Contributor

By Eric AndersonTechnology

Contributor episodes

October 17, 2023Community Driven IaC: OpenTofu with Kuba Martin
Kuba Martin (@cube2222_2) is Software Engineering Team Lead at Spacelift and Interim Tech Lead of OpenTofu, the open-source fork of Terraform. Terraform is a declarative infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tool that recently switched to a source-available license. Spacelift and other companies that heavily relied on Terraform came together to fork it into a community-driven project originally called OpenTF, which has now become OpenTofu and is governed by the Linux Foundation.
Contributor is looking for a community manager! If you want to know more, shoot us an email at [email protected].
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In this episode we discuss:
Two kinds of forks

How OpenTofu handled the opportunity to rethink their licensing and copyright

Finding hundreds of pledges to the OpenTF Manifesto

The benefits of a technical steering committee

Recreating the community registry
Links:
OpenTofu

Spacelift

Terraform

Gruntwork

Harness

env0

Scalr
34 min
September 13, 2023Postgres for Everything: Tembo with Ry Walker
Ry Walker (@rywalker) is the founder and CEO of Tembo, the Postgres developer platform for building any and every data service. To Ry, the full capabilities of Postgres appear underappreciated and underused for most users. Tembo is an attempt to harness the large ecosystem of Postgres extensions, and ultimately collapse the database sprawl of the modern data stack.
Contributor is looking for a community manager! If you want to know more, shoot us an email at [email protected].
Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications!
In this episode we discuss:
Taking the “red pill” of using Postgres for everything

Providing universal support for Postgres extensions

Why Ry dislikes the current state of the modern data stack

How databases across the board have mostly changed into application platforms

What makes Tembo “Startup Mt. Everest”
Links:
Tembo

OSSRank

Citus Data

Modal

Supabase Wrappers
People mentioned:
Erik Bernhardsson (@bernhardsson)
Other episodes:
Clickhouse with Alexey Milovidov and Ivan Blinkov
33 min
August 09, 2023Automation for Technical People: n8n with Jan Oberhauser
Jan Oberhauser (@JanOberhauser) is the founder and CEO of n8n, the free and source-available workflow automation tool for technical users. n8n's flexible architecture allows users to avoid the limitations of other automation tools, while also opening doors for complex automation scenarios. The project has garnered over 30,000 GitHub stars and a thriving community of 55,000+ members.
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In this episode we discuss:
How Jan’s background in film effects laid the groundwork for n8n

Why n8n uses a forum over Discord or Slack for a community platform

Use cases from scheduling fitness classes to upgrading financial mainframes

How n8n might stack up against the well-thought out Python script

Why n8n uses a fair-code license rather than open-source
Links:
n8n

n8n Community
Other episodes:
Temporal with Maxim Fateev

From Orchestration to Building Applications: Conductor with Jeu George

Rethinking the Workflow Problem: Windmill with Ruben Fiszel
41 min
July 26, 2023The Big Fork: libSQL with Glauber Costa
Glauber Costa (@glcst) is the founder of Turso and the co-creator of libSQL, an open source, open contribution fork of the database engine library, SQLite. Most people believe that SQLite is open-source software, but it actually exists in the public domain and doesn’t accept external contributions. With their big fork, Glauber and his team have set out to evolve SQLite into a modern database with support for distributed data, an asynchronous interface, compatibility with WASM and Linux, and more.
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In this episode we discuss:
Community reactions to forking SQLite

How Glauber was spoiled by starting his career developing for Linux

The controversial decision to launch libSQL without writing a single line of code

The plan for incorporating upstream changes from SQLite

Examples of how application developers need to move code “to the edge”
Links:
libSQL

SQLite

Turso

LiteFS

Litestream

rqlite

VLCN
People mentioned:
Avi Kivity (@AviKivity)

Dor Laor (@DorLaor)

Ben Johnson (@benbjohnson)

Phillip O’Toole (@general_order24)

Matt Tantaman (@tantaman)
Other episodes:
Scylla with Dor Laor

Apache Cassandra with Patrick McFadin
33 min
July 05, 2023Rethinking the Workflow Problem: Windmill with Ruben Fiszel
Ruben Fiszel (@rubenfiszel) is the creator of Windmill, the open-source developer platform that lets users easily turn scripts into workflows and internal apps with auto-generated UIs. Windmill doesn’t force engineers to change their coding style or adopt a convoluted API, and its low-code design makes it accessible to non-technical users. Tune in to find out how Windmill offers speed, performance and flexibility, while avoiding the limitations of rigid tools.
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In this episode we discuss:
Why many engineers try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to workflow engines

When Ruben first saw the need for a platform like Windmill while working at Palantir

“Today is the nicest period to build open-source…”

Ruben’s incredible presence with support and bug fixes

Windmill’s generous open-source offerings and the future of the business
Links:
Windmill

