The Hacking Open Source Business Podcast

Patrick McFadin, VP of Developer Relations at DataStax and Chief Evangelist for Apache Cassandra, joins the Hacking Open Source Business Podcast on Episode 26 to deep dive into open source.  In this episode Patrick talks about:

- His time working in open source database community, including Apache Cassandra's journey and upcoming developments.
- The role of evangelism and contributors in driving adoption and getting people to try your project.
- The challenges and mistakes companies make when commercializing open source, with lessons he has learned from his time in the database community.
- How new features are chosen based on his experience with Cassandra highlighting features such as transactions and open-source tool Guardrails?
- Does open source innovation slow down as products mature?
- What is cloud-native anyways?  And what does it mean in the database context?
- Building a diverse and gloabl team by building trust.
- DevRel Best practices includeing, how do you measuring DevRel success.

- Patrick McFadin's LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-mcfadin-53a8046/
- Learn more about Apache Cassandra: https://cassandra.apache.org/

Checkout our other interviews, clips, and videos: https://l.hosbp.com/Youtube

Don’t forget to visit the open-source business community at: https://opensourcebusiness.community/

Visit our primary sponsor, Scarf, for tools to help analyze your #opensource growth and adoption: https://about.scarf.sh/

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Saurav Pathak, co-founder and CPO of Bagisto, joins the Hacking Open Source Business Podcast on Episode 25 to discuss his experience with open source, the story behind the creation of Bagisto, and the importance of marketing decisions in the success of an open source project. Saurav highlights the connections and opportunities that open source has provided in his journey as a developer and entrepreneur. Bagisto is an open-source e-commerce platform that fills the gap between developers and the e-commerce ecosystem, and Saurav discusses the technical details around distributing extensions and managing multiple instances. He emphasizes the importance of building a community, optimizing keywords, offering extensions and licensing options, regularly revising pricing, and preventing product abuse and license management to sustain momentum and generate revenue for an open-source project.

What you'll find in this episode:
00:00 - Saurav Pathak's introduction as Co-Founder and CPO of Bagisto.
07:19 - Saurav shares his first experience with open source.
08:40 - How Bagisto was created and why.
13:45 - How marketing decisions impacted the success of the project.
17:15 - The importance of personal connections in marketing your product.
20:49 - How Bagisto reached the top of Google's search results page.
23:29 - Building a successful content marketing engine,
26:23 - Sustaining momentum after experiencing a viral burst.
28:34 - Keyword research for a website and building an audience to improve visibility.
30:39 -  Building a community and other strategies for the growth of an open-source project.
35:51 - How this open source project approached pricing for its extensions.
39:08 - Technical details around distributing extensions and managing multiple instances.
41:58 - The process for handling license violations in open source businesses.
44:02 - Product abuse and license management in open source business.
46:10 - Measuring commercial success of the product.
49:53 - Managing your community in the open source space.
53:29 -  Saurav's insights on launching successful open source projects.

Checkout our other interviews, clips, and videos: https://l.hosbp.com/Youtube

Don’t forget to visit the open-source business community at: https://opensourcebusiness.community/

Visit our primary sponsor, Scarf, for tools to help analyze your #opensource growth and adoption: https://about.scarf.sh/

Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app:
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Join us on Ep. 24 of The Hacking Open Source Business Podcast features Nithya Ruff, the Head of Amazon's Open Source Program Office, discussing various aspects of open source with hosts Avi Press and Matt Yonkovit. They cover topics such as the challenges facing open source today, evaluating new open source projects, the importance of Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) for startups, building successful and sustainable open source businesses, reducing friction for developers, open source diversity, managing diverse talent and competing ideals in open source governance, and Nithya Ruff's role as Chair of the Linux Foundation Board. Throughout the episode, Nithya emphasizes the importance of community building, listening to the community, and maintaining the freedom of the open source definition.

What you'll find in this episode:

00:00 - Getting to Know Nithya Ruff! 
10:28 - What size companies should start thinking about an OSPO?
15:37 - What are the key metrics or KPI's for an OSPO?
18:34 -  How many open source project does the team contribute to in a year?
19:57 - How do you manage contributions across hundreds or even thousands of projects?
22:04 - What does being a good open source citizen look like?
24:37 - Dealing with complex, sometimes competing points of view, and motivations in open source.
28:18 - Role at the Linux Foundation.
31:15 - What are some of the big challenges the open source community faces? 
33:33 - Are there criteria the LF looks for in projects before getting involved?
37:06 - What should we be excited about in the coming years?

