Sustain

Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer

Don Goodman-Wilson

In this episode we talk with Don Goodman-Wilson, from Amsterdam. He’s a philosopher-engineer experienced in developer advocacy, Founder of Katsudon.tech, and Board Member at Maintainerati Foundation.

1:18 Don explains Maintainerati’s mission and brings up a point about how to create a network of support among maintainers.

04:10 Don talks about having no insight in the Japanese open source community and the challenges must face not being able to communicate with others.

7:03 Justin asks Don what does DevRel means to him and he also explains what “empowerment” means to him as well.

10:26 Don explains what issues he tackled at Slack and GitHub.

16:17 Don wrote a post on open source about how it’s a bit broken. He explains how the current situation is radically skewed in favor of the business interests.

18:50 Richard asks Don to talk about what ethical implications might mean for open source and how do we fix it, work on it, and make it better for the developmental maintainers.

22:21 The panel and Don discuss how a maintainer, Seth Vargo, found out that his code was being used by a subcontractor for ICE and how ICE is currently having major humanitarian issues on the border.

28:21 Justin speaks about open source and section five of no discrimination against persons or groups.

32:10 Don chimed in about a talk he did at FOSDEM that challenged the assumption that open is the right thing.

35:27 Richard explains his views on academic linguistics and saving endangered languages and how to do it properly.

Don Goodman-Wilson

Special Guest: Don Goodman-Wilson.

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Whether you’re working on a personal project or managing your enterprise’s infrastructure, Linode has the pricing, support, and scale you need to take your project to the next level. Get started on Linode today.

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Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer | Allen “Gunner” Gunn

Gareth Rushgrove

In this episode, we talk with Gareth Rushgrove, from Cambridge, UK, Director of Project Management at a security software startup called Snyk. He has spoken at a number of international technology conferences over the past few years, including FOSDEM, RAMP, BACON, QCon, PuppetConf, Monitorama, GOTO and Velocity. Security and Open Source don’t often go together, in this episode we explore the topic and more.

01:20 Gareth explains that Snyk provides tools for developers who use Open Source Software and help them stay secure. He also expands on vulnerability landscapes.

02:10 Justin asks Gareth at what point does he think the collective community decided that we need to start digging into security holes within our software and he answers the question.

04:00 One of the guys asks Gareth if security is a passion of his and if he joined the company because that’s what he loves or was it more for Open Source.

05:30 The guys talk about Guy Podjarney (a.k.a Guypod) and Steve Souders and how they started the web performance movement.

07:30 Richard states Snyk has 400,000 users on the website and three times more vulnerability than a public database. Gareth goes further in-depth about this and what his company does using Java, Ruby, or Python and how he does a bunch of propriety research and helps projects do profit disclosure.

11:10 Gareth discusses the Heartbleed attack & the Equifax data breach and its effect on the industry’s view on Open Source. Companies want Open Source ecosystem to be more secure,

17:50 Gunner chimes in with a question about if there is a list of things Gareth wishes Open Source projects would do to be better members of ecosystems visa the security and if there are checklists or places to go for best practices. Gareth expands on this.

23:49 Gareth talks about DevSecCon which is a conference that brings developers and security together in one place. There are eight conferences around the world this year.

24:33 One of the guys is curious about the effect of security and how people out there have packages that are used by millions of other users and how often they don’t know how many users are using it. Gareth explains.

26:44 Gunner asks about the role of threat modeling in the work Gareth does and what he recommends.

28:25 Gareth goes in-depth about the Helm Project and CNCF sponsoring.

37:31 Gareth gives advice on where people can go to find more information about security besides talking to Snyk.

Snyk

Special Guest: Gareth Rushgrove.

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Whether you’re working on a personal project or managing your enterprise’s infrastructure, Linode has the pricing, support, and scale you need to take your project to the next level. Get started on Linode today.

