At last fall’s All Things Open Conference, Open at Intel host Katherine Druckman talked with Percona CEO Ann Schlemmer about the rewards and challenges of running an open source focused company, open source sustainability, and why it's important to have drop-in open source replacements for some database projects. Enjoy the transcript of their conversation.
“I really am a believer that with open source, all boats rise. That's what I find amazing in that collaboration, and being at a place like ATO right now, and people really saying, "Wow, what ideas might come out of this week?"
— Ann Schlemmer, Percona CEO
Katherine Druckman: Hey Ann. Thank you so much for joining me. We are here on the floor at All Things Open, which is a really great conference. If you've never been, I highly recommend it. Thank you for sitting down with me. I appreciate you taking the time.
Ann Schlemmer: Thanks for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.
Katherine Druckman: Awesome. You're the CEO of Percona. I wonder if you could just introduce yourself a little bit, and tell us about Percona as a company?
Overview of Percona
Ann Schlemmer: Sure. Percona has been around for over 18 years. Our co-founders started it, they had been with the original MySQL AB, and they really founded it, I'd say on three things: customer first, open source, and then performance, performance in the database, which, we hold all of those to be true still. I've been with Percona for over 11 years now, and I took over for our founder, Peter Zaitsev, two years ago as CEO. I've had quite a journey during that time. We build on upstream open source, where you have direct drop-in replacements for MySQL, MongoDB, and Postgres. And then, just this year, in 2024, we've gotten into Valkey, which is the Redis space. We took advantage of that, again, thinking about customers, customer first with Redis, when they changed their license and quickly, that community spun up, and it's in the Linux Foundation. Now, we're in those four databases.
Katherine Druckman: Fabulous. Tell me, again, for your customers and your community, why is it so important to provide that drop-in replacement as an open source alternative?
Importance of Open Source Alternatives
Ann Schlemmer: Sure. We have our mission, that we say we believe an open world's a better world, and we really want to make sure that people are able to innovate using open source, and with us, it's open source databases. And then, we supply solutions around those. Solutions come in the form of software and services. Again, our belief that we've stayed true to is open source, and making sure that customers aren't, let's say inhibited to be able to use their database, which is what we've seen at different times in the industry, that it's like, "Wait, you want backups? Well, you've got to pay for backups." Which is almost absurd, to think about using a database without backups. How would you have it?
Katherine Druckman: Baked in.
Ann Schlemmer: Yeah, you need that. Our belief has been, if you can download it, it's open source.
Katherine Druckman: Awesome.
Ann Schlemmer: We continue to believe in that, and work on that.
Katherine Druckman: The database space in particular has been interesting over the last 10 years, more. I've been around open source for a very long time. I won't get into too much detail about it, but I've been around, and I've participated in and seen a lot of conversations, especially around databases. Several years ago, there was a period where several databases that were originally open source changed their licensing, and it was because of various business challenges, or at least, that would be the story, I think, you would hear from them.
Ann Schlemmer: Sure.
Challenges in the Open Source Database Landscape
Katherine Druckman: We're now in a world where there are licenses which allow for certain permissibility, and lock down other areas, but they're definitely not open source. I wondered, with your perspective on that specific area, that database landscape, you're perched in a much more open spot than a lot of them, and how are you able to do that, where they have taken a different path?
Ann Schlemmer: Well, my belief that we work on, that I run Percona by is, we always have to be providing value to our customers, to our community, and then also, back to Percona. Something that's maybe different than some of our competitors is that today, Percona's been customer funded. We haven't taken an outside investment. You had brought up, it's a business decision, and I haven't been in the boardrooms, or in the executive sessions with companies that have changed their licenses. How many debates, and you've probably had a lot of speakers who talk about, open source is not a business model. Is it or isn't it?
Katherine Druckman: It depends on who you ask.
Ann Schlemmer: That's exactly right. What I think about is the fact that when it comes to what you do with your license or not, I get really concerned about trust and keeping that trust with our community and with our customers, but there's also that idea of fairness and value. If I'm giving value to my customers, there is that fairness. Open source doesn't mean that we're not for profit.
Katherine Druckman: Exactly. For sure.
Ann Schlemmer: We're running a business, but where is that value, and are you purpose driven? Our purpose is saying, "Hey, we want to be open source," and we know how to monetize our expertise, and how we've been doing that, we've been doing that with our services. Definitely, though, need to always consider, how is the landscape changing?
