Sustain

Justin Dorfman

Portia Burton · Eric Holscher

Hello and welcome to Sustain! Today, we have a bonus episode for you to listen to, and we’re calling it “Sustain Our Docs.” If you are looking for your place in open source, then you have found it. We’ll be sharing with you a new concept around documentation and sustainability and all that kind of cool stuff. We’re going to talk about how you can leverage documentation, how you can leverage content to bring more people, more attention, and more funding to your products. We will talk to experts who know how to write content engagingly, interview people who speak about the importance of content having goals, and talk to people who have successfully built projects, used excellent documentation and used the content as the pillar of their success. Our hosts are Portia Burton and Eric Holscher. Portia is the owner of Document-Write, a technical documentation agency, and Eric is the co-founder of Read the Docs, Write the Docs, EthicalAds, and PyCascades. We learn about Portia and Eric’s backgrounds, businesses, and visions for this podcast. They also have conversations about the sponsorship model, the multi-pronged finding model, the meaning of funneling, and the importance of documentation and sustainability. So go ahead and download this episode now to find out much more!

[00:00:38] We learn all about the hosts, Portia and Eric.

[00:02:05] Portia tells us why she is super excited to talk about financial sustainability when it comes to open source projects.

[00:05:35] Eric shares his thoughts on how in the software ecosystem, documentation is a huge part of how people get involved in projects, and he talks more about documentation and sustainability.

[00:08:09] Portia wonders what kind of conversation Eric has when talking to a maintainer of an open source project about economic sustainability and its connection to documentation.

[00:09:18] We learn more about EthicalAds and the sponsorship model.

[00:13:45] Portia goes deeper into the multi-pronged funding model.

[00:17:01] Eric explains more about what they mean by “funnelling.”

[00:18:27] Portia and Eric explain what this podcast is all about.

[00:21:50] We learn from Portia why money was the most off-putting part about open source and one of the biggest problems she had with having conversations about money.

[00:24:29] Eric touches on the huge benefits to having really good documentation and some great teasers are mentioned for future episodes.

[00:02:58] “I guess you know the vision is I want to see open source developers get paid.”

[00:03:14] “And it just breaks my heart to see such talented, smart people not know how to make that next step and to be able to take a little bit of value or monetize, basically the gifts they put out in the world.”

[00:04:45] “So I think documentation is a form of ethical content marketing.”

[00:07:12] “Yeah, it’s one of those things that really brings me a lot of joy is seeing success in open source and people getting paid for the work that they’re doing.”

[00:09:44] “And advertising is one of the ways, but I think developers know all the issues with online advertising around privacy and everything else.”

[00:10:44 “Sponsorship model is a model that you see in other industries such as fitness and beauty, and it’s definitely something that open source projects could emulate as well.”

[00:13:52] “I think we also need to have more conversations in the open source community about having different revenue streams, as opposed to depending on one.”

[00:17:10] “It’s all the stuff that the successful projects are already doing.”

[00:18:04] “And when you write documentation, when you write your blog posts, you’re actively finding your people, and how beautiful is that?”

[00:20:42] “ And I’m just remembering, I ran into this thing in the Dev Rel World called the “Orbit Model” or something, and I do think that was a way of rebranding funnels in a way that’s a little bit less kinda loaded already.”

[00:23:28] “I just think about the person who’s dropped from a bootcamp and they go into the ecosystem of software or whatever and they’re trying to learn how to be a developer, and they run into so many terrible documentation sites and software that they actually think that the problem is them, when actually the problem is the terrible state of documentation and in many parts of the ecosystem, and working to improve that situation is a huge benefit to lots of people.”

Special Guests: Eric Holscher and Portia Burton.

Sponsored By:

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Josh Montgomery

Eric Berry | Alyssa Wright | Richard Littauer

**TRIGGER WARNING: **There is mention of blood in this episode.

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Today, we have an amazing guest, Josh Montgomery, who is one of the co-founders of Mycroft AI, which is a private open source voice assistant and smart speaker, that customers could access, change, hack, and customize. Josh has also written a children’s book called, Mycroft and the Patent Trolls, that relates to open source sustainability. Josh takes us through the process of how Mycroft AI came about, we learn how it’s different than the other voice systems out there, and more about their goal, which is to provide value to customers in a way that makes them willing and eager to pay for it. He goes more in depth about the book he wrote which started because they realized there wasn’t a lot of innovation on the defense side, and Josh explains the ways the patent system needs to be reformed. Download this episode to find out much more!

[00:01:42] We learn more about Josh and the story behind founding Mycroft AI.

[00:04:20] Richard wonders how Josh builds this without having huge amounts of data to access.

