EP 343 – Can Open Source Save Hong Kong? – Peter Man – Red Hat

Read the best-effort transcript below (This technology is still not as good as they say it is…):

Michael Waitze 0:00
Peter, it’s great to have you here. It’s I’m really excited to do this. Thanks so much for coming to the show. Let’s jump right into this thing. Talk to me about the perception of digital transformation in Hong Kong today, and for the people that are going through it, or feel like they’re going through it, what are their primary goals? What are they trying to achieve? What do they think they’re getting?

Peter Man 0:33
Thank you for the question, Michael, and first of all, thank you for inviting me to the show today. It’s my pleasure. I would say that for Hong Kong, as of this year, 2024 we are mostly recovering from covid, but we do have some challenges to tackle and more opportunities to capture going forward in Hong Kong, first of all, I would like to highlight a few challenges we are facing. You know, since about like, 12 months ago, I would say that in Hong Kong, the economy is rebounding, but some industry are seeing new challenges, especially like, you know, retail, shopping, food and beverage, tourism, real estate and the financial sector are facing different challenges. And regarding the pain points, I would say that, you know, like our financial market, you know, we are facing, you know, a weaker number of IPO, you know, in Hong Kong. And also, you know, the activities in the stock market is kind of like slowing down, you know, recently. And also, as you know, Hong Kong, you know what used to be a very popular expert at import hub for Greater China and also for Asia Pacific. So you know how Hong Kong can compete with other ports like near Hong Kong will be a big, you know, question mark that you know people need to resolve. And the last point I want to mention for Hong Kong, especially for Hong Kong, is, you know, we are seeing a lot of immigrations out from Hong Kong. People are moving to oversee because of different policies, you know, are giving the opportunities for people from Hong Kong to migrate over. So we are seeing a shortage of labor, you know, in Hong Kong, you know, across the industries. So I would say that, you know, for the current state of digital transformation in Hong Kong, it’s not just about time to market. We talk about time to market for digital transformation before, but now for the specific situation in Hong Kong. I would say that Hong Kong need to capture a bigger customer base. And also think about how to expand our markets. When we are talking about expanding the markets, I would, I would, I would want to mention that you know the markets, you know, I would classify the markets, you know, in in three areas. The first one is Greater Bay Area, not, not sure, Michael, you are familiar with GBA, with the Bay Area. It is the, actually, the South China Bay Area, the region, you know, including the few major cities like Guangzhou, sum, Hong Kong and Macau, you know, in South China, you know, this is a very big market with over 80, 80 million population, and much bigger than Hong Kong

Michael Waitze 3:21
and a huge government initiative.

Peter Man 3:23
Yeah, it’s a huge government initiative, yeah, they wanted to make this region very internationalized, you know, more outgoing, you know, facing the International is Shenzhen in there as well? Yeah, assumption is in there as well. Yeah, some Chan, Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macau. You have the four big ones, yeah. So,

Michael Waitze 3:40
can I ask you this, what is the, what is the implication for this big focus by the Chinese government on this area that has 80 million people in it, the Greater Bay Area, right? That has manufacturing, that has finance, that has sourcing. They’re trying to make this into almost like a Silicon Valley of Asia, in a way, right? And it’s got this huge population, like they named it the Greater Bay Area, kind of like the Bay Area in Silicon Valley, right in San Francisco. What implications for that on Hong Kong? For someone like I am who’s been in Asia for 30 something years, Hong Kong has always appeared to us as like this financial hub that’s going to have this massive benefit from being associated with one of the fastest growing economies in the world. What are we missing? Okay,

Peter Man 4:23
great, great question. Michael, so I would say the Greater Bay Area means a lot, you know, not just to China, but but also for Hong Kong. The reason I said that is because I, as you said, you know, Hong Kong used to be like the financial hub, you know, for Asia Pacific. You know, it is the International facing city. But of course, you know, as China is also evolving, and we have like, you know, iwis and a lot of like, you know, technologists that are exporting to the outside world, we see the important to have a bigger market, a bigger anchor point for. The rest of the world to interface with China. For Hong Kong, I would say that fortunately and unfortunately. Of course, you know, we are like the dragon head for for GBA, because of our of our history and experience. And you know, we have been dealing with our international customers for many years. Yeah. But also, you know, it is a challenge to Hong Kong. Because, you know, where the Hong Kong will will have the advantage compared to other, to other, like bigger cities, you know, like some Jan and Guangzhou, you know, they probably have even a bigger market population, you know, compared compared to Hong Kong. So where the Hong Kong can remain, the dragon head, you know, in Greater Bay Area. This is something that you know, you know for for Hong Kong government, and you know for us, you know, you know, living in Hong Kong, that need to think about is, do

Michael Waitze 5:51
you think this is a purposeful thing by the government to try to diminish the status of Hong Kong?

