Guest Kavita Kapoor Panelists Eric Berry | Eriol Fox | Alyssa Wright | Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Our special guest today is Kavita Kapoor, Founding Member and Strategy Director of the Federation of Humanitarian Technologists. Kavita tells us all about the Federation of Humanitarian Technologists, how things are going there since they started, and a project they started. We learn from Kavita why she thinks it’s important that children learn about technology, she gives incredible advice on how a tech person can get involved with the humanitarian efforts, and why it’s important to live your mission and visions. She also tells us her perspective and shares a personal story on the lack of gender diversity in tech jobs, as well as not enough LGBTQ plus spaces for the tech community especially in the UK. Kavita is amazing, so go ahead and download this episode to hear more! [00:03:11] Kavita tells us all about her herself, her involvement in the Shorinji Kempo martial art, and how she met Mike Nolan, who is the other Founding Member of the Federations of Humanitarian Technologists. [00:05:45] We learn all about the Federation of Humanitarian Technologists. [00:07:45] Kavita talks about how they hired their first Humanitarian Aid Director and how everything is going there. [00:09:55] Eric wonders where those lines cross in open source versus what Kavita is working with humanitarian efforts. [00:13:00] Eriol asks Kavita if open source software and the open source community offer more opportunities for these Non-governmental organizations and charities to build capacity around their technology. [00:15:24] Find out why Kavita thinks it’s important that children learn about technology, and whether open source can be part of that education and how early should it be. [00:19:13] Richard wonders why Kavita is so interested in the membership organizations such as OpenUK and the Federation of Humanitarian Technologists. [00:21:33] Eric tells Kavita she is a powerhouse and wonders how she has time to do the things that she’s doing and also wonders if she has any other passions. [00:22:30] From the technologist side, Kavita tells us how a tech person can get involved with the humanitarian efforts such as hers and do that in a sustainable way for them, emotionally as well as financially. [00:26:43] Eriol asks to hear Kavita’s perspective on things that she’s witnessed when people with tech skills do get engaged with these kinds of projects, but the barriers that she’s perceived and the ones that she’s tried to knock down so they can participate. She talks about gender diversity and not enough LQBTQ plus spaces for the technology community, especially in the UK. [00:31:54] Find out where you can follow Kavita online. Quotes [00:06:40] “And I think it’s what we all realized when we work for organizations of different scales is that it’s really difficult sometimes to scale up and have the infrastructure, especially when you’re working on projects that are all funded for the end goal, for the end impact.” [00:17:31] “So I went off and became COO of the Micro:bit Educational Foundation and we went around the world. We went to into sixty countries during my tenure. We went from a million devices in the UK that was given away free, four million devices around the world, and some of the kids that we worked with were incredible.” [00:19:59] “But actually, when I’ve been working for profit organizations, I’ve never felt that I could have the impact that I wanted to have or have the access to the power structures that I wanted to have so that we could actually do more good.” [00:20:25] “But the bottom line is always about where the money is.” [00:20:43] “You have to live your mission and visions.” [00:23:41] “I find it crazy at the moment that we’ve got so many people out of work who have tech skills and so many open tech positions and I’m trying to figure out what that gap is.” [00:24:44] “It is really where your starting point is, but you can always do something, and you can always negotiate with your teams at work to get some bandwidth.” Spotlight [00:32:24] Eric’s spotlight is a new program that just launched called FundOSS. [00:33:53] Eriol’s spotlight is a project called Chayn. [00:34:42] Alyssa’s spotlight is being thankful that her computer is working. [00:35:02] Richard’s** **spotlight is the National LGTB Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC). [00:35:58] Kavita’s spotlight is Software Conservancy. Links SustainOSS (https://sustainoss.org/) Kavita Kapoor Website (https://kavitakapoor.org/) Kavita Kapoor Twitter (https://twitter.com/kavitakapoor) Kavita Kapoor Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kavitakapoor/) OpenUK (https://openuk.uk/) International Rescue Committee (https://www.rescue.org/) Shorinji Kempo (https://www.shorinjikempo.net/en/about-shorinji-kempo/what-is-shorinji-kempo/) Federation of Humanitarian Technologists (https://www.federationof.tech/) The Federation of Humanitarian Technologists-GitHub (https://github.com/FederationOfTech/) BBC Micro Games Archive (http://www.bbcmicro.co.uk/) Micro:bit (https://microbit.org/) Project Implicit Harvard (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/) Project Implicit Test (https://www.projectimplicit.net/) Lesbians Who Tech Pride Summit 2021 (https://lesbianswhotech.org/pridesummit2021/) FundOSS (https://fundoss.org/) Chayn (https://chayn.co/) National LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce (https://www.nglcc.org/) Software Freedom Conservancy (https://sfconservancy.org/) Sustain Podcast-Episode 69-“Humanitarian Open Source” with Michael Nolan. (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/69) Sustain Podcast-Episode 49-“What OpenUK Does” with Amanda Brock & Andrew Katz (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/49) Sustain Podcast-Episode 68-“Introducing FundOSS.org: A new way of funding open source, by Gitcoin x Sustain” with Kevin Owocki. (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/68) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Kavita Kapoor.

Sustain

Episode 86: Kavita Kapoor and HFOSS: Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software

Guest Geoffrey Huntley Panelists Eric Berry | Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. We are super excited to be going “down under” with our guest today, Geoff Huntley, who works at Gitpod as part of a team that focuses on community and he works with the engineering team. He is also a long-time open source developer advocate, and general coder dude from Australia. We learn from Geoff how he got started in coding, how he loves to teach people coming into the field, and the importance of turning up, sticking around, and helping out in this industry. He tells us all about Gitpod, what he does there, why more people are adopting it, what beer money does for maintainers, and how he’s using Gitpod to try to solve the problem of maintainers sustainability. Also, Geoff shares some awesome advice to help the sustainers out there, and his advice on how to use money, which you really need to hear! Download this episode now to find out much more from Geoff #vanlife! [00:01:45] Geoff tells us about the van he lives in and the project he maintains called ReactiveUI. [00:02:50] We learn how Geoff got started with coding and how he ended up willing to take over an open source project that takes a lot of maintenance. [00:06:00] Richard asks Geoff to talk about the amount of maintainers out there and any opinions he has about the engineering code versus the maintainer parable he just mentioned. [00:08:49] We learn more about Gitpod from Geoff. [00:10:49] Eric asks why people are adopting Gitpod, what makes that different between that and Codespaces, and Geoff tells us what the response has been so far. [00:14:40] Geoff talks about how he’s using Gitpod to try to solve this problem of maintainers sustainability, and how it goes back to Nadia Eghbal with her Roads and Bridges and the pivotal work she did with the Ford Foundation. [00:17:43] Eric wonders what Geoff thinks that beer money does for the maintainers, and when he was talking to the guys, what kind of response was he getting. [00:21:18] Geoff tells us how many people were involved in the distribution and if he was able to bring in more community members to help decide where those funds were allocated. [00:23:13] We find out the background of the team at Gitpod, and what Geoff does there. [00:25:12] Richard wonders how Geoff is structuring partnerships and how is he making it easier for developers to know about the whole suite of tools that are at their disposal to try and get not just beer money, but sticker money, backer money, and eventually, hopefully things like UBI coming out of code. [00:26:46] Geoff shares his knowledge to the sustainers out there and that can help others. [00:33:00] Eric and Richard share their thoughts on what the next five years is going to be. [00:39:24] Geoff leaves us with a final thought on, “How to use money?” We also find out where you can find him online. Quotes [00:03:27] “Well, it was for personal development and learning. I found at the company I didn’t really have a mentor as such, and I found in open source there is an unlimited supply of learning if you just turn up and say, “How can I help?” [00:04:12] “No other industry has that opportunity if you just do the one simple thing of just turning up, sticking around, and helping out.” [00:04:36] “So these are common problems in open source. We have a lot of focus on the code, but there’s so many different ways people can contribute to open source even if you still don’t understand the code base.” [00:07:22] “So, one thing to always remember is problems can be fixed, we’ll pull requests. Open source software is as is.” [00:16:03] “Now, one of the things we’ve found in that is it’s still too hard to give projects money.” [00:18:56] “People are very excited just to even know that you’re using their software and how it’s getting value.” [00:39:31] “I suppose I’d leave to everyone to think about when you do have money and beer money is coming in, consider maybe not paying your developers.” [00:40:12] “So, use your funds to bring yourself joy. Think about all the things you do as an open source maintainer and the things that don’t bring you joy, that’s what the funds should be used to do.” Spotlight [00:42:22] Eric’s spotlights are github1s and GitHub Web IDE. [00:43:31] Richard’s spotlight is the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs. [00:44:30] Geoff’s spotlight is the open source project pre-commit. Links Geoffrey Huntley Twitter (https://twitter.com/geoffreyhuntley) Geoffrey Huntley Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffreyhuntley) Geoffrey Huntley Website (https://ghuntley.com/) Gitpod (https://www.gitpod.io/) Iron Ring (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring) Open Source Maintainers on GitHub (https://github.com/maintainers) GitHub-open source (https://github.com/open-source) Geoff Huntley’s personal monorepo-GitHub (https://github.com/ghuntley/ghuntley) Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure by Nadia Eghbal (Ford Foundation) (https://www.fordfoundation.org/work/learning/research-reports/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure/) DevX Conf (https://devxconf.org/opensource) “DevX Conf wrap & distributing $10k of open-source funding” by Geoffrey Huntley and Christin Frohne (https://www.gitpod.io/blog/devxconf-wrap) Gitpod chat (https://gitpod.io/chat) Geoff Huntley Gitpod chat (https://discord.com/invite/ZZ8wxgHtc6) “Gitpod Open-Source Sustainability Fund” by Geoffrey Huntley (https://www.gitpod.io/blog/gitpod-open-source-sustainability-fund/) github1s (https://github.com/conwnet/github1s) GitHub Web IDE (https://github.com/zvizvi/Github-Web-IDE) Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs (https://vcnaa.vermont.gov/) pre-commit (https://github.com/pre-commit/pre-commit) Russell Keith-Magee-“If you’re relying on open-source software for your business”-YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t85TyH-h04) Sustain Podcast-Episode 50-Gitcoin, Quadratic Funding, and how Crypto can sustain Open Source with Kevin Owocki (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/50) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Geoffrey Huntley.