[00:06:04] When Josh talks about “us” he explains who “us” is, how large the community is, and what kind of people are in it.

[00:08:21] Josh tells us about the challenges he faces trying to maintain that ethical boundary, but still be competitive.

[00:12:37] Alyssa wonders if the business development model that Josh was talking about has been in any other space.

[00:13:40] We hear a pitch for Mycroft AI from Josh.

[00:15:20] Josh mentions giving back to the community and Richard wonders how that would work and who in particular would get the investment back.

[00:18:18] Josh goes more in depth about how far they support people and what their focus is right now with Mycroft.

[00:20:21] Richard brings up “Patent Trolls” and ask Josh to talk about the eleven law firms that he hired and the children’s book he wrote.

[00:22:02] Josh explains how he feels about patents. TRIGGER WARNING. He shares an example about the guy who invented the “SawStop” and patented it.

[00:25:46] Find out where you can follow Josh and Mycroft AI online.

[00:03:19] “You know, we went and decided to do it an open way.”

[00:05:26] “So the way we get access to data is by being good stewards of our customer’s data and then giving customers the choice of how that data is used.”

[00:07:35] “You know our goal is to make it easier for those people to contribute and then to do as much of the heavy lifting as we can, you know, using company resources.”

[00:09:31] “Many of the Silicon Valley giants, I mean for example, Google is under indictment by all fifty states in the United States.”

[00:11:49] “And then from a sustainability perspective, you know, the next step to that is to take that revenue and share it with the people in the community who are building the skills that power the technology.”

[00:12:31] “You know what I would argue is take the easy way out, which is you know, spying on people and it’s just something we’re not willing to do.”

[00:12:50] “Plex is a great example of a company that took an open source stack, XBMC, right, or I guess it’s called Kodi now, took that and built a sustainable business where they provide some additional features for people who are paid.”

[00:20:35] “So, one of the things that we realized when we started battling a Patent Troll was that there wasn’t a whole lot of innovation on the defense side.”

[00:22:11] “A patent is a quid pro quo. It’s a deal between the general public and the inventor.”

[00:23:42] “And so, you know, the patent system needs to be reformed in a number of ways.”

[00:23:47] “But I think the two biggest things that need to happen is number one, it needs to be much, much harder to get a patent in terms of obviousness and in terms of people who have expertise in the area being able to reproduce it. So that’s number one. And then number two, they need to create a process that makes it extremely inexpensive and easy to challenge patents as they’re going through the process to get them revoked if they’re bad.”

[00:24:24] “And so I think we need to restore the patent system back to what it was originally intended for.”

[00:29:28] “You know, we’ve given open source a voice.”

Special Guest: Josh Montgomery.

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Dan Lorenc

Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Today, we have a very special guest, Dan Lorenc, who is a Staff Software Engineer and the lead for Google’s Open Source Security Team. Dan founded projects like Minikube, Skaffold, TektonCD, and Sigstore. He blogs regularly about supply chain security and serves on the TAC for the Open SSF. Dan fill us in on how Docker fits into what he’s doing at Google, he tells us about who’s running the Open Standards that Docker is depending on, and what he’s most excited for with Docker with standardization and in the future. We also learn a little more about a blog post he did recently and what he means by “package managers should become boring,” and he tells us how package managers can help pay maintainers to support their libraries. We learn more about his project Sigstore, and his perspective on the long-term growth of the software industry towards security and how that will change in the next five to ten years. Go ahead and download this episode now to find out much more!

[00:01:09] Dan tells us his background and how he got to where he is today.

[00:03:08] Eric wonders how Docker fits into what Dan is doing at Google and if he can compare Minicube and his work with what the Docker team is trying to drive. He also compares Kubernetes to Docker and how they relate.

[00:06:13] Dan talks about if he sees a shift of adoption in the sphere of what he’s seeing, and Eric asks if he feels that local development with Docker is devalued a little bit if you don’t use the same Docker configuration for your production deploy.

[00:08:49] Richard wonders in the long-term, if Dan thinks we’re going to continually keep making Dockers, better Kubernetes, or at some point are we going to decide that tooling is enough.

[00:10:35] We learn who’s currently running the Open Standards that Docker is depending on and Dan talks about the different standards.

[00:12:13] Dan shares how he thinks the shift towards open standards in particular with Docker, influences open source developers who are in more smaller companies, in SMEs, in medium-sized companies, or solo developers out there who may not have the time to get involved in open standards.

[00:13:45] Find out what Dan is really excited about in terms of Docker, with standardization or in the future that will lead to a more sustainable ecosystem.

[00:15:17] Justin brings up Dan’s blog and a recent post he just did called, “In Defense of Package Managers,” and in it he mentions package managers should become boring, so he explains what he means by that.