Peter Man 5:57
I want to say diminish. But I also, I want, I want to say that they want to make a bigger Hong Kong, Okay, fair enough, yeah. So they want to have, like, you know, as you say, the Bay Area, like, you know, lexicon Valley, or the Tokyo Bay Area. You know, we have to have a number of, you know, big enough population, and also, you know, industry all across the board to become a real, you know, important hub, you know, around the world. So I think Hong Kong alone, we only have like, 7 million population, you know, compared to the rest of Bay Areas we talk about it is not enough, you know, as a hub, okay, I would say the GPA is a very, very good initiative, not just for China, but for Hong Kong, for the opportunity for us to influence the rest of the Greater Bay Area, to to make, you know, the area, you know, the international hub for, for the for the whole world. Yeah, it

Michael Waitze 6:53
feels like it what? So going a little bit further right, what is the impact not just on Hong Kong, of GBA, and this sort of connection, like, if you said that Hong Kong is the dragon head, remains the dragon head. What’s the impact on the rest of Asia, on the rest of Asia Pacific, for all the stuff that’s happening there, I

Peter Man 7:08
see, okay, thanks for the question again, Michael, we’re a good one. I think this is the longer term impact is, you know, as you I understand that, Michael, you are based in Singapore, so you probably know Singapore In

Michael Waitze 7:25
Singapore, so I know a lot about it, yeah.

Peter Man 7:26
Okay, great, you know. So, you know, Hong Kong used to compete with Singapore. I was going to

Michael Waitze 7:31
bring this up like when I first came to Asia in 1990 I hate to date myself. There was this ongoing argument. And I was thinking about this before you and I were speaking, but there was this ongoing argument of, right, which of these little island nations, right? Because that’s how we looked at Hong Kong before the handover in 97 right? Are going to be the gateway to China, because both of them are Chinese speaking. One is Cantonese, one’s Mandarin, but still speaking Chinese, right? So definitely can communicate easily culturally with the mainland of China. And then at some point, some bit flipped where it just felt like Singapore, just like went into overdrive, and Hong Kong kind of stagnated a little bit. Is that fair? Yep,

Peter Man 8:11
I would say that. Unfortunately it is a fair statement, because of a lot of reason, you know, mostly because of covid, because we have, like, a shutdown policy for the city, and we are among the last one, you know, in the region, to open up. I remember that, that that create a little challenge for us, you know, to catch up and to rebound from the covid. But I would say that Hong Kong will remain, you know, our advantages. You know, in the longer run. What? Why? Why I’m saying that is because, you know, Hong Kong is part, actually, technically, part of China. Yeah, you know, we are the special administration of of China. You know, we still have the common law and everything. And, you know, it’s very international setting, yeah, yep. So I think, you know, it is, it is good that, you know, we still have that advantage with us, and also the proximity to China. And I think, you know, going forward, we should continue to play this role, but at the same time, we want to do business with ASEAN countries, not just Singapore, but also the fast growing ASEAN countries, you know, in Southeast Asia, right? That is another target customer base that Hong Kong is facing. So as you can see, you know how Hong Kong will compete, I sometimes, I would say, not just compete, but cooperation and everything, okay, how Hong Kong and Singapore together can make Asia bigger than the rest of the world. I think that is something that you know, as two very international city, you know, there’s something that I think we should work together instead of competing with each other.

