Sustain

Omotola Eunice Omotayo | Jan Ainali

Richard Littauer

Hello and welcome to Sustain! Today, Richard’s live at FOSS Backstage 2023 in Berlin, and on this episode, he’s joined by two guests.

His first guest is Omotola Eunice Omotayo, who works as a community manager and organizer for Outreachy, which is a fellowship under Software Freedom Conservancy. She gave a talk about “Contributor engagement and monetization opportunities” at the event. They discuss the number of applications Outreachy received, the number of interns, and how she manages to keep up with social media and meetings with each intern. Finally, we learn about the HUGE open source community in Africa and OSCA.

Richard’s next guest is Jan Ainali, who’s here to discuss a card game. Seriously! The Governance Game is a card game designed to encourage discussion about governance in open-source code bases. The game was created by publiccode.net, which helps public organizations collaborate on developing software for public purposes. The game includes starting states, bugs, and scenarios that are based on calamities observed in the real world. Jan also talks about the Foundation for Public Code, what they do, and how they are funded. Download this episode now to learn more!

Special Guests: Jan Ainali and Omotola Eunice Omotayo.

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Nahuai Badiola

Richard Littauer | Justin Dorfman

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Today, Richard and Justin are very excited to have as their guest, Nahuai Badiola, who’s a freelance WordPress developer, part of the WordPress Sustainability Initiative, the W3C Sustainability Working Group, and a recent recipient of a fellowship at The Green Web Foundation. Today’s discussion covers the importance of sustainability in different contexts, including the environmental, social, and economic aspects. There’s a conversation on the efforts being made towards sustainability and the challenges of translating environmental and social issues for the digital space. Also, we’ll hear about Nahuai’s project called, Doughnut Economics, and his fellowship work with The Green Web Foundation. Download this episode to hear more!

[00:02:14] Nahuai is a WordPress developer, so he tells us when he started, and he talks about the three pillars.

[00:04:37] He tells us about the WordPress Sustainability Initiative he helped set up and its efforts to create guidelines for building a more sustainable CMS.

[00:07:05] We hear about the people who are on the Sustainability Initiative.

[00:09:08] Nahuai discusses how they plan to work with plugin developers and hosting services to incentivize sustainable practices and possibly implement a sustainability score for plugins.

[00:11:54] The conversation is about the need for sustainability in the WordPress community and the efforts being made towards that goal. They also discuss the importance of buy-in from influential people in the community like Matt Mullenweg and Syed Balkhi at WPBeginner.

[00:17:23] Nahuai is part of a working group within the W3C that aims to produce evidence-based guidelines for web sustainability. He tells us there’s a draft in progress and the group aims to present it at the W3C TPAC conference in September.

[00:21:22] We hear about The Green Web Foundation and their fellowship program and Nahuai being a fellowship recipient working on a project to bring the idea of “Doughnut Economics” to the WordPress community through and interactive workshop.

[00:25:39] Nahuai is considering how to adapt the framework of 12 social foundations and 9 ecological ceilings for the WordPress community.

[00:28:10] Richard wonders if Nahuai has any thoughts about making that translation itself an easier process for future people to go through.

[00:30:13] Find out where you can get involved with Nahuai’s projects, learn more about him and his podcast you can check out called, Freelan_dev_.

[00:02:47] “I fell in love with WordPress because of the community.”

[00:07:24] “We at WordPress Sustainability Initiative can do small things but have a big impact.”

Special Guest: Nahuai Badiola.

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Wolfgang Gehring | Ana Jiménez Santamaría

Richard Littauer

Hello and welcome to Sustain! Today, Richard is joined by two guests from FOSS Backstage 2023 in Berlin.

His first guest is Wolfgang Gehring, OSPO Head at Mercedes-Benz Tech Innovation. Wolfgang discusses the importance of open source at Mercedes-Benz. He mentions the company's recent FOSS convention, explains his role in getting people to work together, and talks about the challenges of de-risking and softening legal requirements. Richard asks for advice on how other large industrial companies can get started with OSPO. Finally, Wolfgang discusses his involvement with the Eclipse Foundation and their efforts to revise the Cyber Resiliency Act in the EU, and a great conversation about how large industries use and evangelize open source.