Episode 85: Geoffrey Huntley and Sustaining OSS with Gitpod

Guest Jono Bacon Panelists Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Today, we have as our special guest, Jono Bacon, a self-employed Community and Collaboration Consultant, author, speaker, and Founder of Jono Bacon Consulting. Jono tells us about his interesting journey with his career, the diversity of his clients, a concern he has with chat channels, and why community is the most important thing in open source. He talks about developers and how to help them see their value and potential to achieve their goals. We learn more about some of the things Jono wrote, including his most recent book, People Powered: How Communities Can Supercharge Your Business, Brands, and Teams, _and how he got the _“star power” behind it. Also, he also shares an awesome story when he worked at XPRIZE, and something that made him realize how unique the open source world really is. Go ahead and download this episode to hear much more! [00:01:46] Jono tells us how he ended up doing what he does. [00:03:36] We find out the type of clients Jono has and how he gets them often through referrals. [00:06:34] Jono talks about how he feels about Discord, Discourse, Gitter, and the open source IRC replacements that are going on right now. [00:09:42] Richard asks Jono what he thinks the value is of having these side conversations, and how does that help community members have better engagement and build value for them. [00:13:28] Jono shares his opinion on one of the flaws with individuals in open source and why community is the most important thing. [00:16:46] Richard wonders how Jono balances the needs of emotionally connecting to everyone in your group and how he makes sure that developers know there is a balance to be met to have the community thrive. [00:20:30] We learn about some things Jono wrote and he tells us about his most recent book, _People Powered: How Communities Can Supercharge Your Business, Brands, and Teams. _Justin wonders how he got the “star power,” such as Jamie Hyneman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in his book. [00:28:01] We hear an awesome story when Jono worked at XPRIZE and how personalities of people made him realize how unique the open source world really is. [00:31:42] Richard asks Jono if there are any challenges, anything open source needs help with, and what is down the road for us. [00:36:44] Find out where you can follow Jono online and learn more about what he does. Quotes [00:07:25] “The second priority that I’ve got is by extension, that anybody who joins the community should get amazing value out of it.” [00:07:32] “As far as I concerned, if you join a community and you don’t get value out of it, that community hasn’t earned you.” [00:07:56] “One of the concerns I have with chat channels and chat services in general and I’d include Slack, Mattermost, Discord, Git, all of these, is that by definition, it’s a linear stream of consciousness. So Slack claims that they’ve got history and you can kind of unlock history for example if you pay for it. It just doesn’t work.” [00:08:41] “That’s why I think even Slack, don’s say this is for community building, it’s for building teams.” [00:10:00] “So, to me what brings people into communities is they’re there to solve a problem. They’re there to improve their future state, such as they’re using pieces of open source software, and they want to make better use of it and solve their problems or build their applications.” [00:10:16] “I think what people stay for in the community is an intrinsic sense of belonging and a sense that this is just a good place for me to be.” [00:13:26] “My take on this is I think one of the flaws of a lot of open source communities, not so much communities but more individuals, is that they always talk about the most important thing is code, is getting code that can be created and shared with a group of people.” [00:13:57] “But to me, I’m engineering for impact here, whether you’re building a little project to just make certain types of unit testing easier, or whether you’re building a replacement for a major piece of proprietary software.” [00:14:48] “ The reason why I’m so passionate about community is because if you take a hundred people inside of those hundred people, there are so many ideas and insights and experiences and skills, and so much time available. Then when we can get all of that out into the open, it makes us the best we can be as people.” [00:17:28] “But, I think most people, a much more kind of, I guess you could say practical than that, and they will do something if they can see the value, and it’s worth it, and they can achieve their broader outcomes.” [00:18:36] “You need to be inclusive, not just in terms of a rich demographic of people, which is always important, diversity of race and sexuality and all those wonderful things.” [00:18:48] “But just a diversity of ideas and letting people come in and take your little baby, which is this project, and just put new clothes on it and see what it can do.” [00:19:21] “It’s kind of like someone says I’d like to learn to cook and I basically give them everything they need to be a Michelin Star Chef.” [00:27:31] “Eric Holscher probably has had a larger impact on the world. Read the Docs is amazing, and you know he’s a really down to earth guy who’s not famous who you wouldn’t recognize.” [00:33:01] “The platform should be holding your hand and showing you how to do.” [00:33:47] “I would also go as far to say that I think we, as a community, need to get over this obsession with metrics.” [00:34:14] “I would much rather say, okay, what are the things we don’t know today and what are the three metrics that we can use to figure that out?” [00:34:37] “Sure, I can see, for example, all of these metrics about how a project in GitHub is performing, but I think what most developers want to know is what does normal look like?” [00:35:00] “I think if we really want to build scale with open source, which I think we can, and we’ve seen scale happening, open source is real in the world, but the platforms have got to help that long tail of projects succeed more with community building.” [00:35:42] “So to me, diversity is not just a great code of conduct, but also it’s great leadership, and it’s great moderation, and it’s inspiring diverse collaboration as well.” Spotlight [00:37:46] Justin’s spotlight is Bitnami. [00:38:14] Richard’s spotlight is The Book of Knights by Yves Meynard. [00:38:48] Jono’s spotlight is a project called Arches. Links Jono Bacon Website (https://www.jonobacon.com/) Jono Bacon Twitter (https://twitter.com/jonobacon) Jono Bacon Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonobacon/) [People Powered: How Communities Can Supercharge Your Business, Brand, and Teams by Jono Bacon](https://www.amazon.com/People-Powered-Communities-Supercharge-Business/dp/1400214882/ref=sr11?dchild=1&keywords=people+powered&qid=1621619908&sr=8-1) [The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation by Jono Bacon](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Community-Building-New-Participation/dp/1449312063/ref=sr14?dchild=1&keywords=jono+bacon&qid=1621620040&sr=8-4) Bitnami (https://bitnami.com/) [The Book of Knights by Yves Meynard](https://www.amazon.com/Book-Knights-Yves-Meynard/dp/0312864825/ref=sr11?crid=W2ZBQ8JJ2WPQ&dchild=1&keywords=the+book+of+knights+by+yves+meynard&qid=1621633116&sprefix=the+book+of+knights%2Caps%2C162&sr=8-1) Arches Project (https://www.archesproject.org/) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Jono Bacon.

