Sustain

In this week’s episode of Sustain Our Software the panel interviews Laura Gaetano. Laura is a developer and designer, whose main job was running was running Rails Girls Summer of Code. The panel considers how great Rails Girls is and all that they are doing. The panel also expresses their love for the Rails framework. 

Laura explains the difference between Rails Girls and Rails Girls Summer of Code. The panel asks about the challenges that the Rails Girls Summer of code experience. Laura tells the panel how open source and the Ruby community has changed since they started. When they first started Rails Girls Summer of Code there was a lot less support for open source and diversity in programming. Now their main challenges are lack of resources, such as money and people who are invested in Rails Girls Summer of Code for the long term. 

Other challenges in the organization stem from the nature of the organization. They are just trying to get everything done, that things like documentation and long term management solutions get forgotten. They want to get all their experience for the last six years documented so that knowledge can help in the future of Rails Girls Summer of Code. 

The panel considers what a great feeling it is when people use or contribute to their open source and ask Laura what it’s like to actually help someone become a developer through her open source efforts. Laura explains how amazing it is to see women from past Rails Girls Summer of Code and their success. Laura shares her love of open source and the collaboration that happens in the community. Doing Rails Girls Summer of Code she gets a lot more human contact than in typical open source projects, she explains how that has made a difference in the way that she sees open source. 

The panel asks Laura about the state of diversity in open source. Laura explains that there are initiatives out there to support diversity in opensource. She invites everyone to visit opensourcediversity.org. They provide resources to learn about diversity. They even have an open forum where people have a safe space to learn about diversity. She explains that diversity is now a common talking point at conferences to help improve diversity by educating developers about it. The panel discusses making projects more inclusive and explains how Github added s social impact feature that helps make your project more inclusive. 

The topic turns to a talk Laura gave in 2017. Her talk explains that open source needs more than code. She explains that she would like to see more crowdsourcing of knowledge and design in open source. Programming is a major part of open source and she is so impressed the how willing programmers are to volunteer their time. However, she would love to see that desire from other people in the technology industry. Open source would be more maintainable if they had people marketing, networking, documenting. Having open source maintainers who focus on these things would help generate more funding and make it more sustainable. 

The panel considers why there is such an emphasis on the code contributions, even more so than managing or other roles in open source. Code is a very visible contribution, easy to hold up and say look what they did. Other roles aren’t so easy to hold up, how can someone hold up the hours they spent finding sponsors or perfecting documentation.

The discussion turns to mental health in open source. Laura talks about her own state of mind and how hard it can be to get herself to do anything when she is feeling burnt out. She explains that she needs to change the way she approaches work.  The panel discusses ways that we can help those experiencing mental health problems in open source. They suggest talking to each other more about their experiences, about what depression, anxiety, and burn out look like and how they affect different people. The panel discusses what processes can be put in place to help developers to avoid burn out. 

The panel wonders if developers are susceptible to mental health problems. Do the large workloads and high amounts of stress contribute to these issues. Laura explains that in her opinion, we as humans tend to think that our experience is unique, so other industries probably feel the same way. The reality is that this is a worldwide problem, especially for those that Laura calls knowledge workers.  

The panel considers other ways we can help open source maintainers not get burnt out. The power of gratitude is one way they think might help. Laura thinks that getting a thank you from supports is very important. She relates how she feels when she talks with participants of Rails Girls Summer of Code and how it makes all her hard work worth it.

The panel discusses the power of money in open source, explaining why they started codefund. They explain the benefits of open source getting some money for their contributions. They consider the effect it plays on burn out. While Laura agrees to receive funds for open source contributions can be helpful, she warns that it could be a double-edged sword.

She warns that the receiving fund could be adding more stress to open source because of the responsibility it adds. Laura explains that she has already started to see entitlement from open source users, getting upset when the maintainer doesn't fix something right away. The panel considers how these benefits and costs when the funding is anonymous compared to when it is a direct sponsorship.