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Pia Mancini | Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer | Allen “Gunner” Gunn

Josh Simmons

In this episode we talk with Josh Simmons, Senior Open Source Strategist at Salesforce Engineering. He is a community strategist, open source advocate, and dusty- foot philosopher. He also serves as Vice President of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

4:10 Josh talks about how he started in Open Source and his background.

7:27 Josh explains why companies/people should invest money in Open Source even though it’s free and why it’s a good business, adding features, fixing bugs, and risk mitigation.

10:28 Richard says, “As a dusty-foot philosopher,” Josh believes it’s ethical to give back and non-ethical for enterprise companies not to give back.

11:03 We are lucky to have this concept of Open Source. Our fore fathers twenty plus years ago realized there was another approach to intellectual property. Open Source was such a radical concept. Also, as contributors, if we don’t give back who will? If no one does, what are we here for?

20:50 A panelist asks Josh, “What are the challenges of running an OSPO?” In an organization with over 8,000 developers, Josh explains how he tries to pull all the docs and pool everything together and create coherent set of documents and policies. Also, the main challenge is the outreach to the staff.

25:27 Josh tells us tools he likes using such as CLA Assistant (BOT) and OSS Review Toolkit. He also gives a shout out to the TODO Group: talk openly, develop openly which is a project for the LINUX Foundation. Both tools were found through the “To Do Group.”

28:16 Josh talks about his role in OSI (Open Source Initiative). Josh is Vice President of the Open Source Initiative. He gives us the history of how it started and how their goal is to protect and promote Open Source, including maintaining the approved OSI license list.

36:55 Richard and Josh debate whether or not OSI is a vehicle for the community. Richard brings up how dual licensing does not fall under Open Source under OSI’s definitions.

50:04 Justin's spotlight this week is cURL

Linode

Josh Simmons Website

Special Guest: Josh Simmons.

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Whether you’re working on a personal project or managing your enterprise’s infrastructure, Linode has the pricing, support, and scale you need to take your project to the next level. Get started on Linode today.

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Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer

Ibiam Chihurumnaya

00:55 In today’s episode, we have Ibiam Chihurumnaya. He is a developer based in Nigeria. Ibiam works with Sugar Labs where he develops and maintains software for children. Also, as a way of giving back to society, he trains children how to code. So far, they have trained over 800 children. He is here to share with us how he started his programming journey and the wonderful things he is doing for future programmers.

Imagine growing up in a village where every child is expected to either be a lawyer, an engineer or a doctor and anything to do with technology is unheard off. Can you imagine depending on a cyber café for you to learn how to code? Our guest narrates to us how he overcame all that he went through for him to become the great developer he is today.

07:10 How did he start coding? Ibiam was fortunate enough to attend a school that offered coding training. He was lucky enough to grab a chance to attend some of the training, and it created a base for his coding passion.

10:10 The laptop he was using at that time had limited RAM and hard disk space; therefore, he resulted in learning Python. It was not a walk in the park. He had to sacrifice to afford cyber services. For parents who are listening, it is good for you to allow your children to choose what they want to do. Ibiam’s mother supported him to the best of her ability. Our guest started the FOSSFA movement.

15:30 He drew inspiration from a developer in Uruguay who teaches coding as an extra-curricular activity to children between the age of nine and twelve who are interested in coding. The results in Uruguay are amazing. When Ibiam started teaching kids programming in Nigeria, it was not easy for him but the desire to see people who will carry on the coding work once he is not there kept him going. He teaches open-source.

21:09 Ibiam is working with the Nigerian government to help teach the interested children coding as an extra-curricular activity along with other activities like robotics, design and drones classes. The foundation encourages children to be whatever they want to be without necessarily choosing a career in the technology world.

33:06 In Africa, Rwanda is doing an exceptionally good job in encouraging the children to love coding. In the next 10 to 20 years, Ibiam sees Africa as a tech space with collaboration and innovations. Also, he wants to see a lot of engineers in Africa from Africa, still in Africa and working with companies in Africa and outside Africa.

Special Guest: Ibiam Chihurumnaya.

