Kelsey Hightower, a Kubernetes pioneer focused on making complex systems accessible, teams up with Eswar Bala, AWS's EKS Director, who specializes in container orchestration. They discuss the grassroots origins of open source and its role in democratizing tech access. Hightower shares his personal journey and the importance of contributions over credentials. Bala highlights AWS's commitment to open source, introducing projects like Karpenter and Cedar. Their conversation emphasizes collaboration and how community-driven innovation is reshaping the cloud landscape.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
Open Source Entry Point
Kelsey Hightower learned about open source through Linux magazines and CDs.
This allowed him to enter the tech industry without traditional credentials.
insights INSIGHT
Open Source and Career Sovereignty
Open source allows individuals to control their careers.
Early Kubernetes contributors were judged by their contributions, not credentials.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Kubernetes Early Days
Kubernetes initially faced scalability limitations, with a 30-node limit.
Amazon's support of Kubernetes through EKS signaled its long-term viability.
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In a candid episode of The New Stack Makers, Kubernetes pioneer Kelsey Hightower and AWS’s Eswar Bala explored the evolving relationship between enterprise cloud providers and open source software at KubeCon+CloudNativeCon London. Hightower highlighted open source's origins as a grassroots movement challenging big vendors, and shared how it gave people—especially those without traditional tech credentials—a way into the industry. Recalling his own journey, Hightower emphasized that open source empowered individuals through contribution over credentials.
Bala traced the early development of Kubernetes and his own transition from building container orchestration systems to launching AWS’s Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), driven by growing customer demand. The discussion, recorded at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, touched on how open source is now central to enterprise cloud strategies, with AWS not only contributing but creating projects like Karpenter, Cedar, and Kro.
Both speakers agreed that open source's collaborative model—where companies build in public and customers drive innovation—has reshaped the cloud ecosystem, turning former tensions into partnerships built on community-driven progress.
Learn more from The New Stack about the relationship between enterprise cloud providers and open source software:
The New Stack Podcast 