Eric Berry

Nate Hopkins

Laura Gaetano

DevEd Podcast

The Freelancers Show

My Ruby Story

CacheFly

AlterConf Berlin 2017: Making your voice heard: Open Source Needs You by Laura Gaetano

Laura Gaetano - Building inclusive Open Source communities | ReasonConf 2018

https://devchat.tv/ruby-rogues/

https://railsgirlssummerofcode.org/ 

https://opensourcediversity.org/ 

https://www.codenewbie.org/podcast/rails-girls-summer-of-code 

https://github.com/about/diversity 

https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1157379019878232064 

https://m.signalvnoise.com/to-smile-again/ 

https://twitter.com/alicetragedy

https://github.com/alicetragedy

https://www.facebook.com/Sustain-Our-Software-SOS-857471391289849/

https://twitter.com/sos_opensource

Eric Berry:

https://webflow.com/ 

Nate Hopkins:

https://www.metabase.com 

Willow Hybrid Tree 

Laura Gaetano:

Jocelyn K. Glei 

The Bulletin

Design for Real Life

Special Guest: Laura Gaetano.

In this week's episode of Sustain Our software Titus Wormer joins the panel to discuss his experience maintaining Unified.js.  Titus is built Unified and is working fulltime maintain Unified. He has a bachelor's in digital design and did his thesis on fixing natural language in wed design using syntax trees.

The panel takes a moment to talk about abstract syntax trees. Titus explains how abstract syntax trees help computers understand what is going on in human languages, helping programs like Babel and Google Translate.

Titus also does a lot of his work in markdown and the panel asks him why he started working in markdown. Most developers work in markdown and HTML explains Titus, plus markdown has some great tools. In opensource he needs a lot of Read Me’s so Titus built tools in markdown to check on his Read Me’s. 

Moving on to the sustaining of Unified the panel asks Titus about the funding he is receiving for Unified. Titus explains a little about the setup of Unified and what goes into maintaining it. Unified has over 400 repositories on Github that need to be maintained, and as Unified gained popularity so did the amount of work needed to maintain the repositories. Titus shares how stressful it was to come home from his everyday paying job to find more and more requests piling up. 

Titus decided they needed a change, so last November they started an open collective and looking for sponsors. Titus shares how easy it was asking his users for money and the amount of support they received. According to Titus, about 90% of their funding comes from large company sponsors. The panel discusses his experience in finding these companies and getting them to sponsor Unified. 

The panel wonders how much time Titus spends fundraising. Titus explains what it was like when they first started the open collective. They were getting some funding but not enough to pay someone to work full time maintaining Unified, so they didn’t really know what to do with it. 

The panel brings up an article about developers working for salaries under the poverty line because of the lack of sustaining funds for opensource projects. They consider specific projects and how much funding they receive annually.

Titus shares his opinion on this article. He believes people support what they see that they are using, big visible projects like Babel and Webpack receive tons of funding because not only do a lot of people use this software but they see that they are using it. He explains that smaller projects that are buried in a stack don’t get funding because they are less visible to their users. Relating this to Unified, Titus doesn’t think Unified fits into either category. Unified is a bunch of smaller modules but is advertised as one large monolith. Which is why they get as much funding as they do. 

The Starbuck’s supply chain analogy is discussed by the panel. The analogy is this, farmers grow the coffee beans to make the coffee at Starbucks. While sitting Starbucks the coffee drinkers never think of the farmers that put all the work into the coffee just about Starbucks. Some opensource projects are the farmers, small and unrecognized while others are visible and renowned like Starbucks. The panel asks Titus about where he thinks Unified fits into this analogy. 

Next, the panel discusses governance, asking Titus how he decides who gets the money. He explains that in people would help out, fixing things, and Titus would tell them to send in an invoice and that he would give them some of the money. Many of the people didn’t want the money, saying it was opensource and they were happy to donate their time. Titus then decided to try maintaining Unified fulltime and has been doing so since May.  He explains all he does every day to maintain Unified. 

“What’s next for unified?” is the next question the panel wants to be answered. Titus explains how they partnered with NDX and announced a new project called micro mark. He’s is hoping to finish up the new project by November when the money runs out. At which time he will need to find a real job or find other funding. 

