Anand Babu (AB) Periasamy had not idea to build super computer. He just wanted a job that allowed him to hack free software. He took up a part time job in a company to pay his bills. The company was researching on supercomputing. He became the Center Technical Officer and hired hackers of open source. He realized that they have to get paid too. The Department of Energy came to them. As he was not a permanent resident, he did not have the right to see the super computer his team built. They just made the parts and shipped them. Anand Babu (AB) Periasamy and his team established Gluster and sold it to Red Hat in 2011 for 136million dollars and then they build Minio. All this was possible by solving tough problems with simplicity and by using software that comes free. To Anand Babu (AB) Periasamy free software was very important and they could not efford to lose.
According to Anand Babu (AB) Periasamy software is much like an idea that can be improved only by sharing and hacking is not getting into computer security as people think. Refusing the share knowledge is matter of ethics. When someone told Richard Stallman that free software was impractical, he asked if it is not practical to lead an ethical life. Not sharing is unethical. We share because we are passionate about it and not because it is a trend. Anand Babu (AB) Periasamy knows many startups that build products using opens source and proprietary software of others. This builds to misleading brand. We should build a brand that people can love to use and not that which could mislead them.
When setting a startup Anand Babu (AB) Periasamy says that we should get people who have the drive to do something and would go to greath lengths to make it happen. The standard model being followed is hierarchies and layers which is very expensive and can be useful only in manufacturing segment. Anand Babu (AB) Periasamy says that the idea is aligning people to the vision and managing them. Not managing the product.
