Linux Format - UK (2019-12)

42 LXF257 December 2019 http://www.linuxformat.com

INTERVIEW Jason Shepherd

use open technology to bring back checks

from strangers. This is partly why open

source matters so much. You know the

movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding with the

guy that sprays Windex on everything?

LXF: Of course, it’s a classic. Windex

cures ills from psoriasis to poison ivy.

JS: Well, I see blockchain as one of the

Windexes of technology. And 5G is

another one. These are important

technologies, but they won’t solve the

world. This will take 3-5 years, but there

are already companies like Helium, who

provide shareable Wi-Fi bandwidth. That’s

the resources part of it. A lot of people just

talk about the data, but it’s really about

data, resources and services.

It’s about selling those to strangers or,

in a more altruistic context, sharing them.

You can’t get there without a combination

of technologies. So what you need is

industry collaboration, open collaboration.

You need root of trust for the silicon level.

All data in a digital sense is all created in

silicon: things or devices or PCs or

whatever. You need trusted zero-touch

provisioning, and by that I mean when I

ship a box somewhere, I don’t know who’s

going to plug it in. I still need it to get the

certificate and the dial tones securely and

safely. You might’ve noticed

that Intel and Arm

announced that they’re

collaborating on this. You

need that industry

collaboration.

Then you need open

frameworks like EdgeX that

are architected to bring

together an ecosystem

around very heterogeneous

components, because that’s

what embedded is. We’re

collaborating in this new

Akraino project – that’s a

telco-centred infrastructure

monetise data resources and services

with complete strangers. You will never,

ever get there with a bunch of lock-in

models, you must have openness.

In consumer, trust is built, generally,

with a number of entities that you get

value from. I know my UPS guy by name.

Amazon’s great. Four years ago I told my

team “Hey, Amazon’s gonna win the first

round of consumer – don’t even try”,

because they’ve got the double whammy:

they sell you content and stuff. Google will

do fine, Apple will do fine, and then you’ve

got your Facebooks and such. Sometimes

the trust is violated, especially around

privacy, but generally, in consumer, if you

build trust with someone and you get

value from their services, then your

privacy goes out the window. Period.

In business, or in business-to-business-

to-consumer, or crossing between any

public and private domain, you cannot

have any single owner of the trust – it

doesn’t work. So the current IoT market

has everyone building these platforms

that lock people into their clouds or

whatever, so they can make money off

those people’s data. That’s completely

backwards. Since all data is collected at

the edge, what you need to do is set the

data free the moment it’s created, and

project. EdgeX is at the application layer,

Akraino is more infrastructure-level. So

great things happen when you collaborate

there. Then, yes, you need some Ledger,

and maybe some AI for contents. And

when you combine all this in the right way,

with industry collaboration, no single

ownership of trust, then I can literally

create data in the physical world – and if

I choose to, then I can share it or sell it to

complete strangers. This is scale.

I’ve never met anyone who has said this

can be done the way people are doing

things today. It won’t work, and people say

“Oh, that’s logical”. In the ocean you have

riptides, and people’s natural inclination is

to swim against the current back to shore.

If you try this you’ll get tired and you’ll

drown. In any new emerging market you

get this herd mentality, and just now that’s

all about lock-in models.

What we’re doing as an open

community is we’re swimming sideways,

which is what you’re supposed to do. You

collaborate, you get out of that lock-in,

and you start to open things up. In a

similar water analogy, I would say the

maker movement is why IoT came along.

It used to be with industrial, buildings,

manufacturing, whatever, they’d be

proprietary platforms that would lock you

in and cost you tens of thousands of

dollars a year.

The moment an innovative small

company pops up that threatens your way

of life – and this has been going on for

years – [they] buy ’em up and kill ’em. But

with all of the power from this open

collaboration, and the kickstarters, there’s

not enough money in the world to buy up

all those innovators.

You either change or you die, and this

is the innovators’ dilemma. So we’re all

about floating all the boats for open scale

and collaboration and, in this world, just

make sure your boat is really good and

really fast. You’ve got to innovate and

stay ahead. From Dell Technologies’

standpoint we gave away our code to

seed the project. The Linux Foundation

has to be completely transparent – they

do a great job running transparent, open

projects with governance when needed.

LXF: They do a great job organising these

interviews for me too. There are an awful

lot of distractions, both of the technical

and sugary nature.

JS: We knew that this needs to be open.

I’d say we’re at the ‘AOL’ stage of IoT: it’s

early days. Initially EdgeX is about

interoperability. The easiest way to

describe it to people is it will do for IoT

what Android did for mobile. You have to

abstract that interoperability of the

EDGEX TO LF EDGE

Since this interview, EdgeX Foundry

has become part of LF Edge (https://

lfedge.org), Linux Foundation’s

umbrella organisation which aims

to further the Edge unification and

interoperability about which Jason

spoke so eloquently in this interview.

LF Edge is supported by key

industry players including Arm, AT&T,

Dell EMC, IBM, Intel and Zededa.

Besides EdgeX, other LF Edge-hosted

projects include Akraino (mentioned),

Baetyl (for connecting cloud-native

applications), Fledge (for industrial

edge applications) and Project EVE

(The Edge Virtualization Engine).

EVE connects a type-1 hypervisor

with optimisations and hardening

designed especially for running on

edge and IoT devices. You can read

more about it in a future issue when

the transcription Jonnibot gets round

to typing up the interview he just

enjoyed in Lyon with none other than

Erik Nordmark, cofounder of, and Chief

Architect at, Zededa.

“I make you laugh? I’m

here to amuse you?”

