To be a modern developer is to be trapped between the past and the future. On one side, technology is changing at an increasing pace. On the other, ancient legacy systems that companies use for their daily tasks aren’t going anywhere. Open-source resources are helping developers bridge this gap between the old and the new, according to Sam Ramji, vice president of product management at Google Inc.

“We think the cloud is just a spectacular opportunity,” Ramji said. The market for the cloud is so large that a company doesn’t have to be a monopolist to find success, he explained. This makes an excellent ground for open platforms. Given their communities, open platforms also tend to grow. Also, because of their open and known standards, such systems are easier to future-proof.

Ramji, a strong advocate for open source, spoke to Stu Miniman (@stu) and Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile live-streaming studio, during the Red Hat Summit in Boston, Massachusetts. (* Disclosure below.)

Together with cohosts Stu Miniman (@stu) and Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), Ramji spoke about the cloud, openness and trust.

Markets shifting toward open source

Open choice is not one thing, however. It represents a spectrum of effort for the developers and users. One lesson learned is that if the platform is too difficult to work with, it’s not a real choice. Understanding that has helped bring the open field to life. “Market share does shift over time in favor of openness,” Ramji said.

Today’s computer networks and systems are all interconnected. That means they have to work together. This gives companies an economic imperative to go open. Through open source, people don’t have to work for the same companies to collaborate. The sense of community this provides also helps developers produce better open-source solutions, Ramji explained.

That community needs to be organized, he added. To bring big companies to open source, there has to be a certain level of trust. These businesses also need some way to coordinate their work in open source, especially since they may have a lot at stake.

Foundations are developing to help give that trust and coordination. A successful open-source foundation can bootstrap trust in the community, Ramji concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of Red Hat Summit 2017. (* Disclosure: Red Hat Inc. sponsors some Red Hat Summit segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Red Hat nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

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