Richard’s next guest he has another great conversation with is Ana Jiménez Santamaría. She discusses her work with the OSPO community and the importance of sustainability in open source ecosystems. Richard and Anna discuss a survey done by the TODO Group. Also, Ana talks about the importance of educating non-tech audiences on open source, and her new YouTube channel helping teach open source in an easy way to those not familiar with the tech stuff, particularly in Spanish, where there is a lack of content. Download this episode to hear more!

Special Guests: Ana Jiménez Santamaría and Dr. Wolfgang Gehring.

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John Robb

Richard Littauer | Amanda Casari

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. We’re super excited to have guest, John Robb, joining us today. John is a Community Manager at React Flow, an open source library for building node-based UI. Today, John talks about how they’ve sustained the project without investors and valuing intentionally and autonomy over endless growth. Then, there’s a conversation around paying contributors, supporting diverse contributors, and establishing boundaries for a safe environment. Also, we’ll hear about the challenges of funding open source projects, understanding the purchase funnel, and the need for transparency and clarity around the financial aspects of open source projects. Download this episode now to hear more!

[00:01:53] John tells us about React Flow and how they’ve managed to sustain the project without investors.

[00:04:50] “Dear Open Source: let’s do a better job of asking for money,” is a blog post John wrote and he used the word “ramen profitable,” so he explains what it means.

[00:06:44] John talks about the company values intentionality and autonomy over growth and endless expansion.

[00:09:32 ] As a Community Manager, John’s interested in thinking critically about growth and what it means to have a community.

[00:11:13] The conversation revolves around the tension between personal greed and the desire for growth in open source projects.

[00:15:38] The group discusses the importance of paying contributors for their work and how to invite and support a diverse range of contributors.

[00:18:33 ] John tells us about an experience that’s been most relevant to him while doing community management work which was at a design camp called Stone Soup that he co-organized this year.

[00:21:13] They discuss the history of open source and how it began with large enterprises working together on project without violating antitrust laws.

[00:23:43 ] There’s a conversation about the importance of understanding the purchase funnel and how to make it easier for individuals and organizations to donate or support open source projects.

[00:25:44] The group highlights the need for more transparency and clarity around the financial aspect of open source projects.

[00:33:05 ] Find out where you can follow John on the web and get in touch with him.

[00:08:08] “We’ve all been raised in this business culture to seek for something bigger and greater, and to grow a company as large as one can. But the tradeoff is great.”

[00:09:37] “Do we want to scale our community?”

[00:09:45] “Having more contributors makes things more difficult for them.”

[00:14:48] “Just talking about the number of contributors isn’t going to help.”

[00:15:46] “Being able to pay people in open source is good. People being able to be paid for their work is good.”

[00:16:02] “Free time is a privileged resource.”

[00:19:20] “How do you invite people and how do you know who you want to bring to the event and who not?”

Special Guest: John Robb.

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Gregor Bransky

Richard Littauer

Hello and welcome to Sustain! On this episode, Richard is in Berlin this week at FOSS Backstage 2023, and he is joined by his guest, Gregor Bransky, who’s an artist, hacker, and computer technician. He discussed his experiences at CCC and how they value the creation of beauty using technology as part of their "Hacker Ethics." Gregor also discusses his role as a board member for present policy of the Innovation Council Public Health, an NGO that developed digital tools to fight COVID-19. The organization participated in the Virus Hackathon by the German government in March 2020, which led to the creation of projects such as a digital waiting room for communication with public health centers. Download this episode to hear more!

Special Guest: Gregor Bransky.

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Martin Woodward

Richard Littauer | Ben Nickolls

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. This is a special podcast and one of several in this series for GitHub’s Maintainer Month. We’re interviewing maintainers to ask them about their experience of open source and their experience of living as maintainers. We are super excited to talk to our guest, Martin Woodward, who’s the VP of Developer Relations at GitHub. Today, Martin explains the origins of Maintainer Month and discusses his role in supporting open source maintainers and helping them succeed with GitHub. The conversation also covers topics such as the distinction between open source authors and maintainers, the GitHub Accelerator program and the M12 fund, the future of maintainership and funding challenges, and strategies for setting expectations for senior management and funders. There’s much more, so hit download now!

