Close to the {code} with Dell’s Josh Bernstein
Community Matters

Dell’s expansive {code} project is a cornerstone of the company’s open source strategy. Dell Technologies VP Josh Bernstein talks about {code} and the value of open source.
As a vice president of technology at Dell Technologies, Josh Bernstein has many responsibilities, but the project closest to his heart is {code} [1], which Dell inherited by acquiring EMC. {code} is a collection of open source projects maintained or supported by Dell. According to Bernstein, "A lot of times older legacy organizations don't really get open source. They don't understand how to market it. {code} was created to develop a brand for the community, to make Dell relevant to a community that did not interact with them, didn't trust large enterprise brands. The {code} team is a collection of open source engineers and advocates inside Dell Technologies that are working to better support the community and engage Dell Technologies with the community."
Dell is not new to open source. They worked on Dynamic Kernel Module Support (DKMS) and Redfish, and they wrote open source drivers for hardware on the Linux kernel. Some of the big open source projects that came directly from Dell include EdgeX Foundry, which is now a Linux Foundation collaborative project. OpenSwitch is another big project to which Dell contributed. Most Linux users may be familiar with the project Sputnik, which offers high-end Dell systems with fully supported Linux distributions.
"Dell was doing all this open source work, but nobody knew about it," said Bernstein. "EMC was doing a lot of work specifically in the storage data center infrastructure. When the two companies were combined, there was actually a lot of synergy between the two. We naturally found each other and just increased everybody's voice in the whole community."
Open source is as much about technology as it is about people and culture. It's also about legal frameworks. A small mistake may release a company's intellectual property as open source or make them a violator of the GNU GPL. Companies need to create an internal environment that nurtures the open source mentality while offering legal frameworks to developers.
One of the projects within the {code} umbrella is called DevHigh5 [2]. The DevHigh5 project allows any developer in the company to bring their own project to the open source community, offering the internal support and legal guidance needed to establish a successful project.
"We help them with legal guidelines, licensing, infrastructure and make sure that whatever project is released its done with the best interest of the open source community. It has to be transparent and it has to be consumable by the community," said Bernstein.
The {code} team contributes to more than 100 projects in the open source community. The project website provides links to an impressive list of sites hosted by {code}, as well as other important open source projects to which the team is contributing. The {code} team maintains a GitHub page that has 67 repositories [3].
Container Storage Interface
One of the most ambitious projects the {code} team is working on is the Container Storage Interface (CSI) [4]. Although Kubernetes is enjoying an explosive adoption, Bernstein believes that it's not getting adopted in production as heavily as it should.
"There is a lot of dev-tests; there is a lot of internal PoC (proof of concept), but when you want to run it in production, you want to run meaningful and valuable applications that add business value," said Bernstein. "Many of those applications require storage. In an effort to fill a gap in the ecosystem and make it a production ready platform, storage is very important."
CSI is designed to provide storage orchestration between container run times and back-end storage infrastructure so persistent applications can run in containers. Many container storage interfaces exist, but currently there is no standardization.
CSI aims to fix the existing fragmentation. The initial specification for CSI was led by Mesosphere. Later on the Kubernetes community joined the efforts.
"Our contributions have been in implementing CSI inside of Kubernetes and also providing two drivers to the open source community to use CSI with our products," said Bernstein.
At KubeCon Austin, the team released CSI drivers for Dell EMC ScaleIO (csi-scaleio) and vSphere (csi-vsphere). The {code} team also released a generic NFS driver, a generic VFS driver, and a generic block driver.
"We are working very hard so that CSI becomes a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) project," said Bernstein, "We really think that storage has been left out of the container ecosystem for so long.
Business and Open Source
Selling open source doesn't always come through direct sales or subscriptions; it can also come through becoming a core component of the open source ecosystem. You don't make money from open source; you make money around open source. {code} is a great model for other companies to follow, to build an open source culture within the company and also create actual projects that are useful in real use cases.
Infos
- Code community: https://thecodeteam.com/
- DevHigh5: https://thecodeteam.com/devhigh5/
- Code team GitHub page: https://github.com/thecodeteam
- CSI: https://github.com/container-storage-interface
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Direct Download
Read full article as PDF:
Price $2.95
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Find SysAdmin Jobs
News
-
Kubuntu Focus Announces XE Gen 2 Linux Laptop
Another Kubuntu-based laptop has arrived to be your next ultra-portable powerhouse with a Linux heart.
-
MNT Seeks Financial Backing for New Seven-Inch Linux Laptop
MNT Pocket Reform is a tiny laptop that is modular, upgradable, recyclable, reusable, and ships with Debian Linux.
-
Ubuntu Flatpak Remix Adds Flatpak Support Preinstalled
If you're looking for a version of Ubuntu that includes Flatpak support out of the box, there's one clear option.
-
Gnome 44 Release Candidate Now Available
The Gnome 44 release candidate has officially arrived and adds a few changes into the mix.
-
Flathub Vying to Become the Standard Linux App Store
If the Flathub team has any say in the matter, their product will become the default tool for installing Linux apps in 2023.
-
Debian 12 to Ship with KDE Plasma 5.27
The Debian development team has shifted to the latest version of KDE for their testing branch.
-
Planet Computers Launches ARM-based Linux Desktop PCs
The firm that originally released a line of mobile keyboards has taken a different direction and has developed a new line of out-of-the-box mini Linux desktop computers.
-
Ubuntu No Longer Shipping with Flatpak
In a move that probably won’t come as a shock to many, Ubuntu and all of its official spins will no longer ship with Flatpak installed.
-
openSUSE Leap 15.5 Beta Now Available
The final version of the Leap 15 series of openSUSE is available for beta testing and offers only new software versions.
-
Linux Kernel 6.2 Released with New Hardware Support
Find out what's new in the most recent release from Linus Torvalds and the Linux kernel team.