[00:18:01] Dan discusses how package managers can help pay maintainers to support their libraries.

[00:22:03] Richard asks Dan if he has any thoughts on getting other ways of recognition to maintainers down the stack than just paying them. He mentions things that he loves that GitHub’s been doing recently showing people their contribution history.

[00:23:46] Find out about Dan’s project Sigstore and what his adoption looks like so far.

[00:26:35] Richard wonders if Dan thinks it’s a good idea to have that ecosystem depend upon a few brilliant people like him doing this work or if there’s a larger community of people working on security supply chain issues. Also, who are his colleagues that he bounces these ideas off of and how do we eliminate the bus factor here. Dan tells us they have a slack for Sigstore

[00:30:03] We learn Dan’s perspective on the long-term growth of the software industry towards security in general, how will that change over the next five to ten years, and how his role and the role of people like him will change.

[00:31:35] Find out all the places you can follow Dan on the internet.

[00:10:14] “You kind of move past that single point of failure and single tool shame that’s actually used to manage everything.”

[00:12:44] “So, they kind of helped contribute to the standardization process by proving stuff out by getting to try all the new exciting stuff.”

[00:16:33] The “bullseye” release actually just went on a couple of days ago which was awesome.”

[00:17:04] “It’s a problem because there’s nobody maintaining, which is a really good topic for sustainability.”

[00:24:46] “But nobody’s doing it for open source, nobody’s signing their code on PyPy or Ruby Gems even though you can.”

[00:29:50] “These are not the Kim Kardashians of the coding community.”

[00:30:25] “Something that we’ve been constantly reminding, you know, the policy makers wherever we can, is that 80 to 90% of software in use today is open source.”

[00:30:51] “And even if companies can do this work for the software that they produce if we don’t think of, and don’t take care of, and don’t remember that these same requirements are going to hit opensource at the very bottom of the stack, and we’re kind of placing unfunded mandates and burdens on these repositories and maintainers that they didn’t sign up for it.”

[00:31:11] “So we’re really trying to remind everyone that as we increase these security standards, which we should do and we need to do, because software is serious, and people’s lives depend on it.”

Special Guest: Dan Lorenc.

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Niels ten Oever

Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Our guest today is Niels ten Oever, who is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Amsterdam, and recently published a really interesting report from the Ford Foundation on “Human Rights Are Not A Bug: Upgrading Governance for an Equitable Internet,” which we will learn more about. Today, Niels shares his thoughts on what the internet is, what human rights are, and how to make sure that we all work in the open. Niels tells us about the idea he had to build this powerful tool for the people in Ethiopia and what happened with that. He explains how he got interested in Internet Governance, his thoughts on 5G, working with the Guardian Project to develop the StoryMaker app, and more about his PhD report called, “Wired Norms.” Niels also shares great advice for open source developers on what they can do to make the world a better place. Download this episode now to hear so much more from Niels.

[00:01:41] Niels tells us how he got into being a developer and working in open source, and tells us about working with the Guardian Project to develop the StoryMaker app.

[00:04:25] Niels explains how he came up with this idea to build this powerful tool for the people in Ethiopia. He talks about his involvement with Tactical Tech and more about the report he wrote for the Ford Foundation on “Human Rights Are Not A Bug: Upgrading Governance for an Equitable Internet” and he goes in depth about infrastructural norm of interconnection.”

[00:16:23] Since Niels is someone who is an open source developer and has worked with open tools, Richard asks him how he views the intersection between large unseen infrastructure, human rights, and open source as this whole idea of everything should be able to be used by anyone else and how does that work with him with the idea of privacy.

[00:20:56] Niels talks about an article that he did along with Mallory Knodel, that the New York Times printed called, ‘Master,’ ‘Slave’ and the Fight over Offensive Terms in Computing.

[00:26:06] Richard is curious to know how Niels personally chooses what level of the stack to approach to figure out how to be a better person. Niels shares his thoughts and advice for open source developers on what they can do to make the world a better place. He mentions Cloudflare as a company that has adopted a Human Rights Policy.

[00:31:58] We find out from Niels about writing his PhD report called “Wired Norms,” why he came out with it, and the best part of it.

[00:36:12] Find out where you can follow Niels online and learn more about things that he’s writing.

[00:36:27] Justin brings one final point about how Niels writes a lot of papers on 5G and how in America there a certain people that have this conspiracy theory that 5G is not secure, and since Niels works very closely in that community, he shares his thoughts.

[00:03:18] “Then we develop different distros for the different parts of the radio station that have been in use ever since.”