Episode 84: Jono Bacon on Building Sustainable Communities

Guest Dominic Nguyen Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. We are very excited about our guest today, Dominic Nguyen, founder of Chromatic, the company behind Storybook.js. Storybook.js is an open source tool for building UI components and pages in isolation. On this episode, Dominic fills us in on Chromatic, how Storybook evolved, the story behind Meteor, which is the first full-stack JavaScript framework, and who their venture backers are. We also learn the difference between Declarative and Imperative UI, and Dominic tells us what it means for him to be an open source project. Download this episode now to find out much more! [00:01:21] Dominic tells us about Storybook and how it evolved. [00:06:26] We learn the difference between Declarative and Imperative UI. [00:08:22] Find out what other projects have come out of Meteor. [00:09:07] Richard wonders what the financial situation is for Storybook, how much money is needed, and where does it go. [00:11:00] Dominic announces Chromatic is hiring engineers to do open source development, and he tells us who his seed funders are that believe in his mission. [00:14:24] Dominic talks about open source companies launching these open source business models. [00:16:04] Eric wonders if there’s a direction with Storybook to work with or integrate with non-JavaScript based frameworks. [00:18:26] Richard wonders how Dominic is avoiding becoming a “kitchen sink” and making sure that he doesn’t just fill all the needs for everyone and then do it badly. Dominic explains why they exist as the guiding light. [00:21:43] Richard asks Dominic what it means for him to be an open source project and how does he mentally manage the divide between the Storybook community as a whole needing to be sustained. [00:25:04] Eric asks Richard why would the funds that are generated to develop and maintain this project, why should they be distributed outside of the team that’s the primary maintainers of it. Eric and Justin chime in and share their perspectives on this topic as well. [00:32:39] Find out where you follow Dominic online. Quotes [00:02:57] “Meteor was, for the audience who might not be familiar or who is just jumping into JavaScript now, was one of the first, or if not the first full-stack JavaScript framework.” [00:05:38] “If you look at the kind of long history of what components and why components exist, you can think about them as standardized parts.” [00:09:22] “The way we do it at Meteor is two ways: One, we have this idea of we’re a community led open source project. We have an open collective that donates, like folks in the community donate money and then it’s used effectively for marketing, marketing purposes, swag, doing stuff like CI, bills, like kind of incidentals.” [00:09:49] “Because when you think about it, it hasn’t been enough to really pay someone a salary without asking for donations all the time and I think that’s what’s happening in Babel right now.” [00:10:10] “So, what we do on the Chromatic is the company behind Meteor, we have maintainers, official maintainers whose full-time job is to push that project forward, build the features that people want and maintain that kind of core API, and that is in partnership with our community.” [00:14:37] “If you look at the long answer in the context of other open source companies that are coming out right now and are launching, it seems like this is the model that everyone has landed on that separates you from these older style like open source, I would say classic open source business models.” [00:15:02] “It seems like the modern kind of like open source business models, build an open source project, sell some type of service that compliments it.” [00:17:57] “So for instance, isomorphic was like the hot word five years ago.” [00:22:28] “We put money back into the open source project and in doing so the development experience is better for everyone and it’s that cycle that we’re trying to maintain and continue.” [00:27:34] “Yeah, for me, the issue is like people who contribute to it, they’re self-serving, it’s a self-serving action. They are contributing to it for their own benefit.” [00:28:11] “And when that is the case, I agree with you a hundred percent. When that’s not the case, when it’s a tool that’s being used by anybody, to me honestly, that is the beauty of open source.” [00:29:52] “So, the hard part about open source is maintaining it for a really long time.” [00:30:28] “Just staying afloat is like a full-time job.” [00:30:33] “And what we hope to offer the community from Chromatic, as like the maintainers, is a stable release cadence that keeps up with the rest of the ecosystem and includes some new, helpful, handy features.” Spotlight [00:33:26] Eric’s spotlight is s tutorial, “Dockerize your Rails app” by Nate Hopkins. [00:34:25] Justin’s spotlight is Wormhole by Feross. [00:34:49] Richard’s spotlight is Brian T. Ford. [00:35:19] Dominic’s spotlights are open source projects such as State of JS by Sacha Greif, Wordpress, Mock Service Worker (MSW), and Mirage JS. Links Dominic Nguyen Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominic-nguyen-25aa4821) Dominic Nguyen Twitter (https://twitter.com/domyen) Chromatic (https://www.chromatic.com/) Storybook (https://storybook.js.org/) Meteor (https://www.meteor.com/) “Dockerize your Rails app” by Nate Hopkins (https://gist.github.com/hopsoft/c27da1a9fda405169994a004957597b4) Nate Hopkins Twitter (https://twitter.com/hopsoft) Wormhole (https://wormhole.app/) Brian T. Ford (https://twitter.com/briantford) State of JS (https://stateofjs.com/) Sacha Greif (https://sachagreif.com/) Wordpress (https://wordpress.com/create/?utm_source=google&utm_campaign=google_wpcom_search_brand_desktop_us_en&utm_medium=paid_search&keyword=wordpress&creative=476205831529&campaignid=998785131&adgroupid=53026924047&matchtype=e&device=c&network=g&targetid=aud-1244516595356:kwd-295456403946&gclsrc=aw.ds&gclid=Cj0KCQjwkZiFBhD9ARIsAGxFX8AtjkQqNxxpBf4uxWORYLafGtBppOm4Ko5Ga4haPy076aHpBmA6_NIaAhbYEALw_wcB) Mock Service Worker (https://mswjs.io/) Mirage JS (https://miragejs.com/) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Dominic Nguyen.

Episode 83: Dominic Nguyen on Chromatic, Storybook.js, and building self-sustaining OSS projects

Guest Steve Helvie Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Our guest today is exceptional in many ways, so you don’t want to miss this episode! On this episode, we have Steve Helvie, VP of Channel Development for the Open Compute Project (OCP). He helps to educate organizations on the benefits of open hardware designs and the value of “community-driven” engineering for the data center. Today, Steve tells us how the Open Compute Project started, how he got involved, how it generates revenue, what open hardware is, and the challenges he sees with open hardware. We also learn why Europe is always at the forefront of regulations when it comes to sustainability and designs. Download this episode now to find out much more! [00:00:39] Eric, Richard, and Justin tell us about their backgrounds since Steve was curious. [00:03:26] Steve tells us his background, what he does at Open Compute Project, and explains more about open hardware. [00:06:41] Steve mentions there are 200 projects in the Open Compute Project and Richard wonders what the minimum entry is, what you need to be one of these projects, and how much money is needed to think about having open hardware in his company. [00:12:04] Justin asks for Steve’s insight on a supply chain attack when it comes to hardware and how does the OCP fix it. [00:14:56] Steve talks about sustainability with “save the earth and save money,” and how Europe is always at the forefront of regulations when it comes to sustainability and designs. [00:17:00] Steve had mentioned that he’s invested in helping people have hardware and run hardware better for their own companies, and Richard sees this to be at ends with Cloud Native, so he asks Steve to talk about how he sees that conflict. [00:18:13] Richard wonders if Steve is helping to improve Uber’s private cloud and partially the public cloud by allowing them to do work with OCP and with other managers, how has that not led towards a non-sustainable earth and how does he reckon with that conflict. [00:20:51] In talking about refreshing hardware, Justin tells us about a book he read called _Flash Boys. _He also tells us about how he talked to an ex-Googler when GCP was getting built, who told him that Google was importing thirty tons of hard drives every single day and asks Steve if this is a normal thing. [00:22:43] Richard wonders if a large amount of Steve’s clients are Crypto. [00:23:37] Eric brings up Steve’s background and wonders if he had an a-ha moment or was there a point in time where he thought this is bigger than just hardware. [00:26:00] Steve tells us besides memberships, how the OCP generates revenue. He talks about having to switch to virtual summits during COVID. The guys all chat about if they’ve seen memberships and activities increasing in the last year since going virtual. Steve shares a staggering number of virtual attendees at his recent event. [00:30:37] Richard wonders what challenges Steve sees for the entire field of open hardware. Steve mentions a great course he took on Open Source Technology Management that’s worth checking out provided by Brandeis University. [00:35:29] Find out where you can follow Steve online. Quotes [00:08:02] “There is such a huge fear that someone’s going to take my designs and copy them.” [00:08:28] “So, what big companies like, in any company really, is they like a dual sourcing strategy.” [00:08:40] “They like that one skew, give me consistency across the board that I can deploy in Asia, Europe, or America, but give me multiple suppliers that mitigates my supply chain risk.” [00:10:48] “The types of companies that are looking at Open Compute are companies that have an open source mindset, they have a Cloud Native mindset where software is going to define everything.” [00:11:26] “And that’s the point of when that happens in industries you start to see this customer poll. It’s happening now in Telcos. Fintech gets it, gaming gets it, traditional banking, traditional healthcare, insurance companies do not get it yet, but they will. It’s going to come.” [00:14:32] “So, there’s this second user economy or what we call circular economy that’s happening now within what Google, Microsoft, Facebook, all the Hyperscalers now have a second use plan because they need to for sustainability.” [00:15:03] “What’s happening in Europe is you have Europe is always at the forefront of regulations when it comes to sustainability and designs.” [00:15:21] “There are heat reuse out of data center initiatives. For example, the Netherlands, you cannot build a new data center in the Netherlands unless you have a heat reuse.” [00:19:11] “So, the only part that I can see that’s redeeming about this fact is that OCP designs use a lot less energy between 30-50% less energy than a normal standard server.” [00:19:53] “We have large enterprises that are taking the hardware coming out of these Hyperscale Data Centers that oftentimes is less than three years old.” [00:20:02] “A lot of these Hyperscalers don’t even keep their hardware for more than three years and they’re out if it. That still has a lot of life for if I’m a small and medium sized business in anywhere else in the world, they can still use that hardware for five years.” [00:34:28] “Open software, you can crank through it, iterations, sprints. Open hardware, it’s very dependent on chip cycles, product cycles, and yeah, it’s a lot of hurry up and wait in hardware.” Spotlight [00:36:32] Eric’s spotlight is Gitpod. [00:38:30] Justin’s spotlights are Episodes 1-16 of Sustain the podcast are back home and Orbit. [00:38:59] Richard’s spotlight is Strange Parts. [00:39:21] Steve’s spotlight is Jason Mauck and his podcast called Mauck Me. Links Steve Helvie Twitter (https://twitter.com/stevehelvie) Steve Helvie Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-helvie-37935712) Steve@opencompute.org (mailto:steve@opencompute.org) Open Compute Project (https://www.opencompute.org/) Open Compute Project Membership Tiers (https://www.opencompute.org/membership) Open Compute Project Open System Firmware (https://www.opencompute.org/projects/open-system-firmware) Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis (https://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Wall-Street-Revolt/dp/0393351599) Committing To Cloud Native podcast-Google Cloud, Hay-doop, Mars Rover, AWS and more with Miles Ward of SADA-Episode 3 (https://podcast.curiefense.io/3) Brandeis University-Certificate in Open Source Technology Management micro courses (https://www.brandeis.edu/gps/professional-development/micro-courses/ostm/index.html) Sustain podcast-What OpenUK Does with Amanda Brock and Andrew Katz-Episode 49 (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/49) Gitpod (https://www.gitpod.io/) Sustain podcast-Episodes 1-5 (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/page/7) Sustain podcast-Episodes 6-16 (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/page/6) Orbit (https://orbit.love/) Strange Parts (https://strangeparts.com/) Jason Mauck Twitter (https://twitter.com/jasonmauck1?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) Mauck Me podcast (https://mauckme.podbean.com/) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Steve Helvie.

