formula between GitHub stars and cache. I think there was a thesis for a while that, like, GitHub stars up into the right equaled an unassailable business. But I think even things like Docker have disabused people of that.

Bryan:

I think it's probably that's right. And and then I think all that kind of that fervor has kinda moved on and is now in the, now you're right that you gotta be an AI startup if you wanna get that kind of fervor.

Adam:

No. That's right.

Bryan:

So so so what's the what's the future here? Do you think this this I mean, FUD continues. I think that feels like

Adam:

Unbated. Yeah.

Bryan:

That's right. It feels like, up there with with World War 2 is stressful. Is that is that that fight will continue. Yeah. What do you think the the fate will be?

Bryan:

Does any of this have any effect on either Ashikorp or Obed Tofu? I mean, didn't matter.

Adam:

I think it doesn't matter. I think it doesn't matter. I think that, I think no. I think, like, we'll we'll keep on seeing this kinda signaling from whether TashiCorp or Redis or, you know, folks who are in in my opinion, although that I say would disagree, you know, in the wrong. That that folks were taking, open source products and trying to relicense them under the source available licenses.

Adam:

This is not you know, they like to use terms like sustainable. This is not sustainable. This is not the path to, sustainability for the folks who are building critical infrastructure. I don't know I don't know what the path is necessarily, but it can't look like this. And so we're we're gonna keep on seeing these weird emissions, but you I guess my optimistic take is maybe we're at the the waning edge of this.

Adam:

Like, maybe we're gonna see maybe there aren't that many Redis' and Terraforms left that are gonna go through these kinds of throws. What do you think?

Bryan:

Yeah. You mean that you just think that the fire is running out of fuel? That there's like, a I

Adam:

kinda do. I kinda do. I think there was this whole generation of open source projects in kind of the, I don't know, like mid to late aughts or something like that that, where where some of the stuff was less clear. And and maybe more, like, later, more sophisticated, open source maintainers and starters and companies either, you know, didn't, like, they they didn't make these kinds of mistakes or they, they thought about it earlier or had better distinction. So so, yeah, maybe the maybe the fire is just running out of fuel as you say.

Bryan:

And so and I do wonder about that. I also wonder, like, how much, like, escalation I mean, I've got a why am I even saying this? Because I'm just like, I'm I I'm gonna apologize in advance for the open TOFA folks. If because if, but I am gonna ask what escalation is left? Like, you've already accused them.

Bryan:

You, Hashicorp, have already used accused open tofu of, like, stealing your code. When you get to talk oh, you know, accused them of, like, following you home, of, like, you know, of

Adam:

Is it copper mat? Do they have to dump your thing?

Bryan:

Copper mat. Exactly.

Adam:

That's right.

Bryan:

Are you gonna be, like, no. I'm just, like, like, I there were the the I saw the entire the open tofu core was, like, you know, I was looking into my bedroom or why because I just don't know what what what are you gonna do? Like, what what what's next? I I just I I just don't know, what you can do how you can kind of continue to escalate. And and I I I don't think you're gonna get purchase on any of this.

Bryan:

So I I think that ultimately this is going I mean, to me, this is like just to go back to, like, the the fear that I sense is, like, a fear in HashiCorp itself. Clearly, HashiCorp is afraid. And Yeah. They they are probably rightfully afraid because they're probably beginning to hear. I mean, they are probably hearing it from customers.

Bryan:

Like, they've got their own customers. They're probably like, hey. What's going on with open tofu? And they're like, oh, hey. Well, have you heard that we've, you know, sent them to the sea?

Adam:

And they were at my barefoot bedroom window just last night. Like, is that weird? Like, do you really wanna hang out with them?

Bryan:

No. No. You don't wanna hang out with them. Exactly. So I think that the, I I I think that this is gotta be close to running its course.

Adam:

Okay. My prediction my hope I don't know. Oh, here we go. This is this is my hope is that HashiCorp, starts inject like, creates tons of features. Just like feature palooza in Terraform.

Bryan:

Feature palooza. Oh, yeah. No. I got yeah. I agree with that.

Bryan:

Yeah. Feature palooza.

Adam:

That they just tried to jam so much shit in there, hoping that something will become vital to their users. And and it's like creating a different kind of busy work for OpenTofu, and, and maybe sort of they feel unchanged because, you know, previously, they maybe had to hold back some features for the closed source enterprise products, and now they don't feel that way anymore. And so they just start jamming in crap. And, and and probably piss off their own users doing it because there's always some new feature or some new intentional incompatibility because they're trying to, like, spike strip the the open TOEFL project. That's my that's my low low probability, high amusement prediction.

Bryan:

So low so intentionally, compatibility is interesting. Right? Because that would be very much a play. That's from the Halloween documents from Microsoft and their FUD. That's the IBM FUD and Amdahl.