[00:03:52] “So we tend to think that you need the really fancy computers to do things, but Linux actually allowed me to reuse so much of the hardware and software there to enable freedom of expression.”

[00:05:38] “I had also studied a year in Berlin and one of the quotes on top of the Humboldt University directly when you entered is in German and it means “Philosophers have always interpreted the world differently, but what really matters is to change it.” And that’s what I actually wanted to do. I didn’t want to be an armchair philosopher.”

[00:08:42] “And then I thought like hey, but all these smartphones people carry around, they have as much computing power as my Linux boxes. Why don’t we actually do editing on that?”

[00:09:51] “So then I got really involved with technical tech and other organizations working on digital security issues, but also found out that like teaching people who were under the most stressful situation of their lives to do something else added on top and that the best possible outcome of that behavior is nothing happens is almost like the worst premise for behavior change.”

[00:10:30] “So, then I started wondering, why don’t we address this in the infrastructure itself?”

[00:11:03] “So, that really confused me because my whole premise, freedom of expression plus access to information equals social change, clearly wasn’t true.”

[00:13:09] “What is so interesting about the internet, which consist of more than 70,000 independent networks, lots of different devices from different manufacturers, lots of networking stacks, operating systems, that are all working together, that is possible through what I call “infrastructural norm of interconnection.”

[00:14:49] “But this is the nature of infrastructure, it hides itself, it only shows what it breaks.”

[00:17:47] “But, as open source developers know, the most central part in this are actually people.”

[00:18:35] “But, unfortunately, as the excellent researcher Corinne Cath shows, is that many of these governance bodies, such as the internet engineering task force, there is a total monoculture that is actually very resistant to change.”

[00:19:09] “And there is nothing inherently wrong with that, but it is wrong if they set the rules for a global internet.”

[00:20:56] “Together with Mallory Knodel, officer at the Center for Democracy and Technology, I made a really simple internet draft to request people to stop using “master,” “slave” and “blacklist”, “whitelist,” and that ended up being a huge route which ended up in the New York Times.”

[00:23:22] “But what’s the most important part I think is that it’s never done, your human rights are like muscles, you need to keep training them or else you lose them.”

[00:24:10] “If your code is used for a bad thing, that doesn’t make you a bad person, but it makes you a bad person if you don’t do anything about it and if you don’t relate to that.”

[00:24:37] “Our actions have consequences and people who work with computers have a disproportional impact on society.”

[00:27:20] “Try to make the things a bit better, try to document your code better, try having discussions, try having people who are not just all CS white dudes on the developing team, but really do your best to bring more people in.”

[00:28:43] “So, I do a lot of martial arts and I really enjoy it. And so, the first time you get punched in the face, you feel almost like insulted, right, like whoa, what, can you do this?”

[00:29:35] “And I think that’s what open source software is and can be really good for because we can fork, we can change, we can make iterative changes, discuss them in our meetings.”

[00:30:41] “So like it’s just another sign that says, “Club, need to comply to our methods, our tools, to be able to partake in this.”

Special Guest: Niels ten Oever.

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Bruno Souza

Richard Littauer | Justin Dorfman

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. If you’re looking to learn more about Java, this is the episode you really need to listen to. Today, our guest is Bruno Souza, a Brazillian Java programmer and a member of the OSI. Bruno is the Founder of SouJava, a Brazillian Java User Group which became the world’s largest, he was involved with some of the earliest JVM’s, and has been very influential not only in Brazil, but in the Java open source works at large. Bruno goes in depth on how he got involved in open source, getting involved in the OSI, and in Java. We also learn more about what Kotlin means for the community, how OpenJDK was extremely important for Java, and how Oracle really embraced the idea of OpenJDK. You will soon understand why Bruno is known as the “Brazilian JavaMan.” Go ahead and download this episode now to find out more!

[00:01:44] Bruno explains how he got involved in open source and how long he’s been a developer.

[00:03:46] We learn how Bruno got involved in the OSI early on and how he got involved in Java.

[00:07:12] Justin asks Bruno how he felt during the legal proceedings on Oracle v. Google.

[00:12:35] Richard wonders how the Brazilian government got in touch with Bruno and what role has Brazil played in open source. Bruno mentions a manifesto that his Java group wrote along with other user groups in Brazil, explaining how they, as developers, saw open source and standards.

[00:21:51] Justin asks Bruno to talk about what Kotlin means for the community and what other projects took advantage of the OpenJDK contribution.

[00:28:41] Richard asks who is paying the current Java maintainers and how do we make sure that companies are responsible in doing that.

[00:35:14] Find out where you can find Bruno on the internet.

[00:05:15] “So, for me that discussion really opened my eyes on how important it was for a developer to have access to the source code of the things they are doing.”