[00:01:30] Martin explains that his role involves supporting open source maintainers and helping them succeed with GitHub.

[00:02:46] How does Martin distinguish between DevRel and GitHub and make sure the work he does helps people who are maintainers.

[00:04:54] Martin discusses the origins of Maintainer Month, starting with a virtual maintainer summit during the pandemic, which later expanded to involve the entire community.

[00:07:38] Ben brings up how Maintainer’s month seems to be evolving, and Martin tells us the event aims to provide a safe space for maintainers to connect, share best practices, and raise awareness among developers about the challenges and importance of maintaining open source projects.

[00:10:17] Martin explains the different segments within the maintainer community, ranging from contributors to maintainers who set the direction and run the projects, and emphasizes the need for respect and understanding of the diverse governance structures.

[00:12:32] Ben discusses the distinction between open source authors and maintainers, highlighting the challenge of maintaining projects and the need for support and resources in that role, and he brings up a resource library.

[00:15:34] The conversation shifts to the future of maintainership, focusing on the funding challenges faced by maintainers and the various motivations and expectations within the open source community.

[00:17:12] The discussion touches on the involvement of venture capital firms asking for open source strategies from start-ups.

[00:18:54] We hear about the involvement in the GitHub Accelerator program and M12 fund, with members of their team driving the first cohort and providing funding and training to open source start-ups.

[00:22:44] Martin acknowledges the importance of maintaining boundaries and saying no as a maintainer, and shares how GitHub is incorporating feedback from maintainers into product features, such as interaction limits and status settings. He also mentions personal strategies for avoiding burnout as a maintainer.

[00:27:26] Richard asks Martin for his thoughts on setting expectations for people above him such as senior management and funders, regarding keeping open source sustainable.

[00:32:21] Why did Martin get into open source?

[00:34:56] The conversation turns to the relationship between Microsoft and GitHub, with Martin stating that GitHub remains an independent entity while benefitting from the scale and resources of the parent company.

[00:37:22] Find out where you follow Martin on the web.

[00:08:37] “Other people start using it and all of a sudden you find you’re the maintainer of an open source project.”

[00:21:34] “Maintainers are the givers.”

[00:21:55] “Maintainers build communities.”

[00:25:26] “You don’t have to take everybody’s PR’s.”

[00:29:17] “Open source communities value co-contribution over everything else.”

Special Guest: Martin Woodward.

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Predrag Gruevski | Kingsley Mkpandiok

Richard Littauer | Eriol Fox

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. This is a special podcast and one of several in this series for Maintainer Month. We’re interviewing maintainers to ask them about their experience of open source and their experience of living as maintainers. We’re super excited to have two guests with us.

Our first guest is Predrag Gruevski, who’s the maintainer of two projects in the Rust ecosystem. Predrag discusses his role as a maintainer for these projects, and he shares his motivations for volunteering as a maintainer, the value of making an impact on the community, and the importance of mentorship.

Our next guest is Kingsley Mkpandiok, who’s a B2B B2C UX Designer, Open Source Design Advocate, and has contributed to projects like CHAOSS Africa and OSCAfrica Festival. Kingsley shares his journey as a UX designer contributing to open source projects in Nigeria, he discusses the challenges of onboarding designers, shares his approach to creating a welcoming environment and providing opportunities for designers to contribute beyond initial tasks. Download this episode now to hear much more!

Predrag:

[00:00:46] Predrag discusses his role as a maintainer of two open source projects in the Rust ecosystem: cargo-semver-checks and Trustfall.

[00:01:13] He explains that semantic versioning is more critical in Rust due to the language’s auto traits feature, and breaking changes in Rust can have serious consequences.

[00:03:15] Predrag talks about being a volunteer and how it provides an opportunity to make a significant impact on the community while benefiting from the value proposition.

[00:06:32] We hear how Predrag values helping early career individuals break into software engineering and finding competent individuals who outperform their peers.

