The MonkCast

RedMonk

Join the developer-focused industry analysts at RedMonk as they discuss news and trends in the software space with leaders and practicioners in cloud, AI, IaC, security, DevOps, developer relations, observability, data, and more. Can't get enough of the Monks? Visit the RedMonk YouTube channel or check out our research at RedMonk.com. You can also follow RedMonk on Bluesky, Twitter (X), and LinkedIn. Meet RedMonk's AnalystsJames Governor, Principal Analyst & Co-founder @monkchips, LinkedIn, Blog Stephen O'Grady, Principal Analyst & Co-founder @sogrady, LinkedIn, Blog Rachel Stephens, Research Director @rstephensme, LinkedIn, Blog Kate Holterhoff, Senior Industry Analyst @KateHolterhoff, LinkedIn, Blog

  1. 8 Oct

    Inside the AWS Agent Toolkit with Liam Greenamyre

    Why do some teams see massive speedups from AI coding agents while others barely notice a difference? In this RedMonk New Builders Conversation with AWS, Kate Holterhoff talks with Liam Greenamyre, Principal PM of Developer Platforms at AWS, about the uneven impact of AI on software development and how to restructure work so agents can succeed. Liam explains why making tasks verifiable is the single biggest lever, then walks through the Agent Toolkit for AWS: a remote MCP server, 100+ skills, plugins, and a rules file that work with Claude Code, Codex, Kiro, and more. They dig into how a single RunScript tool covers 15,000+ AWS APIs token-efficiently, how IAM context keys separate human and agent actions, how agents discover new services like Aurora DSQL, and why isolated dev accounts make safe sandboxes for autonomous agents. Liam closes with a bold prediction: the biggest changes ahead are organizational, not technological. This New Builders conversation is sponsored by AWS. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/liam-greenamyre/ Chapters 00:04 Introduction to AI in Software Development 03:07 The Uneven Adoption of AI in Development Teams 06:20 Strategies for Successful AI Integration 10:09 Exploring the AWS Agent Toolkit 17:01 Guardrails and Context for AI Agents 20:10 The Impact of AI on FinOps and Cost Management 24:28 Evolution of Agent Tooling 32:17 Enhancing Discoverability in AWS 35:56 Guardrails and Safety in AWS Operations 41:03 Future of AI in Software Development

  2. 1 Oct

    Securing Enterprise Open Source with Coalitions & Clearing Houses: Lightwell from IBM & Red Hat

    Most of an enterprise application stack is open source that nobody is paid to maintain. Gunnar Hellekson of Red Hat puts it at 60 to 70 percent, and that gap is what IBM's Lightwell is built for. He walks James Governor through the mechanics: members scan and triage their own dependencies, submit what they find with the source identity stripped out, and get fixes back after an embargo period before those fixes reach a wider network and, where a maintainer still exists, the upstream project. Financial services goes first. Hellekson is candid that plenty of customers cannot use the service yet, because joining would only lengthen a patch backlog already measured in months. Mythos, the two agree, mostly revealed how bad things already were. They also work through token economics, why nobody needs to scan OpenSSL separately, and why a fix should end up as deterministic code rather than something an AI keeps rediscovering. Red Hat is a RedMonk client, but this is free and independent content. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/gunnar-hellekson/ Chapters 00:00 Introduction: IBM's big bet on open source security 03:18 A win-win for customers and the open source community 05:27 The problem: 60–70% of the stack is unsupported open source 07:15 Carry your own fork or hope upstream fixes it 09:17 Eat your vegetables first: hardened images and paid platforms 09:45 How Lightwell works 11:57 Scope: application dependencies 12:57 Network effects, industry clearinghouses, and identity washing 14:34 When to move off orphaned projects 16:04 Mythos showed how bad things already were 19:51 Delivery via Maven, PyPI, and npm 20:33 Attackers vs. defenders at machine speed 21:44 Why fixes should be deterministic code, not endless AI 23:06 Token economics and shared remediation 24:05 Nobody needs to scan OpenSSL separately 25:08 Will every enterprise build its own software? 27:38 Wrap-up

