Episode 161: Aaron Crawfis on Dapr and Sustaining Cloud OSS

Mar 24, 2023

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Guest

Aaron Crawfis

Panelists

Richard Littauer | Justin Dorfman

Show Notes

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Richard and Justin are excited to have as their guest today, Aaron Crawfis, who works in the cloud space as a Senior Product Manager on the Azure Open Source Incubations team, which develops and launches new open source projects to advance the industry of cloud native computing and applications. He’s done a lot of work on Dapr, which is a distributed application runtime where he helped define, launch, and market it to microservice developers currently working on incubations, and more open source stuff across Azure and Microsoft. Today, we’re going to find out more about Dapr, Azure, and working in the cloud space. Aaron tells us about some great projects and cool technologies coming out of the incubation space at Azure, and he shares some awesome advice if you’re a project looking to get into this space. Press download to hear more!

[00:01:52] We start with learning more about Dapr.

[00:04:39] What’s the difference between cloud native and working in the cloud?

[00:07:35] Justin mentions Dapr is mature and there are several companies that use it and wonders what’s keeping Dapr in an incubation state rather than graduating. Aaron also tells us that since the release of Dapr v.1.10, they found that the majority of contributors are now non-Microsoft developers.

[00:09:31] We hear if Sarah Novotny and Stormy Peters are involved in Dapr or if they’ve worked on any projects with Aaron.

[00:11:59] Aaron gives us his take on why so many people in the cloud space feel the need to gravitate towards large corporations.

[00:16:33] We hear about a small business startup Diagrid, and the Founders are building their entire business model around Dapr.

[00:18:13] Besides wearing a Dapr hat, Aaron runs the Open Source Incubations at Azure, so he fills us in on what that is, and their most recent incubation they launched called, Project Copacetic. Justin wonders if this project has any similarities to Chainguard’s images or a different approach to tackling vulnerabilities.

[00:24:08] Aaron shares how the Azure Open Source Incubations team, as well as Microsoft is giving back more than it takes. He gives a shout-out to the Hugo Project and Doxy, which are his two go-to projects.

[00:27:3] We hear about if there’s been a discussion around governance for Dapr and how to make the governance be independent from a single large funding body.

[00:29:40] If you’re a project looking to get into this space, Aaron shares some advice.

[00:30:57] Find out where you can follow Aaron on the web.

Quotes

[00:16:26] “Developers and customers will go where the best place to run that software is and I don’t think it has to necessarily be a large corporation.”

[00:30:39] “You can make the best piece of software out there, but if it’s undocumented or if you’re doing the getting started guide and you a hit a bug on the first line, that’s where everyone will drop off.”

[00:30:48] “Biggest piece of advice, make sure that things are well documented, the value props are there, and the customers will flock right to you.”

Spotlight

[00:31:39] Justin’s spotlight is a series he’s doing called, tncc-newsletter.com.
[00:32:02] Richard’s spotlight is Hugo.
[00:32:20] Aaron’s spotlight is Doxy.

Credits

Produced by Richard Littauer
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound

Special Guest: Aaron Crawfis.

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