

Sustain
SustainOSS
Sustain brings together practitioners, sustainers, funders, researchers and maintainers of the open source ecosystem. We have conversations about the health and sustainability of the open source community. We learn about the ins and outs of what ‘open source’ entails in the real world. Open source means so much more than a license; we're interested in talking about how to make sure that the culture of open source continues, grows, and ultimately, sustains itself.
Newsletter
Newsletter
Episodes
Mentioned books

Jul 24, 2020 • 42min
Episode 46: Commercial Open Source with Joseph Jacks
Panelists
Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer
Guest
Joseph Jacks
Founder and General Partner of OSS Capital
Show Notes
Hello and welcome to Sustain! On today’s episode, we have special guest, Joseph Jacks, Founder of OSS Capital and also works on Open Core Summit, which is a conference he founded as well. Today we discuss with Joseph what he does at OSS Capital, the companies they invest in and how he helps commercial Open Source Companies. We will also find out about what he did at Open Core Summit last year and find out about when and where the next one will take place. Download this episode now to find out more!
[00:01:10] Joseph tells us what he does at OSS Capital. He also tells us what he means by Commercial Open Source.
[00:03:22] Richard and Joseph discuss GitHub and GitLab.
[00:11:29] Justin brings up the business source license which is very controversial, and he wants to know Joseph’s involvement with it.
[00:17:08] Joseph tells us about OSS.cash, the conference he did in 2013 with the spreadsheet data, and how the Open Core Summit went in September 2019, right before COVID hit.
[00:22:49] Eric is fascinated by Joseph’s process and he says it seems like he’s trying to find that brief moment when a project starts to take off, but hasn’t really considered creating a corporation, creating a company to generate money around it. It seems like you’re looking for a unicorn before it grows its horn. Joseph elaborates on this.
[00:26:48] Joseph talks about RISC-V since they are invested in that company. He also tells us other companies they are invested in.
[00:30:36] Joseph explains how commercial offensive software companies are different. Also, he tells us how they help commercial Open Source Companies early on.
[00:37:03] Where can you find Joseph on the Internet, URL’s, or Twitter? Find out here.
Spotlight
[00:37:44] Justin’s spotlight is EB.js.
[00:38:23] Eric’s spotlight is since Code Fund shut down, he wants to extend his gratitude and say thank you to all the publishers, open source projects, bloggers, application builders, maintainers, and all of them that were within the network.
[00:39:32] Richard’s spotlight is scuttlebutt.nz.
[00:40:09] Joseph’s spotlight is the Kubernetes project.
Quotes
[00:04:14] “I tend to think of the companies as slightly different in terms of what they focus on and GitHub has sort of like a Facebook social network feel, you know, huge amounts of people collaborating on public Open Source repos.”
[00:05:18] “And so even though the core, the Open Source core for GitHub is very small, it’s sort of super tiny core, and the crust around that Open Source core is really thick, like basically all of GitHub.com, all this proprietary technology they’ve added around it, I’ve still viewed it as commercial Open Source because that sort of existential definition is still true.”
[00:16:03] “Another one is WSO2 in Sri Lanka. The WSO2 is a company in the middleware kind of category and the enterprise IT world. They sell products for connecting applications and doing messaging integration, integration middleware, SOA software, and business process management, lots of things of this nature.”
[00:19:58] “The spreadsheet motivated starting OSS capital for sure, and also Open Core Summit. I guess the reason is because this thing’s kind of been maintained for going on seven years now I guess, and the growth of this spreadsheet’s been pretty substantial.”
[00:23:15] “Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but it seems like you’re looking for a unicorn before it grows its horn.”
Links
Joseph Jacks Twitter
OSSC
Open Core Summit Twitter
Open Core Summit
COSS Index
Scuttlebutt
Kubernetes
Credits
Produced by Justin Dorfman
Produced by Rebase
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Special Guest: Joseph Jacks.Support Sustain

Jul 17, 2020 • 38min
Episode 45: The Meaning of 'Tyranny of Openness' with Nathan Schneider
Sponsored by Linode
Panelists
Allen "Gunner" Gunn | Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Pia Mancini | Richard Littauer
Guest
Nathan Schneider
University of Colorado Boulder
Show Notes
Hello and welcome to Sustain! In this episode, we have special guest, Nathan Schneider, a Professor of Media Studies at CU Boulder. He also runs a new little outfit called Media Enterprise Design Lab. In today’s episode, Nathan will tell us what he does, how he got to where he is today, and he explains what he means by, The Tyranny of Openness.” We will also discuss Democratic Mediums, Platform Cooperativism, and CommunityRule. Download this episode now!