The episode ends with a discussion about what it’s like being a fulltime opensource maintainer. Titus explains that his current situation and the fact that the Netherlands has a safety net for its citizens making it less dangerous financially than it would be in the United States. Titus and the panel explore the idea of Titus being a contractor for unified as a way of making money. 

Eric Berry

Richard Littauer

Titus Wormer

Adventures in DevOps

Adventures in Angular

Ruby Rogues

CacheFly

https://opencollective.com/unified 

http://www.openmdx.org/ 

Software Below the Poverty Line 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_85_Ways_to_Tie_a_Tie 

https://github.com/micromark 

https://github.com/mdx-js/mdx 

https://mdxjs.com/  

https://github.com/unifiedjs/governance 

https://github.com/unifiedjs/github-tools 

https://wooorm.com/

https://twitter.com/wooorm

https://www.facebook.com/Sustain-Our-Software-SOS-857471391289849/

https://twitter.com/sos_opensource

Eric Berry:

Chats with Kent 

https://codefund.io/partners/opencollective 

Richard Littauer:

https://nadiaeghbal.com/basic 

The Martian 

Titus Wormer:

Go for a walk more

https://www.burntfen.com/projects/francis-bacon-and-eggs/ 

Special Guest: Titus Wormer.

In this week's episode of Sustain Our software Titus Wormer joins the panel to discuss his experience maintaining Unified.js.  Titus is built Unified and is working fulltime maintain Unified. He has a bachelor's in digital design and did his thesis on fixing natural language in wed design using syntax trees.

The panel takes a moment to talk about abstract syntax trees. Titus explains how abstract syntax trees help computers understand what is going on in human languages, helping programs like Babel and Google Translate.

Titus also does a lot of his work in markdown and the panel asks him why he started working in markdown. Most developers work in markdown and HTML explains Titus, plus markdown has some great tools. In opensource he needs a lot of Read Me’s so Titus built tools in markdown to check on his Read Me’s. 

Moving on to the sustaining of Unified the panel asks Titus about the funding he is receiving for Unified. Titus explains a little about the setup of Unified and what goes into maintaining it. Unified has over 400 repositories on Github that need to be maintained, and as Unified gained popularity so did the amount of work needed to maintain the repositories. Titus shares how stressful it was to come home from his everyday paying job to find more and more requests piling up. 

Titus decided they needed a change, so last November they started an open collective and looking for sponsors. Titus shares how easy it was asking his users for money and the amount of support they received. According to Titus, about 90% of their funding comes from large company sponsors. The panel discusses his experience in finding these companies and getting them to sponsor Unified. 

The panel wonders how much time Titus spends fundraising. Titus explains what it was like when they first started the open collective. They were getting some funding but not enough to pay someone to work full time maintaining Unified, so they didn’t really know what to do with it. 

The panel brings up an article about developers working for salaries under the poverty line because of the lack of sustaining funds for opensource projects. They consider specific projects and how much funding they receive annually.

Titus shares his opinion on this article. He believes people support what they see that they are using, big visible projects like Babel and Webpack receive tons of funding because not only do a lot of people use this software but they see that they are using it. He explains that smaller projects that are buried in a stack don’t get funding because they are less visible to their users. Relating this to Unified, Titus doesn’t think Unified fits into either category. Unified is a bunch of smaller modules but is advertised as one large monolith. Which is why they get as much funding as they do. 

The Starbuck’s supply chain analogy is discussed by the panel. The analogy is this, farmers grow the coffee beans to make the coffee at Starbucks. While sitting Starbucks the coffee drinkers never think of the farmers that put all the work into the coffee just about Starbucks. Some opensource projects are the farmers, small and unrecognized while others are visible and renowned like Starbucks. The panel asks Titus about where he thinks Unified fits into this analogy. 

Next, the panel discusses governance, asking Titus how he decides who gets the money. He explains that in people would help out, fixing things, and Titus would tell them to send in an invoice and that he would give them some of the money. Many of the people didn’t want the money, saying it was opensource and they were happy to donate their time. Titus then decided to try maintaining Unified fulltime and has been doing so since May.  He explains all he does every day to maintain Unified. 