Episode 82: Steve Helvie and the Open Compute Project

Guest Mae Beale Panelists Eric Berry | Richard Littauer Show Notes TRIGGER WARNING: There is a mention of blood in this episode. Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Being surrounded by beautiful mountains is wonderful, but even more wonderful is our guest today, Mae Beale, who is the Engineering Manager for True Link Financial, Vision and Operations Strategist for Title Track Michigan, and the Founder and CEO of Beale Street Software. Today, you will find out about Mae’s involvement and the many hats that she wears working for True Link Financial, Title Track Michigan, and Ruby for Good. Also, we learn about some of the projects she’s built and others she’s involved in, which are Mutual Aid, Voices of Consent, and Terrastories. Mae shares some awesome stories and advice, so go ahead and download this episode now to hear much more! [00:01:20] Mae tells us about True Link Financial and Title Track Michigan. [00:04:47] Eric wonders if acknowledging or giving thanks for the land that I’m on is really common where Mae lives, and she explains the culture behind it. [00:07:21] Mae shares her thoughts with us on the topic of how people talk about laziness a lot in our industry. [00:11:38] We learn about the work that Mae is doing with Ruby for Good. [00:13:41] Mae tells us what kind of projects she has built through Ruby for Good, such as diaper and essential needs for diaper banks and an animal shelter. [00:15:18] Eric asks Mae to talk about if you want to get involved, what type of commitment is required, if it’s open for volunteers and to whatever extent they can contribute, the typical contributor that she sees in this program, and if you have to be a Rubyist to do this. [00:17:04] Richard brings up problems with open source such as how to choose the right project, how to fund this work long-term, how to avoid vendor lock-in for the non-profits and now have to use this code that was made for them. Mae shares her thoughts and also mentions a great project called the Terrastories Project. [00:20:32] Mae tells us her views on how to stop young person burnout. [00:22:26] We learn about two more projects Mae is involved in, Voices of consent and Mutual Aid. [00:27:22] Mae talks about how doing a better job of verbalizing could help with interpreting what’s happening, and she tells us a great analogy. [00:29:30] Mae tells us about Mutual Aid and how you can get involved. [00:31:38] Find out where you can follow Mae and see her work on the internet. Quotes [00:02:56] “And rights of the water itself. So, there’s a lot of different efforts similar to how companies became people. There is precedent for natural spaces to becoming people are entities that have their own rights. So, the protection is on behalf of the lake itself.” [00:06:34] “That’s generally my MO is I have a high sensitivity to the way in which the language that we use and the things that we focus our attention on shape who we are and how we are to each other.” [00:07:05] “But, acknowledging what is happening that makes one uncomfortable is something I try to be willing to share and willing to receive.” [00:08:34] “But, calling it lazy it is in my opinion, problematic and communicates things to other people, amongst ourselves and to other people, that don’t disclose our awareness of our privilege.” [00:10:00] "But, sometimes, part of language adjustments over time that we’re always trying to do is the difference between intent and impact.” [00:15:52] “So, there really is no average contributor we’ve had in the repos I’ve been involved in.” [00:21:39] “There’s people who like to be in community and so there’s a lot we get out of it that isn’t just coding.” [00:26:29] “And we operate as if relationships are Boolean states, and if we can shift that to being able to engage and build trust and build understanding then we can get somewhere.” [00:30:12] “Mutual Aid also includes a political arm of taking a political stance in that it’s not charity. There’s a phrase, “Solidarity - not charity.” Spotlight [00:33:11] Eric’s spotlight is Bridgetown. [00:34:14] Richard’s spotlight is EMA: The Erasmus Mundus Students and Alumni Association. [00:35:00] Mae’s spotlight is Ruby for Good. Links Mae Beale Twitter (https://twitter.com/mae701?lang=en) Mae Beale GitHub (https://github.com/maebeale) True Link Financial (https://www.truelinkfinancial.com/) Ruby for Good (https://rubyforgood.org/) Title Track Michigan (https://titletrackmichigan.org/story/) Title Track Michigan-Understanding Racial Justice course (https://titletrackmichigan.org/understandingracialjustice/) A guide to indigenous land acknowledgement (https://nativegov.org/a-guide-to-indigenous-land-acknowledgment/) Ruby for Good Diaperbase-GitHub (https://github.com/rubyforgood/diaper) Terrastories (https://terrastories.io/) Ruby for Good Terrastories-GitHub (https://github.com/rubyforgood/terrastories) Voices of Consent (https://github.com/rubyforgood/voices-of-consent) Ruby for Good Voices of Consent-GitHub (https://github.com/rubyforgood/voices-of-consent) Ruby for Good-Mutual Aid (https://github.com/rubyforgood/mutual-aid) Bridgetown (https://www.bridgetownrb.com/) EMA: The Erasmus Mundus Students and Alumni Association (https://www.em-a.eu/) Ruby for Good-GitHub (https://github.com/rubyforgood) WeCamp (http://we-camp.us/#home) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Mae Beale.

Episode 81: Mae Beale and Using Open Source for Good

Guest Emma Irwin Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! We are so excited to have on this episode as our guest, Emma Irwin. She is a Senior Project Manager in the Open Source Program Office at Microsoft. Today, we learn what Emma does at Microsoft OSPO, how she runs the FOSS Fund Program inside Microsoft, and she tells us about an article she wrote on Mozilla last year about safety. We also dive into the recent news of Richard Stallman returning to the FSF board, and what Emma is excited about happening soon with work she’s trying to do to help with diversity, equity, and inclusion. Download this episode to find out much more! [00:01:32] Emma fills us in on what she does at Microsoft OSPO. [00:02:47] Richard wonders how Emma manages to make it not seem extractive to do open source and how she makes it inviting for people to come and volunteer their time to work on projects which are housed by Microsoft or Microsoft is involved in. [00:05:05] Emma tells us how she runs the FOSS Fund Program inside of Microsoft and the three goals of the FOSS Fund. She also tells us how many people are working in it and if it’s involved with other departments or business units, or if it’s completely separate. [00:09:26] Emma gives us her opinion of how you can best build communities that enable people to thrive in an open source environment. [00:11:36] Emma elaborates on the safety issue she brought up and tells us about an article she wrote on Mozilla last year. [00:13:32] We learn how many incidents Mozilla experienced a year. [00:14:32] Justin wonders of Emma sees any projects that get more hate than others. [00:15:56] Richard brings up the recent news of Richard Stallman returning to the Free Software Foundation after resigning in 2019, and Emma shares her thoughts about it. [00:19:57 ] Emma tells us what she’s most excited about in the next six months with work she’s trying to do to help DEI work. [00:21:56] Find out what Emma shares that she’s been learning recently as part of the FOSS Fund, which is a positive thing from Microsoft. [00:24:57] Find out where you can follow Emma on the internet. Quotes [00:01:47] “And then the place that we’re kind of at Microsoft is thinking about the culture that we’re building around open source as well, you know it’s the mechanics and the compliance piece, but it’s also the human piece.” [00:03:27] “But I really believe that, and my experience at Mozilla where I worked before this, was like bringing people together around specific topics, allowing people to learn a thing, but also collaborate and chat, come together around shared pain points or opportunities.” [00:07:48] “A good OSPO doesn’t live in any part of the organization, it traverses and works with organizations and teams across it.” [00:09:41] “I think, and I teach that you really have to be mindful of who it is that you want to engage as part of your open source project.” [00:11:53] “So that work was done kind of back in the topic are of recognizing that there is not a fluid line in open source between employee or paid staff and contributors.” [00:12:51] “So that blog post and work was all about creating an end to end program to ensure that both staff and volunteers felt safe, but also understood their role.” [00:14:08] “I’ll actually say that a lot of people mean well, a lot of people want, but they’re often unprepared.” [00:14:42] “I think some of the well-organized projects, the .net project at Microsoft. The group that runs that is extremely good at running community.” [00:17:26] “And that’s why open source is still less diverse than tech overall and Stahllman is like dinosaur in my opinion of that era.” [00:24:08] “Yeah, and there’s a risk working group with CHAOSS, that’s what they call the RISK WG, which is basically like, how do we think about our dependencies as a problem, how do we solve this?” Spotlight [00:26:21] Justin’s spotlight is Fiverr. [00:26:49] Eric’s spotlight is Gitpod. [00:27:25] Richard’s spotlight is Gist. [00:27:55] Emma’s spotlight is the Drupal Project. Links Emma Irwin Twitter (https://twitter.com/sunnydeveloper?lang=en) Emma Irwin Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmamirwin/) Emma Irwin Medium (https://medium.com/@sunnydeveloper) Microsoft Open Source (https://opensource.microsoft.com/) Microsoft’s Free and Open Source Software Fund (FOSS Fund)-GitHub (https://github.com/microsoft-sponsorships/microsoft-foss-fund) Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/participation/) “Weaving Safety into the Fabric of Open Source Collaboration” By Emma Irwin (https://blog.mozilla.org/community/2020/09/10/weaving-safety-into-the-fabric-of-open-source/) Contributor Covenant (https://www.contributor-covenant.org/) “Richard M. Stallman returns to the Free Software Foundation Board of Directors,” article on ZDNet (https://www.zdnet.com/article/richard-m-stallman-returns-to-the-free-software-foundation-board-of-directors/) RMS Open Letter-GitHub (https://github.com/rms-open-letter/rms-open-letter.github.io) CHAOSS Diversity and Inclusion Working Group-GitHub (https://github.com/chaoss/wg-diversity-inclusion) Fiverr Business (https://www.fiverr.com/business) Gitpod (https://www.gitpod.io/) Gist (https://gist.github.com/discover) Drupal Project (https://www.drupal.org/project/project) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Emma Irwin.

