Speaker Interview: Stephen Walli

Stephen Walli is a Distinguished Technologist at Hewlett Packard Enterprise who is speaking on SCALE Sunday at 1:30 on "Patterns and Practices for Open Source Project Success." He took some time to talk to the SCALE Team about his presentation.

Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?

A: I'm a distinguished technologist at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, but I've been around the open source community building product since before we called it open source. I was a founder a start-up that combined about 250 open source licensed packages covered by on the order of 25 licenses (some still not approved by the OSI), and shipped a product on Windows NT implementing the UNIX systems standards. Microsoft acquired the technology in 1999, so I was the first person to ship GPL software on Windows 2000.

Q: You're giving a talk on "Patterns and Practices for Open Source Project Success." Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?

A:I'm hoping to show the audience that building a successful open source community is about getting certain on ramps to the project right. Freeloaders are a sign you're doing it right. And the patterns and practices are well understood, so hopefully I'm showing people a new way to look at things they already understand. I was thinking of changing the talk title to "Freeloaders Required!" or maybe "WTFOSS!"

Q: Is this your first visit to SCALE? If so, what are your expectations? If not, can you give us your impressions of the event?

A: I've had the pleasure of attending (and speaking at) SCaLE before now, but that was a few years ago now. I'm looking forward to seeing how things are evolving.

Q: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

A: I'm really looking forward to catching up with old friends and colleagues, and meeting new ones.

SCALE Team interview by Larry Cafiero