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Whether you’re working on a personal project or managing your enterprise’s infrastructure, Linode has the pricing, support, and scale you need to take your project to the next level. Get started on Linode today.

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Eric Berry | Pia Mancini | Justin Dorfman | Allen “Gunner” Gunn

Justin W. Flory

In this episode we talk with Justin Flory, quite possibly the future of Open Source Sustainability. Justin fell into the Open Source world as a 15-year-old out of necessity while trying to build and maintain his Minecraft server. Justin currently attends the Rochester Institute of Technology, currently the only institute of higher learning offering a Free and Open Source Software and Free Culture minor. He is best known as an Open Source contributor in the U.S.

01:21: Justin Flory discusses his contribution to the Linux open source community and getting involved with his University’s open source program.

02:11: The driving force at an early age was playing Minecraft as a kid and wanting to have his own server to build a community to play with friends. This led to learning networking, system administration, and eventually drove him to some Minecraft open source software. It was there he helped out and eventually became a community manger.

07:32: Justin talks about the Spigot Project and how they funded it through a web store, contests, and donation drives.

09:18: While at RIT, he became more involved in the open source world through such things as the FOSS Initiative, Libre Corps, UNICEF, Open APS, Night Scout, and Sugarlabs, and the One Laptop per Child ecosystem.

12:51: Also at RIT, and as part of his minor, discusses his class on FOSS.

14:29: Breaks down the 2006 post on Linux.com by Bruce Byfield on why FOSS is not on activists’ agenda and how he was ahead of his time.

21:54: Justin talks about one of the sessions he went to at the Mozilla Festival in 2019 about the Extinction Rebellion.

23:40: Gunner joins in and Eric talks about the upcoming events in Brussels: Sustain, CHAOSS, and FOSDEM. Justin Flory and Michael Nolan will be speaking at FOSDEM and he gave us a preview of his “Freedom and AI” which will showcase the Four Essentials of Freedom. This will be held on Saturday, February 2, 2020.

• 34:24: Justin Dorfman spotlight this week is Tailwind CDN.

Justin W Flory

Rochester Institute of Technology

unicef

Libre Corps

Justin's blog about Bruce Byfield’s post

Why FOSS Isn’t On Activist Agendas

FOSDEM 2020

Justin Flory's Sustain Summit 2018 Blog

Extinction Rebellion

Tailwind CDN

Queer JS

Tails OS

Qubes

Mert

Spigot Project

Special Guest: Justin W. Flory.

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Whether you’re working on a personal project or managing your enterprise’s infrastructure, Linode has the pricing, support, and scale you need to take your project to the next level. Get started on Linode today.

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Justin Dorfman | Eric Berry

Gidi (Gideon) Morris

00:44: The special guest for this episode of Sustain is Gidi (Gideon) Morris. Gidi is the principal software engineer at Elastic and has been in the industry for about two decades now.

03:08: He discusses his worries within not just the open source world, but the entire tech industry. Justin furthers the questions that Gidi raise about the open source world and the various psychological impacts it can have on the employees, due to his own experience. Gideon address the pressures and shifts relating to newcomers in the industry, specifically focusing on the world of open source. He raises the two issues he’s concerned about which is why people come into the industry and how do we support them? And are we creating an environment where they’re burning themselves out the way I did?

06:45 Eric begins the discussion by addressing the term Gidi raises which is, burnout. He relates his own experience where he felt this way about his work in the past year and brings up Gidi current employer, Elastic. Eric talks about his time when he was working at a startup called Mahalo and he used a product called Elastic search.

07:45 The question was posted in IRC and it was answered in 30 seconds according to Eric, which he exclaims was very surprising and that it represented that healthy environment Gidi brought up. Eric says he’s heard the work on Elk Stack is the environment striving to prevent the burnout that Gidi raises issues about.

08:18 Gidi then goes into detail about how companies can prevent the burnout of their employers and how they can learn from companies, like Elastic. He explains Elastic and what they do, he says it mainly works on a product called Elastic search, which is a search engine as well as a variety of satellite products.

