Episode 192: FOSSY 2023 with Erik Benner

Guest Erik Benner Panelists Richard Littauer | Eriol Fox Show Notes
Hello and welcome to Sustain! We are in Portland at FOSSY, the Free
and Open Source Software Yearly conference that is held by the
Software Freedom Conservancy. Richard and Eriol are joined by Erik
Benner, who works for Mythics, a large public sector IT company
specializing in cloud migration and traditional legacy
applications. Today, they discuss the challenges of transitioning
open source software to government departments and the need for
technical and cultural support in sustaining open source in the
public sector. Erik emphasizes the importance of verifying true
open source software and shares insights on Mythics role in
providing services and support for government organizations. They
also dive into the usability of open source applications, Erik’s
background in Unix and Linux, and the potential benefits and
considerations of government involvement in open source. Hit
download to hear more! [00:00:57] Erik tells us about Mythics.
[00:01:43] Eriol asks Erik about the challenges of transitioning
open source software to government departments and their
familiarity with it. He also mentions the challenge of companies
misrepresenting proprietary software as open source. [00:04:43]
Erik suggests that governments should be more diligent in verifying
if technology marketed as open source is truly open source and not
modified. [00:05:56] Richard is curious about Mythics and Erik
clarifies that Mythics helps government organizations procure and
support commercial distributions like Oracle, providing services
and knowledge base for technical support and education. [00:08:16]
We learn about Mythics responsibility for fixing dependencies in
the tech stack as Erik emphasizes the need for education and
enablement in the public sector where training may be limited. He
gives an example of cities adopting open source and highlights
Mythics role in providing assistance. [00:09:44] Eriol expresses
interest in the usability and user design of open source software,
suggesting it could be more user-friendly, and Erik agrees and
mentions that open source applications in the UI space have room
for improvement in terms of user experience. [00:10:56] Erik talks
about his early experience with Unix systems and his introduction
to Linux, he mentions his involvement in kernel hacks, bug finding,
and bug fixes. Then, he explains his career transition, how he
became more involved with technologies and open source and
discusses the importance of using the right tools for the right
job. [00:13:04] Richard asks Erik about his opinion on government
subsidizing or paying for open source to improve cybersecurity and
make it a part of shared infrastructure. Erik mentions the MITRE
Corporation and other government-funded initiatives that contribute
to open source, highlighting existing grants and funding
mechanisms. He compares government involvement in open source to
examples like the post office and Amtrak, noting that a mix of
government funding and other approaches can be effective.
[00:15:09] Find out where you can follow Erik online. Links
SustainOSS (https://sustainoss.org/) SustainOSS Twitter
(https://twitter.com/SustainOSS?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
SustainOSS Discourse (https://discourse.sustainoss.org/)
podcast@sustainoss.org (mailto:podcast@sustainoss.org) SustainOSS
Mastodon (https://mastodon.social/tags/sustainoss) Richard Littauer
Twitter (https://twitter.com/richlitt?lang=en) Software Freedom
Conservancy (https://sfconservancy.org/) Open OSS
(https://openoss.sourceforge.net/) Erik Benner Twitter
(https://twitter.com/Erik_Benner) Erik Benner LinkedIn
(https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikbenner) Tales from the Datacenter
v2.0 (Erik’s Blog) (https://talesfromthedatacenter.com/) Mythics
(https://mythics.com/) MITRE Corporation (https://www.mitre.org/)
CVE (https://cve.mitre.org/) Security Technical Implementation
Guides (STIGs) (https://public.cyber.mil/stigs/) Credits Produced
by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M.
Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show
notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound
(https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Erik Benner.