  3. 24 Sept

    The BOM Explosion & Why PQC Stopped Being 10 Years Away with David Pollak & Allan Friedman

    In this episode, David Pollak, founder and CEO of Spice Labs, and Allan Friedman, Senior Technical Advisor at the Institute for Security and Technology, discuss the importance of software supply chain security, bills of materials, and the emerging field of post-quantum cryptography with Kate Holterhoff. Friedman, "the godfather of SBOMs," gives a state of play for 2026: where the tooling has matured, where it still falls short, and why the Cyber Resilience Act is about to make this everybody's problem. From there the conversation moves to CBOMs and post-quantum cryptography. Pollak argues PQC stopped being a 2035 problem in June, when the White House, the US military and French standards bodies all pulled their deadlines forward by five years. Also covered: whether developers should have to think about security at all, what the IPv6 transition taught us, and the 360,000 Maven packages carrying vulnerable code nobody disclosed.   This RedMonk conversation is sponsored by Spice Labs. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/david-pollak-allan-friedman/ Chapters 00:04 Introduction to the Guests and Topics 06:29 The State of SBOMs in 2026 13:46 Understanding Cryptographic Bills of Materials 22:12 The Intersection of Security and Development 31:25 The CBOM Approach and Its Importance 33:23 Post-Quantum Cryptography: A Future Concern? 38:55 Navigating Regulations and Compliance 43:57 Finding vs. Fixing Vulnerabilities in Open Source 49:58 AI's Role in Security and Vulnerability Management 53:31 Lessons from IPv6 and Cryptography Libraries

  4. 10 Sept

    "Somebody is always paying the token bill": AI and Open Source with Brian Proffitt & Jason Brooks

    Generated code is arriving faster than maintainers can read it. RedMonk's Steve O'Grady discusses this new reality with Jason Brooks and Brian Proffitt, both managers in Red Hat's Open Source and AI Program Office. Proffitt's teams are adding what he calls human speed bumps upstream: PR templates that ask whether AI wrote the patch, and if so, what the prompt was. The point is transparency, not blocking the flow. Brooks argues for the importance of human decision makers because writing code may cost close to nothing now, but getting another person to accept it still costs plenty, and someone always pays the token bill. The conversation also touches on maintainer burnout, why saying "no" is still a legitimate answer to a pull request, Fedora Hummingbird and its agentically assembled packages, and the thing Proffitt worries about most: trust. This RedMonk video is sponsored by Red Hat. Show notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/brian-proffitt-jason-brooks/ Chapters 00:04 Introduction to AI and Open Source Governance 00:32 Guest Introductions: Jason Brooks and Brian Proffitt 02:10 AI's Ubiquity and Industry Impact 03:06 Guardrails for AI Code Quality in Projects 04:22 Implementing Human Speed Bumps for AI Contributions 05:17 Encouraging Transparency in AI Contributions 06:46 Automated Review and Guardrails in Open Source 07:50 Verifying AI-Generated Code in Fedora 09:10 Human Oversight in AI Processes 13:39 Developer Burnout and Managing Contribution Floods 16:09 Trust and Transparency in AI-Driven Ecosystems 18:30 Evolving Policies for AI in Fedora 20:16 Future Challenges and Community Trust in AI 21:11 Closing Remarks and Future Outlook

About

Join the developer-focused industry analysts at RedMonk as they discuss news and trends in the software space with leaders and practicioners in cloud, AI, IaC, security, DevOps, developer relations, observability, data, and more. Can't get enough of the Monks? Visit the RedMonk YouTube channel or check out our research at RedMonk.com. You can also follow RedMonk on Bluesky, Twitter (X), and LinkedIn. Meet RedMonk's AnalystsJames Governor, Principal Analyst & Co-founder @monkchips, LinkedIn, Blog Stephen O'Grady, Principal Analyst & Co-founder @sogrady, LinkedIn, Blog Rachel Stephens, Research Director @rstephensme, LinkedIn, Blog Kate Holterhoff, Senior Industry Analyst @KateHolterhoff, LinkedIn, Blog

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