Michael Waitze 9:47
Yeah, it’s funny, right? Like, I’m not Asian, but, boy, sometimes I feel like I am. It’s a really interesting thing for me, right? Because I’ve been here since I was like a kid now, right? I mean, I’ve been here since. I was 24 years old, so and I’ve never lived anywhere in my life, except for here as an adult. So to me, I have a really unique perspective on this, the question about whether Asia is going to be like the driving force for the global economy, for the global anything for the rest of the you know, in this century, is not a question for me. It never has been. Where do you see Hong Kong fitting in, though, with Singapore in the context of this expansion into places like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, even Vietnam, all these countries are seeing rapid economic growth, big growth in the middle classes. How do you get more associated with them? How do you get into their economies as well. I

Peter Man 10:41
think, you know, what a good question, Michael, if you compare Hong Kong and Singapore, I think the advantage of Hong Kong is because we have China, you know, as our like, you know, the, you know, on our back, okay, yeah, you know, China has a large number of, you know, industries and also manufacturing that are, you know, the world factory for, for a lot of things, yeah, you know, for the Asian country, you know, there’s a lot of things that, you know, they are importing from China, you know, from from Singapore. You know, Singapore is more like, you know, the middleman of everything. And they are doing a very good job at, you know, on that there, you know. And of course, you know, they are closer to the ASEAN country. But if the ASEAN country are going to do business with China. There’s a lot of reason why they want to use Hong Kong as the middle man. Yeah, because of a lot of reason that you know, because we understand, you know, how, how China function, and you know how they should do business with China. I think you know it is a safer bet, you know, to to deal with Hong Kong. You know, if you want to get into China and vice versa? Yeah. Yeah. I

Michael Waitze 11:43
mean, one of the things about Hong Kong that has always been great is the the existence of English law, right? And I don’t say and it’s so hard to explain this to people that don’t understand how the region works. I don’t mean because the law is written in English. I mean because it’s based on the law of England, and it’s just easier for people to understand, and because it’s been around for a lot longer, rather than longer. Rather than setting up your headquarters in Shanghai or in Shenzhen or in Guam, set it up in Hong Kong, and then you understand, like the governance around your companies, corporate governance, right? So it makes it much easier, and the strategic closeness, like you said, the proximity to China, makes dealing with China just 1000 times easier because you’re there, right? So getting there is easier and stuff like that, but you’re right. Working in conjunction with Singapore gives you a whole bunch of other service capabilities that maybe you wouldn’t otherwise have, that you can then add on to that. And because, again, the communication and culture is similar, it makes that easier too. Can we, yeah, can we talk about why? Like, let’s be a little bit more specific about open source and about Red Hat, right? Like, where does that fit in is just as a strategic solution for Hong Kong, particularly in the context of all the things we’ve already been discussing.

Peter Man 12:51
Yep, I love this question, Michael. You know, open source is so important for Hong Kong these days. Let me explain to you why. Okay, because you know, as you know, you know, geopolitical conflicts are like happening all around the world, yeah, and in Hong Kong, you know, we are in the middle of the US, China, I would say, cooperation, competition, conflict, that are escalating daily. You know, things are quite sensitive these days. And you know how to position us, the enterprises, politically correct, you know, to operate in this region is becoming a big challenge for Hong Kong. Okay? So I would say that, you know, in Hong Kong, we see more customers are considering it. Solution from China, like Chinese make solution, okay, because of security and political reason, then you can, you can see us are doing the same thing, you know, yeah, they are banning some, you know, China, Chinese company. It company on their solution that, you know, they don’t allow the government, you know, to use some of the Chinese big solution, yeah. So, you know, this kind of things it’s becoming more very political. I

Michael Waitze 14:02
would say, yeah. I mean, Huawei used to sell a ton of phones in United States, and now they say exactly, right, and that’s only exactly as a political consideration, but please go exactly.

Peter Man 14:11
And also, you know, the drones, and also, you know, those kind of things, are all becoming very sensitive. DJI, yeah. DJI, but I have to say it, it is a universal language. Yeah, it is very difficult to pick a solution just based on where it is made or developed, because a lot of technologies are actually, you know, you know, the origin is from everywhere. You know, it’s not just from one country, right? So how to, how do you, you know, juggle this kind of political concern. And also, you know, you we are isolating ourselves, you know, using just solution from one specific country or area we will be, we will advance much slower than the rest of the world, right? You know, that is what we don’t want to see in Hong Kong. And also, the. Enterprise will suffer at the end. Yeah, that’s why I said, you know, open source is the way to go, you know, for Hong Kong, because, you know, open source, we can provide a safe, secure and reliable solution for our local customer, for right hand, you know, even though we are registered in us, but you know, as we are, we have an operation in Hong Kong, it is our duty to provide a very safe and secure solution for our customers. Okay, this is no question. You know. You know we cannot hurt our local customer. But at the same time, you know how red hat as open source company, can, you know, free the customer from any geopolitical concern or issue that may arise, you know, anytime. Okay, and go back to open source. Why open source is the best bet for Hong Kong. First of all, number one, I think you know it is 100% transparent. You know, for open source, you know you can, you can see the source code. You can, you can come compile your the source code by yourself. Everything is open, transparent, no hidden stuff, no Trojan horses, no back doors, okay, and it is, by nature, very safe for anyone to use. Yeah,

