With open source gaining wider adoption and infrastructural usage, understanding the game plans of some of its leading proponents in the tech industry can give clues as to how it will be leveraged in the years to come.

Jim Whitehurst, president and CEO of Red Hat, Inc., joined Stu Miniman (@stu) and Brian Gracely (@bgracely), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, at this year’s Red Hat Summit to discuss market share, enterprise connections and the possibilities of the Internet of Things (IoT).

Open-source power

As the conversation began, Whitehurst mentioned, “One of the things that I find just amazing about a Red Hat event is the energy. … It does have a different vibe than most events, because people are here because they’re passionate about open source.” That passion carried over to Whitehurst’s responses to the cohosts’ questions, as he was eager to share Red Hat’s plans and analyses on various topics.

One of those was the effect that open source’s growing presence has had in empowering data handlers, and as Whitehurst noted, those workers are now able to get some power against “those kind of middle-management people who like controlling data.”

According to Whitehurst, “We have a couple of projects that were companies we bought and then open-sourced.” The one that he focused on was CloudForms, a cloud management platform. “I’ve been amazed at the number of large companies that have teams of developers working on CloudForms, because they’re saying, ‘OK, this is basically what I need, but there’s a few things I need changed,’ and instead of coming to us and waiting for our team to change it, they’re doing it themselves.”

Leaping forward

That willingness to engage with open-source directly is a sign of how much acceptance open-source has grown to have across the tech landscape. “Over time, as the web companies have really taken off, they’ve started doing everything in their infrastructure in open source,” he said. “Now when you say ‘open source,’ [CEOs are] thinking innovation.”

And for Red Hat, that growth is drawing them forward as well, Whitehurst explained. “Enterprise IT is saying, ‘Here’s where the world is going; Red Hat, we need you there,’” he said. And while CEOs may have once looked at open source as a cost-cutting measure, Whitehurst feels that now “it’s not about carving out cost; it’s about driving functionality.”

Whitehurst also shared his thoughts on a number of developing technologies. He was very excited about the potential of containers for app development, though he did feel that there were some kinks to be worked out in the dependencies. Beyond that, he said, “The feature functionalities we’re driving are exactly the things that enterprises need to complement the things that Web 2.0 is doing.”

He also cited the burgeoning options of IoT, gateways and other connections made by mobile devices as the interests responsible for pulling Red Hat “into the device level.” And with more anticipation, he stated, “One of the things that excites me about AI … is that I think that’s going to force others who might pursue a more closed path … [to go open source] if you’re competing against Google and Facebook.”

Living with balance

“In the end, a lot of these things, early days, there’ll be buzz … but when you put it into production … [that’s where open source] starts to show its value,” Whitehurst said, pointing to long-term savings paying off from early investment.

“People are beginning to recognize more and more open source is a development model,” he added, though he acknowledged some separation between users and developers would always remain, along with the proprietary split. “There’s so many solutions that are a mix of [proprietary and open-source]. … Check the box, open source is winning at the infrastructure layer … but that doesn’t mean the whole world is going to become a bunch of Red Hats.”

In the end, he said, “Recognizing that it’s going to be kind of a mixed hybrid world is something everyone needs to get familiar with.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Red Hat Summit.

Photo by SiliconANGLE