Daniel Stenberg, creator and maintainer of curl and libcurl for 17 years, talks about the origins of curl, why he remains dedicated to it, version control systems used, licensing, and more.
Read more
AI Summary
AI Chapters
Episode notes
auto_awesome
Podcast summary created with Snipd AI
Quick takeaways
Daniel Stenberg has spent over 13k hours working on and maintaining curl for the past 17 years, showcasing his dedication to the project.
Curl has achieved wide adoption and usage among billions of people and companies like Facebook, highlighting its significant impact and reach.
The choice of licenses, from GPL to MPL and then MIT, has played a crucial role in the adoption and comfort of companies using curl for their projects.
Deep dives
Curl's 17-year journey and its creator, Daniel Stenberg
In this podcast episode, Daniel Stenberg, the creator and maintainer of Curl, discusses the 17-year journey of Curl. He talks about his work at Mozilla, his experience as an internet protocol geek, and his passion for open source. Daniel shares his thoughts on being an OG (Original Hacker) and the challenges and joys of working on Curl. He also mentions the importance of licenses and the transition from GPL to MIT license. Overall, the episode highlights Daniel's dedication and passion for Curl, as well as the broad usage and impact of the software.
The influence and impact of Curl
Daniel Stenberg discusses the wide adoption and usage of Curl, noting examples like Facebook using it. He expresses how it feels to know that billions of people rely on Curl in their projects. Daniel also mentions moments such as seeing the Curl command line on a billboard in Silicon Valley, which reinforced the reach and impact of the software. He highlights the importance of the community and the contributions from users and companies that have helped shape and improve Curl over the years.
The evolution of Curl's licenses
Daniel Stenberg reflects on the licenses used by Curl throughout its history. He initially chose GPL but later switched to MPL for more flexibility and then to MIT for its liberal nature. Daniel explains how licenses played a role in the adoption of Curl, as some users were restricted by copyleft licenses. He shares his thoughts on the importance of choosing the right license for a project and how the liberal license has helped companies feel comfortable using Curl.
The challenges and rewards of maintaining an open-source project
Daniel Stenberg discusses the challenges and rewards of maintaining Curl as an open-source project. He mentions dealing with bug reports and criticism, as well as the need for a thick skin in the open-source community. Despite the challenges, Daniel highlights the satisfaction of seeing Curl being widely used and the positive impact it has had. He also emphasizes the importance of user contributions and calls for more participation in testing, reporting bugs, and trying out patches.
Daniel Stenberg's programming heroes and influences
Daniel Stenberg mentions Richard Stallman as one of his programming heroes due to his contributions to open source with projects like GCC, Emacs, and GDB. He also acknowledges Linus Torvalds for his accomplishments and integrity in the open-source community. Daniel appreciates their work and admires their ability to make a significant impact in the field of programming and open source.
Daniel Stenberg joined the show to talk about curl and libcurl and how he has spent at least 2 hours every day for the past 17 years working on and maintaining curl. That’s over 13k hours! We covered the origins of curl, how he chooses projects to work on, why he has remained so dedicated to curl all these years, the various version control systems curl has used, licensing, and more.