How To Get Started In Open Source

Gaining entry to the open-source community can seem daunting to customers unfamiliar with the territory. Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst said that might be because they don’t understand that it isn’t just one large community, but several different ones.

’There are thousands of open-source communities, and the each have their own culture. They each have their own norms, ways of working, you know, personalities. And breaking in isn’t easy,’ Whitehurst said.

Whitehurst referenced the open-source project ManageIQ that Red Hat recently joined, along with other companies.

’I was really interested to see that BBVA, Autotrader and Booz Allen Hamilton are also upstream members,’ Whitehurst said.

ManageIQ powers Red Hat CloudForms, enables to users to transition workloads across cloud platforms, and enhance private clouds. The community software provides ’a self-contained appliance you can quickly spin up on your own infrastructure.’

’We hope that you’ll see us as a way of breaking into those communities, to get you going,’ Whitehurst said.

Other founding community partners include Cirba, Cloudsoft and VMturbo.

PUBLISHED JULY 7, 2015