This in-depth interview with Gilles Chehade, co-founder of Plakar and creator of OpenSMTPD, explores his philosophy on software development, open-source principles, and emerging technological challenges.
Background and philosophy
Chehade traces his path from a childhood curiosity for BASIC programming to dropping out of school to pursue self-taught learning in Unix and Linux, eventually becoming a respected systems architect. He views software development as a craft requiring a balance between logic, elegance, and human understanding—qualities reflected across his varied careers in programming, research, architecture, and music.
Genesis of Plakar
Plakar emerged from decades of frustration with opaque, over-engineered backup solutions. Rather than replacing existing tools, it addresses the absence of a standardized consensus around data protection, similar to what PostgreSQL and Git achieved in their respective domains. The platform prioritizes immutability, deduplication, and transparency through open design and public development processes.
Authentic open-source
Regarding open-source philosophy, Chehade acknowledges the movement's evolution since the 1990s, when philosophical commitment drove adoption despite practical sacrifices. Today's audience values pragmatism over ideology more heavily. He argues forcefully that companies using open-source solely for marketing inevitably disappoint communities that detect insincerity, resulting in project forks and abandonment.
AI: opportunity and threat
Chehade perceives AI development as transformative, comparable to the invention of the Internet, while expressing concerns about the accelerating disconnection from foundational skills. He observes students and professionals increasingly relying on AI-generated code without understanding failure modes or error handling—the very learning struggles that have historically built competence. This pattern risks degrading the talent pool feeding AI systems, creating a vicious cycle of declining code quality.
Architecture and transparency
His architectural approach prioritizes clarity, portability, and simplicity over trendy frameworks, designing systems resilient to technological change through well-defined component boundaries and contracts rather than specific implementations.
Central vision
Ultimately, Chehade's vision centers on building systems that people can understand and verify, recognizing that trust emerges through transparency rather than marketing claims—a principle animating both Plakar's design and his broader philosophy of responsible innovation. In a world where AI accelerates development, maintaining foundational programming literacy becomes critical to avoid future vulnerabilities requiring a cultural recalibration toward the fundamentals.