On today’s show Nadia and Mikeal are joined by Eric Holscher to discuss non-code contributions, how they are regarded in open source culture, their value, and how to incentivize this type of work. They also talked about how Read the Docs grew a documentation community, contribution guides, and why this work matters.

Documentation and the Value of Non-Code Contributions

Request For Commits explored different perspectives in open source sustainability (retired).  Hosts Nadia Eghbal and Mikeal Rogers dive deep into the trials and tribulations of being an open source maintainer, building communities, and navigating the business side of software. Common topics include software licensing, copyright, documentation, governance models, funding platforms such as Open Collective, Kickstarter, etc., measuring success, and more.

Technology

Tech News

Podcasting

Gadgets

Software How-To

In this finale episode of Request For Commits – we regroup to discuss how we got here, lessons learned, community impact, and where the conversations around open source sustainability are taking place now and in the future. This might be the end of this podcast, but the conversation will continue on The Changelog. You should subscribe if you’re not already.

Finale, thank you!

Lauren McCarthy joined Nadia and Mikeal to discuss her work on p5.js, contributions and culture, her before and after take on open source, her path to becoming a maintainer, how p5.js gets new contributors, how they keep them around, and why design isn’t better represented in open source.

Design, software, and open source

Henry Zhu joined Nadia and Mikeal to discuss his work on Babel, how he became and accidental maintainer, why he thinks maintainers aren’t special, paid open source work, the Babel brand, and building community.

Maintaining a popular project and sponsored time

Daniel Bachhuber joined Nadia and Mikeal to discuss his work on wp-cli, the economics, origins, staying productive as a maintainer, fund raising, and the state of wp-cli today.

Experiments and the Economics of Open Source

Danese Cooper joined Nadia and Mikeal to discuss the history of open source, how the term became a thing via Tim O’Reilly, feeling empowered as an open source contributor, companies’ relationship to open source, foundations and their role (or not) in governance and sustainability.

Documentation and the Value of Non-Code Contributions

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