“What’s next for unified?” is the next question the panel wants to be answered. Titus explains how they partnered with NDX and announced a new project called micro mark. He’s is hoping to finish up the new project by November when the money runs out. At which time he will need to find a real job or find other funding. 

The episode ends with a discussion about what it’s like being a fulltime opensource maintainer. Titus explains that his current situation and the fact that the Netherlands has a safety net for its citizens making it less dangerous financially than it would be in the United States. Titus and the panel explore the idea of Titus being a contractor for unified as a way of making money. 

Eric Berry

Richard Littauer

Titus Wormer

Adventures in DevOps

Adventures in Angular

Ruby Rogues

CacheFly

https://opencollective.com/unified 

http://www.openmdx.org/ 

Software Below the Poverty Line 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_85_Ways_to_Tie_a_Tie 

https://github.com/micromark 

https://github.com/mdx-js/mdx 

https://mdxjs.com/  

https://github.com/unifiedjs/governance 

https://github.com/unifiedjs/github-tools 

https://wooorm.com/

https://twitter.com/wooorm

https://www.facebook.com/Sustain-Our-Software-SOS-857471391289849/

https://twitter.com/sos_opensource

Eric Berry:

Chats with Kent 

https://codefund.io/partners/opencollective 

Richard Littauer:

https://nadiaeghbal.com/basic 

The Martian 

Titus Wormer:

Go for a walk more

https://www.burntfen.com/projects/francis-bacon-and-eggs/ 

Special Guest: Titus Wormer.

Support Sustain

The panel interviews Lou Huang, who has a background in architecture and urban planning. Lou built an opensource app called Streetmix and uses it to help the panel understand opensource projects from a user's perspective. Lou starts by sharing his background, how he got into opensource and his work making Streetmix sustainable. 

Lou then explains that most Streetmix users are urban planners and don’t care if it is opensource or not. The panel weighs the trades offs of choosing an opensource project versus a non-opensource project. 

Considering the benefits of using an opensource product, the panel discusses the effect opensource has on developers learning from opensource code. Convenience is mentioned and the panel touches on how seeing the code can ensure that your information stays private. 

The trade-offs of using opensource are discussed by the panel. They also discuss how trade-offs are getting fewer. These trade-offs include extra time and the risk of the project not being maintainable. 

The panel discusses what the word sustainability means and Lou references the Sustainability three-legged stool. The panel considers the three legs of the stool, economic, social and environmental.

How to raise awareness and funding for sustainable software. The panel also discusses why and how non-technical users of opensource products can contribute to sustaining software that they love.

Eric Berry

Richard Littauer

Lou Huang

GitLab | Get 30% off tickets with the promo code: DEVCHATCOMMIT

DevOps

DevEd

CacheFly

https://www.codeforamerica.org/

http://saiko.fish 

https://streetmix.net/ 

https://louhuang.com/

https://biffud.com/

https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1067682759592869889 

https://www.facebook.com/Sustain-Our-Software-SOS-857471391289849/

https://twitter.com/sos_opensource

Eric Berry:

https://theuserisdrunk.com 

Unblocked 

iPad Pro 

Richard Littauer:

https://www.sidetracked.com 

https://indefenseofdegrowth.com 

https://yellowlegalpads.com 

Lou Huang:

The economics of open source by C J Silverio | JSConf EU 2019 

https://www.thegreathack.com 

The Imposter's Handbook 

Special Guest: Lou Huang.

Support Sustain

Joined By Special Guest: Chris Ward

This week, Sustain Our Software welcomes Chris Ward, Technical Writer at Ethereum from Berlin, Germany. Chris shares his story of how he became a technical writer as well tips and resources for good documentation writing.

After many years working as a developer, Chris realized he enjoyed helping others understand technical subjects. Chris defines a path of how to become a technical writer. He advises contributing to Open Source projects as well as joining the Write the Docs Society.

Chris and Richard discuss why having good documentation is important and what the minimum viable documentation for a project is. Often times the assumptions that developers make are not very obvious to other developers on the project and the users.

Then then discuss the common challenges a technical writer faces when creating documentation targeting developers, contributors and Getting Started Guide. A good technical documentation develops over time and like code it's never really done and newer versions are rolled out as questions come in.