10:30 He also states that it’s also one of the biggest remote companies across the tech world. He joined because all of the development within Elastic is developed like an open source project. Gidi also discusses how well the communication is within the employers and the flexibility within the company.

12:50 Eric then moves the conversation to working in a remote company and the benefits and downsides that it can possess. Gidi explains how his team works across 5 different time zones. Eric then asks Gidi about licensing working on a source available product, which allows users to look at the source.

16:30 Gidi discusses the benefits of the open source project and the healthy environment it provides. There is nothing secretive about what's being done within the company which he states as being less limited than more limited. Gidi explains how there are certain folders that have what used to be closed source and are now source available. Eric agrees with Gidi in that the key to open source sustainability is licensing and being honest with customers and contributors.

22:01 Gidi also brings up the recent dilemma about the expectations of the open-source community to shift without the help of those companies, which is where the dilemma comes up between balancing that and licensing agreements. Gidi explains some of the mistakes they’ve made along the way with the dual-licensing model, however it has mostly worked out for them in the end. Eric says that Elastic has taken a good approach to licensing with open source.

36:40 Gideon ends the conversation explaining why he joined Elastic from the start. The main thing was the difference between a company being asynchronous and synchronous and that is what Elastic brought into question for him. He emphasized that if we as a community adopt these ways of working, there will be a big change in how others get involved with the open source community.

43:25 Eric and Justin wrap up the conversation by discussing what they’re planning to do with every podcast, which is every podcast they share an open-source project or library that has provided value or an impact for their personal career or life. They spotlight Erik Rasmussen, Laravel Charts, and a charity called BEAM.

Special Guest: Gidi Morris.

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Whether you’re working on a personal project or managing your enterprise’s infrastructure, Linode has the pricing, support, and scale you need to take your project to the next level. Get started on Linode today.

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Allen Gunn aka Gunner self-identifies as a recovering software engineer and CTO. After the dot-com bubble popped circa 2000 he founded a non-profit called Aspiration which is a values-driven nonprofit technology organization. For those lucky enough to have attended an event Gunner has facilitated will know, he has the gift of gab. He was so good on this episode that we asked him to become a permanent host/panelist and he said YES!

Justin Dorfman | Pia Mancini | Richard Littauer | Eric Berry

Allen Gunn (Gunner) of Aspiration

01:10 Allen’s Background

02:32 Conferences

05:10 Allen’s Experience That Lead Him to Where He Is

09:01 Building Capacity Toward Sustainability

10:15 What You Would See at Allen’s Conferences

13:30 Hard Conversations in Open Source Communities and How To Bridge Those Conversations at the Conferences

20:07 Self-Obsolescence

25:30 Control Takers vs. Love Bringers

29:55 Why Gunner is in Tech and not Politics

39:16 Gunner’s Thoughts on Sustainability

Justin W. Flory's Episode Notes

Justin - Carbon - A simple PHP API extension for DateTime

Pia - CodeBuddies

Richard - HackMD

Eric - Bulk Insert Ruby Gem

Allen - Allied Media Project

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Whether you’re working on a personal project or managing your enterprise’s infrastructure, Linode has the pricing, support, and scale you need to take your project to the next level. Get started on Linode today.

Support Sustain

Justin Dorfman | Pia Mancini | Richard Littauer | Eric Berry

Ewa Jodlowska

01:20 How Ewa Got Started in Open Source

02:38 Keeping the Python Culture Going

03:32 Challenges the PSF is Dealing With

04:10 PyCon

07:58 PSF Sponsorship Program

12:05 BDFL Steps Down

15:25 Where Developers are Going with Python

21:38 Starting Workgroups

24:10 Challenges Python Developers Face

26:03 Questions Other Languages Ask

28:25 Addressing Diversity at PSF

31:05 PSF Membership Levels

33:00 Updates in the Python Governance from PyCon 2019

Special Guest: Ewa Jodlowska.