Michael Waitze 16:18
and look open. I mean, let’s, let’s be clear about this too. Red Hat has been in the open source business for, I’m gonna say, like 25 now, more than 30 years. Yeah, almost more than 30 years. Yeah, yeah. So they are literally, like some of the pioneers, and actually taking open source Linux itself, originally, right, and then taking it and making, turning it into a commercial model, right, to be able to do that. But leaving everything open source, you’re right, gives it a transparency that other software doesn’t have. So if you don’t, if you can’t trust the source, at least you have the open source software. You can say, like, look, I went through all the code. There’s nothing in here, right? Because

Peter Man 16:51
regular software is just, if you want to take time to do it, yeah, yeah, yeah. But regular

Michael Waitze 16:55
software is just like a lockbox. You don’t know what’s in there, because you can’t see the source

Peter Man 16:59
code. Absolutely, absolutely, Michael, you’re 100% correct. I think that’s so that’s why, by nature, open source software is much safer in terms of security, you know, for our end users. Yeah,

Michael Waitze 17:11
can I ask you this, though? So you mentioned immigration before, right? I’m presuming a lot of this immigration is going to Canada, just because Canada’s had a long time or a long standing relationship with Hong Kong, particularly in times of concern. During 1996 a lot of Hong Kong Chinese emigrated to Canada. It’s been a place where it’s been easy and a great relationship to do this. But does I’m curious about, like, what the impact is on not just your customers, but the overall economy in Hong Kong for this open source thing, and if other companies will be doing this as well. Do you know what I mean?

Peter Man 17:44
Yeah. So I would say that, you know, I think for the second point, I want to talk about on open sources, you know, besides that, it is 100% transparent, right? You know, the thing that you know make open source very safe for like Hong Kong or any other any any customer in any place to use this, because open source software is not governed by proprietary and user license, right? Open Source operation, yeah, by definition. And also, you know, technically, open source software are governed by open source licenses that guarantee your your fundamental of freedom to use and to distribute

Michael Waitze 18:26
and to change and to adapt it. Yeah, doesn’t change. Yeah, good. Why is

Peter Man 18:30
this important? You know, especially in Hong Kong or any other places, because you know, if one day you know a country is being sanctioned, you know, by by another government, you know they can withdraw your end user license agreement overnight, okay, yeah, which means that, you know, because proprietary software you are licensed to use, but for and for open source software, your subscription is for support. It’s not the license to use, because, by nature, open source software already guarantee your right to use and to distribute the software. Yeah. So overnight, if we are we cannot do business with a certain country. We cannot withsure Their right to use. But you know, of course, you know they they may need to find another way to support your software, but it doesn’t prevent, prevent you to doing that. So this is a loss, saver, way for your continuity of your business, if you are running open source software, comparing to some proprietary resource software that your life, your right of use, is being licensed by by by a company. I want, I want to make this

Michael Waitze 19:39
point, though really clearly, because I think this is actually really important. I want to make sure that to make sure that people understand this. You said this, but I want to say it even louder. Sure when you when you buy software, you’re buying an end user license. You’re not buying the right to use that software. Per se, you’re buying the right to an end user license. But when you use open source software, you’re not buying a license to use the software. You’re buying. Service to help you use that software. So So in the case that, like, something geopolitical happens that you can’t control, no one can take that software away from you. They can’t stop you from using it, because they may be able to stop you from the service you get, right, but they can’t stop you from using the software. And that’s a very nuanced but very big difference, I think. And I think and tell me if I’m wrong here, but I think now today, more than ever, it’s more important than ever to have open source software, because I feel like the world is way more unstable than it’s been in my lifetime, and that means that governments are getting there’s more tension between governments, where before there wasn’t that much tension. I think it’s cyclical, so sure it’ll go away at some point. But today, it feels better to have an open source license than it does to have an end user license from a proprietary software giver. Does that make sense? You