Chris recommends some tools for technical writing as well as a book by Stephen King called On Writing. He also recommends dogfooding or hackathons to help the developers work on usability issues.

Then they talk about how the Bounties model can also be applied to documentation writing.

Chris Ward:

Richard Littauer:

Special Guest: Chris Ward.

Support Sustain

The panel interviews Lou Huang, who has a background in architecture and urban planning. Lou built an opensource app called Streetmix and uses it to help the panel understand opensource projects from a user's perspective. Lou starts by sharing his background, how he got into opensource and his work making Streetmix sustainable. 

Lou then explains that most Streetmix users are urban planners and don’t care if it is opensource or not. The panel weighs the trades offs of choosing an opensource project versus a non-opensource project. 

Considering the benefits of using an opensource product, the panel discusses the effect opensource has on developers learning from opensource code. Convenience is mentioned and the panel touches on how seeing the code can ensure that your information stays private. 

The trade-offs of using opensource are discussed by the panel. They also discuss how trade-offs are getting fewer. These trade-offs include extra time and the risk of the project not being maintainable. 

The panel discusses what the word sustainability means and Lou references the Sustainability three-legged stool. The panel considers the three legs of the stool, economic, social and environmental.

How to raise awareness and funding for sustainable software. The panel also discusses why and how non-technical users of opensource products can contribute to sustaining software that they love.

Eric Berry

Richard Littauer

Lou Huang

GitLab | Get 30% off tickets with the promo code: DEVCHATCOMMIT

DevOps

DevEd

CacheFly

https://www.codeforamerica.org/

http://saiko.fish 

https://streetmix.net/ 

https://louhuang.com/

https://biffud.com/

https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1067682759592869889 

https://www.facebook.com/Sustain-Our-Software-SOS-857471391289849/

https://twitter.com/sos_opensource

Eric Berry:

https://theuserisdrunk.com 

Unblocked 

iPad Pro 

Richard Littauer:

https://www.sidetracked.com 

https://indefenseofdegrowth.com 

https://yellowlegalpads.com 

Lou Huang:

The economics of open source by C J Silverio | JSConf EU 2019 

https://www.thegreathack.com 

The Imposter's Handbook 

Special Guest: Lou Huang.

Joined By Special Guest: Chris Ward

This week, Sustain Our Software welcomes Chris Ward, Technical Writer at Ethereum from Berlin, Germany. Chris shares his story of how he became a technical writer as well tips and resources for good documentation writing.

After many years working as a developer, Chris realized he enjoyed helping others understand technical subjects. Chris defines a path of how to become a technical writer. He advises contributing to Open Source projects as well as joining the Write the Docs Society.

Chris and Richard discuss why having good documentation is important and what the minimum viable documentation for a project is. Often times the assumptions that developers make are not very obvious to other developers on the project and the users.

Then then discuss the common challenges a technical writer faces when creating documentation targeting developers, contributors and Getting Started Guide. A good technical documentation develops over time and like code it's never really done and newer versions are rolled out as questions come in.

Chris recommends some tools for technical writing as well as a book by Stephen King called On Writing. He also recommends dogfooding or hackathons to help the developers work on usability issues.

Then they talk about how the Bounties model can also be applied to documentation writing.

Chris Ward:

Richard Littauer:

Special Guest: Chris Ward.

Gitlab Commit

Adventures in DevOps

Cachefly

Eric Berry

Joined By Special Guest: Heath Arensen

Heath Arensen is the Director of Business Planning and Sustainability at the Digital Impact Alliance's Open Source Center. He also supports Open Source projects with consulting and advising in Business Models for sustainability.

The discussion opens with a discussion about a quote Heath has in his Twitter account “Belief that the world's best software can be built in the most unlikely places”. Heath grew up in East Africa and talks about how developers from Africa can face prejudice when it comes to their skills.

They then talk about how developer talent can be cultivated around the world. Heath defines sustainability as more than just software. He describes their "Open-Sourcify" check-list that they go through when they are evaluating an Open Source project's sustainability.

The panel then goes through an example where two countries exchange digital services and list the challenges that can arise along the way. They then talk about some of the successful cases Heath has worked on.