Episode 80: Emma Irwin and the FOSS Fund Program

Guest Leah Silen Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Alyssa Wright | Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! Today, our special guest is Leah Silen, who is the Executive Director of NumFOCUS. She has been the primary driver behind the organization and execution of its programs including fiscal sponsorship, the PyData event series, and DEI initiatives. We learn what NumFOCUS does, how it works in terms of scientific research, who provides the funding, and the diversity, equity, and inclusion support that NumFOCUS provides projects. Leah talks about the importance of Grant Management and Community Management needed to help projects in the future, and a “Sustain Exclusive” announcement is made by Leah on something NumFOCUS is in the early stages of building. Go ahead and download this episode now to find out what it is! [00:01:16] Leah explains what NumFOCUS does, how it works, and what scientific open source means. [00:03:22] Since NASA researchers use NumFOCUS for sponsored projects, Justin asks if there are any sponsored projects on Mars right now. [00:05:18] Leah tells us about NumFOCUS being a project foundational to scientific research. [00:05:54] We learn about Leah’s art background and becoming one of the founding members of NumFOCUS. [00:07:21] There are maintainers of forty-two projects and Leah explains who the typical maintainer is of the NumFOCUS ecosystem. [00:08:14] Find out what a typical week looks like for Leah at NumFOCUS. [00:10:37] Richard is curious how Leah sees the future of this sort of organization as we’re seeing more of them, and if she’s just going to keep growing until there’s hundreds of projects under her or will there be more or less. [00:13:12] We learn who provides funding at NumFOCUS since they have nine staff members. Justin wonders how NumFOCUS is diversifying their income and Leah makes an announcement about something NumFOCUS is building and it’s a “Sustain Exclusive!” [00:16:11] Justin asks if NumFOCUS ever joins forces with the PSF. [00:16:55] Leah mentioned the diversity, equity, and inclusion support that NumFOCUS provides projects, she describes how it’s important for project sustainability, and the conversations there have been. [00:19:59] Richard wonders about the process of taking on a new project. [00:23:25] Leah tells us how they deal with the maintenance of scientific projects. [00:25:24] We learn the moon-shot idea of NumFOCUS, besides just making sure all these projects run smoothly, and what the goal is. [00:26:42] Leah tells us what she’s most excited about in terms of providing better stuff to projects in the near future. [00:29:20] Community Manager and Developer Advocate is discussed. [00:31:20] Find out where you can follow Leah and NumFOCUS on the internet. Quotes [00:04:00] “Many of the leaders in that project work for a division of NASA that have been directly involved in Mars Roemer images and things like that, as well as Astro Pi, another one of the projects that’s widely used by the astronomy community.” [00:05:18] “We many times speak of NumFOCUS projects as being very foundational to scientific research.” [00:10:59] “We have to make sure that as the number of projects that we’re sponsoring are affiliated with NumFOCUS grows, that the organization is able to scale with that.” [00:12:20] “And there’s so many areas that we don’t address that we could address for our projects, you know just handling the legal aspect, grant management, helping them with we have a contributor diversification and research program.” [00:12:35] “So working on DEI initiatives that’s woven through everything we do and helping our projects with that.” [00:23:58] “But that’s one reason we really want to work and focus on diversifying the contributor base. Also, with contributors who are across different domains and in different areas.” [00:24:08] “So, if a project comes and applies to NumFOCUS and everyone is at one university, we don’t consider that open, so there has to be contributors spread out no more than two employed, whether that’s a university or whether that’s a for-profit entity.” [00:26:50] “So, I think projects, a lot of the things that NumFOCUS does can be related to Community Management but definitely when you’re talking about more of an internal project community.” [00:27:20] “I think that is probably one of the things that is most needed across projects is every project having a Community Manager to really look at their internal communities as well as interactions with their user base.” Spotlight [00:32:05] Alyssa’s spotlight is Community Managers. [00:32:44] Eric’s spotlight is Doom Emacs. [00:33:21] Justin’s spotlight is Lipgloss by Charm. [00:33:42] Richard’s spotlight is IDLE. [00:34:09] Leah’s spotlight is Sustain Diversity Working Group. Links NumFOCUS (https://numfocus.org/) NumFOCUS Twitter (https://twitter.com/NumFOCUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) info@numfocus.org (mailto:info@numfocus.org) leah@numfocus.org (mailto:leah@numfocus.org) “5 qualities of outstanding open source community managers” by Jason Blais (https://opensource.com/article/20/9/open-source-community-managers) Doom Emacs-GitHub (https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs) Lipgloss-Charm (https://github.com/charmbracelet) Charm Twitter (https://twitter.com/charmcli?lang=en) IDLE (https://docs.python.org/3/library/idle.html) Sustain Working Groups (https://sustainoss.org/working-groups/) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Leah Silen.

Episode 79: Leah Silen on how NumFocus helps makes scientific code more sustainable

Guest Stormy Peters Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! Our amazing guest today is Stormy Peters, Director of the Open Source Programs Office at Microsoft and long-time advocate of free and open source software. Stormy tells us how she started her journey into open source and how she got involved with the OSPO at Microsoft. We find out about the impact of Duane O’Brien’s FOSS Fund, what Stormy is doing at Microsoft to help other nonfinancial ways of supporting communities and building great open source ecosystems of communities, and about how they support Outreachy. Also, Stormy fills us in on where she thinks open source is going in the future, her team’s goals, and their focus on cultural change. Download this episode now to find out much more! [00:01:16] We find out how Stormy got into open source. [00:02:40] Stormy tells us how she got involved with the Open Source Program Office at Microsoft, if she ever found herself defending open source more so than today, and if she ever thought Microsoft would be in a position they are now of how much they’ve given back to open source. [00:04:14] Richard is curious how Stormy feels about sustain, how the process has been like for her, how has it been to see the change from just being a licensing issue to being a culture, and if she thinks most people are paid for open source. [00:08:45] Eric wonders what the overall mentality was for Stormy when she got to Microsoft regarding supporting open source and if it’s changed since she’s been there. [00:12:17] Eric asks Stormy if in five years our whole development environment is on Microsoft platform if we’re going to get locked in and is that going to cause the same type of negative frustration as he is with Apple right now. [00:13:40] Richard wonders if tools are owned by Microsoft how will that affect his development and how will affect the open source ecosystem if very large corporations become the main stakeholders in open source and direct the projects in their own ways, and Stormy replies and also explains how the people get paid. [00:16:10] Justin wonders how much impact Duane O’Brien’s program FOSS Fund has made in the way they operate and the rest of the bigger OSPO’s out there. We also learn what she’s doing at Microsoft to help other nonfinancial ways of supporting communities and building great open source ecosystems of communities. [00:18:53] Stormy fills us in on who makes up their team of employees at OSPO Microsoft and where you can go to see what they are doing. [00:20:12] Richard is curious where Stormy sees the role for OSPO’s for universities, governments, cities, and anything that’s not a large corporation. She also tells us about how they support Outreachy. [00:23:08] We learn from Stormy where she thinks open source is going in the future and why she thinks a Copyleft is dropped out of the parlance. [00:25:49] Stormy tells us how she sees Ethical Source progressing and if she sees it being a major player with people or as being a movement that will cause the same tensions that GPL used to cause. [00:27:24] Richard wonders if Microsoft has a mapping of what resources they have used of what code is in their system, what open source packages they depend on, and how they are actively working towards giving back to them as a whole down the stack. [00:29:12] Eric asks Stormy what is on the forefront of her team’s mind right now, and she fills us in on her team’s goals. [00:29:56] Find out where you can follow Stormy on the internet. Quotes [00:01:53] “And this was just about the time that Linux was getting popular and they had not one, but two desktops that were popular, GNOME and KDE, and I thought surely we can collaborate on this like they do.” [00:03:42] “I’d like to joke now that I think Microsoft’s first contribution to open source was being the common enemy.” [00:04:54] “I think it’s still evolving, and I think it always will evolve and so I think it’s important that all of us continue to think about it and figure out what the new models look like.” [00:05:32] “I think a much larger majority than before get paid to work on open source.” [00:06:33] “So, I know when I was at Mozilla we consciously thought about this with Firefox OS, having people full-time on it and even more than full-time, as they worked extra hours to try to get out the door, could you still welcome people that only had two or three hours a week to work on it.” [00:08:56] “So to go back to the question about my career that it looked like it changed with this last move, I don’t think it did. To me, this was the next step in the path.” [00:09:27] “Microsoft, I think, is ideally positioned to make the next big change in open source software.” [00:12:33] “So it’s my job, extended team’s job, to make sure that Microsoft does open source well, and part of us being successful in open source is making sure we have active communities around our projects that are broader than us so that the projects are broader than us that we’re not creating that lock-in.” [00:14:51] “Microsoft uses a program called FOSS Fund that Duane O’Brien at INDEED started, where we let employees pick a project every month to give them $10,000, and the idea’s that’s not going to be enough money to support them forever but we just want to recognize some of the projects that we’re using that aren’t getting a lot of funding in other ways.” [00:15:54] “Those companies started doing contract work for an open source software project and now they work on open source software projects and other projects in general.” [00:16:34] “I think Duane’s a good thinker, like when COVID started, he started an effort to raise money for the events that were impacted, so I hope that’s empowering to a lot of people that one person can have a good idea that is a need and get people involved.” [00:17:44] “So, we’re unofficially giving Azure Credits to a number of open source software projects. I’m trying to launch an official program by which people can apply to get Azure Credits whether it’s just do their builds or whether it’s to make sure that stuff runs on Azure.” [00:18:05] “We have a lot of Microsoft employees who work on projects on GitHub. I think it’s definitely over 30,000 Microsoft employees have linked their Microsoft identity to their GitHub identity.” [00:23:13] “I think if you’d asked me that like twenty years ago, I would not have realized that Copyleft would drop out of importance as much as it has.” [00:23:36] “I don’t know if I would make an accurate prediction, but I hope it’s to continue to make, not only to make more software available to more people, but to make it more possible for people that aren’t in tech careers to write code and make computers do what they need them to do.” [00:24:20] “I think it’s cause the fear has dropped out. In the beginning it was fear that I was going to have to open source something I didn’t want to and fear that somebody was going to take my stuff and take advantage of my stuff.” [00:29:17] “Our goal is to make sure that Microsoft business units can use open source software in their strategy, that they can consume open source, that they can open source things, and that they have all the tools and knowledge they need to do that.” Spotlight [00:30:41] Eric’s spotlight is Kombucha (KeVita). [00:31:29] Justin’s spotlight is Jekyll Admin. [00:32:04] Richard’s spotlight is Carl Boettiger. [00:33:04] Stormy’s spotlight is Educational Software Projects like Khan Academy and Internet-in-a-Box. Links Stormy Peters Twitter (https://twitter.com/storming) Stormy Peters Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/stormy/) Microsoft Open Source (https://opensource.microsoft.com/) Microsoft Open Source Blog (https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/opensource/) FOSS Contributor Fund- Duane O’Brien blog post (https://engineering.indeedblog.com/blog/2019/07/foss-fund-six-months-in/) What is copyleft? By Ben Cotton (https://opensource.com/resources/what-is-copyleft) Outreachy (https://www.outreachy.org/) KeVita Kombucha (https://www.kevita.com/) Open Collective (https://opencollective.com/) Carl Boettiger (https://ourenvironment.berkeley.edu/people/carl-boettiger) Internet-in-a-Box (http://internet-in-a-box.org/) Khan Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org/) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Stormy Peters.

