Red Hat: Contributions out of Asia for open source could be improved
Unsurprisingly, open source has come a long way since Red Hat first came about, but according to the company's APAC office of technology vice president Frank Feldmann, there could be more coming out of the Asia Pacific region.
"The general sense, we have come a heck of a long way, right, and we just imagine when Red Hat as a company started, open source wasn't really that well understood," he told ZDNet during Red Hat Summit.
"Today it is a default for pretty much any area of technology innovation, the majority of programming languages and products out there are either built or derived from open source initiatives, even the practices around open source in terms of how we innovate and collaborate."
With a focus on Asia Pacific, however, Feldmann said contributions out of the region could be improved.
"I think in Asia specifically, we can always do better in terms of open-source adoption, I think the contributions out of Asia for open source is an area that can be improved and Red Hat certainly tries to influence it and drive it where we can," he said.
He said a lot of hesitation is still about mindset, and the idea that open source is just a cheap alternative to something else.
"That may have been a decision for people some time ago, but open source right now has become an innovation engine to build upon and the practices of how open source is developed and governed are actually very healthy to look outside of just software development for, as well," Feldmann explained.
"There's a lot of room for us to work there, the beautiful and positive thing for us about that is being as sacred in open source as we are, there's nothing but opportunity for us in that sense to grow and expand in that space."
While Feldmann said Red Hat is fairly happy with where things are, there are plenty of "pockets" where it could improve, such as investing in improving its reach to developers.
Additionally, Feldmann said the way those involved in open-source work hasn't been affected too much by changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I think we're lucky in the sense that COVID-19 is something we have been at least unknowingly prepared for, our developer community is vastly spread around the world, they're very accustomed to working in remote disconnected ways, we certainly don't see any disadvantages to having that 25-plus year experience that we've built on," he continued.
Meanwhile, Red Hat general manager for Southeast Asian markets Benjamin Henshell said due to COVID-19, the company has seen a slowdown of new projects, but in-flight projects are still going ahead.
"What we are definitely doing in the Southeast Asia region is just walking alongside our clients in the enterprise space, that top tier through to the mid-market space, where there is a large, immediate demand for technical innovation that requires low cost or low capital investment," he said.
"It's really walking with these clients and customers through the challenges that they have in regards to access to capital, access to funds, and then aligning the subscription model."
The IBM-owned company said 70,000 people registered for its global virtual Red Hat Summit.
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