How do you define open source software? What are the challenges an open source project and maintainers face? How do maintainers receive financial, legal, security, or other types of help? This week on the show, we have Josh Simmons from Tidelift and the Open Source Initiative to help answer these questions.

Josh does open source ecosystem strategy for Tidelift. We talk about what Tidelift is and how they support maintainers. We also discuss the types of support maintainers need and the barriers that can block that support.

Josh also serves as President of the Open Source Initiative. OSI is actively involved in open source community-building and education. He talks about how collectives and foundations can be powerful tools in the open source ecosystem.

Course Spotlight: Python Inner Functions

In this step-by-step course, you’ll learn what inner functions are in Python, how to define them, and what their main use cases are. You’ll see how to write helper functions, create closure factory functions, and how to add behavior to existing functions with decorators.

Topics:

00:00:00 – Introduction
00:01:49 – What is Tidelift?
00:03:41 – What is your role?
00:05:28 – What is a lifter?
00:06:50 – How much software used by businesses is open-source?
00:10:26 – Comparing risks of proprietary, open-source, and commercial software
00:18:52 – How to define a project as open-source
00:30:17 – Defining rights and freedoms of open-source
00:32:39 – Sponsor: Sentry
00:33:43 – Obstacles in the way for contributions
00:42:51 – Other types of support open-source contributors need
00:46:55 – A goal to work with foundations and individual maintainers
00:49:54 – Benefits of improved documentation, a force multiplier
00:51:26 – Video Course Spotlight
00:52:37 – What makes a managed open-source project?
00:54:58 – What are you excited about in the world of Python?
00:55:51 – What do you want to learn next?
00:57:10 – Shoutout and call to action
00:59:27 – Social media information
00:59:46 – Thanks and goodbye

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