Peter Man 20:49
100% correct. Michael, you know, you’ve got it. You know, correctly, I would say that you know, you know the freedom to use is very important. Yeah. You know, no one can take take away your freedom to use the whether you I can support you or you, whether you know you can engage me to support you continually in the future, if something happened, you know that that is our only question mark. Of course. You know, for example, if Red Hat cannot support your open source software anymore, uh, starting tomorrow, you can always find a third party, you know, maybe locally, a third party to support you, and they will get an open source version of the patch and everything for you so you can continue to use the software that you are using, but just with our red hat to support you. Of course, I would say that a lot of people love Red Hat, and you know, thanks God about that. And you know, we are supporting everyone today, but in case something happens, some black swan event happened, right? You know, you know, things won’t stop your operation. That is the most important thing for our customers. Yeah. And

Michael Waitze 21:51
look, if I were, if I were a company like Red Hat that was providing software and support for software that has open source, I’d spend all day talking about it. I’d spend exactly every

Peter Man 21:59
day talking about it. So important this thing. And Michael, you’re right. You know, a lot of people don’t fully understand that until we explain it to them again and again. And now they see the see the importance of that. And actually, especially for Hong Kong, it is very, very important. Yeah, it

Michael Waitze 22:13
seems so, that’s why I wanted to say it explicitly. So the elephant in the room today, besides all the geopolitical stuff that’s going on, is artificial intelligence. Like, where does this fit in with AI?

Peter Man 22:22
Okay, we’re interesting. We’re Interesting. Yeah, everyone is talking about AI, right? I would say that you know why AI becomes so hot a topic today. I would say the Gen AI as AI, Gen AI is a specific area for AI. AI has been around for a long time. You let me know? Yeah, so, but Gen AI, like, starting two, three years ago, when, when chatgpt released the software, it is an eye opener, yeah, and I opened, you know, in the sense of, like, the personal productivity, okay, people see that, you know, AI really can do something for that, yeah, instead of some, like, you know, something hidden behind, behind the scene, helping enterprise to analyze something or something that is not, you know, customer facing now you see Gen AI is actually helping you to to summarize an article, and can answer your question directly, and can recognize pattern. And also can, you know, generate new content based on what what they learned? Okay, so this is a game changer, you know, especially for personal productivity, yeah, but I, but I have to, usually, you know, I spend a lot of time to tell my customers, enterprise customers, how we should look at this. Okay, personnel, personal productivity improvement is a good thing. You know, don’t get me wrong. Okay, I saw a lot of use cases, very good use cases, for example, you know, now we don’t need to have someone to take minutes, you know, in a meeting. You know, AI can do it for you. You know, before that you need a secretary or someone need to in the meeting. Need to do it, you know. But now it can generate all the minutes for you. You know, easily, and also, you know, if you are writing articles, like on a on LinkedIn, you know it will, you will have an AI engine to help you to correct your your your content, or like grammar mistakes. You know, those kind of things right? That is something that, as an end user, you know, I’m benefiting from them. It saved me a lot of time and make my work, you know, in high in higher quality, that I really like that. But for an enterprise, you know, we, we need to be very careful on this kind of truth, because, you know, I see enterprise, our enterprise customers are using AI, more, you know, more on a specific use cases. Okay, they are not, you know, getting like, you know, this kind of like Gen AI things to to replace the Secretary, or to replace the some of their workers, but more on, on improving some of the use cases, you know, like. Red Hat, we are releasing AI version of like OpenShift Linux and also Ansible night speed. All of this AI specific upgrade to help our specific use case to do a more intelligent job. That is what enterprises are looking for today, you know, in their environment, okay, of course, you know, like some companies are using some of the productivity tools, but you know, I also understand that they are doing it very carefully, because, you know, AI is still very, I would say the early stage Okay, for productivity improvement and also really getting, getting into the enterprise environment, you know, in a big way. But, you know, I think you know, for any new emerging technology, open source will always play a role, you know, like, look, look at Kubernetes containers. Okay, yeah, because Kubernetes container, it was originated, you know, as an open source, you know, model, okay. And then, you know, different players are getting into the game. OpenShift happened to be one of the biggest one and, you know, and it proved that, you know, the open source model of Kubernetes make it a very, very hot topic, you know, in the industry, and a lot of developers are seeing that, you know, as the future to deploy the applications and things are moving from the traditional virtual machine to the container model. We are seeing that happening in the in the last seven or eight years, really, in a big time, this is the future of how to hold your host, hold your applications. Got it so. So for this kind of new emerging technology, if you can make it open source, things will happen very quickly, and innovation will happen very fast. And look at EV, okay, electric vehicle. I always want to use this as an as an example on how open source can drive, drive things forward. Because, you know, Tesla, like Tesla, is the biggest EV company in the world, and you know that Tesla has open source all the, all the EV technologies, okay, so, you know, because they are the guts to do it, you know. They, they are not trying to to be like, you know, I am the only one that that can do this kind of like, you know, cost effective and very efficient. UE, but they are willing to open source everything you know, to the outside world, and look at the evening market today. Do you think that, you know, they, they were stupid on doing that so, you know, the other companies can copy that technologies? No, I would say yes, and no, okay. The good thing is, they are building up a very big ecosystm, right? You know, comparing to they are doing it on their own, okay? And they believe their leadership so well, I would say that like I will compare Tesla to to Red Hat, because Red Hat is so confident that you know, if you need support on the selected components on open source software, Red Hat is always someone that they they will consider right. Okay, I think Tesla is doing the same thing in iwi, okay, they want to build a big ecosystm To start with, but to make sure that you know you will become the future. You know of of cars. You know of automobile. You know for the world, and after that, you know they can show the world that you know they are the leader and in that. And you know they may lose some market share, but you know, the combined market will be bigger than if they are doing it by themselves and get 100% of it.

