It started as a microprocessor pioneer in the 1970s. Now, the company is charting a new course in open source silicon.
datacenterknowledge.com, Aug. 21, 2019 –
Western Digital, the company known to most as a seller of hard drives, has gone all-in on open source. While not a stranger to open source software -- and far from being the first hardware company to embrace open source -- it recently became a pioneer by diving headfirst into the uncharted waters of open source silicon. And it seems fitting for a company started in the 1970s as a chipmaker.
Like many companies that started life in the proprietary world, it took the storage vendor a few baby steps to get into open source software. In an interview with Data Center Knowledge, Western Digital's senior director of systems and software technologies Jorge Campello said the journey began with open standards.
Open Standards Pave the Way
"Open standards have been an integral part of how we do business for a long while," he said. "I think we've been very deeply engaged in those, even longer than we have in open source, because even back before open source was pervasive, even in the world of proprietary software, the way that interoperability worked was we depended on standards."