[00:06:19] “The adoption of Java was important because they were looking for freedom because they wanted to be free from the vendors.”

[00:06:47] “And so for me, when I started discussing open source in 2000, my whole objective was to discuss those two freedoms together, the freedom to choose different vendors and the freedom to do what you want with the software you’re using.”

[00:09:01] “And so for me, it was more like Google was relying and benefitting from the Java tools, from all the knowledge on Java, for all the developers that knew Java.”

[00:09:12] “But at the same time, they did not commit to the community.”

[00:09:25] “And then when Oracle took over and they made the lawsuit, right, the problem with the lawsuit was, in terms of copywriting, it was damaging, I think. The way the lawsuit was done was damaging for developers, for software in fact.”

[00:11:00] “Sometimes it’s like you’re swimming side by side with whales. The whale doesn’t even know you’re there, doesn’t care that you’re there. If the whale decides to move in another direction, you’re dead.”

[00:16:20] “The interesting thing is that the Brazilian open source community at that time was mostly comprised of people using open source, so Linux, and Open Office, so basically people suing tools. And the Java community in Brazil was by far the strongest development community that was developing for Linux using Java. So then basically, we are bringing in the developer discussion.”

[00:16:46] “So, for us, the whole point to us, you know, it’s not only about deciding to use open source, it’s about to develop basing your code on the standards and open source software.”

[00:17:19] “You can buy software from someone, you can download software from someone, but the big effort that you actually do is to write your own software.”

[00:23:15] “And, I think this was very important because Oracle did do amazingly with Java in open source because Oracle really embraced the whole idea of OpenJDK.”

[00:26:15] “I think that having Java open source allows you to base other languages on top of the Java VM.”

[00:26:55] “But Java is the runtime in all history, the runtime that will have received more investments from companies.”

[00:27:30] “Honestly for me as a developer, I see languages as tools.”

[00:29:24] “So we still have to battle that with the developer.”

[00:29:27] “I mean look, the biggest beneficiary of open source is the software developer.”

[00:29:33] “You know you can talk about companies can benefit, you can talk users can benefit, there’s lots of benefits around open source.”

[00:30:01] “So, I think the biggest thing that we can do is actually show to companies how beneficial it is for them.”

[00:31:15] “But, the more Twitter can get that stuff and put on the VM the less difference there is in between the open source version and what Twitter does, the less differences there are, the more Twitter can benefit from the advancements of the Java VM.”

[00:32:56] “Reality, if you want to make sustainable open source, what you have to do is that we have to show the companies how valuable it is that code they have in their hands.”

[00:33:14] “They’re not doing the work on the open source code.”

[00:33:55] “You know it’s like companies that let their open source software be in this precarious situation they are throwing money down the drain.”

[00:34:05] “They’re really ignoring the huge value they have in their hands and if that value disappears, they are going to pay for it… heavily!”

[00:35:39] “Uncle Bob says that every five years we double the number of developers, so every five years half of the developers never heard of any of that.”

[00:38:02] “I think open source in general needs love, needs more people giving and less people taking.”

Special Guest: Bruno Souza.

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Logan Kilpatrick

Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. We are very excited to have as our guest, Logan Kilpatrick, who is the Community Manager for the Julia Programming Language, a graduate student studying Software Engineering and Technology Law, and makes an exclusive announcement of another position he recently has taken on. Today, we are talking to Logan about the Julia Programming Language. We learn more about the role Major League Hacking played in the MLH Fellowship with Julia, why Logan is most interested in doing open source non-technical, his experience working at NASA, and the challenges he has with research papers. He also tells us about why the Julia community should not be using Slack, but maybe using Discord and Zulip in the future. Logan shares some parting advice about reaching out to people if there’s opportunities that are interesting to you. Find out more and download this episode now!

[00:00:22] Logan gives us a brief introduction of who he is, what he does, and what this new position is he has recently taken on.

[00:01:52] NumFocus is the topic and how this all came to be for Logan, and why Julia as a programming language is so unique and special.

[00:05:48] Justin brings up ML Hacks and Logan explains more about this.

[00:08:04] Logan fills us in on what his Julia day-to-day tasks that he works on and his non-technical tasks so he can influence the next non-technical open source contributor.

[00:11:51] Find out if the Julia Programming Language is using any tools to monitor their community engagement. Justin talks about something he uses called Orbit, which is a framework for building high gravity communities.

[00:16:00] Find out the experience Logan had working with NASA!

[00:18:49] Logan has so much going on in his life and Justin wonders how he finds time to do anything.

[00:20:10] We learn why Logan has a bunch of challenges with research papers.