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Whether you’re working on a personal project or managing your enterprise’s infrastructure, Linode has the pricing, support, and scale you need to take your project to the next level. Get started on Linode today.

Support Sustain

Lorenzo Sciandra talks about being an Open Source maintainer, how Formidable provides Open Source, the benefits of open source, expanding open source, and who is behind Formidable.

Justin Dorfman | Pia Mancini | Richard Littauer | Eric Berry

Lorenzo Sciandra @kelset

02:42 Being an Open Source Maintainer

08:40 How Formidable Provides Open Source

14:03 Explaining the Benefits of Open Source to Other Companies

16:38 Expanding Open Source Through Fellowship (Proposal Process)

21:08 How to Get Other Companies to Participate in Open Source

24:07 Who is Behind Formidable

26:00 Other Companies That Have a Big Impact in Open Source

29:10 Contributions to Open Source Projects

34:05 Meaningful Work Being Done Outside of Work Hours

Special Guest: Lorenzo Sciandra.

Sponsored By:

• Linode: Whether you’re working on a personal project or managing your enterprise’s infrastructure, Linode has the pricing, support, and scale you need to take your project to the next level. Get started on Linode today.

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Serkan is a freelance software developer who has been developing web applications since 2001. Lately he has been working with Angular and ASP.NET. He shares that he has been studying sustainability of open source issues since 2014 and also shares the abridged version of how he came to be involved with the open source community. 

Richard then asks Serkan to share more details on how he as a developer became interested in open source. He shares how as a developer working on proprietary software he often found himself working on similar solutions in different companies and he realized that he was building the same software solutions over and over. From this he concluded that open sourcing these types of projects would reduce the need to keep creating these projects by sharing the solutions between those that need them. Serkan points out the problem with the way open source works now is that it’s difficult to make money in it and as such he started looking for ways to fix this problem. He has the desire to find ways to move money from proprietary solutions into open source. Serkan asserts that the only real difference between proprietary software and open source software is licensing and furthermore that any software could be open source. 

The next topic discussed by the panelists is the changes they’ve seen in the last five years for funding open source. Serkan highlights that he believes that many companies are coming to understand that the future is positive with open source and those companies are beginning to move that way. Richard responds by sharing the importance of building structures around funding developers who decide to open source their software. 

Serkan moves the conversation to a deeper analysis of proprietary rights. The panelists discuss a survey of developers taken by Tidelift that shows that many professionals prefer open source software over proprietary software. The panelists then have a deeper discussion on what the reasons and drawbacks are for proprietary companies to turn open source. They also discuss how to create a tax of sorts that starts funding proprietary solutions turned open source and who would start that process. 

The open source experts then discuss how it is difficult to convince individual companies to go open source because their focus is on growing their business and making their own software prosper. Serkan responds to this by saying that open source is an investment that can pay dividends in the long run. They also share ideas on how working with governments and individuals could help to facilitate the transition to greater worldwide involvement in open source and propel the software industry forward to supporting open source. 

Serkan closes by reiterating some thoughts he shared earlier that governments are already involved in a wide range of programs that benefit all of its citizens. He shares how the sustaining of open source could be another program that is added to a government’s agenda and the opportunities that a government has to be of help in contrast to companies and individuals. 

Richard Littauer

Pia Mancini

Eric Berry

Serkan Holat

Sponsors

iPhreaks

Adventures in Angular

Adventures in .NET

Angular

ASP.NET

Chad Whitacre Medium

Catching Up w/ Nadia Eghbal

Changelog.com

sustainoss.org

Tidelift Survey

Tragedy of the Commons

Richard Littauer

NPM Tools

The Access Fund

Pia Mancini

Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday

Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guébrou

Eric Berry

Airpods Case

Oscoin

Codefund

Serkan Holat

License Zero

Marcin Jakubowski Ted Talk

The Egg

In a Nutshell

Special Guest: Serkan Holat.

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