Episode 99: Matt Mankins and giving Kudos to OSS maintainers

Nov 26, 2021

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Guest

Matt Mankins

Panelists

Richard Littauer | Ben Nichols

Show Notes

Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Today, we are very excited to have as our guest, Matt Mankins, joining us from Barcelona. He is a Fellow at Mozilla, currently working on advancing open monetization strategies for the web. He previously worked at the publisher Condé Nast, where he led global monetization engineering efforts for the company’s iconic brands and was the CTO of FastCo magazine. He’s also the Founder of numerous companies such as Lorem Ipsum Books, SMTP.com, Vert, and Fair Tread. On this episode, Matt fills us in on his journey as a Fellow at Mozilla and his ideas about alternative ways to fund the web, which led him to the idea of Kudos, that came out of thinking about payments. We learn what his main goal is right now with Kudos, the hardest problem he’s facing as he develops Kudos, and what he’s trying to accomplish before his Fellowship ends. Also, find out what Matt means when he said, “Kudos are about the creation, not the creator.”

Go ahead and download this episode now to find out much more!

[00:02:20] Matt fills us in on the history of the Lorem Ipsum Bookstore.

[00:03:57] We learn what Matt is doing at Mozilla and he explains Interledger.

[00:07:00] Matt describes what Kudos is and how it works, since that is the main thing he is working on now.

[00:12:50] Matt explains how Kudos is in the philosophy stage right now and the implementation is up to the various people that implement this.

[00:15:22] Flattr is brought up in conversation, and Matt explains something he did called “in-a-moon.”

[00:17:27] Richard wonders how Matt sells this to companies and how does he get them involved in wanting to invest in Kudos, and Matt shares a goal he has right now.

[00:20:02] Matt shares what he thinks is the hardest problem he’s facing right now as he develops Kudos.

[00:21:52] Ben wonders if Matt is looking for particular communities that might be interested in experimenting and Matt shares a dream of his with us.

[00:24:09] We find out how Matt is working with the Mozilla communities and how he’s about to be in the “build it phase” and the “promote it a little bit more phase.” He also tells us something he’s hoping to do in the implementation phase with Facebook and Kudos.

[00:30:44] Find out where you can follow Matt and his work online.

Quotes

[00:11:31] “In my mind, this is not just supporting Babel or Henry, but you’re supporting all of the contributors that could number in the thousands or tens of thousands.”

[00:22:21] “One of my dreams is that, as a creator, I can just go do my creation and money will show up in my bank account as I do good work to society.”

Spotlight

[00:31:11] Ben’s spotlight is Open PHD Guiding.
[00:31:56] Richard’s spotlight is the Scottish Rail System.
[00:32:43] Matt’s spotlight is a GitHub project called libfood.

Credits

Produced by [Richard Littauer] (https://www.burntfen.com/)
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at [Peachtree Sound] (https://www.peachtreesound.com/)
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr [Peachtree Sound] (https://www.peachtreesound.com/)

Special Guest: Matt Mankins.

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