Oscar's Impact on the Open Source Community in Africa

Guest

Ana Jiménez Santamaría | Samson Goddy

Panelist

Richard Littauer

Show Notes

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Richard is at the State of Open Con 2023 UK in London, and he’s excited to have his first ever in-person podcasts. Today, he has two guests joining him. His first guest is Ana Jiménez Santamaría, who’s working as the TODO Group OSPO Program Manager at The Linux Foundation. We’ll find out about Ana’s talk at this event, everything she’s been doing for the past few months as the OSPO Program Manager, what’s going on with the regional working groups, what OSPOlogy is, and how the TODO Group works. His next guest is Samson Goddy, a software engineer, open source advocate, Co-founder of Open Source Community Africa (OSCA), and on the Open Source Collective Board. Samson gives us the details about OSCA and the OSCA Fest 2023 coming up in June, that he expects to have a lot of people attending. He also shares a great project called Chakra UI, created by a Nigerian maintainer, as well as a collection of open source projects on GitHub created by Nigerians. We’ll hear about his talk, his favorite sessions, and how he views software sustainability. Enjoy these great discussions and hit the download button now!

[00:00:54] Ana went to FOSDEM for the third time, and she tells us what her main takeaway was after being there, and the talk she enjoyed the most called, Open Design.

[00:03:00] Since Ana is an OSPO Program Manager she does a lot in terms of output, so we’ll find out what she’s been doing for the past few months.

[00:05:15] We hear about the regional working groups, for example the Japanese regional working group, and Ana tells us about some groups in Europe.

[00:07:45] What is OSPOlogy?

[00:09:03] Ana explains how the TODO Groups work and how OSPOlogy fits within a larger question of open source sustainability.

[00:11:45] Richard wonders how they judge inauthentic participation in OSPO’s, and do they ever have any actions what they can say this isn’t what we want.

[00:15:39] We hear about Ana’s talk at State of Open Con UK, how the UK gets involved with TODO and the OSPO, and she shares that she sees a need of creating communities with British participants in the OSPO space.

[00:17:54] What is Ana looking forward to in the next few months that she’s working on? Also, with all the tech layoffs, she tells us if that has affected the participation in the OSPO.

[00:20:50] Find out where you can get involved in the TODO Group and follow Ana on the web.

[00:22:05] Richard’s next guest joins him and that is Sampson Goddy. He gives us more details about being the co-founder of OSCA, what it is, and info about OSCA Fest 2023.

[00:25:26] Richard doesn’t see a lot of maintainers of major open source projects coming from Africa or Nigeria, and he wonders if we can change that. Sampson shares there’s been a few projects done by Nigerian and African core maintainers, as well as a collection of open source projects created by Nigerians on GitHub.

[00:29:06] A tough question is asked about there being a lot of racist and colonialist attitudes towards Nigeria and hard to deal with. Is there anything that corporations or communities of tech people can do to help OSCA and what would the support look like?

[00:31:06] Sampson talks about other movements in countries that are not in Nigeria.

[00:33:32] How does Sampson view software sustainability?

[00:35:10] We hear what Sampson’s favorite sessions have been in the sustain mini events with OSCA and what his talk is about.

[00:36:27] Find out where you can learn more about OSCA and the festival coming up, and where you can follow him on the web.

Links

• SustainOSS
• SustainOSS Twitter
• SustainOSS Discourse
• podcast@sustainoss.org
• Richard Littauer Twitter
• Ana Jiménez Santamaría Twitter
• Ana Jiménez Santamaría LinkedIn
• OSPOlogy
• The Linux Foundation
• TODO Group Community
• Samson Goddy GitHub
• Samson Goddy Twitter
• Samson Goddy Website
• Samson Goddy LinkedIn
• Open Source Community Africa (OSCA)
• Open Source Community Africa Festival
• Open Source Community Africa Instagram
• Open Source Community Africa Facebook
• Open Source Collective
• Chakra UI
• Made in Africa Collection-GitHub

Credits

• Produced by Richard Littauer

• Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound

• Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound

Special Guests: Ana Jiménez Santamaría and Samson Goddy.

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