Episode 78: Stormy Peters: Sustaining FLOSS at Microsoft's Open Source Programs Office

Guest Jordan Harband Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Alyssa Wright | Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! We are all very excited to have as our guest today, Jordan Harband, referred to as “Mr. Perfect” by the panelists! He is a longtime open source enthusiast, maintainer, coder, works at Coinbase, a TC39 Delegate, and heavily involved with Node for years. Today, Jordan gives us his perspective of being a maintainer of repositories and code. We find out how he is so successful at being a maintainer of so many open source projects, how he deals with ethics, how to ethically license your stuff, and how he handles hundreds of repos which he helps maintain. Jordan tells us what he’s doing to help other people out and shares some tips to a path if you’re interested in becoming more experienced. Download this episode now to find out much more and to get some fresh inspiration! [00:01:39] Jordan tells us how he got started with Node. [00:03:42] Justin wonders how Jordan maintains all of his notifications that he has and how does he deal with it. Also, he tells us if sponsorship plays a part of him having that passion and not getting overwhelmed which is why he’s so successful. [00:09:23] Jordan explains how he is nowhere close enough in terms of revenue stream from sponsorships to be able to consider quitting a job and working full-time on open source. [00:11:34] Richard brings up a book called, Drive by Daniel Pink, and wonders how Jordan chooses which open source projects to invest in and how does he feel like they’re actually giving him value because you’re making something that’s meaningful to you. [00:14:06] Justin asks Jordan if IE6 will ever die. [00:16:32] Jordan explains how to deal with ethics and open source, and how to ethically license your stuff. Richard wonders what he thinks the ethical obligations are of the maintainer who has a package. [00:20:29] Richard wonders since Jordan has hundreds of repos which he helps maintain, and how he deals with deciding to take on more work. [00:21:35] We find out what Jordan’s involvement is with the Airbnb JavaScript Style Guide. [00:24:08] Jordan shares advice to somebody who is just starting out in open source looking to build in a sustainable way for themselves and for the code they’re making. [00:27:05] Eric asks Jordan if he ever considered setting up a counselling program for open source maintainers since he seems to have it all figured out. Also, Jordan shares when he had a challenging moment in his life. [00:32:33] Richard wonders if Jordan is doing anything to systematically change open source to make sure that other people also have the opportunities to work on open source if they want to, he shares what he is doing, and mentions one of the programs he’s involved with called Major League Hacking. [00:36:37] Find out where you can follow Jordan along with his “perfectness.” Quotes [00:04:05] “I try to treat those notifications in an asynchronous manner so that I’m not, like I don’t have any push notifications set up for those things, so it’s not bothering me when I’m doing something else, whether that’s doing coding or other work, or whether that’s spending time with family or friends.” [00:06:14] “None of the parts of my career have been specifically for my open source projects.” [00:07:01] “The rise of sponsorship models, Tidelift, Open Collective, GitHub sponsors, etc.., what that does to me is it’s a demonstration of interest and appreciation in a way that is more concrete than someone clicking a GitHub emoji, giving me kinda invisible internet points. It’s something concrete.” [00:08:02] “The ability of someone to contribute even a dollar, five dollars a month is a concrete gesture that for the majority of people is actually really significant.” [00:08:12] “There’s that whole concept of how, when a very wealthy person will donate a large amount of money to a charitable cause and then a number of people point out that in terms of the percentage of their net worth, it’s actually like you giving three dollars, and it’s still meaningful because it’s three hundred million dollars, but it’s much more significant I think when an individual gives sixty dollars a year, which is like my lowest tier on GitHub sponsors is five dollars, so if somebody is paying sixty dollars a year for most people that’s something, that’s significant.” [00:09:53] “It’s not life changing, as I said, in the sense of paying my bills or not, but it would be life changing in a sense that I would be able to consider, well, I love my job, but do I love my job more than I would love working full-time on open source.” [00:13:46] “So there is a trade-off there, but the upside is that ninety-eight of those packages need three minutes of maintenance every five years.” [00:14:30] “But I think there are a lot of engineers that are frustrated supporting old environments, old Node versions, or old browsers, and it sort of violates a sense of aesthetics to have to deal with that messiness.” [00:14:59] “And whenever people talk about dropping browser support they talk about percentages, but .01% of internet users is like the population of this country or something like that, I don’t know, I haven’t done the math. I’m probably off by a factor of ten or a hundred or something, but it’s still a significant number of human beings.” [00:24:27] “One is remember that code is not the only important thing. Even just updating docs and READMEs and tutorials and things on projects is immensely valuable, and you don’t have to have any expertise in programming, necessarily, to be able to do that. So, there’s lots of ways you can get familiar with a project without touching any code at all.” [00:26:50] “And so, in the same way I think that for oneself, knowing your own behavior patterns and what is a good fit for you and what works well for your life and your mental health and so on, is probably the most effective tool to making sure that happens.” Spotlight [00:37:23] Eric’s spotlight is a GitHub project called the README project. [00:37:59] Justin’ spotlight is a funny woman on Twitter called Alexis Gay, who does hilarious Bay area tweets. [00:38:37] Alyssa’s spotlights are acknowledging one year of COVID lockdown, LISTSERV, and watching Coming 2 America. [00:39:20] Richard’s spotlight is a book by Daniel Pink called Drive. [00:39:38] Jordan’s spotlight is Tidelift. Links Jordan Harband Twitter (https://twitter.com/ljharb?lang=en) Jordan Harband Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ljharb/) Jordan Harband GitHub (https://github.com/ljharb) Coinbase (https://www.coinbase.com/) Tidelift- How Jordan Harband maintains hundreds of npm packages (https://blog.tidelift.com/how-jordan-harband-maintains-hundreds-of-npm-packages) globalThis-ECMAScript Proposal-GitHib (https://github.com/tc39/proposal-global) MLH-Major League Hacking (https://mlh.io/) Airbnb JavaScript Style Guide (https://github.com/airbnb/javascript) The ReadME Project-Maintaining kindness and commits by Jordan Harband (https://github.com/readme/jordan-harband) Alexis Gay-Twitter (video) (https://twitter.com/yayalexisgay/status/1369346460911734784) LISTSERV (http://www.lsoft.com/products/listserv.asp) Coming 2 America (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6802400/) [Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink](https://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates/dp/1594484805/ref=sr14?dchild=1&keywords=daniel+pink&qid=1615855737&sr=8-4) Tidelift (https://tidelift.com/) Sustain (https://sustainoss.org/) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Jordan Harband.

Episode 77: Jordan Harband: Being a Sustainable Maintainer of Hundreds of Projects

Guest Tobie Langel Panelists Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! On today’s episode, we have an amazing guest back for a second time, Tobie Langel, who is an open source strategy consultant and Founder of UnlockOpen. He’s a really great resource for learning about the ins and outs of how open source works, with his common-sense approach to dealing with common issues that we have with open source licenses. One of the reasons he is here is to talk about a wonderful Tweet he sent out about “this” graph of what is and what is not open source. Download this episode now to learn much more as Tobie goes in depth about each quadrant of the graph. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EsNzVN4W4Ag4_uN?format=jpg&name=large [00:02:02] Tobie explains what he meant by “this” that he refers to in the Tweet. [00:04:08] Tobie talks more about licenses and compliance in using open source in corporations. [00:07:06] Richard brings up Tobie’s Tweet about the grid with a Y and X axis and he describes what’s in each quadrant. [00:14:04] We learn what’s in the bottom right quadrant of the graph. [00:17:29] Richard shares his ideas on the early days of open source and Tobie expands on them. [00:24:02] Tobie talks about the role of OSI and how he imagines OSI looking at this going forward. [00:30:16] Richard explains what he thinks about when he thinks of OSI and how the graph is a really useful way of talking with people to figure out where they are. [00:32:24] Find out where you can follow Tobie on the internet. Quotes [00:04:50] “The other thing that corporations really care about are security of the software and the other aspect is community health. Why? And what’s interesting, that security itself has to do really closely to community health.” [00:19:06] “We say that copy left is a hack on copyright, but to some degree open source is a hack on copyright too. It’s a hack on being able to cross sort of corporate borders.” Spotlight [00:33:50] Richard’s spotlights are ICQ, AIM, IRC, and AOL. [00:34:37] Tobie’s spotlight is a book he read called, How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens. Links Tobie Langel Twitter (https://twitter.com/tobie?lang=en) Tobie Langel Linkedin (https://ch.linkedin.com/in/tobielangel) Tobie Langel Graph (https://twitter.com/tobie/status/1352051125353127936) UnlockOpen (https://unlockopen.com/) Sustain Discourse (https://discourse.sustainoss.org/) OSI (https://opensource.org/) ICQ New (https://www.icq.com/) AIM (Software) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_(software)) IRC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat) AOL (https://www.aol.com/) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Tobie Langel.