Michael Waitze 28:48
Can we make the case, though, that open source is more than just like software. It’s a movement and it’s a mindset as well, right? So this idea that whether it’s Tesla or Red Hat or any other company that’s participating in the open source with an open source model. It’s a movement, right? It’s a way of thinking about how to build software, and the idea of maybe if our services are better, even if all the software’s the same, it’s better for the world that way, right? And I think that was the original idea of Linux itself, anyway. And sort of Red Hat grabbed that and ran with it faster than anybody else, particularly at the beginning, and I was way far ahead, way further ahead than anybody else in that space. But the idea is more of like I always say, no one succeeds alone, right? So even for a small startup or a big company, they no one six, no company succeeds alone. No individual succeeds alone. Nobody who runs the 100 yard dash trained alone for 15 years. They had a whole team working with them. Every boxer has like a corner team, like no one succeeds alone. And in this case, the idea is not just, is it smart or stupid to give that software away, but it’s the idea of, you know what? Maybe if we put it out there, the stuff we’re going to get back is going to be better than the stuff we could have developed ourselves. That helps us, it helps all our customers, and it rises the tide for every. Everybody, and that’s just better. Is that fair?

Peter Man 30:02
Exactly. Michael, you know, you got it right. I think you know the most important is, if you’re doing it all alone by yourself, you know, no matter how big your company is, you are talking about, like, maybe 1000 2000 people working on a software compared to look at how many contributors in Linux alone, you are talking about, like, over to trend, yeah, at least, you know, active, active contributors, 200,000 easily, easily, it will be bigger than any, any company you know, who want to develop a software by itself, right? Okay. And also, you know, if everyone can get involved, you know, the interest and the skill set, you know, will grow much quicker, comparing to you need to all do all the marketing yourself. You need to convince people that you know your 100, 200 people team you know Can, can do everything yourself. And you know, and also you know, the another thing you know, a lot of developers you know would welcome is, you know, if everyone can see your source code, they can, they can build things on top of it, exactly. They can contribute things on top of it. You know, look at some of the software games you know, people are playing, okay, if they are open sourcing, I will, I will say totally open sourcing. But, you know, they are opening all the interfaces for people to build things on top of it. Look at the community. The community will become very big because, you know, it is like, you know, the sky the limit. You know the game. You know the software. Game will become like, you know, full of everything that, and more than any company can can input, you know, into the game. So it will become a very big community. And at the end of the day, you know, the originator of the of the game, of the of the software, will benefit of it, from it. You know, I want to make a point

Michael Waitze 31:56
in a different in a different vertical, right, just to show you that, like I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I use something called OBS Studio. OBS stands for Open Broadcaster Software. That’s what I use to actually, to feed through my camera into this other piece of software using which is Riverside. And I believe Riverside probably uses the components of OBS and then, like you said, puts a layer on top of it and then provides services around it, just like zencastr does, which is another platform that does this, just like Ecamm does, that does the same thing. All these things are built on open source software, and they just keep getting better, faster and faster.

