VMware today announced that Chip Childers has joined the company as vice president and Chief Open Source Officer.
“We’re delighted that Chip has joined VMware,” said Chris Wolf, VMware’s Chief Research and Innovation Officer. “The upstream and community work, as well as the outstanding compliance efforts from our Open Source Program Office, are critical to the success of our customers, the communities we work with and VMware.”
“I am extraordinarily happy to be joining VMware because of its strategic and high profile embrace of open source and its clear grasp of the importance of building inclusive cultures,” Childers said. “Both are positive-sum approaches to growing a great business. When an organization such as VMware embraces positive-sum thinking, it improves outcomes for customers, partners, employees, the broader industry and the company itself.”
Childers brings more than 20 years of experience in enterprise infrastructure and cloud computing. Most recently, he was at Puppet Labs, where he served as Chief Architect and led their innovation program, incubated multiple new products, and aligned their open source strategy to evolving business needs.
Previously, Childers co-founded the Cloud Foundry Foundation and served as its Chief Technology Officer and Executive Director. While at the Cloud Foundry Foundation, he transformed the organization from an independent nonprofit to a directed fund within the Linux Foundation. VMware is a platinum member of both the Cloud Foundry Foundation and the Linux Foundation.