Episode 76: Tobie Langel on what people mean when they say "Open Source"

Guest Deb Nicholson Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Alyssa Wright | Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! Today, we are incredibly privileged to have as our guest, Deb Nicholson, who is Interim General Manager and Interim Executive Director at the Open Source Initiative, as well as a founding organizer of the Seattle GNU/Linux Conference (SeaGL). Deb tells us how she founded SeaGL and what she did in legislature before open source. We learn about a blog post that Elastic wrote, how Deb feels about it, and how OSI is addressing it. Also, we learn how open source is looked at differently by the community and by lawyers, and a talk Deb did about all the different patent clauses in licenses. Find out what Deb is currently doing as the Interim General Manager at OSI and why being kind is so important to her. As well, if you haven’t seen the Seagulls video on YouTube, you have to watch it! Download this episode now to find out more! [00:02:23] Deb tells us the story of how she founded SeaGL, when the next conference will be, and how many people come to it. [00:05:39] Justin brings up a blog post that Elastic wrote recently and asks Deb what her feelings are about it and wonders how OSI is addressing it. Alyssa wonders if there was any direct conversation with somebody from Elastic. [00:09:20] Deb explains the two groups of people, the community and lawyers, and the differences between what they think open source means. [00:11:20] Eric asks Deb if Elastic deserves all the bad press and negative feelings. Deb also tells us what approach Amazon should have taken. [00:14:22] Alyssa asks Deb to speak more about lawyers sit in the community now and what lawyers and people with legal expertise can do to be a part of open source creation and sustainability. [00:16:40] Deb tells us what she did in legislature before open source. [00:17:40] Alyssa asks Deb how she found clarity around all these licenses, was she ever confused about how to navigate, and if she could help people understand and navigate through them. She mentions she did a talk about all the different patent clauses in licenses. [00:20:52] Deb explains how she ended up as the Interim General Manager at the OSI and what she’s currently doing there. [00:22:14] Find out why being kind so important to Deb. [00:25:13] Deb talks about the process of the Cryptographic Autonomous License. [00:26:54] Richard wonders Deb’s thoughts on setting best practices for open source in general, not just licensing, in particular other countries. [00:28:25] Find out where you can follow Deb on the Internet. Quotes [00:06:23] “Basically, we didn’t really think our business model through. We decided we were going to do one thing and then whoops, because we didn’t think it through, now we have to change.” [00:23:24] “It also means that when you go out and you talk to people about your mission you sound like a person that hasn’t had a conversation with someone about anything other than your work five years, because you kind of haven’t.” [00:24:35] “There might be other decisions I could affect, but like you end up sounding really out of touch and it’s not good for your organization and for promoting your mission if you never have perspective.” [00:24:44] “Unfortunately, Deb, you’re one of our guests, and this happens occasionally with our guests who are so eloquent that I can’t even imagine a question ‘cause you just wrapped everything up in such a nice bow that it’s like yes, that’s exactly the problem, that’s a really good point, I totally agree, we should all have more time off!” [00:25:05] “Take a vacation! Never forget! Even if it’s a staycation, because, you know, pandemic.” [00:25:36] “So we don’t draft licenses, that’s the thing we don’t do, but we do look at new licenses, and last year we approved the Cryptographic Autonomous License.” Spotlight [00:29:33] Alyssa’s spotlight is the launch of FundOSS. [00:30:38] Eric’s spotlight is Exercism. [00:31:43] Justin’s spotlights are “The Onion seagull beach interview,” and Katacoda-Interactive Learning and Training Platform we are using for Curiefense. [00:32:33] Richard’s spotlight is WaffleJS. [00:32:49] Deb’s spotlight is a project called Spritely. Links Deb Nicholson Twitter (https://twitter.com/baconandcoconut?lang=en) SeaGL.org (https://seagl.org/) Opensource.org (https://opensource.org/) Elastic- “Doubling Down on Open.” (https://www.elastic.co/blog/doubling-down-on-open) SEAGULLS (Stop it Now) – A Bad Lip Reading of The Empire Strikes Back-YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9t-slLl30E) LibrePlanet 2021 (https://libreplanet.org/2021/) Open Source Initiative-The SSPL is Not an Open Source License (https://opensource.org/node/1099) Social Linux Expo SCaLE19x-March 2022 (https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/19x) Mill City Triatholon (https://www.trisignup.com/Race/MA/Lowell/MillCityTriathlon) Podcast-SustainOSS-Episode 62 with Richard Fontana (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/62) Podcast-SustainOSS -Episode 23 with Josh Simmons (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/23) Podcast-SustainOSS-Episode 37 with Patrick Masson (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/37) “Don’t Fear the Patent Clause,” with Deb Nicholson-YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqMdaKE8zkI) Cryptographic Autonomy License-GItHub (https://github.com/holochain/cryptographic-autonomy-license) FundOSS.org (https://fundoss.org/) Open Collective/Fund OSS (https://opencollective.com/fundoss) Exercism.io (https://exercism.io/) The Onion-Seagull beach interview (https://www.theonion.com/seagull-with-diarrhea-barely-makes-it-to-crowded-beach-1819574572) Katacoda (https://www.katacoda.com/) Curiefense (https://www.katacoda.com/curiefense) WaffleJS (https://wafflejs.com/) Spritely Project (https://spritelyproject.org/) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Deb Nicholson.

Episode 75: Deb Nicholson on the OSI, the future of open source, and SeaGL

Guest Jory Burson Panelists Justin Dorfman | Alyssa Wright | Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! On this episode our special guest is Jory Burson, who is celebrating her birthday with us today! She is the Community Director of OpenJS Foundation, which is a non-profit foundation dedicated to serving the open source JavaScript ecosystem. Today, we will learn all about what Jory does as the Community Director at OpenJS, what the OpenJS Foundation is, why it was formed, and what it formed to do. Also, Jory tells us why she couldn’t imagine working on the web without MDN (Mozilla Developer Network) Web Docs and what the future holds for MDN. In addition, find out what Jory is most excited about going forward at OpenJS. Download this episode now to find out more! [00:01:20] Jory tells us about the OpenJS Foundation and what she means by “home.” [00:03:01] We learn why OpenJS was formed and what it formed to do. [00:06:25] Jory gives a brief history of how she got involved into these dynasties, also the kind of work she does at the Community Director at OpenJS. [00:10:37] Richard asks Jory what she is doing to make sure the projects have a longer life cycle and the work that they do is sustainable in the long term. [00:13:46] Jory tells us what her role is with MDN and she talks about how they restructured the organization. [00:17:27] Justin asks Jory about the future of MDN. [00:19:37] Jory talks about what they’re doing right now with working with MDN and other people to build out a shared roadmap of priorities to make MDN more useful and better than it is today. [00:22:40] Alyssa asks Jory what the balance is and most powerful partnership between these centralizing forces, these other entities, other projects, other contributors that are more distributed, and how do we relate with one another in powerful ways in order to sustain open source. [00:25:33] Jory tells us what’s she most excited about going forward at OpenJS. [00:27:19] Find out where you can follow Jory on the internet. Quotes [00:08:24] “It just blew my mind that there was that consensus of that population of people that’s that subgroup of people was going to make a choice that affected everybody.” [00:08:42] “And so at that point, from that point on, I just became very obsessed with understanding how those decisions got made and how people work together in a group to reach technical decisions and sort of how to make the human interoperability component of our technical interoperability discussions more effective.” [00:10:52] “So first, let me say out loud, that I am not convinced that the objective of any project should be to stick around as long as possible.” [00:11:49] “I think the objective is to help the project understand what is its scope, what is its end game, and how can it effectively move through different life cycles of startup phase, of growth phases, of the sustained phases, or maintenance phases.” [00:12:55] “But instead, because it was a part of the foundation, we were able to find and support new maintainers who could and did have the energy to drive that forward and how it’s really thriving.” [00:16:42] “And so, what we decided to do was find a solution and that’s what we did, we found I think a polyfill for MDN.” [00:20:24] “It’s interesting and kind of unfortunate that this process of moving the content off of the Wiki to GitHub has been a multi-year sort of project.” [00:24:51] “To understand JavaScript you have to understand the whole universe is maybe too much, so how can we and at what point is it appropriate to break those layers down so people can like not have to recreate the whole world.” Spotlight [00:28:28] Justin’s spotlight is Buffer.com [00:28:47] Alyssa’s spotlights are a shout-out to Jory’s birthday and the move to build things together to support the ecosystems. [00:30:36] Richard’s spotlight is the Boston JavaScript community of 2016, Jim Kang, Aria Stewart, Jory Burson, Boaz Sender, Gregor Martynus, Ashley Williams, and everyone else. [00:31:13] Jory’s spotlight is three people, Chris Mills at MDN, Dom at W3C, and Michal at jQuery. Links Jory Burson's Twitter (https://twitter.com/jorydotcom?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) Jory Burson's Website (https://joryburson.com/) Jory Burson's Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/public-profile/in/joryburson?challengeId=AQGHO9QkESxpZAAAAXfqwLI_nveaF9TBtXkMfUcXfvyIezD-8YEIrlSX8DlBbEzEc0tvXowHUeZSq0mS1HLMn2HX-44DAECFSw&submissionId=9a3e63c0-ca09-6816-b552-387434592917) OpenJS Foundation (https://openjsf.org/) MDN Web Docs (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/) JavaScriptLandia (https://javascript.plainenglish.io/what-is-javascriptlandia-9859367d2ec1) Standards Working Groups (https://www.ogc.org/projects/groups/swg#:~:text=Standards%20Working%20Groups%20(SWG)%20have,to%20an%20existing%20OGC%20standard.) Buffer (https://buffer.com/) W3C (https://www.w3.org/) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Jory Burson.