42 LXF257December 2019 4440Decmbr 21930 1

INTERVIEW Jason Shepherd

use open technology to bring back checks

from strangers. This is partly why open

source matters so much. You know the

movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding with the

guy that sprays Windex on everything?

LXF: Of course, it’s a classic. Windex

cures ills from psoriasis to poison ivy.

JS: Well, I see blockchain as one of the

Windexes of technology. And 5G is

another one. These are important

technologies, but they won’t solve the

world. This will take 3-5 years, but there

are already companies like Helium, who

provide shareable Wi-Fi bandwidth. That’s

the resources part of it. A lot of people just

talk about the data, but it’s really about

data, resources and services.

It’s about selling those to strangers or,

in a more altruistic context, sharing them.

You can’t get there without a combination

of technologies. So what you need is

industry collaboration, open collaboration.

You need root of trust for the silicon level.

All data in a digital sense is all created in

silicon: things or devices or PCs or

whatever. You need trusted zero-touch

provisioning, and by that I mean when I

ship a box somewhere, I don’t know who’s

going to plug it in. I still need it to get the

certificate and the dial tones securely and

safely. You might’ve noticed

that Intel and Arm

announced that they’re

collaborating on this. You

need that industry

collaboration.

Then you need open

frameworks like EdgeX that

are architected to bring

together an ecosystem

around very heterogeneous

components, because that’s

what embedded is. We’re

collaborating in this new

Akraino project – that’s a

telco-centred infrastructure

monetise data resources and services
with complete strangers. You will never,
ever get there with a bunch of lock-in
models, you must have openness.
In consumer, trust is built, generally,
with a number of entities that you get
value from. I know my UPS guy by name.
Amazon’s great. Four years ago I told my
team “Hey, Amazon’s gonna win the first
round of consumer – don’t even try”,
because they’ve got the double whammy:
they sell you content and stuff. Google will
do fine, Apple will do fine, and then you’ve
got your Facebooks and such. Sometimes
the trust is violated, especially around
privacy, but generally, in consumer, if you
build trust with someone and you get
value from their services, then your
privacy goes out the window. Period.
In business, or in business-to-business-
to-consumer, or crossing between any
public and private domain, you cannot
have any single owner of the trust – it
doesn’t work. So the current IoT market
has everyone building these platforms
that lock people into their clouds or
whatever, so they can make money off
those people’s data. That’s completely
backwards. Since all data is collected at
the edge, what you need to do is set the
data free the moment it’s created, and

project. EdgeX is at the application layer,

Akraino is more infrastructure-level. So

great things happen when you collaborate

there. Then, yes, you need some Ledger,

and maybe some AI for contents. And

when you combine all this in the right way,

with industry collaboration, no single

ownership of trust, then I can literally

create data in the physical world – and if

I choose to, then I can share it or sell it to

complete strangers. This is scale.

I’ve never met anyone who has said this

can be done the way people are doing

things today. It won’t work, and people say

“Oh, that’s logical”. In the ocean you have

riptides, and people’s natural inclination is

to swim against the current back to shore.

If you try this you’ll get tired and you’ll

drown. In any new emerging market you

get this herd mentality, and just now that’s

all about lock-in models.

What we’re doing as an open

community is we’re swimming sideways,

which is what you’re supposed to do. You

collaborate, you get out of that lock-in,

and you start to open things up. In a

similar water analogy, I would say the

maker movement is why IoT came along.

It used to be with industrial, buildings,

manufacturing, whatever, they’d be

proprietary platforms that would lock you

in and cost you tens of thousands of

dollars a year.

The moment an innovative small

company pops up that threatens your way

of life – and this has been going on for

years – [they] buy ’em up and kill ’em. But

with all of the power from this open

collaboration, and the kickstarters, there’s

not enough money in the world to buy up

all those innovators.

You either change or you die, and this

is the innovators’ dilemma. So we’re all

about floating all the boats for open scale

and collaboration and, in this world, just

make sure your boat is really good and

really fast. You’ve got to innovate and

stay ahead. From Dell Technologies’

standpoint we gave away our code to

seed the project. The Linux Foundation

has to be completely transparent – they

do a great job running transparent, open

projects with governance when needed.

LXF: They do a great job organising these

interviews for me too. There are an awful

lot of distractions, both of the technical

and sugary nature.

JS: We knew that this needs to be open.

I’d say we’re at the ‘AOL’ stage of IoT: it’s

early days. Initially EdgeX is about

interoperability. The easiest way to

describe it to people is it will do for IoT

what Android did for mobile. You have to

abstract that interoperability of the

EDGEXTOLFEDGE

Sincethisinterview,EdgeXFoundry

hasbecomepartofLFEdge(https://

lfedge.org),LinuxFoundation’s

umbrellaorganisationwhichaims

tofurthertheEdgeunificationand

interoperabilityaboutwhichJason

spokesoeloquentlyinthisinterview.

LFEdgeissupportedbykey

industryplayersincludingArm,AT&T,

DellEMC,IBM,IntelandZededa.

BesidesEdgeX,otherLFEdge-hosted

projectsincludeAkraino(mentioned),

Baetyl(forconnectingcloud-native

applications),Fledge(forindustrial

edgeapplications)andProjectEVE

(TheEdgeVirtualizationEngine).

EVEconnectsatype-1hypervisor

withoptimisationsandhardening

designedespeciallyforrunningon

edgeandIoTdevices.Youcanread

moreaboutitinafutureissuewhen

thetranscriptionJonnibotgetsround

totypinguptheinterviewhejust

enjoyedinLyonwithnoneotherthan

ErikNordmark,cofounderof,andChief

Architectat,Zededa.

“I make you laugh? I’m

here to amuse you?”