Checkout our other interviews, clips, and videos: https://l.hosbp.com/Youtube

Don’t forget to visit the open-source business community at: https://opensourcebusiness.community/

Visit our primary sponsor, Scarf, for tools to help analyze your #opensource growth and adoption: https://about.scarf.sh/

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Join us on the Hacking Open Source Business Podcast with our guest Jana Iris, an investor at TQ Ventures, as we dive into the world of community building, startups, and open-source business success. With over 13 years of experience, Jana shares her journey and invaluable insights into early-stage startups, building strong communities, and leveraging user feedback for growth. Learn the importance of being intentional, finding your niche, and balancing community engagement with sustainable business models. Don't miss this episode packed with tips, stories, and expert advice!

In this episode, you will learn about:

• The importance of community building in open source and tech ventures.
• How to navigate the challenges and rewards of early-stage startups.
• The long game of building a community and balancing sustainable growth.
• Monetizing open source by knowing your niche audience and being intentional.
• Utilizing user feedback to develop features worth paying for.
• Identifying key users and personas for effective feedback programs.
• How to measure community value and ROI.
• Evaluating early-stage startups through various metrics.
• Go-to-market strategies and community building for transitioning open source projects into businesses.
• Choosing opportunities based on passion and embracing career pivots.
• The significance of continuous learning, patience, and trusting the process.

Checkout our other interviews, clips, and videos: https://l.hosbp.com/Youtube

Don’t forget to visit the open-source business community at: https://opensourcebusiness.community/

Visit our primary sponsor, Scarf, for tools to help analyze your #opensource growth and adoption: https://about.scarf.sh/

Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app:
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In this episode of the Hacking Open Source Business Podcast, Scarf CEO Avi Press and HOSS Matt Yonkovit are joined by Kaj Arnö, CEO of the MariaDB Foundation. They discuss the challenges of managing support expectations in open source projects, including balancing limited resources with important user requests, how non-profit organizations like the Wikimedia Foundation align with open-source goals, and why many organizations use open-source software but don't support it financially.

Kaj also discusses the importance of community in open source sustainability and the need for companies to sponsor or promote the software they rely on. Then also delves into the systemic problems in the open source community, the business logic and ethics of open source, and the societal issues contributing to the lack of support. 

Tune in to learn how you can help contribute to open source sustainability.

In this episode, Kaj shares some interesting takes aways, including:

• Users of open source software expect it to be open and free, but not necessarily supported
• Organizations that understand and prioritize open source often make reasonable requests for support
• Balancing limited resources with important user requests can be challenging in open source projects
• Non-profits like the Wikimedia Foundation are often aligned with open-source goals
• Many organizations use open-source software but don't support it financially
• Open source sustainability is dependent on sponsoring and promoting the community
• Lack of support is a systemic problem in the open source community
• Separating business and open source entities can lead to success in open source projects
• Effective open source strategies involve balancing commercial goals and community values
• Indirect metrics like website traffic and brand recognition are used to measure adoption in open source projects.

Checkout our other interviews, clips, and videos:  https://l.hosbp.com/Youtube

Don’t forget to visit the open source business community at:  https://opensourcemetrics.org/

Visit our primary sponsor, Scarf, for tools to help analyze your #opensource growth and adoption:   https://about.scarf.sh/

Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite  app:
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#opensource #opensourcesoftware #business  #podcast 
#mariadb #OpenSource  #mariadbfoundation #foss #database #opensourcefoundation #open

Checkout our other interviews, clips, and videos: https://l.hosbp.com/Youtube

Don’t forget to visit the open-source business community at: https://opensourcebusiness.community/

Visit our primary sponsor, Scarf, for tools to help analyze your #opensource growth and adoption: https://about.scarf.sh/

Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app:
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Buzzsprout: https://l.hosbp.com/Buzzsprout

We dig into the fascinating world of open source platform development with Nikhil Nandagopal, one of the founders of Appsmith, in this episode of the Hacking Open Source Business podcast, hosted by Avi Press and Matt Yonkovit. Learn how Appsmith's open core approach allows developers to create powerful applications while addressing the needs of managers and CXOs. Dive into their strategy for balancing core features, user feedback, and value-added features, prioritizing data security over managed hosting. Find out how Appsmith's journey has evolved with user understanding and how open source offers better security, auditing, and self-hosting capabilities. Join us as we discuss developer retention, networking insights, and the importance of building a solid open-source community before monetizing. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from the experiences of a successful open source founder!

Some of the things you will uncover in this episode:
1.  Appsmith uses an open core approach, focusing on features developers care about vs. features managers and CXOs care about.
2. Developer retention is a core metric for Appsmith, with a focus on building the open-source community before monetizing.
3. Open source offers better security, auditing, and self-hosting capabilities for Appsmith users.
4. Appsmith addresses the challenge of limited engineering bandwidth for internal tools and aims to make them as good as the best SaaS software.
5. The platform's direction evolved with user understanding, and data-critical needs influenced the open-source decision.
6. Appsmith doesn't de-emphasize code; it reuses existing building blocks in low/no-code environments.
7. Appsmith is an open-source low-code framework focused on developers, aiming to make the platform extensible and community-driven.
8. Networking is highly valuable for personal growth, learning, and connecting with like-minded individuals.
9. Appsmith has been closely collaborating with early customers to build their enterprise offering, focusing on self-serve features.
10, Many users embed Appsmith in their existing React projects, leading to a better overall experience.