[00:01:24] Nathan tells us what he does at University of Colorado, Boulder and social.coop. He’s also running Zoom right now on a Linux machine and he tells us how he got to where he is today.
[00:05:03] Richard wants Nathan to describe what he means by “The Tyranny of Openness.”
[00:07:33] Justin has been thinking about the Linux Kernel, Python (up until recently), Ruby, and cURL. They’re all run by BDFL and installed on billions of devices, so why is that working and in the future, how should projects at that scale work?
[00:11:10] Pia asks Nathan in his wildest dreams, what would a structure like he was talking about look like and what tools should we be building? Gunner is curious and asks if the notion of governance design patterns is something that’s part of Nathan’s Meta governance? Nathan talks about an attempt he made to collect patterns, a little directory called, Democratic Mediums, which was a forerunner to some of this work.
[00:17:54] Richard is curious to know what’s the split in coders like on a normal GitHub project, because there are people who would be classified as doers versus people who’d be classified as decision makers, and how does this work directly into governance?
[00:21:27] Nathan talks about Platform Cooperativism as a critique of open source.
[00:25:08] Nathan discusses about taking ownership, the big debates happening around Open Source right now and licensing issues.
[00:29:21] Pia asks Nathan to talk about CommunityRule and his thoughts on it.
[00:32:18] Nathan tells where you could find his work, where you can read his books, and how you can get involved.
Spotlight
[00:33:52] Justin’s spotlight is The Governance Ready Working Group.
[00:34:10] Gunner’s spotlight is Gathering for Open Science Hardware.
[00:34:29] Pia’s spotlight is SaveInternetFreedom.tech
[00:35:11] Eric’s spotlight is Allinone.im.
[00:35:27] Richard’s spotlight is Mathias Buus.
[00:35:53] Nathan’s spotlights are The Ethical Source Movement and System76.
Quotes
[00:05:04] “You like the phrase of “The Tyranny of Openness.”
[00:05:18] “I guess another annoying habit I have is that when I love something, I like to criticize it.”
[00:09:13] “But there’s some sophistication there that a lot of our Open Source projects lack.”
[00:09:43] “You know you’re an Admin or not. Admins can silence people, and you know, have incredible despotic control over voice.”
[00:17:32] “It’s how engineers think. They want the engineered solution, but you know, politics is very good at resisting engineers.”
[00:24:16] “Microsoft is stepping in and forking their code and you know, making money off of it. And they’re like, wait, what’s going on? This is not in line with our values, but it is in line with their licenses.”
[00:25:59] “It’s sort of like a double-edged sword because you know with the Open Source licenses as they are defined now, they allow Amazon and Microsoft to do this.”
Links
Nathan Schneider
CommunityRule
Social.coop
Media Enterprise Design Lab
Democratic Mediums
Xkcd-A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math, and Language
The Tyranny of Openness: What Happened to Peer Production?
Governance Readiness
Gathering for Open Science Hardware
Save Internet Freedom Tech
All-in-One Messenger
Mathias Buus GitHub
The Ethical Source Movement
System76
Credits
Produced by Justin Dorfman
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Ad Sales by Eric Berry
Special Guest: Nathan Schneider.Support Sustain

Jul 10, 2020 • 41min
Episode 44: Crossing The Chasm with Tobie Langel
Sponsored by Linode
Panelists
Allen "Gunner" Gunn | Justin Dorfman | Pia Mancini | Richard Littauer
Guest
Tobie Langel
Show Notes
Welcome to Sustain! On today’s episode, we have special guest, Tobie Langel, the Founder of UnlockOpen, from Geneva, Switzerland. Tobie tells us all about UnlockOpen and what he does there. He tells us how he focuses on convincing companies that they need to contribute back to Open Source. Other topics we will talk about are DevOps culture, prototype JavaScript framework not being updated since 2015, which Tobie extensively explains what happened, as well as speaking about lessons to be learned and things we need to be aware of. There is so much great advice and stories shared on this episode. Download it now!
[00:01:19] Tobie tells us about UnlockOpen and what he does.
[00:02:30] Richard wants to know how do you get in the door as a consultant to try to talk to people about how they should use Open Source and how do you pitch that to people that don’t know what Open Source is?
[00:08:04] Tobie discusses how he focuses on convincing companies that they need to contribute back to Open Source. Pia wonders if Tobie thinks we’re making progress towards cultural changes within the audience?
[00:12:10] Allen asks Tobie if he’s advancing the notion of DevOps as a gateway drug for all of this open culture. Tobie mentions a book he’s reading called, Accelerate, that_ _talks about the benefits of DevOps culture to companies from a business perspective.
