Hi Everyone,

Steve here. Two weeks ago, I was up and out the door before the sun came up because time is precious during school vacation weeks. A half hour into my morning walk, I thought I heard something over the audiobook I had playing in my headphones. Taking them out, I stopped, listened and sure enough, heard the faint, keening call of a mourning dove. Then it repeated. A minute later, the sun that much closer to peeking over the horizon, I heard a songbird tentatively tweet out a few quick notes.

For those of you in more southern latitudes than these, none of this would be either notable or cause for celebration. Here in Maine, however, much like the first day in the 60’s since fall that fell yesterday, it’s a reminder that spring, not winter, is on the way. Finally.

And that is something worth celebrating, particularly after the winter - both the season, and the events that transpired over said season - we just had. We could all do with some renewal right now, I think.

With spring, of course, also comes the ramp up of conference season, beginning with our own Monki Gras in London. While I am (crushingly) unable to attend the event myself because I will be returning to a conference dating to RedMonk’s own beginnings, JavaOne, I have an absolutely massive case of FOMO. I mean, just look at the speaker list. And then there’s the food, the drink, and - most of all - the people. It’s one of the best events in the industry, in large part because of the brilliant, kind and welcoming crowd it attracts every year.

After the Monki Gras, us monks will fan out to events both here in the US and abroad, including Google Next, Kubecon EU, SUSECON, TDX - and that just gets us through April. We’ll be out and about, in other words, and will look forward to seeing as many of you as possible, whether at the events themselves or one of the many off the beaten track venues we gather at for RedMonk Beers.

As we’ve been able to enjoy some time at home before the travel commences in earnest, we’ve also been busy. Most recently, Kate’s looked at AI and open source policy and maintainers, Rachel’s written about the disintermediation of databases and I’ve zoomed out for a macro view of AI’s impacts across a wide variety of communities, markets and personas. Suffice it to say, as a recent post says, 2026 is shaping up to be a very different year than 2025.

Until we see you next, then, stay healthy, stay well and take care.

-sog

Links Roundup

• Dr. Cat Hicks created a Claude Skill to help with active learning. Periodically throughout coding, users can enter an interactive exercise to ensure they understand the actions taken by the LLM. Claude pauses and waits for user input rather than answering its own questions.

• Now that we're all reasonably familiar with the concept of the forward-deployed engineer, here are some thoughts on what a forward-deployed designer could do when teamed up.

• Interesting and notable to see Anthropic’s erstwhile competitors such as Google or OpenAI as well as Microsoft come to the company’s defense in its suit against the United States government.

• This piece from the Wall Street Journal makes the case - with some quotes from the Executive Director of the Technology & Policy Research Initiative at Boston University, and former Monktoberfest speaker - that AI’s impact will not be apocalyptic as many in the industry expect. Fair warning, however, the developers we’ve shared this with tend to have very strong reactions to it.

Recent RedMonk Research

• Kate Holterhoff compiled and analyzed the generative AI policies of 73 open source organizations. The resulting visualization maps the current policy landscape across several dimensions: overall stance (permissive, ban, or undecided), primary concerns (quality, copyright, and ethics), disclosure requirements, and adoption timeline.

• Databases aren’t going away, but how they fit in the modern data landscape is changing. Here's how we're thinking about the unbundling of storage, compute, and interface layers at RedMonk. RM clients mentioned: Amazon and Oracle

Recent Videos

• Rachel Stephens (Research Director at RedMonk) introduces Monster Scale Summit 2026, an event designed for technical ICs navigating explosive growth. This event is for teams thinking about performance not as an occasional tuning exercise, but as a constant design discipline. If you’ve attended P99 Conf in the past, Monster Scale Summit takes that same deep practitioner focus and applies it to systems operating at scale.

• In this episode of RedMonk Conversations, Rachel Stephens sits down with Özer Dondurmacıoğlu, VP of Product Marketing at GitLab, to discuss GitLab’s vision for intelligent orchestration across the software development lifecycle.

• In this RedMonk Conversation, senior analyst Kate Holterhoff is joined by Alex Moore, Executive Director of Open Web Advocacy (OWA), to unpack why the web has struggled to compete with native apps on mobile and what regulators are finally doing about it.

• Chris Corriere, Founder of Ecology Computing and an organizer of Devopsdays Atlanta, shares his unique perspective on socio-technical systems, complexity in computing, and the future of DevOps practices with Kate Holterhoff.

• Kate Holterhoff speaks with Ansgar Lindwedel, Director of Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) Ecosystem Development at the Eclipse Foundation. They discuss the concept of Software Defined Vehicles, the evolution of software in the automotive industry, and the challenges faced by developers.

• Stu Miniman, Senior Director of Market Insights, Hybrid Platforms at Red Hat, shares his extensive tech industry experience and insights with Kate Holterhoff. Stu discusses behind-the-scenes stories from his time as an industry analyst at theCUBE.

Sponsorship Opportunities Available - Monki Gras 2026

Monki Gras, the intimate London conference about software, craft, and tech culture, returns NEXT WEEK, on March 19th & 20th, 2026.

We are still accepting sponsors for the conference. Please reach out to Morgan Harris for available options!

Meet the Monks

Events we'll be attending:

• JavaOne 2026: 17 - 19 March 2026, Redwood City, CA

• Kubecon EU 2026: 23 - 26 March 2026, Amsterdam

• TDX 2026: 15 - 16 April 2026, San Francisco, CA

• SUSECON: 20 - 21 April 2026, Prague

• Google Cloud Next 2026: 22 - 24 April 2026, Las Vegas, NV

Events we'll be hosting:

• Next week! Monki Gras 2026: 19 - 20 March 2026, London, UK