Katherine Druckman: Yeah.
Ann Schlemmer: You mentioned, about 10 years ago, things started changing. Well, what was that? A little bit that the cloud was coming in. How do I view that? Well, if you truly believe in open source, you've put out a license that you know that other people can use it. I don't begrudge other companies that, hey, they've figured out what customers want and need. They were able to be innovative. Would me as an open source advocate to make sure that there's a more equitable give and take? Everybody can't be takers.
Katherine Druckman: Absolutely not, sure.
Percona's Community Contributions
Ann Schlemmer: How do you give back, and what is that level of fairness, is something that we think about and we consider as well. Yeah, it's a challenge, but I think you need to have clarity. I appreciate when people have clarity in what they're doing and how they're monetizing. Again, for me, it goes back to value, it goes back to trust, and how do you put your expertise out there and get correctly compensated for that?
Katherine Druckman: I wanted to talk a little bit more about what it means to you to be an open source company. You talked about Valkey, for example, as a community that you're involved in, and the give and take. I do know that you do give quite a bit in the community. Can you tell us a little bit about how that works at Percona? Which communities, what kind of upstream contributions, that kind of thing?
Ann Schlemmer: Sure. Again, with our history, and maybe still most known for is our MySQL space. When the company got started, we didn't feel that MySQL at the time was as performant as it needed to be. Besides putting services around it, and literally wrote the book on performance, and helping customers do what they needed to do, we also contributed back. We contributed back to the upstream with patches, or we would do bugs, and look at those things, or some of that code, too. Again, our code is out there, it's open source. If people want to use it, they can use it.
Katherine Druckman: That's how it works.
Sustainability and Governance in Open Source
Ann Schlemmer: That's what it is, and that's what we believe in. We also understand that our deep expertise and that drive we've had over the years with the services really is that value add, and it is part of what our DNA is as well. It's important for us that we believe that you can have a viable business and continue to grow. There is that, and different people use different terms. You might hear coopetition. I really am a believer that, with open source, all boats rise. That's what I find amazing in that collaboration, and being at a place like ATO right now, and people really saying, "Wow." What ideas might come out of this week, Katherine, that we might not even be aware of for another, who knows, but it was just because some conversations were happening, people were willing to have that exchange, that intellectual exchange and curiosity together, and do it in a way that really is for the good, and not being too possessive on that. I think that's pretty, maybe idealistic, but I think it's pretty awesome, and full of energy.
Katherine Druckman: I agree. That's why I'm here. I'm here to literally have those conversations, and we learn from each other, and it's great. I have a lot of conversations lately about the sustainability of the open source ecosystem, the giving, as we keep talking about, and I wondered if you had any thoughts or advice for other leaders in the open source community, leaders of companies, leaders of projects, for both sustainability, but also, the importance of having a seat at the table in order to drive the direction of a project, but keep it going.
Ann Schlemmer: That's right.
Katherine Druckman: Yeah.
Ann Schlemmer: I think I'll go back to the example of Valkey, which is really interesting. I think we are in an interesting space in open source. Again, I focus on the database side, where companies have changed licenses, and have come up midway through. Again, that's a business decision. That's where they're feeling like, I'm assuming, "Hey, I've put all this out there in the world, and yet, somebody is having more success off of my tech. Maybe we need to rethink that," versus, look at how powerful the movement is for Redis, that one week they announced they're changing, and within a week, this really passionate group of contributors have spun up a community, and now is sitting in Linux Foundation.
There's a lesson here, and we're all still trying to figure that out. You see how different foundations have worked. If it's a one-vendor monopoly, again, that trust factor is being looked at. I think the consideration really is, if you're going to be involved in a project, and here's the funny part, Katharine, the chicken and the egg, how do you pick those projects that are all of a sudden going to become ubiquitous that everybody wants? And then, you have that sustainability. I think about MySQL. How many companies globally have built upon MySQL, whether like us, literally on a MySQL business, but even those that it's their back end that they're doing it on?
Katherine Druckman: Run an application, a large application.
Ann Schlemmer: And they have the ability to make sure that it continues to sustain and innovate by being a part of the community.
Katherine Druckman: Exactly.
