The evolution of open source in the enterprise [Q&A]

Open source software has been around for decades, it's thriving, effective and disrupting in the enterprise more than ever.

We talked to, Cédric Gégout, VP product management at Canonical, to discuss the evolution of open source in the enterprise and protecting its fundamentals for continued success.

BN: How do you believe open source has evolved and how the community of contributors is broader and more diverse than ever.

CG: In many industries, the usage of open source software became the core principle of many standards. It became the right thing to do, and the main reasons for that are that open source demonstrated to be the proper way for innovation to scale. Getting more mature and more professional, open source became also the place where secure software can be guaranteed across the different supply chains, at scale and with transparency.

Industries, like telecommunications, that were initially wary of open source, now embrace it to develop their standards and stay aligned with cutting-edge technologies. The development of the clouds had boosted the communities by providing avenues for commercialization: developing open source software became the preferred way for building profitable businesses through enterprise support, consulting services, and proprietary offerings. This democratizes open source: individuals and small businesses can now contribute to open source software with tangible benefits and returns on investment.

This can be explained by the fact that the open source licenses became more permissive than initially. The Apache Licensing model became the norm instead of the copyleft license such as GPL. It opened the door for a more diverse range of contributors (including web designers, IT operators, domain specialists, and data scientists). Now we see evolution in the open source licensing models that can impact this dynamic since the new licenses are discriminatory towards specific fields of uses, and could then limit the business opportunities mentioned earlier.

BN: How have major industries that were once hesitant to leverage open source, such as telecommunications, IoT, SaaS, finance, automotive, etc. embracing it to keep up with the pace of innovation?

CG: The rate of open source software adoption and the motivation to participate in the open source communities varies based on the challenges, opportunities, and concerns of each sector.

Some industries, such as telecommunications and e-commerce, embraced open source because it guarantees some interoperability, the ability to avoid vendor lock-in (by enabling easy replacement of some components), and it provides a way to counter the OTT players, thanks to faster innovation. The pace of adoption was then directly related to cost pressure those industries faced from their suppliers and their competitors.
For the IoT industries, open source adoption came from the fact that open source software offered standards and protocols to ensure that devices can communicate effectively. The open source dynamic was proportional to the increase in complexity in IoT systems.

For some industries, regulatory and security concerns have slowed down the adoption of open source as major institutions are under strict regulatory oversight. Examples here include industries like financial services and automotive.

But now, the advancements in open source mentioned previously, plus the level of enterprise-grade maturity obtained by the communities, have established a solid foundation for large and consistent adoption of open source software in most of the industries, if not all of them.

BN: What kind of changes have there been with the company's technology since launching?

CG: Canonical remains aligned with its core principles:

Canonical has consistently released new versions of Ubuntu, our flagship product, every six months since 2004. This includes both Long Term Support (LTS) and regular releases. This gives a deterministic view for all the contributors and the users of Ubuntu. We strive to ensure that Ubuntu can be used by all, regardless of their technical expertise and business domains.

Also, we have continued its engagement with open-source communities, fostering collaboration, hosting events -- guaranteeing that Ubuntu remains a community-driven initiative.

Having these principles in mind, for the last two decades, our technological trajectory has often reflected anticipations of the broader trends and shifts in the open source landscape. Some of the notable technologies and solutions that Canonical has introduced over the years are now key focus areas for the company, for example:

• Canonical invested massively in cloud computing, with dedicated offerings for public and private clouds - working closely with major cloud providers. This is aligned with the growth of the clouds and their roles in the development of open source software.
• Specifically for the private cloud market, Canonical introduced and developed MAAS for the provisioning of bare metal infrastructures.
• Canonical introduced Snap as a universal packaging system that allows applications to be easily installed and updated on any Linux distribution, and Ubuntu Core as a stripped-down version of Ubuntu for constrained cloud infrastructure (e.g., edge cloud) and IoT.
• With the increasing importance of cybersecurity and enterprise-grade requirements, Canonical introduced the Ubuntu Pro offering that ensures that Ubuntu remains secure with regular patches and updates, and expanded its enterprise offerings, providing support, training, and consulting services for deployments in complex environments.

BN: What are some threats to the fundamentals of open source?

CG: We can list a couple of threats:

• One threat comes from the commercialization of open source software. This commercialization led to the emergence of vendors developing proprietary software on top of open source to secure their businesses. In addition, now we see the proliferation of open-source licenses that protect the main contributor of the open source software against its own competition (discrimination towards specific fields of use). There's nothing inherently wrong with commercial products built on open source -- it presents one way to accelerate innovation. However, this approach demonstrated that it can often lead to vendor lock-in, which conflicts with the open source paradigm. This approach is usually in action when one or few large corporations dominate contributions to an open-source project, it might naturally sway the project's direction in favour of those corporate interests.
• Another threat comes from the cybersecurity challenge the open source communities continuously face. We said that the transparency of open source was beneficial for the development of more secure open source software. But, it is a double-edged sword: while it allows for community-driven security improvements, it also exposes vulnerabilities for all to see. This is a race with hackers that have more and more powerful tools (like Generative AI) to exploit vulnerabilities. Open source communities rely on the open source platform providers, such as Canonical, that combine and catalyze the efforts of the communities, to counter such threats.

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