[00:14:13] Justin wants to know where Tobie got his kind of background and he also wonders about project abandonment, and prototype JavaScript framework hasn’t been updated since 2015. So, what happened there and what lessons could be learned?
[00:24:06] Tobie speaks about learning from history, about lessons to be learned, and things we have to be aware of.
[00:26:06] Tobie mentions how he’s a huge fan of DHH and Basecamp and he gives some great advice that he’s learned on focusing on things that matter long term. Justin and Richard also have some positive advice and stories to share as well.
[00:35:25] Richard makes an awesome statement here about being resilient.
[00:36:20] Tobie tells us where we can find him to learn more about him.
Spotlight
[00:38:03] Justin’s spotlight is our first bonus podcast episode (#41) with Dave Gandy, and we discussed Font Awesome 6, the donut diet, commitments, and more. Check it out! ☺
[00:42:23] Allen’s spotlight is Open Tech Fund.
[00:38:56] Richard’s spotlight is Aral Balkan, a cyborg rights activist.
[00:39:17] Toby’s spotlight is a book by Nadia Eghbal called, Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software.
Quotes
“It boils down to bottom line and top line. To some degree it’s more than that, obviously, culture, brand, making people feel happy to work in a company. All of those are critical for a company.”
[00:10:45] “And we are at the point where we need to cross the chasm. So maybe move that from being something that is essentially something adopted by a few really performant companies at the helm of this effort and move that across to become more mainstream.
[00:16:47] “And so the funny thing is I essentially learned JavaScript by reading the source code because there was no documentation and I started contributing to the library by writing documentation for it.”
[00:17:44] “It took a lot of time for Sam to realize that he was burning out and just couldn’t spend the time that was needed to give more authority to other people on the project.”
[00:21:58] “There was a lot of energy, and people are ready to do a lot of things for the rocket ship because you also benefit personally quite a bit when you’re investing your time in a rocket ship.”
[00:25:19] “This goes right to the heart of what we’re trying to talk about here. And so I think one of the things that I’m really picking up from what you’re saying is that it’s better to dedicate yourself towards an ideology of working well in the open, of working with other people, of trying to consistently not just stay ahead of the curve, but work in a way that what you do will matter later.”
[00:34:20] “At the same time you could carry that comparison even further kind of ad absurdum, like everything’s the same, because we all need to eat and we all get tired and we all get sleepy and we all get hungry, we’re all kind of anxious and we have to work with other people and what wears kind of annoying and it’s pretty tough.”
Links
Tobie Langel Twitter
UnlockOpen
Sustain Podcast-Episode 41: The Donut Diet, Commitments. and More Awesomeness with Dave Gandy
Open Technology Fund
Aral Balkan
Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software by Nadia Eghbal
Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps:Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations by Nicole Forsgren, PhD
Credits
Produced by Justin Dorfman
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Ad Sales by Eric Berry
Special Guest: Tobie Langel.Support Sustain

Jul 3, 2020 • 41min
Episode 43: Investing in Open Infrastructure with Kaitlin Thaney
Sponsored by Linode
Panelists
Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Pia Mancini | Richard Littauer
Guest
Kaitlin Thaney
Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI)
Show Notes
Hello and welcome to Sustain! Today, we have Kaitlin Thaney, who is the Executive Director for Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI). Kaitlin will tell us all about IOI and what she’s doing there. She also explains the history of the Mozilla Science Lab and how her team came up with it. How has COVID impacted the organization, especially since her first day of the job was when New York City went into lockdown! Download this episode now to find out!
[00:01:17] Kaitlin tells us what Invest in Open Infrastructure is and what she’s doing there.
[00:04:17] Eric wants to know is this organization built to create essentially just the technology behind these infrastructures or is it primarily ways of sharing data? Kaitlin explains the end goal in simplistic terms.
[00:09:50] With Kaitlin’s background and previous organization’s that she’s worked for (Wikimedia, Mozilla, and Creative Commons), Justin wants to know how those former employers shaped her for what she’s doing now as an Executive Director.
[00:16:41] Kaitlin explains Mozilla Science Lab. She also has a call to action called “Get credit for your code!” She talks about this and how she and her team came up with it.
[00:21:35] Richard asks Kaitlin to tell us what Elsevier is and how they represent what’s happening in academia now. Also, since she started this initiative before COVID happened, she tells us how she’s adapted, how she’s changed, and what’s happening moving forward.