[00:08:24] How does Predrag rule out people who aren’t competent yet? He explains how he’s looking for people who are outperforming their peers and outperforming their environment.

[00:09:55] Regarding onboarding maintainers, Predrag discusses marketing mentorship opportunities on GitHub issues and being open to collaborating with students or individuals interested in Rust open source tooling.

[00:11:15] Predrag acknowledges the possibility of experiencing burnout as a maintainer. He separates burnout from mentorship, noting that not everyone may be a good fit for his mentorship style. He values feedback and growth-oriented individuals and believes in honest conversations.

[00:12:56] Richard brings up value propositions and Predrag tells us he enjoys solving hard problems and finding efficient solutions. The question of value alignment comes up and Predrag clarifies that he sees himself as a curator of options for the project, providing a menu of potential directions for new maintainers to choose from.

[00:15:26] Predrag mentions that he plans to integrate cargo-semvr-checks into the Rust programming language cargo tool, which would further decentralize the project and make it a collective effort.

[00:17:09] Find out where you can follow Predrag and his blog on the web.

Kingsley:

[00:20:21] Our next guest, Kingsley tells us that he sees himself primarily as a designer rather than a maintainer. He shares his experience of joining CHAOSS Africa as his first open source contribution.

[00:23:31] Kingsley tells us it took him about two months to fully understand how to contribute to CHAOSS Africa, and he emphasizes the importance of designers being open to problem-solving and looking for issues to fix within the community.

[00:26:16] Regarding onboarding designers and creating a more inclusive environment, Kingsley shares his experience in CHAOSS Africa and a document he created.

[00:30:06] Kingsley shares that the one thing he didn’t expect about working in design was having to handle conflict resolution among design contributors.

[00:31:41] Eriol asks Kingsley about his vision for change in open source projects and culture to make design more inclusive. He expresses his desire to see more designers getting involved in open source projects, and he encourages designers to see themselves as problem solvers who can contribute to various aspects of open source.

[00:35:10] Find out where you can follow Kingsley on the web.

Predrag:

[00:04:10] “There’s been multiple prior efforts to build semver-checks in Rust that have failed for maintainability reasons. They were harder to keep going.”

[00:05:28] “I felt that for a very small amount of effort, I could have a very large impact on the community.”

[00:07:01] “I’m one of those people that believes that number of years of experience is an extremely poor predictor of competence, whether in software or otherwise.”

[00:10:10] “I label issues as ‘e-mentor,’ so that means I’m willing to mentor someone to take over implementing this issue.”

[00:14:11] “I believe in laying out a menu and saying, hey, which of these ten different things, ten different directions of taking the project are you interested in working on?”

[00:16:54] “The project will have failed if twenty years from now I’m the person that has to make every single one of these decisions.”

Kingsley:

[00:24:58] “You can’t contribute to a project you don’t understand.”

[00:30:35] “One thing I didn’t expect [about working in design] is conflict resolution.”

[00:31:22] “I wish someone had told me about the need for conflict resolution skills and not just design.”

[00:34:57] “There’s no future in open source without design.”

Special Guests: Kingsley Mkpandiok and Predrag Gruevski.

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Lisa Caywood

Richard Littauer | Amanda Casari

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. We’re very excited for our guest today! Joining us is Lisa Caywood, who’s the Senior Principal Community Architect at Red Hat OSPO, and has a podcast about cheese, which we’ll learn a little more about. Today, our discussion revolves around managing open source communities, determining their strategic value, and gracefully ending relationships when necessary. We’ll also hear about telco industry’s shift towards open source code, and the importance of community health and strategic alignment with Red Hat’s objectives in deciding whether to continue investing in a particular community. Also, there’s a discussion on the challenges of managing relationships between corporations and open source projects. Download this episode to hear much more!

[00:01:32] Lisa shares that Red Hat’s OSPO focuses on outbound open source engagement, ensuring healthy and well-governed communities, and advising on engagement strategies. She tells us what a Senior Principal Community Architect does.

[00:04:04] Lisa emphasizes the importance of community health and strategic alignment with Red Hat’s objectives in deciding whether to continue investing in a particular community.

[00:05:59] The discussion revolves around managing open source communities.