[00:22:47] Eric wonders if people are not sharing the code for reasons that they don’t want to give up intellectual property or that it’s not completely well-formed and they just want to own it, but still want to share it. Logan gives his perspective on this.

[00:25:17] Logan explains the different places you can find the Julia community and why they should not be using Slack. Eric wonders what is out there that we can use that people would adopt, and Logan talks about Discord, Zulip, and Forum Community.

[00:29:09] Logan covers one more thing, going back to the convo they had about open source contributions and non-technical contributions. He also brings up Jono Bacon’s book, People Powered.

[00:04:46] “The estimate right now is something like a million developers or something like that, which is at a million users.”

[00:05:53] “So, Major League Hacking is an incredible organization and they were sort of generous enough in the first iteration of the MLH Fellowship, which is just an opportunity for students to contribute to open source and get paid to do it by Major League Hacking and a bunch of peripheral organizations who support Major League Hacking.”

[00:08:33] “I think my sort of general goal that has just come out recently for me is to make people understand that a non-technical contribution in open source is a viable way of contributing.”

[00:08:58] “And the reason for that is I feel like there’s more opportunities to do those non-technical contributions and there’s more sort of missing pieces in the non-technical space.”

[00:10:21] “Again, I think there’s so much non-technical work that if someone doesn’t step up and do it, it doesn’t get done.”

[00:20:21] “One of which is a lot of times folks don’t release their code, which is sort of one of the missions of NumFocus and in a sense, “Open code equals better science.”

[00:26:16] “To me, it’s 100% evident and perfectly clear that we should not be using Slack.”

[00:26:23] “Slack is a tool that is built for corporations to communicate with one another... It is not a tool for open source projects to be using.”

[00:28:46] “In my personal opinion, Discord and Zulip will probably be the two that are fighting each other in the future with respect to places that communities go and meet.”

[00:29:22] “I think something that is perhaps might be obvious to some people, might not be obvious to some people, but really, non-technical contributions in my opinion are the pathway to making a code contribution.”

[00:30:58] “I think my parting suggestion for people that I always try to instill whenever I have the opportunity to talk to people that I don’t know through the internet is take the opportunities to reach out to folks that you don’t know if there’s opportunities that are interesting to you.”

Special Guest: Logan Kilpatrick.

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Leslie Hawthorn

Allen "Gunner" Gunn | Eric Berry | Eriol Fox | Richard Littauer

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. We have an excellent guest on today and she is here to talk about real stuff! Our guest is Leslie Hawthorn, who is the Manager for the Vertical Community Strategy in Red Hat’s Open Source Programs Office in the Office of the CTO. She has spent her career creating, cultivating, and enabling open source communities and we are so fortunate to have her with us today to speak her eloquent words of wisdom. We learn more about what Leslie does in her position, the Open Source Program Office and how she sees it growing and changing, and a deep conversation of European digital sovereignty and how it is both a threat and opportunity for open source and open standards. Also, Leslie keeps it real and shares awesome advice on what it takes to be the best kind of corporate open source program officer. Go ahead and download this episode now to learn much more!

[00:02:37] We learn what Leslie she does in her position.

[00:05:13] Richard is curious about what Leslie thinks about the OSPO concept in general and how does she see it growing and changing in the past five years.

[00:07:43] Leslie talks about digital sovereignty and the movement towards open source program offices focusing on that.

[00:13:13] Eriol brings up a design phrase “human-centered” and asks Leslie to talk more about examples she has seen where humans, users, and citizens have been centered at the creation of various open source software projects. Leslie mentions a really great panel discussion to check out with Claudia Barrosa and Pia Karter where they talked about Open Source and Open Standards, Supporting European Innovation.

[00:18:21] Leslie tells us what made her move to Germany and how that’s reflected in the work she’s doing at Red Hat.

[00:23:16] Richard wonders why Leslie feels that the OSPO at Red Hat is the place where you can affect the most change, how is she doing ecosystem level change in her current position, and where does she think it will lead her over the next few years.

[00:27:42] Gunner is curious to know if Leslie has a taxonomy of how she thinks about different types of open source program offices and their motivations or contributions to open source communities, and any guiding principles that she thinks any accountable open source program office or officer might want to be following or guided by.

[00:33:02] Find out where you can follow Leslie online.

[00:02:49] “And when we think about traditional community management, quote on quote, there’s typically a community focused human who is looking at the universe from the perspective of, how does my singular community engage with other entities?”

[00:07:45] “Those who are not familiar with this concept of digital sovereignty, just the really quick rundown is this idea that folks in Europe are, I would say for some good reasons and for some bad reasons, deeply concerned about making sure that there is control of IT infrastructure and data and everything associated with just having a technological life, which turns out is now true of every citizen.”