Peter Man 32:29
Exactly.

Michael Waitze 32:29
Yeah, but I think we need to go back to the comment we made earlier, and that is, I don’t think most people who use software understand that still. And the open software, the open source software movement, has been around for, I’m gonna say, 50 years since the 70s, so maybe even longer, right? But, boy, there’s never been a better time to have it than today. Yeah,

Peter Man 32:46
exactly, compared to because, you know, personally, you know, I have been doing open source software since 204, yeah, 20 years long time. Yes, more than, like, this year is actually my 20th year in doing, doing open source software, okay? So I see the changes in the market, you know, in 204, I still need to explain to people that you know, open source software is not free free of charge. It’s free to use, but not free of charge for sure. Okay, if you need support, you know, from Red Hat, you still need to pay Red Hat. Okay, so we can pay our engineers so, so, you know, the mindset, you know, has become a lot more mature compared to before. You know, today, you know, a lot of people inclined to use open source software compared to proprietary software, proprietary source software if they have a if they have a choice. The reason is, they know the benefit of open source software, and if you look at like Linux, it has been around for as long as you can imagine, yeah. And for some of the for some of the proprietary software in the market, some of them came and gone, okay, for a long time already, you know, because you know, not enough customer or developers are working on it, and people move on to different things, you know, after you know, they use the software. But for like software, like Linux, you know, it has been like the two biggest open open source, you know, operating system you can find in the market today, right?

Michael Waitze 34:18
So the interesting thing about Linux, if you don’t mind me saying this, and please correct me where I’m wrong, right is that Unix was a proprietary software developed at at&t or at&t Labs. I forget Bell Labs, like back in the 60s, right? Maybe even earlier, but back in the 60s, and Linus Torvald said this should be open source, and he literally went out and wrote this thing himself in the first release of this was, if I remember correctly, was in 1991 so this has been around for 30 something years. Yep,

Peter Man 34:44
yeah, yep, you know it really well. Linux

Michael Waitze 34:48
for a long time. Remember my initial view on Red Hat was, of course, it’s IPO, right? So because I was in the equity market, so I know about these companies from a different viewpoint. It, but I’ve been following Red Hat since, like it was born and we and remember when I was at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, we were running our own data centers on the trading floor. And I remember when they started replacing some of the IBM, not the mainframes, but the IBM machines, because they also ran something called annex. I can’t remember ax. I can’t remember they had a Unix kind of software as well, but we started replacing them with these Linux blade servers, and it just changed the way we did it. And I think we probably used red hat to do it, because nobody else was doing it back then. Anyway, that’s how I’ve been following this exactly.

Peter Man 35:33
I would say the Red Hat is actually quite lucky in terms of timing. You know that? You know you become a company, probably least the company, because, you know, has started at a time that, you know, open source software is still not fully understanded by a lot of people So, but, you know, it proved to the to the world that, you know, open source is the way to go for, I would say that not just for software, as you Say, you know, for all kinds of technologies that people are working on. I wouldn’t say that. You know, Red Hat is a total nonprofit company. You know, we are not doing things free for the rest of the world, but I think, you know, we are opening up opportunities for a lot of people, a lot of developers, a lot of enterprises, and free them from when the login. You know, as you can, as you can imagine, open source software can never lock you in, because you know what we are doing. You know, how can we launch you in? You know, you can always take our source code and do something else and release it yourself without saying that. It is Red Hat, okay, then it is perfectly fine, okay. So you can, actually, if you can make like, a micro Linux, Okay, tomorrow. And if people trust Michael yourself as a supporter for, for the for the Linux operating system, you will get a lot of customers. But that is that, that is the opportunity, right? And also that open up, you know, a lot of freedom, you know, for for everyone in the market, yeah, yeah,

Michael Waitze 37:02
it’s hard work. Peter, I’m going to thank you for doing this. I really appreciate your time today. Peter Man, the General Manager for Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau at Red Hat, this was an awesome conversation. We should do this way more often. Thank you so much for your time.

Peter Man 37:16
Thank you, Michael, thank you for having me.