Episode 74: Jory Burson of OpenJS on building sustainable open source communities

Guest Anna Pojawis and Tyler Maran Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Alyssa Wright | Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! On today’s episode, we have two guests joining us, Tyler Maran and Anna Pojawis, the founders of Rysolv, a crowdfunding platform for open source development. They tell us all about Rysolv and what their motivation was behind starting this company. Find out what types of people respond to bug bounties and what sort of incentives are given to the developers to stick around. We find out if Tyler and Ana are working with companies to help with their program to get more money to build better bounties. Also, find out where to find projects that they are funding, where to find these bounties, and where they want this to go in the future. Download this episode to find out much more! [00:01:08] Tyler and Anna tell us all about Rysolv, how it works, and how they came up with the idea. [00:03:36] Eric wonders what their motivation was behind this company. Tyler shares with us when they began, to where there are now, and the challenges that they face, how they are generating more users, and how they’re advertising and marketing their product. [00:06:40] Tyler talks about what he’s learned around the types of people that respond to bug bounties. [00:08:18] Anna and Tyler explain what they do to incentivize the developers to stick around. [00:10:52] Richard wonders if they are doing anything interesting to look at how to onboard users collectively involving bounties in ways that make sure they stick around, and Justin wonders what their expectations are for the first year. [00:13:27] We learn what qualifies Tyler and Anna and motivates them to be able to run this type of business, and how they are going to solve the financial problems. Tyler makes a reference to a xkcd comic. [00:17:28] Alyssa wonders what an open source community looks like for these projects that are working with bounties and if the people will ever be not paid contributors to the work. Also, she wonders how money is playing within the sustainability of these open source communities. [00:21:08] Richard wonders if Tyler and Anna are working with companies to figure out how to get money shuffled into their program to build better bounties, and how they’re pitching this to people who may have the wallet steep enough to sustain long-term contributions or sustain people to have repeat issues. [00:23:48] In talking about a great moment of getting money into the hands of a developer, Anna tells us about one of the issues that recently got resolved and how they felt after. Tyler and Anna tell us what they each do at Rysolv and Anna tells us what her stack of choice is. [00:26:17] Tyler tells us where you could find projects that he’s funding and where to find these bounties. [00:28:03] Richard asks Tyler to share his hopes and dreams, where he wants this to go in the next six months, and if he wants a unicorn floating in a pool outside of his house.☺ Also, find out where you can get involved and where to follow Tyler, Anna, and Rysolv. Quotes [00:20:13] “We want to build upon the platform so that it can be more like long-term, more sustaining, and have some community building aspect about it.” [00:20:28] “As far as adding financial incentives, we think that open source work should not have to be volunteer work. People should get financial contributions for the amount of work that they put in to sustaining the modern internet.” [00:22:40] “So we’ve got what’s best for the company giving the money, and then you’ve got what’s best for the maintainer.” Spotlight [00:32:52] Justin’s spotlight is Git History Extension for VS Code. [00:33:15] Eric’s spotlight is daily dev, a Daily Chrome Extension. [00:33:57] Alyssa’s spotlight is virtual FOSDEM 2021. [00:34:55] Richard’s spotlight is a tool on npm called License. [00:35:36] Tyler’s spotlight is The Awesome Foundation. [00:36:47] Anna’s spotlight is Discourse. Links Tyler Maran Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-maran) Tyler Maran Website (https://www.tylermaran.com/) Anna Pojawis Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-pojawis/) Rysolv (https://rysolv.com/) Rysolv Twitter (https://twitter.com/rysolv) Rysolv-GitHub (https://github.com/rysolv/rysolv) xkcd-A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math, and Language (https://xkcd.com/2347/) Intex Mystic Unicorn Inflatable Spray Pool-Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Intex-Mystic-Unicorn-Inflatable-Spray/dp/B07367RBR9) Git History (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=donjayamanne.githistory) daily.dev (https://daily.dev/) FOSDEM 2021 (https://fosdem.org/2021/) License-npm (https://www.npmjs.com/package/license) The Awesome Foundation (https://www.awesomefoundation.org/en) Discourse-GitHub (https://github.com/discourse/discourse) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guests: Anna Pojawis and Tyler Maran.

Episode 73: Anna Pojawis and Tyler Maran on using Bounties for Open Source Software

Guest Eriol Fox Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Alyssa Wright | Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! Today, we welcome regular Sustainer Eriol Fox, the Head of Design at Open Food Network, who is working on a fully funded PhD at Newcastle University, and also one of the hosts of Sustained Open Source Design Podcast. What is a design, and how does design fit into open source? Eriol tells us their thoughts on programming and one important thing you need as a user experience designer. Find out some of Eriol’s favorite toolsets, what Open Food Network is, and all the other things Eriol thinks about as a community-first person. Download this episode now to find out much more! [00:01:26] Eriol tells us what they mean by a Design PR. They also explain what they mean by design, since there are a lot of opinions on what design is. [00:04:36] Alyssa asks Eriol what’s the best way to speak about design and what’s the best way to speak about it without offending anyone. [00:09:47] Eriol tells us their thoughts about programming and if it requires an additional level of talent that just might come natural to some people and not to others. [00:14:33] Having been involved for over ten years in seeing the evolution of technologies come about, Eric asks Eriol if they have any preferences, and if they see the direction of technology leading to a way where everything is going to become modularized components. [00:10:06] Justin wonders what Eriol uses day to day for their tool set and if they only use open source tools. They mention one of their favorites being Penpot. [00:24:46] Alyssa wonders how Eriol applies these design guidelines when they think about map design. They mention checking out a fantastic designer, Justin Scherer. [00:27:57] Eriol tells us all about Open Food Network where they currently work. [00:30:20] Eriol tells us what else they like to do besides what they do now. [00:34:36] Find out all the places you can find Eriol online. Quotes [00:03:07] “And I think it does it a disservice to really talk about it as just a UI uplift ‘cause that really plays into this false narrative that design is just about making things look better. But what it is also doing is improving the experience for these users of a backend system, which is deeply complex.” [00:11:00] “And also I remember I was so fond of one of the backend developers I worked with in my first job, but he routinely would ask me what I was coloring in that day, which is tricky to hear as a designer, especially when you want to engage with a wider community of developers and people that do cool stuff with tech.” [00:12:17] “I really do think, and I know that there are some designers especially that would disagree with me, but I do think that one of the things that you really need, one of the only things you really need as a user experience designer is a curiosity for solving human problems and thinking about why people do the things that they do.” [00:13:03] “So you can operationalize a lot of the empathy process as well, so it’s not something that’s innate skill.” [00:29:15] “I’ve had conversations recently, as recent as this week, with my team about how when lots of PR’s get pushed by contributors or paid members of staff, they actually might be solving Tech Debt, but they might actually be creating user experience debt (UX Debt), and this was a very new term for them.” [00:31:02] “To get a bit mushy for a second, it really gave me the same kind of feelings that I had when I was really involved in my local community development project. So that’s why it felt incredibly natural to be part of the open source community and maybe why it feels like I’ve been around for a long time.” [00:34:11] “Maybe one day we’ll see as many projects that are design related in Outreachy and Google Summer of Code, and maybe even at some point we’ll see a whole scheme which is just for designers in open source.” Spotlight [00:35:47] Eric’s spotlights are the Open Source Design website and his 3D printer. [00:37:08] Justin’s spotlight is a notifier for GitHub browser extension by Sindre Sorhus. [00:37:47] Alyssa’s spotlight is Open Collective Open Web Docs. [00:38:28] Eriol’s spotlight is a piece of open source software called Jamulus. [00:39:45] Richard’s spotlight is one of his best friends, Simon Vansintjan Links Eriol Does Design (https://erioldoesdesign.com/) Eriol Fox Twitter (https://twitter.com/EriolDoesDesign?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) Penpot (https://penpot.app/) Justin Scherer Twitter (https://twitter.com/justinschrr) Open Food Network (https://openfoodnetwork.net/) Sustain Open Source Design Podcast (https://sosdesign.sustainoss.org/) Sustain Open Source Design Podcast-Episode 1 (https://sosdesign.sustainoss.org/1) FOSS Backstage (https://foss-backstage.de/) Open Source 101 (https://opensource101.com/speakers/eriol-fox/) Eriol Fox- GitHub (https://github.com/Erioldoesdesign) Human Rights Centered Design (https://hrcd.pubpub.org/) Open Source Design (https://opensourcedesign.net/resources/) Notifier for GitHub browser extension by Sindre Sorhus (https://github.com/sindresorhus/notifier-for-github) Open Collective Open Web Docs (https://opencollective.com/open-web-docs) Jamulus (https://github.com/jamulussoftware) Credits Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Eriol Fox.

Episode 72: Eriol Fox on Open Source Design and Sustain

Sustain is a podcast that showcases resources and systems so as to reward open source contributions. We shine the spotlight on people to help their projects to grow and evolve. We also focus on structuring code and organizations to support the efforts of open source contributors. You can listen to previous episodes on Devchat.tv. Part of the CodeFund Podcast Network (https://codefund.io/podcasts)

hubhopper

Sustain

hubhopper