Ann Schlemmer: It's a tricky thing when it's still single vendor, and how much does that single vendor need to look to the community or not, and what is that going to look like? What is the proper governance? If it's going to be a single vendor, what is their obligation to the community, to put in that governance? Or, is there a point in time that you say, "Hey, it's gotten this large, let's put it into a foundation? Let's look at what this model is." I'm not going to pretend to have the answers on what's the best way to sustain. I know that for us, out of our four databases, two are maintained with foundations, which is Valkey and Postgres, and we now have contributors on staff that 80% of their job is giving to the community, and contributing there, and then, 20% is back with us. That's us showing, "Hey, here's our commitment to make sure that there is that."
You mentioned, rightfully so, you can have an influence then. The challenge with, if you talk about geeks and suits, I'm accused of being a suit, and I get it, I'm a suit, sometimes you get too focused on short-term financial results. You have to really think about that long-term, and anticipate, what's it going to look like? You want to control as much as you can control, and when you're in open source, and if you're part of a project like that, you have more control.
Katherine Druckman: Yeah, I absolutely agree. For so many reasons, it behooves somebody, if there is a piece of software that is business critical for you, it behooves you to take that seat, to give back, but you get so much in return
Ann Schlemmer: For sure. Absolutely, but it's not always that clear cut. Competing priorities.
Katherine Druckman: Absolutely. I'm involved in a lot of conversations about security, for example, and we go out there, especially, we're educating people about open source software, to look for things like neutral governance, and avoiding vendor lock, and not because of business considerations always, but security considerations. If you need to rely on a project security, the best way to do that is to have more contributors, and more varied contributors to that project. One of many, many considerations, of course.
Ann Schlemmer: Sure.
Katherine Druckman: I wondered if you had any thoughts about viewing this landscape from that security lens, but not so much security in the weeds, but as a global concept of, we are all in this together, having each other's backs from a software perspective.
Ann Schlemmer: For sure, and then, one of the keynotes earlier today was talking about that as well, and, I don't want to say safety in numbers, but maybe safety in numbers, but also the power of numbers. You're going to have bad actors, they're there, but having a concerted effort and shining a light on it, and there's just this mass of people that are really pushing for that, I think is more important. When security becomes a main focus, and it's just in everything you do, secure by design-
Katherine Druckman: Yep, shifting left.
Ann Schlemmer: It has be that that's an education piece as well, even just for any open source or not. Any developer, and I think of developers as creatives, any creatives still have to be mindful that what you're putting out there, you need to have that security. It has to be there. Again, I believe that with open source, also diversity of thought and perspective, so the more people that you bring in, you're going to get an angle that you alone hadn't thought about. As we're talking about this, I think about that challenge of the governance, and authority and responsibility, and you can't always farm that out, because if everybody owns it, nobody owns it, but really having that proper governance on there, and that agreement that's secure by design, and that's something we need to push for is vitally important.
Future of Open Source Business Models
Katherine Druckman: I wanted to pivot back about talking about, again, open source business models versus less open models and whatnot. I wonder what you see in the next one year, two year, five years happening in this space. I think the community is going through some difficult times. A lot of businesses of all sizes, again, they're tiptoeing into less open source licenses, or they're reevaluating where they put resources into open source projects. I wondered if you had any thoughts on where you see that impacting us as a collective community, but also, just the relationship between certain types of businesses and open source communities?
Ann Schlemmer: A good question. If you look at the data, and even just the headlines, you know that enterprises and also public sector more and more are making mandates for open source. Now, a lot of them, it's because of total cost of ownership. Some of it is also controlling their own destiny, so that they don't have vendor lock-in. Understanding that, and as I mentioned, we have to be giving value. Any business, you have to be giving value to whomever your customer segment is, and that you're targeting. There's a continued desire and want for open source, and it's already out there. We need to continue to evolve, and make sure that we understand that. I do think that, as best one can, I'm not the entrepreneur, I didn't start the company.
Katherine Druckman: Sure, the steward.
Ann Schlemmer: I'm going continue to grow it, and think about, where's that appropriate line for where do you monetize and where do you not monetize?
Katherine Druckman: Yeah.
Ann Schlemmer: If you're agreeing to your open source license, do you really believe in that? Do you believe in what that philosophy is, and what that means? Are you okay with people using your software maybe in a way you didn't intend? Maybe they figured out something you didn't figure out.
Katherine Druckman: Yeah.
Ann Schlemmer: Are you going to be okay with that?
Katherine Druckman: Yeah.
Ann Schlemmer: What does that look like? I think though also, in the inflection point that we're at, I'm interested to see, over the next year or two, if any single vendors on their own decide to go to foundations versus doing license change. Look at Elastic. They did a license change, and now, they're going back. What does that look like? There's a lot of lessons learned. There's a great landscape.