Chapters:
00:00:00 Get to Know Nikhil Nandagopal, Founder Appsmith: Rapid Fire Questions
00:08:10 Introduction to Appsmith
00:09:55 In a Low or No Code Environment Does Open Source Matter?
00:12:32 Deciding to Open Source or Not
00:14:53 Deciding on Which Features Should be Open Core
00:21:16 Customers Paying for Your Engineering Team to Focus on Features
00:22:51 What Metrics Should Open Source Companies Focus on Until their Product is Ready?
00:26:37 Turning Down Short Term Revenue to Focus on Building the Open Source Community
00:30:50 Measuring Developer Retention
00:33:33 Talking Open Source Telemetry or Call-Home Functionality: Is it Worth Trying?
00:38:01 Choosing the Right Messaging and Positioning for Your Open Source Software
00:42:25 Learning from the Early Days of Your First Commercial Open Source Offering
00:44:39 Time Traveling Founder Advice: Network More Early on!
00:49:07 Final Thoughts:

Checkout our other interviews, clips, and videos: https://l.hosbp.com/Youtube

Don’t forget to visit the open-source business community at: https://opensourcebusiness.community/

Visit our primary sponsor, Scarf, for tools to help analyze your #opensource growth and adoption: https://about.scarf.sh/

Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app:
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Maxim Wheatley from Merico talks about their commercialization strategy that involves open core with a twist, where Dev Stream and Dev Lake remain open source and unmonetized while they identify opportunities to offer managed, hosted versions with paid solutions. They focus on their main product, Merico Analytics, with Dev Stream as an open source package manager to help smaller teams set up a DevOps tool chain and Dev Lake to ensure the right processes and identify hidden bottlenecks. Dev Insight, their open core proprietary product, focuses on contribution analysis, code quality signals, static analysis, and permissions for executive users in larger companies.

00:00:00 Getting to know Maxim Wheatly - Rapid Fire Questions
00:09:59 Introduction to Merico
00:19:02 Merico Commercialization Strategy: Open Core with a twist
00:24:56 Donanting Open Source Projects to Different Foundations: Apache & CNCF
00:33:26 When Should a Startup Donate their Project to a Foundation?
00:37:09 Sales & Marketing In Open Source: Taboo Topics?
00:41:55 Open Source Sales: Building Long-Term Relationships and Respecting the Community
00:47:04 What Open Source Metrics Provide the Most Value - DORA Metrics
00:53:07 Important Sales and Marketing Metrics
01:01:43 Thank you, and final thoughts

Checkout our other interviews, clips, and videos: https://l.hosbp.com/Youtube

Don’t forget to visit the open-source business community at: https://opensourcebusiness.community/

Visit our primary sponsor, Scarf, for tools to help analyze your #opensource growth and adoption: https://about.scarf.sh/

Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app:
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On this episode of the Hacking #opensource Business podcast, we talk with Matt Barker, the founder, and president of Jetstack. The discussion is about his experience in building a bootstrapped open source company based on his previous work at Canonical and MongoDB. In the interview, Matt talks about sales, business, and open-source technology (Linux, Kubernetes, Mesos, and more!). Matt covers the challenges of selling free open source software, support as a product, retention challenges, and measuring growth and adoption in open source software. Matt also shares his experience in comparing MongoDB and Canonical and starting Jetstack by choosing Kubernetes as the next big thing. The conversation delves into bootstrapping Jetstack with a services model, moving from services to a software product, comparing Kubernetes to Apache Mesos, and betting on truly open software. The interview provides valuable insights into sales, business, and open-source technology, making it an informative resource for anyone looking to learn about bootstrapping an open-source company.

Two Matts and an Avi walk into a conference in London and end up in the Matt Cave... and this is the result.  

00:00:00  Welcome to the Matt Cave
00:01:48  Getting to know Matt Barker and Jetstack
00:02:30  The Early Days of Canonical
00:07:17  Support as a product, retention challenges
00:13:21  Trying to go to the proprietary world from open source
00:14:28  Comparing MongoDB & Canonical
00:17:27  Bootstrapping Jetstack with Services
00:19:50  Moving from services to product
00:22:53  Convinced Kubernetes was the right space
00:24:54  Betting on truly open software instead of open source controlled by 1 company
00:29:43  Measuring growth and adoption
00:33:04  Rapid Fire

Checkout our other interviews, clips, and videos: https://l.hosbp.com/Youtube

Don’t forget to visit the open-source business community at: https://opensourcebusiness.community/

Visit our primary sponsor, Scarf, for tools to help analyze your #opensource growth and adoption: https://about.scarf.sh/

Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app:
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Buckle up the one, and only Peter Zaitsev is back, talking to us from the State of Open Con in London!  Peter gives listeners insight into which conferences he attends, how to get chosen to speak, how to grow the adoption at an open source company, shares his thoughts on licensing, and more.  He also answers questions like should the government regulate #opensource? Should maintainers be sponsored and funded with public money?

