Contributor

By Eric AndersonTechnology

Contributor episodes

February 24, 2021SkyWalking with Sheng Wu
Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Sheng Wu (@wusheng1108) discuss Apache SkyWalking, an open-source APM tool focusing on cloud-native and distributed systems. SkyWalking was originally developed in 2012 as a training tool for developers new to distributed systems architecture, but it became Sheng’s pet project for several years until he brought it to the Apache Incubator program. Listen to today’s episode for the inside scoop of how this “hidden gem” fits into the Apache network of open-source software projects.
In this episode we discuss:
Why open-source APMs are not very common

SkyWalking’s focus on attracting more contributors rather than users

How a conflict of interest at Huawei led to a “bake-off” between Apache and CNCF

The impact of Elastic changing their license on the open-source community

The name “Skywalking,” its sources of inspiration, and an easter egg
Links:
Apache SkyWalking

Kubernetes

The Apache Incubator

CNCF

Tetrate

Apache ShardingSphere

Apache APISIX

Envoy Proxy

Apache Airflow

Apache Beam

Dynatrace

New Relic

Elastic

Helm

Zipkin
Other episodes:
Envoy Proxy with Matt Klein
33 min
February 10, 2021Snowpack with Fred K. Schott
Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Fred K. Schott (@FredKSchott) dive into the world of Snowpack, an open-source, frontend build tool for web developers. Snowpack is special because it uses Javascript’s ES module system to instantly write file changes to the browser. Fred created Snowpack and the Skypack CDN to fulfill his vision of the future of the web, which he first recognized while trying to advance the Javascript ecosystem with an earlier project called Pika. On today’s episode, find out how Fred rejected the pain of modern web development, and came up with a better solution.
In this episode we discuss:
Reconfiguring old ideas for today’s web development landscape

How Snowpack and Skypack lighten the load when it comes to Node modules and storage space

Questioning what it means to build a modern application that works for developers and users alike

Skypack and the future of shared dependencies across different sites

Why Snowpack is using an open governance framework
Links:
Snowpack

Skypack

OCTO Speaker Series - Fred K. Schott

Svelte

React

Ripple

Microsite

Deno

Next.js

esbuild

webpack
People mentioned:
Rich Harris (@Rich_Harris)

Nate Moore (@n_moore)
32 min
January 27, 2021NumPy & SciPy with Travis Oliphant
Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Travis Oliphant (@teoliphant) take a far-reaching tour through the history of the Python data community. Travis has had a hand in the creation of many open-source projects, most notably the influential libraries, NumPy and SciPy, which helped cement Python as the standard for scientific computing. Join us for the story of a fledgling community from a time “before open-source was cool,” and their lessons for today’s open-source landscape.
In this episode we discuss:
How biomedical engineering, MRIs, and an unhappy tenure committee led to NumPy and SciPy

Overcoming early challenges of distribution with Python

What Travis would have done differently when he wrote NumPy

Successfully solving the “two-option split” by adding a third option

Community-driven open-source interacting with company-backed open-source
Links:
NumPy

SciPy

Anaconda

Quansight

Conda

Matplotlib

Enthought

TensorFlow

PyTorch

MXNet

PyPi

Jupyter

pandas
People mentioned:
Guido van Rossum (@gvanrossum)

Robert Kern (Github: @rkern)

Pearu Peterson (Github: @pearu)

Wes McKinney (@wesmckinn)

Charles Harris (Github: @charris)

Francesc Alted (@francescalted)

Fernando Perez (@fperez_org)

Brian Granger (@ellisonbg)
Other episodes:
TensorFlow with Rajat Monga
50 min
January 13, 2021Scylla with Dor Laor
Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Dor Laor (@DorLaor) go under the hood of Scylla, the open-source NoSQL database designed for low latency and high throughput in big data applications. Dor and his team have reimplemented Apache Cassandra in C++ from scratch, with additional compatibility for DynamoDB. In today’s episode, Dor shares details on the exciting work coming out of ScyllaDB, including Seastar, their open-source C++ framework. Also, check out Scylla Summit 2021 to learn what’s next for Scylla.
In this episode we discuss:
Enabling Scylla to “gain control” by implementing Apache Cassandra in C++

How Dor and his co-founder were ahead of the curve with their vision for virtualization

Scylla’s unique shard-per-core architecture

Working with distributed teams, even before the COVID-19 pandemic

The growing significance of separating the interface from the engine in open-source

Learn about Project Circe, which is being featured at Scylla Summit 2021 right now
Links:
Scylla

Seastar

Scylla Summit 2021

Apache Cassandra

DynamoDB

MongoDB

Redhat

QEMU

Redis

Vectorized

Apache Hadoop

Apache HBase

Apache Beam

Apache Flink

Apache Spark
People mentioned:
Avi Kivity (@AviKivity)
32 min
December 30, 2020Gitpod with Sven Efftinge, Christian Weichel and Gero Posmyk-Leinemann
Eric Anderson (@ericmander) chats with Sven Efftinge (@svenefftinge), Christian Weichel (@csweichel) and Gero Posmyk-Leinemann (Github: @geropl) about their work on Gitpod, an open-source Kubernetes application that allows engineers to spin up a server-side dev-environment from a Git repository, all within their browser. The three team members are part of TypeFox, a consulting firm that specialized in developer tools for different companies before branching out into open-source projects. Upon Gero’s hiring at TypeFox, he was tasked with creating a minimum viable product for the idea that would eventually become Gitpod. Tune in to hear how shifting from consulting to working on their own open-source projects was a breath of fresh air for the developers at TypeFox.
In this episode we discuss:
How Gitpod solves the problem of switching between multiple dev environments, and improves deep code review

