RedMonk August 2026 Update
Hi All,
Steve here. I’m writing this on the Thursday before I go out on my annual couple of weeks of summer vacation, and I hope that some of you have the opportunity to take a bit of a break as well. Inferring from delayed replies to emails and a few meetings getting pushed out, it certainly seems like that’s happening in at least a few cases. The faster things in the technology world move, in my view, the more important having a bit of downtime becomes. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the whirlwind that is this industry because there’s literally never been a time in which it moved faster.
I’d hoped to be dropping a piece on open weight models before I headed out on break, but there’s been too much tying off loose ends and so that will have to wait until I’m back. Which is probably not a bad thing, in fact, because a little more clarity on the positions of the respective players - and importantly, in that space, the delays in actually releasing said open weights - are both more instructive and subtler than headlines have suggested. But more on that later.
While I’m out, I’ll be spending part of my vacation building a new woodshed. The last time I did this over a decade ago, I relied heavily on YouTube. This time around, that’s been supplemented by - what else? - AI. Claude, specifically, which has done everything from help me triage foundation options to working on the permit itself. Given the stakes of the project - both in terms of the cost of materials and time, not to mention blood (hopefully not too much), sweat and tears - my tolerance for mistakes is lower than it would normally be. Which will make it a good test for both Claude, and my ability to critically evaluate Claude’s work.
Building things with my hands does two important things for me. First, it lets me create something more tangible than the words and charts that are my usual fare. In my view, at least, there’s a fundamental difference between building something tangible that I can touch and see versus writing, much as I enjoy both activities. Arguably more importantly, building a moderately large structure outside in the height of the humidity and heat here in Maine - including dragging awkwardly large cuts of dimensional lumber and plywood around - is hot, sweaty work that is likely to injure me in at least minor ways.
All of which will leave me with a deep (re)appreciation for my desk job just in time for me to come back to work.
Until I’m back in the office then, I wish you all a good summer. Enjoy what’s left of it, as it seems to be moving even more quickly than the industry we inhabit. Or maybe it just seems like that because I’m slogging my way through Monktoberfest planning :)
-Steve
Subscribe nowLinks Roundup
"So if how you hold your position matters more than what the position is, what does holding it well actually look like? Whether you lean sceptical or optimistic, there are a handful of practices that separate a considered view from a reactive one." James Stanier on earning your skepticism.
A thoughtful read on AI's compulsion to resolve ambiguity in the face of things that are unknowable. "What surprised me was realizing that the human’s job in this process isn’t to supervise the AI. It’s to communicate certainty clearly — but also to put uncertainty back in."
An extraordinary account of an AI evaluation escaping its intended security boundaries.
Some predictions on the state of the AI market from Corey Quinn.
Recent RedMonk Research
Who’s Writing Open Source Code? In the wake of our look at how Bun transitioned from being primarily written by human to have a majority of its code written by machines, we wanted to better understand how much AI-authored code was making its way into critical open source projects. With the caveat that it's incredibly difficult to detect, the answer seems to be: not a lot. Yet.
A modern software registry is increasingly a trust service. Public registries like GitHub's npm, Inc. and PyPI provide identity, provenance, discovery, policy, short-lived signing, and reputation. They were built as open catalogs: anyone can publish, names are first come first served, and trust is something the consumer infers after the fact from download counts, stars, GitHub activity, and whether the maintainer seems reputable. But that model of treating trust as somebody else’s department, which held for most of software history, has shifted in the agentic era. RM clients mentioned: Microsoft/Github
Some thoughts on the Bloomberg reports of a potential infrastructure offering from Meta. Both for what that would mean for Meta, but also the neoclouds who the market quickly punished in the wake of that news. There are still too many details we don't know to come to any firm conclusions, but even so we've been a little surprised at how black and white the narrative - and market reactions - have been: Meta Compute, Neoclouds and the Future of the AI Infrastructure Market. RM clients mentioned: AWS, Google, Microsoft and Oxide
Recent Videos and Appearances
AI agents are writing code faster than anyone can build, test, and ship it. James Governor talks with Helen Altshuler, CEO and co-founder of EngFlow, about why the bottlenecks that once happened at Google scale are now showing up everywhere: Dealing with the Next Bottleneck: Build Management at AI Scale with Helen Altshuler
Open source has a new problem: you often can’t tell whether the contributor on the other end is a person or an agent working on their behalf. In this RedMonk Conversation, Kate Holterhoff talks with Angie Byron, Senior Manager of Community and Advocacy at Temporal and lead of applied AI at Drupal, about AI’s effects on open source communities: “Don’t Submit Code You Don’t Understand”: Angie Byron on AI and Open Source Trust
James Governor sits down with Marek Poliks, Head of AI at LaunchDarkly, for a spicy conversation about what it actually takes to manage agents in production: Why the Gateway Approach to Agents Sucks (and What to Do Instead) with Marek Poliks
What do Viking needlework, the Apollo guidance computer, and a $7 Etsy crochet pattern have in common? More than you’d think. In this episode of the MonkCast, Kate Holterhoff talks with Abbey Perini, web developer at Hygiena, technical writer, and prolific crafter, about the tangled history of fiber arts and programming: Where Crochet Meets Code: Fiber Arts and the History of Computing with Abbey Perini
James Governor talks with Charity Majors, Co-founder and CTO of Honeycomb, about what AI is doing to engineering practices: Charity Majors on AI, Determinism, Instrumentation, & Eating Your Broccoli
RedMonk Research Director Rachel Stephens talks with JT Perry, co-founder of Barn Analytics, about building ChickenSense — a hardware and software product that uses RFID tags and in-coop sensors to monitor backyard chicken health: Tech for Chickens with JT Perry
Sponsor The 2026 Monktoberfest
The Monktoberfest is a unique opportunity to reach an elite audience of technical people that transcend traditional developer categories. Just as you can’t find beers like this anywhere else in the world, you won’t find a crowd like this anywhere else in the world. From CEOs to hardcore developers, sysadmins to marketers to DBAs, the person sitting next to you is probably responsible for some of the software you use every day.
Sponsorship opportunities are available. Please contact Morgan Harris with any questions you might have about the programs.
Monktoberfest Diversity & Inclusion Scholarship - Deadline Approaching!
RedMonk believes that diversity in technology makes us all better. We'd like to help make Monktoberfest accessible to groups historically under-represented in the technology sector.
If you are a member of an under-represented group in tech (in the US) or know somebody who would like to apply to attend The Monktoberfest 2026 in Portland, ME this fall, travel/lodging expenses paid, here's our application. The app closes August 14, so apply soon!
Meet the Monks
Events we'll be attending:
Render ATL: August 12-13 in Atlanta, GA
VMware Explore: August 31-September 3 in Las Vegas, NV
Dreamforce 2026: September 14-16 in San Francisco, CA
All Things Open: 18-20 in Raleigh, NC
Events we'll be hosting:
The Monktoberfest 2026: October 1-2 in Portland, ME