00:00:00 Intro: Coming Up
00:00:32 From SOOCon23: Welcome Peter Zaitsev to the show
00:02:39 How does Peter choose which conferences to attend?
00:04:22 As an executive, how much time do you spend going to conferences?
00:05:55 Lots of conferences you can attend, but which ones are valuable?
00:07:03 Advice: How to get chosen to speak at a conference
00:11:29 Avoiding the sales pitch conference talk: submit talks that solve a problem
00:13:35 Renegade Underdogs: Peter's new venture into helping founders and open source projects
00:17:47 The most common questions from founders center on how to accelerate growth
00:20:09 Classic Open Source Business Problem: millions of users and no one will pay for anything
00:22:34 Open source licenses
00:23:42 Many projects start off as an underwhelming product, but bring an X factor that makes them successful
00:25:49 Setting the proper expectations for your open source business, growth, and adoption
00:27:39 Government regulation and funding in open source
00:29:17 What would it even mean to regulate open source?
00:32:42 Paying Maintainers, giving grants, or subsidies
00:37:53 Back to open source licenses, lets deep dive this time: do we need more open source licenses?
00:48:01 AGPL: good or bad?
00:52:29 Good Bye!

Checkout our other interviews, clips, and videos: https://l.hosbp.com/Youtube

Don’t forget to visit the open-source business community at: https://opensourcebusiness.community/

Visit our primary sponsor, Scarf, for tools to help analyze your #opensource growth and adoption: https://about.scarf.sh/

Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app:
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Frank Karlitschek shares his open source wisdom and lessons from building Nextcloud.  In this episode, we touch on hot topics like the sovereign cloud, avoiding cloud lock in, building and growing a successful bootstrapped open source company, dealing with consumers and large enterprises, and more! Frank has been in the open source industry for many years and has a unique perspective on what works and what doesn't.  This is episode 16 of the Hacking Open Source Business Podcast!

In this episode:

• 00:00:00 Coming up next on the podcast: VC Expectations
• 00:00:47 Intro: Welcome Frank, CEO of Nextcloud
• 00:01:39 Learning about Nextcloud
• 00:02:44 Branding as the open source version of X
• 00:03:43 Where did you get the idea for Nextcloud?
• 00:04:57 Business or Project? What was the end goal?
• 00:06:13 Deciding on business, pricing, & support models
• 00:08:03 Figuring out the core demographic, planning for growth, and sometimes getting it wrong
• 00:09:17 Why is the sovereign cloud important
• 00:11:05 The first contributor, accelerating contributions, and hiring contributors
• 00:12:29 100% bootstrapped, no external investors
• 00:14:07 How do big organizations or governments affect the roadmap for an open source project?
• 00:16:22 Lessons learned from dealing both with consumers and businesses
• 00:17:36 What advice would you tell your younger self? Don't accept the way things are!
• 00:20:15 How do you decentralize the cloud?
• 00:21:36 Cloud lock-in
• 00:22:25 Rapid Fire Questions!
• 00:23:01 Favorite open source tool
• 00:23:21 First Linux distro
• 00:24:27 Conference walk up music
• 00:25:36 Favorite beverage
• 00:26:27 What is new and exciting in the open source space
• 00:27:38 Thoughts on AI & Copilot
• 00:29:39 Favorite food
• 00:30:01 Thank you!

Checkout our other interviews, clips, and videos:  https://www.youtube.com/@opensourcebusiness

Don’t forget to visit the open source business community at:  https://opensourcemetrics.org/

Visit our primary sponsor, Scarf, for tools to help analyze your #opensource growth and adoption:   https://about.scarf.sh/

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#opensource #business #metrics #businessmetrics #foss #podcast

Checkout our other interviews, clips, and videos: https://l.hosbp.com/Youtube

Don’t forget to visit the open-source business community at: https://opensourcebusiness.community/

Visit our primary sponsor, Scarf, for tools to help analyze your #opensource growth and adoption: https://about.scarf.sh/

Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app:
Spotify: https://l.hosbp.com/Spotify
Apple: https://l.hosbp.com/Apple
Google: https://l.hosbp.com/Google
Buzzsprout: https://l.hosbp.com/Buzzsprout