[00:08:15] We hear the challenges of parting ways with communities, and Lisa offers insights into managing both individual and corporate transitions.

[00:15:06] Lisa explains the challenges of managing relationships between corporations and open source projects.

[00:17:30] One key issue is how to communicate with project leaders about sponsorship or support, which requires a nuanced approached.

[00:19:37] Networking and telco are discussed as examples of industries where open source communities play a crucial role. Lisa touches on the need for projects to address interoperability pain points and ensure the different pieces of the stack are able to talk to each other in a cohesive way.

[00:22:31] Lisa discusses the telco industry’s shift towards open source code, with AT&T leading the way bringing a big chunk of their proprietary project into the open source world, and she mentions the ONAP project.

[00:27:02] The scale of projects and problems being tackled in the telco industry is talked about since it’s so exciting to Lisa, who has always been a big-picture person.

[00:31:30] Lisa talks about when leaving a community, it’s important to document and take the knowledge and mindset shift towards open source with you to the next community.

[00:32:37] Find out about Lisa’s podcast and where you can follow her on the web,

[00:07:13] “The individual has to decide it’s time to leave, but the company also to decide it’s time to leave. Those are two different levels of how to say goodbye.”

[00:09:39] “If you’re an individual who’s coming to the project leadership with a proposal or a plan for how you hand things off to other people, is the best thing you can do.”

[00:16:06] “It’s more how do I address the feeling and continue to make the sale. That’s a different personality and different skillset.”

[00:20:02] “It took a long time for Kubernetes to understand that there’s a little wire on a diagram that connects your apps and that helps different components talk to each other and that’s called the network. You need to include networking people in your community to make this all work and it eventually got there.”

[00:21:44] “The number one thing that keep telcos awake at night is I can’t have anything break. The conversations that we have with these companies span many different communities because we’re not talking about one single type of technology.”

[00:23:49] “We’re all moving towards the same basic model. We’re all going to be doing 80% of this stuff, so let’s figure it out together.”

[00:26:02] “The scale of Chinese telcos dwarfs AT&T in terms of number of users.”

[00:30:56] “As a software person in a hardware company, you’re always the odd duck out.”

[00:32:05] “It’s important not just as individuals, but as a company to be conscious of what you’ve learned in a community, perhaps documented that these are the useful things that we got from working in this community. Let’s make sure we take that with us into our next community so we can take the best things forward.”

Special Guest: Lisa Caywood.

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Russell Keith-Magee | Uriel Ofir

Richard Littauer

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. This is a special podcast and one of several in this series for GitHub’s Maintainer Month. We’re interviewing maintainers to ask them about their experience of open source and their experience of living as maintainers. Our first guest is Dr. Russell Keith-Magee, who’s the Founder of the BeeWare Project and Software Engineer at Anaconda working on BeeWare in the OSS team. Russell talks about starting the project, the challenges of transitioning from an author to a maintainer, and the role of Anaconda in the Python ecosystem. Then we’ll have a conversation with our next guest, Uriel Ofir, who’s the Founder and Manager of Ma’akaf, an open source Israel community. Uriel tells us all about Ma’akaf, the importance of members being serious and proactive in contributing to the community, and how they encourage participants to contribute and improve their skills through an “open source party.” Hit download to hear much more!

Russell:

[00:01:40] Russell explains his role at Anaconda and being the Founder of the BeeWare Project.

[00:03:43] The role of Anaconda in the Python ecosystem and the company’s open source offerings is discussed.

[00:04:15] Russell discusses the process of starting the BeeWare project.

[00:08:03] We hear about the funding problem in open source and how development is something that needs to be looked at.

[00:10:15] He tells us the challenges of transitioning from an author to maintainer.

[00:11:51] What’s hard for Russell as a maintainer? He mentions struggling when you don’t see progress and the difficulties of finding maintainers with the necessary skillset.

[00:14:35] There’s been a lot of effort trying to document the onboarding process and making it smoother for new contributors.

[00:15:21] Russell’s excited about the prospect of iOS and Android becoming officially supported platforms in C Python and the progress they’ve made after nine years of work.