Katherine Druckman: Nothing is written in stone, right?
Ann Schlemmer: No, right. Well, we always say, evolve or die. Is that what you say? What does that look like? I think that's pretty fascinating, that there's been some interesting lessons learned that we could look at. And also companies, and that's fine, what was their intended outcome when they changed their license to begin with? They'll state different reasons, but they have to be watching some metrics. Are they achieving them, and do we think of other ways to achieve that without messing with the license? Or maybe we go to foundations, or maybe we say... what's interesting to me, Katherine, is, what is that critical mass?
If you are a person who started a project, and now you're this project maintainer, and it's become wildly successful, but maybe you don't want to maintain it any longer, where does it go? How do you bring in others, and what is that decision criteria? While you might dream big when you first started it, can you really understand that once it actually takes place? And then, what you do with it? I would love to see more and more maybe models, maybe more open source models on, "Hey, this is what you do with a project. This is the evolution of a project to consider, and here's points along the way to make these declarations, and then business decisions."
Katherine Druckman: Yeah, we're all here to learn from each other. We take meandering paths, and if we can share knowledge about what happens at various spots along the way along those paths-
Ann Schlemmer: Exactly.
Unexpected Uses and Innovations
Katherine Druckman: I think that's fantastic. You brought up something about unintended uses. You might build a thing, and people might use it in a way that you hadn't thought of. That's one of my favorite things to ask project maintainers, because people go into a project with usually a use case, a few use cases in mind. They're building something to accomplish a goal, but always, somebody out there is going to find some use for it that you hadn't expected, and that can be wonderful and fascinating and creative. I suppose it can also be a negative, maybe.
Ann Schlemmer: Sure.
Katherine Druckman: Is this something that you experience from your perspective, with Percona?
Ann Schlemmer: I've seen it more on the periphery. I am always delighted when I get to meet with users and customers who, we've put something out there, whether it's thought leadership or actual code that they're reliant on. It could be in a use case that I just wasn't aware of that's encouraging to me. I'm like, "That's awesome, because what it's meant for." Again, the classic case for all of us to just study is what the hyperscalers in the cloud has been able to do, and what was their mindset there? At some point you went, "Dang it, why didn't I think of that?"
Katherine Druckman: Yeah, that's the fun part.
Ann Schlemmer: Of course, right? That's the beauty of it. That's why I said, I think of developers as creatives.
Katherine Druckman: Being part of a creative and collaborative community can be interesting. A lot of great things can come out of it, a lot of controversy.
Ann Schlemmer: Friction.
Katherine Druckman: Friction, a little conflict. It's all part of the game. It's all, I think, quite healthy. This has been fantastic, honestly, and I really appreciate it, again, you setting aside this time. Is there something that you really wanted me to ask you that I didn't?
Ann Schlemmer: No.
Katherine Druckman: Excellent. We've done a great job, then.
Ann Schlemmer: No, it was great. It was just open dialogue. It was perfect.
Katherine Druckman: Well, thank you again, and I hope you have a great show. We have a whole other day after this.
Ann Schlemmer: That's right.
Katherine Druckman: It's going to be a good time.
Ann Schlemmer: Thanks, Katherine. Thanks for what you do.
Katherine Druckman: You've been listening to Open at Intel. Be sure to check out more about Intel’s work in the open source community at Open.Intel, on X, or on LinkedIn. We hope you join us again next time to geek out about open source.
About the Guest
Ann Schlemmer, CEO, Percona
Ann Schlemmer is the CEO of Percona, a leader in open source database software, support and services. In this role, Schlemmer builds upon Percona’s legacy of open source excellence, leading the company on its mission to help businesses make databases and applications run better through a unique combination of expertise and open source software. Having joined Percona in 2013, Schlemmer has held various leadership positions in the organization, including President, General Manager, Vice President of Customer Success, and Senior Director of Consulting.
About the Host
Katherine Druckman, Open Source Security Evangelist, Intel
Katherine Druckman, an Intel open source security evangelist, hosts the podcasts Open at Intel, Reality 2.0, and FLOSS Weekly. A security and privacy advocate, software engineer, and former digital director of Linux Journal, she's a long-time champion of open source and open standards. She is a software engineer and content creator with over a decade of experience in engineering, content strategy, product management, user experience, and technology evangelism. Find her on LinkedIn.