Episode 22: Thoughts on Bash Becoming Interplanetary and More with Brian J. Fox
Description
Sponsored by Reblaze, creators of Curiefense
Panelists
Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer
Guest
Brian J. Fox
Show Notes
Hello and welcome to Committing to Cloud Native Podcast! It’s the podcast by Reblaze where we talk about the confluence of Cloud Native and Open Source. Today, we have an amazing guest with a long history of open source in the space and that is the legendary Brian J. Fox, who is the Co-Founder of Orchid, a blockchain company that started in 2017. Also, he created the Bash Shell and he was the first employee of the Free Software Foundation. Brian shares the story of how he ended up at FSF, his thoughts on the success of Bash after all these years, which includes running on Mars currently. We learn everything he did before he Co-Founded Orchid, he tells us all about Orchid and how it works, his thoughts on the open source movement and where he sees it going, and more about the value of cloud companies. We also find out Brian is a bassist in a band, so if you want to find out more go ahead and download this episode now!
[00:01:51 ] Brian tells us how he ended up at the FSF.
[00:05:08 ] Justin wonders if Brian thought Bash would still be around and he tells us it’s running on Mars in the helicopter.
[00:07:08 ] Richard brings up that Bash is on Windows and asks Brian to talk about how that happened and what his reaction was.
[00:09:00 ] At some point Brian left FSF and went to Orchid, and Richard wonders how that started. Brian fills us in on all the things he did in between FSF and Orchid.
[00:14:01 ] We learn how Orchid works and its physical infrastructure.
[00:18:51 ] Brian tells us about the protocol being strictly peer to peer, and he explains more about the Orchid network and the bandwidth.
[00:22:11 ] Justin asks if Brian still seeds or if he has enough users where it’s just kind of self-sustaining. Brian mentions OXT which is the name of the Orchid cryptocurrency.
[00:23:36 ] Richard is curious and wants to know what Brian thinks about open source as a movement in the last two or three years, where does he think it’s going, and how does he think he’s leveraging that in Orchid in as best a way possible to make sure the success of the system that he’s building.
[00:27:57 ] We find out from Brian that he’s all about problem solving and the architecture that goes into the problem solving and it’s about the expression.
[00:29:40 ] How does Brian thread the line between being an open source diehard and I run a capitalist firm.
[00:32:33 ] Justin does a U-turn to the conversation and goes back to the VPN industry and wants to know Brian’s thoughts on the current market of traditional VPN’s that are not crypto powered.
[00:33:33 ] Brian tells us how he deals with requests from law enforcement agencies.
[00:35:54 ] We end with Brian telling us where you can find him online, he tells us about his band Chillpoint that you should checkout, and he leaves us with thoughts on cloud companies not going away.
Links
Cloud Native Community Groups-Curifense
Credits
- Executive Produced by Tzury Bar Yochay
- Produced by Justin Dorfman
- Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
- Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound
- Transcript by Layten Pryce
Transcript
[00:01 ] Richard: Bash is awesome, I use bash every single year as it is.
[00:03 ] Justin: I do too, it's always open.
[00:05 ] Richard: So I'm also just incredibly grateful for your work.
[00:07 ] Brian J Fox: Thank you guys so much. I use Bash all the time and I just want to quickly say that the people who provide documentation and instructions on how to use these tools that have been around a long time, they are doing a fantastic service and NixCraft is one of those. You should check them out if you can online.
[00:26 ] Richard: Hello and welcome to Committing to Cloud-Native, the podcast where we talk about the confluence of the cloud and open-source. Today, we have an amazing guest with a long history of open-source in this space. Super excited to have him on. Before I introduce our guest, I want to make sure that the audience knows who was talking. I'm Richard Littauer, I'm your normal host and then we also have Justin Dorfman, the other normal host. Justin, how are you today?
[00:57 ] Justin: Normal.
[00:57 ] Richard: Yes, me too, just totally normal, just in no way exceptional or interesting.
[01:02 ] Justin: I'll be honest. I'll be honest, Richard, I am a little nervous because who we have on right now is a legend. So go ahead.
[01:10 ] Richard: Yes, but he hasn't done that much, right? Like Brian J. Fox, he's smiling right now. He's just a normal guy, right? Wearing a black t-shirt, got glasses on.
[01:18 ] Brian J Fox: Yes, I would say of the three of us I am definitely the most normal.
[01:21 ] Richard: That's true. That's true.
[01:22 ] Justin: Could be.
[01:23 ] Richard: Audience, you can't tell I'm wearing a pizza for a hat, not true. Brian has a long history in this space. He's the co-founder of Orchid, a blockchain company, started in 2017, but he's also done a lot more than that. So he created the Bash Shell. He was the first employee of FSF, otherwise known as the Free Software Foundation. That's about where my brain just stopped and was like, wow, I don't even know where else. How did you end up there? How did that happen?
[01:54 ] Brian J Fox: How did I end up at the Free Software Foundation?
[01:56 ] Richard: Mhmm.
[01:57 ] Brian J Fox: So, I was excited about working with computers and I started writing some software on an Apple two computer around, I don't know, 1980, 1981 and I was teaching a gifted and talented; I'm ancient, by the way, I'm about a million years old.
[02:14 ] Richard: He looks like it too.
[02:15 ] Brian J Fox: Yes, I do. I appear quite old. I'm just kind of a bent-over, decrepit old man. I was teaching gifted and talented seventh and eighth graders and the language that they were learning, I was doing some computer stuff with them, and the language that they were using was called terrapin logo and the terrapin logo software was somewhat broken and I used to delve in there and fix it in the Apple two, you could break into the monitor and make changes to your running software by actually just patching the code live. So I was doi
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