Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks, discusses the scale and business moat created by open-source developer communities.
Opinion
Ghodsi: All proprietary software is vulnerable to disruption by open source
“In fact, I think open source has the potential to replace pretty much any software that's, Any proprietary software that exists on the planet today is, you know, in a really vulnerable state in the sense that it can be disrupted by an open source version, righ…”
Insight
Ghodsi: On-prem open-source vendors sell services masquerading as software
“So the business models were not robust in the sense that really, it was really selling services masqueraded as software.”
Opinion
Ghodsi: Red Hat was the only successful on-prem open source model
“We thought there was one example of a good one, which was Red Hat, but there weren't many other examples that were doing well, and now we've seen Red Hat, you know, also, you know, did not survive as an independent company.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ghodsi: Multi-cloud support will be mandatory for enterprise software by 2023
“And I think this is a secular trend. So in a couple of years, I think it's going to be an absolute requirement. Like I don't want to, if your software only works on this cloud, I'm not sure I'm just going to be in this cloud.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ghodsi: Most COVID-19 vaccine development teams quietly used lakehouse architectures
“They don't want to talk openly about it, but most of those vaccine teams behind the scenes built basically what we call the lake house. We stole all your data, store all your data and do AI on it. And it was really used for these sort of vaccine development bo…”
Insight
Ghodsi: Bottom-up open-source adoption accelerates enterprise sales cycles
“With open source, you have people in the room that will raise their hand and say, I know what Spark is. I've already used it. I downloaded it on my laptop at home. I know how this Delta, I'm a big fan. I know what this is. So that moves things along much faste…”