[00:16:28] Find out where you can follow Russell and read about his work on the web.

Uriel:

[00:18:23] Our next guest, Uriel Ofir, joins us and he tells us about Ma’akaf.

[00:22:28] He explains the community currently has around 350 members and four active projects.

[00:26:09] He started the community even after he got a job and manages it by delegating tasks and empowering members to take responsibility for projects, and he emphasizes the importance of members being serious and proactive in contributing to the company.

[00:29:48] Uriel shares how they encourage participants who may be hesitant to contribute to their open source community by hosting an “open source party” where everyone is welcome to introduce themselves and ask for help or advice.

[00:31:43] Uriel tells us where people can join this group and follow him on the web.

Russell:

[00:02:08] “The Python ecosystem is only successful because of the open source component of it.”

[00:06:51] “I made some challenge coins that we would give out to anyone who made a contribution.”

[00:08:22] “Open source has a funding problem. There are big problems that don’t get solved unless you have someone working on them full-time.”

[00:11:22] “Having to create the project was an inconvenience before I can get to the point of having other work on it with me.”

[00:11:29] “Open source really is a community. The whole thing is built around people working together for a greater good.”

[00:15:05] “The more you can remove every possible obstacle to someone getting that first contribution, the more likely they are to contribute, not necessarily more likely to hang around long term.”

Uriel:

[00:28:33] “The most important thing about open source is to be serious.”

[00:32:07] “I really want people to contact me around the world because this idea is scalable, and I would be happy to help you with that.”

Special Guests: Russell Keith-Magee and Uriel Ofir.

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Serkan Holat

Richard Littauer | Leslie Hawthorn

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Richard and Leslie are hosting today, and they’re very excited to welcome our special guest, Serkan Holat, who’s a Freelance Software Developer, with over 20 years of experience in researching finance, open source ecosystems, and digital public goods. He advocates for financing open source software with public money and setting up dedicated public funds called Agile Public Funds. Today, we’ll discuss with Serkan, the need to allocate funds to support and publish critical open source software, the importance of sustainability on open source software, and the lack of understanding of the industry’s risk profile. Also, Serkan gives us all the details on an experiment he recently started to increase awareness about using public money to finance open source. Download this episode to hear much more!

[00:01:47] We start off with Serkan telling us how the tax cause is going. He proposes introducing an open source tax on proprietary software sales, with the revenue going to public funds for distribution to the open source ecosystem.

[00:06:11] Serkan explains how he’s watched the space grow, and he talks about the Digital Public Goods Alliance that recognizes open source software as a new type of digital public good, and the Sovereign Tech Fund.

[00:08:35] Serkan tells us why there shouldn’t be any obligations on the developers and what we should do.

[00:10:23] We hear Serkan’s thoughts on the Sovereign Tech Fund in Germany, an excellent initiative that he supports as a blueprint for other nations to follow, but scalability will become an issue.

[00:12:39] Free Software Foundation Europe has a fantastic campaign. Serkan’s explains the idea of using public sector collaboration.

[00:13:56] There’s a discussion on the challenges of implementing public sector collaboration and there’s a suggestion of creating a social contract to increase funding for open source software.

[00:16:43] What’s wrong with the market we currently have? Serkan elaborates on this.

[00:20:19] The conversation shifts to Richard, Leslie, and Serkan touching on the role of security in financing open source software, they discuss the allocations of funds to support and publish open source software, the need for sustainability in open source software, and the lack of understanding of the industry’s risk profile.

[00:28:41] Serkan shares his thoughts on how he’s trying to convince software companies to produce open source software.

[00:30:31] Richard wonders how a tax on proprietary software to help out open source communities, is going to lead to a more equitable environment, or all people building open source software.

[00:32:45] Serkan advocates for the creation of public funds to finance the open source ecosystem, and he’s been experimenting with this approach for the past 15 months. He chooses three projects from Open Collective each month and distributes money based on their criticality score.

[00:34:11] Find out where you can follow Serkan and all his writings on the web.

[00:02:51] “My proposal on that area is to introduce an open source software tax on proprietor software sales.”

Special Guest: Serkan Holat.

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