In this episode of the Security Repo Podcast, we sit down with Alex Scheel, staff back-end engineer at GitLab and chair of the OpenBao Technical Steering Committee, to discuss the origins and future of OpenBao, a fork of HashiCorp Vault. Alex explains the implications of HashiCorp's licensing change, the technical advantages OpenBao brings to the table, and the importance of open-source governance under the Linux Foundation. We also dive into interoperability in security tooling, secrets management best practices, and how developers can get involved in contributing to OpenBao.

Alex Scheel is a Staff Backend Engineer at GitLab and the Chair of the OpenBao Technical Steering Committee. He has built a career on open source contributions, previously working at Keyfactor on Bouncy Castle, at HashiCorp on Vault, and at Canonical and Red Hat. You can find him under the nickname cipherboy most places. In his free time, he likes playing the violin and taking photography trips.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-scheel-807514105/

https://openbao.org/

https://openbao.org/blog/vision-for-namespaces/