[00:08:14] “And there is, I will say, especially given my past employer, there is legitimate concern for what does it mean if your IT infrastructure is outsourced to someone far, far away from you who is not necessarily beholden to the same laws or to the same values system of the place in which you reside.”

[00:09:31] “Pia Karger, who is the head of the Open Source Program Office in Germany, you know, pointed out that one of the reasons why there was this change in the name of the office that she shares was because this notion of digital sovereignty and being, let’s create open source that is exclusively to be contributed to by Europeans, that is explicitly to be used by Europeans, was not in keeping with the value system that folks in her office wanted to enact nor with Germany in general.”

[00:10:04] “So instead, you know, she pointed out digital sovereignty is not about excluding people from contribution or excluding people from participation, it’s about ensuring that that there is freedom of choice.”

[00:10:22] “You don’t want to do any single sourcing of any particular vendor or any particular, you know, one place where you’re going to get all your technology if you’re any organization.”

[00:11:10] “The ability to collaborate amongst one another and share best practices, and this moniker of the OSPO is this critical anchor because turns out, if you described your work using common language, it’s very easy for folks to connect to one another and be able to do that knowledge sharing and best practice and collaboration because they can actually find each other.”

[00:11:43] “Yes, OSPO is a locus of collaboration, my friends.”

[00:14:45] “And then not only did she take us through their entire evolution, but then pointed out the different ways in which their agency also accounted for the fact that this digital first future that they were envisioning was going to leave a lot of citizens behind.”

[00:15:50] “If you do not talk to your actual users, you have absolutely no idea what they need and whatever you produce is going to not actually meet the needs of anyone.”

[00:29:38] “And I think that my charge to folks who are working in open source offices is to think back to the words that Richard said earlier, projects come and go, your employer is going to come and go.”

[00:30:11] “And, if you’re going to be looking at your investment strategy as a corporate open source officer, don’t just be looking at whether or not you think that your open source strategy is going to provide you with developer acquisition that’s going to provide you with specific ROI, or allow you to hit some vague milestone.”

[00:31:47] “And that’s the kind of corporate open source program officer that you want to be. You want to be somebody that is genuinely respected because you show genuine respect for other people regardless of what the dollar Euro pound won value is that interaction.”

Special Guest: Leslie Hawthorn.

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Ewa Jodlowska, Rachel Lawson, Leah Silen, Ben Nickolls, Jory Burson, and Karen Sandler

Duane O'Brien and Richard Littauer

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Today, we’re doing something a little different with this episode. We are giving you the audio recording of a round table that was recently hosted by Duane O’Brien and Richard Littauer, about the role of foundations in open source. Our panelists today are Ewa Jodlowska, Rachel Lawson, Leah Silen, Ben Nickolls, Jory Burson, and Karen Sandler. We’ll spend time talking about foundations and associations in general, the kinds of things they do, the kinds of legal structures that they may have, and how they differ from each other. They explain about the work they’ve done for their projects and some services that they offer. And then we’ll spend time talking about projects, when projects might think about reaching out to organizations, or when maintainers might think about bringing their projects to organizations. So, take a listen and enjoy! Go ahead and download this episode now!

[00:00:40] Duane starts off with a quick overview of the conversations they’ll be talking about.

[00:01:36] Everyone gives a brief introduction of themselves, who they’re representing, and what their organization does.

[00:06:42] Duane asks the panelists for their responses to: What is a foundation, what isn’t a foundation, and what are some of the differences between the types of organizations that you have.

[00:10:58] Speaking on behalf of the Python Software Foundation, Ewa talks about what kinds of things they do for projects and we learn from Leah what fiscal sponsorship means.

[00:13:07] Duane asks if there is anyone for whom their organization and their view of fiscal sponsorship is significantly different from what the others have described. Jory, Ben, and Karen share some things.

[00:17:34] Duane asks the panelists to discuss about the times that their organizations have helped solve another kind of problem or member projects or for projects that later became members. And, when have they been able to step in and intervene on behalf of the project?

[00:27:45] Find out what kinds of things the panelists look for from projects that apply to be a part of your organization and when do they think they’re ready to come in.

[00:31:56] For the maintainers of projects who are in charge of their project and are thinking it might be or wondering if it’s time to start reaching out to foundations, Duane asks the panelists for some key indicators that they might look for that it’s probably time to tag in some bigger help than they’ve had to date.

[00:32:54] Richard brings up a question that was in the chat about mailing lists and why is mailing list important when considering whether you’re going to take on a project into your foundation.

[00:34:45] A question that was sent to Richard personally and not in the chat was, why do we think there are so many women in this space?