Heath then talks about different Open Source revenue models that they go through when they evaluate an Open Source projects that benefit the community. They then invite people who are interested in being a part of an Open Source project that with to get in touch with them through their website.

Towards a More Gender-inclusive Open Source Community

https://www.osc.dial.community/

https://forum.osc.dial.community/

Digital Impact Alliance

Heath's LinkedIn

Heath's Twitter

Eric Berry:

https://alteregoeffect.com/

https://www.playdemic.com/games/golf-clash

Richard Littauer:

Taking pics with his grandfather's Nikon camera

Special Guest: Heath Arensen.

React Native Radio

iPhreaks Show

Ruby Rogues

Cachefly

Eric Berry

Richard Littauer

Joined By Special Guest: Bastien Guerry

Bastien Guerry is employed by the French Administration in a program named Entrepreneurs d'intérêt général inspired by Presidential Innovation Fellows. He is also the Release Manager of Org Mode, an information management and outlining tool for Emacs.

Bastien wrote his first software for his girlfriend to help her with her thesis. He then went onto maintain Org Mode between years 2011 and 2015. Bastien likens open source software maintainers' job to that of stay-at-home mothers' job description, as both are a lot of work and involve a lot of responsibility and stress and both are not compensated financially.

The panel then ask about the evolution of Fund The Code Project which supports the free software movement by donations from sponsors. Bastien invites free software maintainers to contact Fund The Code Project for help in finding sponsors.

Bastien Guerry - EmacsWiki

Org mode

_DINSIC

Etalab

Entrepreneurs d'intérêt général

Presidential Innovation Fellows

https://bzg.fr/en/donating-to-free-software-and-free-culture.html/

https://libraries.io/

https://backyourstack.com/

http://themaintainers.org/

Bastien Guerry (@bzg2) | Twitter

Maintainers III: Practice, Policy and Care

https://publiccode.net/

https://www.fundthecode.org/

http://openmodels.fr/en/

SOS 005: Trademark Versus Copyright to Sustain OSS with Mehdi Medjaoui

Open Source & Software Development | O'Reilly OSCON

Eric Berry:

Software Freedom Conservancy

Richard Littauer:

The Internet is a City

https://www.amazon.com/Chomsky-Anarchism-Noam/dp/1904859208

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_and_Company_(bookstore)

Bastien Guerry:

https://www.writethedocs.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Cardenio

Special Guest: Bastien Guerry.

Cachefly

Richard Littauer

Jon Schlinkert

Eric Berry

Joined By Special Guest: Mehdi Medjaoui

Mehdi Medjaoui is the Steering Committee Member of The Maintainers and the founder of OAuth.io and APIdays Conferences. He is also the EU commission 2020 expert on open data and open APIs. He has co-authored O’Reilly Book “Continuous API management” and created the Maintainers Contract and ALIAS protocol. Mehdi and the panel shine a light on the lack of compensation for developers that maintain open source projects. A majority of these projects are used by many profitable end products but these profits do not make its way back to the developers that contribute with their open source code. The panel explores the best methods to write open source code and still be recognized for the development effort via trademark, licensing and copyright.

Mehdi's LinkedIn

Mehdi's Twitter

Mehdi Medjaoui – Medium

Sustain 2018

Tidelift

Open Source Initiative

The Market for Lemons

FOSSmarks

Contributor License Agreement

Why I Do Not Support a Node Foundation by Eran Hammer

https://www.fundthecode.org/

A Trademark-based contract for OSS maintainers

https://github.com/micromatch/micromatch

IBM closes $34 billion Red Hat acquisition: Now it's time to deliver

Walmart's investment in open source isn't cheap

Eric Berry:

Making Uncommon Knowledge Common

SuperHuman marketing efforts

Jon Schlinkert:

Crossing the Chasm

The Profit Zone

Richard Littauer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cherry_Orchard

The Great Book of Amber

https://www.davidwhyte.com/

Mehdi Medjaoui:

https://github.com/Droogans/unmaintainable-code

https://increment.com/

Special Guest: Mehdi Medjaoui.