Bryan:

I mean, that would be like the the classic move here would would be we are going to deliberately make these things incompatible.

Adam:

Yeah. And Maybe like, you know, HCL is the language. So maybe they say, okay, new version of HCL. We're gonna provide a update tool, but that update tool produces documents that are not allowed to be run by anything other than terror, like weird stuff like that.

Bryan:

Totally. And you get like, yeah, you get like weird. Like we are gonna, like, we've got a new HCL update, but it's, you know, it's got patents in it or that there's gonna be something like just, it just gets like super broken, weird. And Yeah. And, again, it's like you can't use that to pro like, you you can't use that to coerce people forever.

Bryan:

Like, that's gonna like, that's just not gonna work forever. You're gonna have to even if if some of the stuff, like, works in the short term, it is not gonna work in the long term. And you're you're gonna actually have to to either to to to accept the fact that, this is gonna be open and you're gonna I mean, which you'd be wise to do and go build, you know, an go build elsewhere, go build up, or you're gonna you're gonna succumb to history. I mean, I think it's gonna be, history history is pretty clear about the, well, bud will continue.

Adam:

Good. That, that feels like a safe prediction. High, low amusement, right? High confidence prediction.

Bryan:

And info world will not take this article down. I feel it was info world article will be up forever. I just don't feel that it's out. These articles are not coming down. These articles, these op eds are not coming down.

Bryan:

Right? So

Adam:

Yeah. One.

Bryan:

Alright. So I'll tell you what's not gonna give you forever. So we we are, when this podcast it's gonna we'll wrap it up I promise. We, so next week we're gonna be out for the next 2 weeks. So, off for off for different reasons in that next week and the week after.

Bryan:

So what that means and I will I I'm gonna I know, Adam, I I swear I was just gonna do this to you or or do this to you. Do this for you earlier in the day, but haven't gotten to exactly why. Sorry. I'm just, for Freudian slips over the place. But our our next, we are our next to be together on May 13th, to, to talk about how life works by Phil Ball.

Bryan:

I'm really looking forward to that. Actually, may I read a bit of of early fan mail you've gotten on this?

Adam:

Please. Early. Yeah. Great. I wasn't aware of any fan mail.

Bryan:

Yeah. Let's see here. So, I'd, it's been obvious to me. See, I picked up a copy of the book just after the XE podcast and aim to finish it before the book club meeting in May, writes this avid listener. It's been obvious to me for a long time that computation is a bad analogy for biology.

Bryan:

We deal in clean abstractions and interfaces. Biology respects none of that. The whole thing is side effects reaching out in every direction. I'm really enjoying the book. So the, and goes on with some more delightfully detailed comments, and I'm gonna I'm gonna save the delightful detailed contents for the for the next time we and maybe I'll get this this listener to actually hop up on stage and and say them themselves, but, this, really this is a technologist who's really enjoying the book.

Bryan:

I don't know if you started yet, but it's, it's a you started you mentioned that you started. I have started.

Adam:

Yeah. I have started.

Bryan:

Yeah. No. It's yeah. It's really interesting, and, and we're gonna have Greg cost on, and I think I'm really looking forward to Greg walking us through. He can explain the stuff that that, stuff that trolls him or the stuff that that that but I think that there's a lot in there that that, he's gonna be able to give us some additional context.

Adam:

And are we're we're gonna are we gonna open up a bit for, for folks who to to bring their favorite passages?

Bryan:

Yeah. Great. That'd be great. Bring your passages, bring your questions, and we'll, so that's gonna be, not a week or 2 weeks now, that is 3 weeks from now. So you 3 weeks from today.

Adam:

From to now.

Bryan:

From to now, need to read, to book, and I'll be right. I'm looking forward to that. It's gonna be a lot of fun.

Adam:

Yeah. Yeah. It's gonna be

Bryan:

excellent. Even the even a mad assay op ed can't ruin our our book.

Adam:

That's right. So That's right.

Bryan:

Be fun. Alrighty. Well, sorry about the FUD, everybody. Obutofu, folks, really sorry that you had to endure it, but, I think that, you are stronger for it. And I think that folks are beginning are are seeing that the response from the open tofu folks is really, really terrific.

Bryan:

So it's much more moderate than you and I are, Adam. It should be it should be applauded for their moderation.

Adam:

Not saying much, but, yes, true.

Bryan:

And it really does not take much to be more moderate than we are on this, but, thank you for your moderation, and, and and, hopefully, everyone get gets a chance to read their response as well, and onward. Alright. Adam, I will we'll talk in 3 weeks on how life works.

Adam:

Looking forward to it.

Bryan:

Great. Talk to you then, everybody.

Creators and Guests

Adam Leventhal
Host
Adam Leventhal
X Mastodon Website Link
Bryan Cantrill
Host
Bryan Cantrill
X Mastodon Website Link
All we have to fear is FUD itself

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