open-source
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Jamie Turner and the art of making work disappear
An early Dropbox user became one of its infrastructure leaders, then co-founded Convex to spare other developers the plumbing. Jamie Turner’s next question is what happens when the programmer has an AI colleague.
Mike Olson has a different idea of good timing
Cloudera’s founding CEO spent decades helping people make sense of data. These days, his interests run from local news and climate investing to a Berkeley café clock that counts the day differently.
Stanislav Poslavsky and the distance between a question and an answer
He built software for the mathematics of particle physics. At MiLaboratories, Stanislav Poslavsky is working on another difficult calculation: how to put scientific tools in the hands of the people asking the questions.
Taylor Otwell’s $57 million change of mind
Taylor Otwell spent 13 years building Laravel on his own terms. Then the programmer from Arkansas accepted outside investment to tackle a problem his success had made harder to ignore: what should he build next?
Raphael Bennett Wants to Know Who Owns the Machinery
The REV Global co-founder has spent his career building the systems behind other people’s businesses. His argument for the AI era starts with a familiar question: who is actually in control?
Swaroop Jagadish and the Trouble with Knowing Too Much
At Airbnb, Swaroop Jagadish helped people find and trust their data. Now the DataHub co-founder and CEO is taking on a more demanding audience: AI agents that need the same institutional knowledge, without a colleague to ask.
John Roberts Asked for Six Months. Then He Opened the Code.
After years building proprietary business software, John Roberts wanted to try a different bargain: let people inspect the code and help improve it. SugarCRM was the experiment; X2Engine became his second attempt.
Richard Wyles Put a Price on Software Freedom
From a New Zealand education consortium to Totara, Richard Wyles kept returning to one awkward question: who pays to keep open software working? His answer gave customers room to change the code and partners room to build a business.
Jerry Wang and the Long Wait for Customer No. 1
Before Tuya connected appliances around the world, Jerry Wang had to persuade someone to buy in. His journey from student-built forums to AI hardware keeps returning to the same question: what would make it easier for somebody else to build?
Mark Shuttleworth and the expensive art of giving things away
A software sale bought him a seat on a Soyuz. Ubuntu gave the Canonical founder a more stubborn problem: making something free that could keep paying its way.
Douglas Levin and the Things Software Hides
A beach holiday helped give rise to Black Duck Software. Two decades later, its founder and first CEO is asking equally awkward questions about the AI systems entering the boardroom.
Arvind Krishna and the art of making the future useful
An engineer spent three decades inside IBM before taking charge. His bet is that the next chapter of computing will be won in the complicated places where businesses actually work.
Xcitium puts the unknown in a box
An unfamiliar file does not need a verdict to become dangerous. Xcitium’s wager: let it run, but keep it away from the things that matter.
WSO2 makes the connections you never see
A donor registry, a bank, an AI agent: each needs a safe way into someone else’s system. WSO2 has spent two decades building those doors.
Jutta Steiner and the trouble with trust
A question about online privacy took Jutta Steiner from applied mathematics to Ethereum’s security team and the co-founding of Parity Technologies. Her story follows the awkward distance between a promising idea and software people can depend on.
Graham Krizek and the art of getting out of the way
He built Voltage because using Bitcoin meant doing too much other work first. Six years later, Graham Krizek is betting that the technology will travel further when fewer people have to think about it.
Ofer Bengal and the business plan that went sideways
He wanted to make toys. An investor had other ideas. The Redis co-founder’s career became a series of unexpected turns, each requiring him to reconsider what business he was really in.
Gavin Wood and the problem with being in charge
He helped build Ethereum, gave Web3 its name and created Polkadot. Gavin Wood keeps returning to a more awkward question: how much power should any one person have?
Leslie Spiro and the Trouble Between Windows
From Reuters workstations to enterprise AI, Leslie Spiro keeps returning to the same overlooked problem: the person trying to get several applications to do one job.
Emile Vauge’s case for a boring internet
He built Traefik to spare himself the work of routing thousands of microservices. A company, a global community and billions of Docker pulls followed - along with a rather good collection of cheese names.
Sam Saffron and the cost of a little waiting
From a homemade media browser to Discourse, Sam Saffron has kept finding work hidden inside everyday annoyances. Now the co-founder and co-CEO is asking what AI saves us - and whose time it spends.
Adrian Ionel and the art of getting out of the way
He helped turn Mirantis toward open cloud software, left, and came back. Now Adrian Ionel is applying a familiar question to the working day: how much machinery can you remove before people can finally get on with it?
Grant Ingersoll and the art of finding what matters
He helped build Lucidworks, worked on the technology behind Wikipedia, and made a career of search. Along the way, Grant Ingersoll learned that useful answers often begin with letting someone else speak.
Jack Jay and the surprisingly ordinary shape of the future
Jackson Jesionowski built Persist around people waiting for a chance to build. At Open Droids, he is taking that same argument into the physical world, one wheeled robot at a time.
Justin Borgman and the trouble with putting everything in one place
A Yale research paper gave Justin Borgman his first company. A stubborn question about where data belongs kept him building, through an acquisition, a second startup, and the arrival of enterprise AI.
Lachlan Donald’s Second Act Has a Different Job Title
He helped Buildkite grow, stepped aside as CEO, and returned as CTO. Lachlan Donald’s career keeps circling the same question: what gets in the way of people doing good work?
Tomer Shiran and the Homework Problem That Followed Him to Work
His daughter could get an answer about the solar system in seconds. Tomer Shiran wanted the same ordinary convenience for people trying to understand their own company’s data.
Bob Young and the business of leaving the hood open
He helped turn freely available software into Red Hat, then gave authors a way around the publishing gatekeepers. From a sewing closet to a football sideline, Bob Young keeps returning to the same question: who gets control?
Scott Kveton and the Business of Getting to Yes
Thirty investor rejections helped shape the Airship co-founder’s approach to building companies. From open-source software to bacon by mail to legal AI, Scott Kveton keeps coming back to the work beneath the pitch.
Joe Duffy and the trouble with making things simple
He helped open .NET to the world, then left Microsoft to make cloud infrastructure programmable. At Pulumi, Joe Duffy keeps returning to a stubborn question: why should powerful computers require such painful tools?