Retool

Tokio

Apache Airflow

Apache Spark
Other episodes:
Prefect with Jeremiah Lowin

Dagster with Nick Schrock

Temporal with Maxim Fateev

Temporal (Part 2) with Maxim Fateev and Dominik Tornow

Apache Cassandra with Patrick McFadin
27 min
June 28, 2023Vector Search for Humans: Marqo with Jesse Clark
Jesse Clark (@jn2clark) is a co-founder of Marqo, the end-to-end, multimodal vector search engine. Vector search has exploded along with the rise of generative AI models, so Marqo’s arrival has had excellent timing. The project has quickly grown to almost 3000 GitHub stars, despite being less than a year old. Jesse and his team weren’t exactly expecting this level of immediate success, but they are well-positioned to continue developing Marqo as a fixture in the worlds of information retrieval and machine learning.
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In this episode we discuss:
Jesse’s journey from physics research, to Stitch Fix, Amazon, and finally starting Marqo

Industry vs academia in the cutting edge of machine learning

Why “almost any organization in the world would benefit from Marqo”

Talking about machine learning language - tensors, vectors, embeddings

How Jesse deals with the stress of knowing how fast the AI space is innovating
Links:
Marqo
People mentioned:
Katrina Lake (@kmlake)

Eric Colson (@ericcolson)
35 min
June 14, 2023From Orchestration to Building Applications: Conductor with Jeu George
Jeu George (@jeugeorge) is the co-creator of Conductor, the open-source application building platform. Conductor began as a workflow orchestrator and was originally developed at Netflix. Jeu also co-founded Orkes, a company which offers a cloud product based on Conductor. Tune in to find out how Conductor has evolved into an open-source, battle-tested distributed application platform.
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In this episode we discuss:
The core tenets of building Conductor - reliability, language and cloud agnosticism

How Conductor enables teams to share and manage their custom modules

The role of Conductor in Netflix’s switch from licensed to original content

Jeu’s journey from Netflix, to Uber, and finally to Orkes

How Orkes is focusing on integrations and AI orchestration moving forward
Links:
Conductor

Orkes
People mentioned:
Viren Baraiya (@virenbaraiya)

Boney Sekh (@boneyorkes)

Dilip Lukose (@diliplukose)
34 min
May 31, 2023Opening Up Authentication: SuperTokens with Advait Ruia
Advait Ruia (@Advait_Ruia) is the co-founder of SuperTokens, the open-source user authentication and authorization framework. SuperTokens integrates natively into both your front-end client and your backend endpoint. This approach gives developers more control over the user experience and allows for custom workflows. Tune in to find out why SuperTokens aims to be the best of both the build and the buy argument for authentication solutions.
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In this episode we discuss:
How SuperTokens evolved from a blog post on session management into a full-fledged infrastructure company

Why there is increasing demand for authentication providers

Do founders need to be in the Bay Area?

Advait’s advice for building community and providing support

Areas where SuperTokens could use outside contributions
Links:
SuperTokens

SuperTokens Product Roadmap
People mentioned:
Rishabh Poddar (@rishpoddar)
Other episodes:
Hasura with Tanmai Gopal
30 min
April 05, 2023Open-Source Runtime Security: Falco with Loris Degioanni
Loris Degioanni (@lorisdegio) joins Eric Anderson (@ericmander) to chat about Falco, the open-source runtime security tool for modern cloud infrastructures. Loris is the founder and CTO of Sysdig, and co-creator of Wireshark, the legendary open-source packet analysis tool. Today, Loris talks about all these projects and more - tune in to learn about some deep history and Loris’ predictions for the future.
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In this episode we discuss:
How Loris began working with Gerald Combs as a student in Italy

Why Loris’ teams name their products after animals

The new non-profit Wireshark Foundation

Parallel development of cloud technology and containers during Loris’ career

The little things that make open-source projects go viral
Links:
Falco

Sysdig

Wireshark
People mentioned:
Solomon Hykes (@solomonhykes)
34 min
March 22, 2023Decoupling Authorization: Cerbos with Emre Baran
Emre Baran (@emre) is the CEO and co-founder of Cerbos, the open-source authorization layer for implementing roles and permissions. Cerbos allows developers to decouple authorization logic from core code into its own centrally distributed component. Easier said than done, perhaps - but Cerbos is secure, intentionally simple to implement, and developer-focused.
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In this episode we discuss:
The difference between authentication and authorization

Why Cerbos is language-agnostic

Authorization patterns in a single application versus a larger network

The reason most devs start out trying to do authorization themselves, and sometimes give up

How the upcoming Cerbos Cloud will empower less technical users to deploy and manage policies and logs
Links:
Cerbos

Cerbos Cloud Beta

Zanzibar: Google’s Consistent, Global Authorization System
People mentioned:
Charith Ellawala (Github: @charithe)
Other episodes:
Open Policy Agent with Torin Sandall
30 min