The trap that many open-source founders fall into

Why TypeFox wanted to switch from a consulting firm to a product shop

Details on how Gitpod handles licensing

Learn how you can instantly try out a Gitpod environment for any existing Github repository
Links:
Gitpod

TypeFox

Theia

Kubernetes
People mentioned:
Anton Kosyakov (@akosyakov)

Sid Sijbrandij (@sytses)
27 min
December 16, 2020oso with Graham Neray
Eric Anderson (@ericmander) interviews Graham Neray (@grahamneray) about oso, the open-source policy engine for authorization. oso was originally born from a desire to make infrastructure and security easier for developers, which is why Graham and his company describe themselves as being in the “friction-removal business.” Listen to today’s episode to learn how the team at oso are working to put security in the hands of developers.
In this episode we discuss:
Developers building RBAC (role-based access control) systems over and over again

Why open-source is the best way to handle authorization logic

The history behind oso’s core policy language, Polar

How someone beat Graham to the punch submitting oso to a Python newsletter

Comparing oso and OPA (Open Policy Agent)
Links:
oso

Stripe

Trulioo

MongoDB

Auth0

Show HN

OPA

Polar Adventure
People mentioned:
Sam Scott (@samososos)

Alex Plotnick (Github: @plotnick)

Stephen Olsen (@olsenator4)
Other episodes:
Presto on Contributor

OPA on Contributor
29 min
December 02, 2020TensorFlow with Rajat Monga
Eric Anderson (@ericmander) is joined by Rajat Monga (@rajatmonga), a co-creator of TensorFlow. Originally developed by the Google Brain team, TensorFlow is now one of the most popular open-source libraries for machine learning. The team at TensorFlow seek to “democratize” the world of AI as we know it, and by all accounts, they are succeeding. Listen to today’s episode to get inside one of the largest and most exciting open-source projects of the decade.
In this episode we discuss:
How TensorFlow compares to other open-source projects at Google

Taking bets on launch day numbers

Balancing the demands of different kinds of TensorFlow users

Lessons from Keras and PyTorch
Links:
TensorFlow

Keras

PyTorch

Kafka

Kubernetes

MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters

Bigtable: A Distributed Storage System for Structured Data
People mentioned:
Jeff Dean (@JeffDean)

Andrew Ng (@AndrewYNg)

François Chollet (@fchollet)
30 min
November 18, 2020Materialize with Frank McSherry
Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Frank McSherry (@frankmcsherry) dive into Materialize, a source-available streaming database that lets engineers build real-time applications. Frank is a data processing expert whose work at Microsoft Research on the Timely and Differential Dataflow models culminated in the Materialize project. Tune in to today’s episode to learn how the team at Materialize are making the technology from cutting-edge data research accessible to a wider swath of users.
In this episode we discuss:
Sharing early ideas with an “academic open source” approach

How Materialize made a commitment to correctness

Frank’s developmental philosophy of iterative thinking

Novel applications for the Materialize community

Changing the way we approach problems with real-time data processing
Links:
Materialize

Naiad: A Timely Dataflow System

DryadLINQ

Apache Arrow
People mentioned:
Arjun Narayan (@narayanarjun)

Derek Murray (@mrry)
37 min
November 04, 2020Cilium with Thomas Graf
Eric Anderson (@ericmander) speaks with Thomas Graf (@tgraf__) about Cilium, the open-source networking, observability, and security software for cloud-native applications based on eBPF. Thomas is the co-founder and CTO of Isovalent, which maintains both eBPF and Cilium. Listen to today’s episode for a discussion of how Thomas’ work has leveled up the Linux kernel and the possibilities of network infrastructure in a cloud-native world.
In this episode we discuss:
The impact of simultaneous development on Cilium and eBPF

Google’s incorporation of Cilium

Shortening the gap between writing kernel code and its deployment

What JavaScript and eBPF have in common

Cilium’s sister project, Hubble
Links:
Cilium

eBPF

Isovalent

Red Hat

OpenShift

Kubernetes

Docker

New GKE Dataplane V2 increases security and visibility for containers

SPIFFE

Istio
People mentioned:
Brendan Gregg (@brendangregg)
Other episodes:
Istio on Contributor
30 min
October 21, 2020Prefect with Jeremiah Lowin
Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Jeremiah Lowin (@jlowin) discuss Prefect, a workflow management system and data orchestration tool under development as an open-source project. Jeremiah initially created Prefect to solve a technical challenge specific to his own work, but soon realized that it was appealing to a very wide range of different clients. Listen to today’s episode to learn why Jeremiah believes most attempts to build a unified framework for solving data orchestration fail.
In this episode we discuss:
Solving the “negative engineering problem”

Learning from the complaints of data engineers at Apache Airflow

The difficulty of having a product that serves two masters

How COVID changed the direction of Prefect
Links:
Prefect

Apache Airflow

Why Not Airflow?
People mentioned:
Jim O'Shaughnessy (@jposhaughnessy)

Patrick O’Shaughnessy (@patrick_oshag)
49 min