[00:36:20] The next chat question Richard asks was, can everyone agree that most open source software foundation’s purpose is not to support the public interest, but instead to support the interest of the members?

[00:39:33] The panelists tell us what they are most excited about that might be coming up for them and what they want to plug on behalf of their organization.

Special Guests: Benjamin Nickolls, Ewa Jodlowska, Jory Burson, Karen Sandler, Leah Silen, and Rachel Lawson.

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Ewa Jodlowska

Jackie Augustine

Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. We are super excited to have two guests with us, Ewa Jodlowska, who is the Executive Director of the Python Software Foundation and has been with the PSF since 2012. We also have Jackie Augustine, who is the Director of Events at the Python Software Foundation and she joined the PSF in 2018 to assist in the planning of PyCon US. Today, we’re going to talk with Ewa and Jackie about how PyCon works, which is the largest annual gathering for the community using and developing open-source Python programming language. Since PyCon US 2021 had to go virtual this year, we learn what they’ve done different, using Hubilo as their event platform, sponsors feedback, how attendance was, the value of these conferences, and if they would ever go hybrid. Also, we learn about a successful virtual job fair that Jackie did this year for PSF and find out the one thing she’s most excited for the next PyCon. Download this episode to find out much from Ewa and Jackie!

[00:03:23] Ewa fills us in how PyCon US is different from PyCon. Jackie tells us what they’ve done since last year and how they’ve adapted since COVID came through.

[00:06:08] Jackie tells us why they went with Hubilo as their event platform, and how the sponsors feedback was for the virtual experience overall.

[00:08:14] Justin asks how the attendance was for the virtual event. Also, he wonders if going forward if they see themselves doing a hybrid.

[00:12:34] Richard is curious to know from Jackie and Ewa if an ecosystem level of analysis of what PSF does and what their conferences are, influenced their decisions at all and is there anything they’re doing to make it more sustainable ecologically. Also, Jackie tells us how international attendance was at their conference.

[00:15:12] Ewa talks about the “value” of these conferences for the ecosystem as a whole and what would happen if we just never have them again.

[00:17:03] Jackie tells us about the successful job fair she did this year which was a virtual set up.

[00:18:52] Richard asks if they’ve looked into moving beyond the single annual convention format.

[00:21:08] Eric could only imagine what Jackie must go through in the weeks prior to the conference and asks her to talk a bit about the experience on an emotional level that she goes through, and she tells us what she learned through this process that she didn’t expect.

[00:24:17] Richard asks if there’s any way Jackie’s made or plans on making it easier for people who come to the conference to join in the decision-making process for a PSF, to join into working groups and feel like they’re a part of something bigger than just watching a talk, and how has that shaped how you’re planning future models.

[00:25:51] What is Jackie most excited about in the future for the next PyCon?

[00:26:01] You can find out from Ewa where to follow PSF, where you can sign up to go the conferences, and where you can follow Jackie online to connect with her.

[00:08:52] “In the end, you know, we had our goals, we had our tiers of goals, and we hit what we thought we would hit, and we were successful in that.”

[00:10:21] “I think the question that we’re asking ourselves is, do you actually take that component out in their ability for anybody to attend whether they feel comfortable traveling or not.”

[00:11:29] “When you add something like a hybrid event, you’re really planning two events at the same time, so that really changes up how we’re able to do that with the resources that we have.”

[00:13:02] “Some of the things that we’re doing or planning on doing is like the swag papers and all that is going away moving forward, so we’re taking the steps. We work with the convention centers as well and make sure that they are doing their part in the sustainability and things like that.”

[00:13:51] “Yes, it’s been wonderful for the environment that we’ve all kind of had to reset and stay home, but I also think that’s going to have a little bit of an adverse effect because now everyone is going to be like, oh my gosh, I want to be together, you know, whenever that can happen.”

[00:15:32] “And I feel like actually there are hundreds of people that attend PyCon that probably never go to a talk. All the value that’s there for them is to network with people, to talk about their projects with people, to have, you know, their projects be seen and tested, whatever the case might be.”

[00:19:30] But then PyCon went to Cleveland, but that I think also helped reinforce a lot of the attendance when you looked at the numbers and how many people attended from Ohio was really incredible, right, so it kind of brought the larger scale portion of it.”

[00:24:40] “We rely a lot of volunteer committees.”

[00:25:51] “What are you most excited about in the future for the next PyCon? Seeing faces! Makes sense, checks out, I get it!”

Special Guests: Ewa Jodlowska and Jackie Augustine.

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Kavita Kapoor

Eric Berry | Eriol Fox | Alyssa Wright | Richard Littauer

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.

[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.”

Special Guest: Kavita Kapoor.

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