Wes and Scott talk with Chad Whitacre, the newest member of the Syntax team, about all things open source—licenses, controversies, economics, and ethics. Chad breaks down what most people misunderstand, and how companies can support sustainable software development the right way.

Show Notes

00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
00:39 Meet Chad Whitacre
03:39 Chad’s retro headphones
- Retrospekt
05:00 Chad’s role at Syntax
- https://syntax.fm/oss
- Open Path
09:41 What do people get wrong about open source?
11:11 Why is open source so divisive?
13:01 The evolution of open source and free software
17:55 Single vendor vs. community open source
20:22 How do people build businesses off of a GPL license?
24:40 What’s the most pure version of open source?
26:55 Fair source licensing explained
30:30 Brought to you by Sentry.io
33:09 Should you be concerned about dependencies in your app in relation to licensing?
- Fair Source
35:16 What’s the most interesting/unusual open source license?
- Beerware License
40:00 What is Open Source Pledge?
- Open Source Pledge
45:41 Choosing the right open source license
48:31 Wes’ most popular open source project
- wait
49:39 Interesting open source projects
- Mercedes-Benz embraces Open Source
- Porsche Open Source Platform
51:33 Licensing for educational content
53:46 The beauty of open source
- Plausible
56:12 Scott’s various open source projects
56:44 The importance of contributing to open source projects
59:16 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs

Sick Picks

Chad: Save The Cat!

Shameless Plugs

Chad: Coming soon

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Ryan Singer, Head of Strategy at Basecamp and author of Shape Up