Interview – Karsten Wade – SCALE 11x

Q: Without tipping your hand on the actual talk you’re giving (unless you want to), can you give us an idea of what we might expect?

A: What I really want to do is show people that not only is it possible to run your FOSS project entirely on FOSS systems, but it is preferable.

First, you get the same assurance about data, community support, and ownership of the code that you get using open source in other ways.

Second, it’s the best way to build an infrastructure team from the community. Many existing and up-coming sysadmin and devops people want to contribute to open source, but are blocked by the effort of contributing code. An open community infrastructure team is a way to play with the latest technology, earn root via merit, and participate in a global IT team in ways that are even more agile and advanced than many companies can offer, even start-ups.

Third, it provides an assurance to your open source developers and community that the lights will stay on regardless of who are the corporate sponsors. It’s clear how they can participate and even provide infrastructure components that continue making the project self-sufficient.