[00:28:21] Pia wants to know from Kaitlin what the broad impact COVID has had and what are her plans going forward, and how are folks thinking about this?
[00:33:12] Richard gives a s/o to the Schmidt Foundation for funding Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI).
[00:33:42] Kaitlin lets us know how you can get involved with her project if you are a software developer, work at a university, or a researcher. Also, how you can find her and where can you sign up.
Spotlight
[00:34:35] Richard’s spotlight is BibTeX.
[00:35:02] Justin’s spotlight is Undraw.co.
[00:35:28] Eric’s spotlight is Betterhelp.com and Therapistaid.com (both worth checking out)
[00:37:55] Pia’s spotlight is Excalidraw.
[00:38:43] Kaitlin’s spotlight is a portable Informed Consent Toolkit from Sage Bionetworks.
Quotes
[00:13:55] “You all know the deep roots that Open Source has, and software and the internet have in science. But beyond those initial stories, I think there’s an interesting kind of proof space that this sort of work allows for, because in terms of moving decisions forward, it’s not just talking about researchers. It also touches those in the education sector, universities, policy makers, for profit tech, and non-profit tech. All of these various elements that by their very nature, help bring and incubate different solutions that you can then apply to broader society.”
Links
Invest in Open Infrastructure
Open Infrastructure in times of crisis: How IOI can help
Kaitlin Thaney Twitter
Kaitlin Thaney (IOI)
Mozilla Science Lab-Get credit for your code!
BibTeX
unDraw.co
Betterhelp.com
TherapistAid.com
Excalidraw.com
Schmidt Family Foundation
Credits
Produced by Justin Dorfman
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Ad Sales by Eric Berry
Special Guest: Kaitlin Thaney.Support Sustain

Jun 26, 2020 • 47min
Episode 42: Open Sourcing COVID-19 Data with Cindy Wang & Gil Yehuda
Sponsored By Linode
Panelists
Justin Dorfman | Eric Berry | Richard Littauer
Guest
Cindy Wang
Sr. Director, Product Management, Yahoo Knowledge Graph
Verizon Media
Gil Yehuda
Sr. Director of Open Source
Verizon Media
Show Notes
Hello and welcome to Sustain! In this episode, we have special guests, Gil Yehuda and Cindy Wang, who both work for Verizon Media, which is a combination of a bunch of companies, predominantly Yahoo and AOL. Gil is Senior Director, Open Source Program and Cindy is Sr. Director, Product Management, Yahoo Knowledge Graph. We learn more about Gil and Cindy’s positions with Yahoo, the Yahoo Knowledge Graph COVID-19 project, data sets, complications with data, and Vespa (open source big data serving engine).
[00:02:26] Gil explains to us what coverage he has and what he’s responsible for in his OSPO (Open Source Program Office). He also tells us how many repos and orgs he’s managing.
[00:05:29] Cindy tells us all about the Yahoo Knowledge Graph COVID-19 project. Justin questions data sets and its inconsistencies and Cindy explains.
[00:12:30] Eric asks Cindy if this resource has been established as an authority and if she’s heard feedback or others pointing to this as the authoritative data source?
[00:14:00] Gil explains to us two levels of complications with data that he’s observing.
[00:18:30 ] In regard to financial incentivisation, Eric wonders what has been their experience, or have they had any feedback from people who are trying to massage the numbers in their favor?
[00:21:22 ] Richard wants to know if there is any code open source and can people look at that? How can people get involved and what was that process like besides the data aspects? Also, Gil tells us if he has any pushbacks from making any of this stuff open.
[00:29:01] Gil mentions Vespa.ai, an open source big data serving engine. Richard wonders if Gil has thought of long term plans for how he sustains this work and how it’s going forward and what teams will be on it, and will it just be open source in the sense of like a year?
[00:31:57] Richard wonders if Gil and Cindy have plans to onboard people from the community who are interested in the data who are helping out so that they also become maintainers, so it’s not just a Yahoo only project internally.
[00:33:08] Eric asks Gil to elaborate on a follow up question where he said he was using these tools internally. Cindy tells us all about the tools. Also, Eric wonders if there was any questions or concerns about licensing the open source and are people allowed to build commercial applications on top of this data?
[00:40:24] Gil and Cindy tell us where people can get involved in this project, how can you follow along, and how can you follow them.
Spotlight
[00:42:20] Richard’s spotlight is Moment.js.
[00:42:39] Eric’s spotlight is a project built by Jared White called Bridgetown, which is an updated version of Jekyll.
[00:43:49] Justin’s spotlights are to thank Ashley Wolf for putting this whole thing together and a browser extension called Read Aloud, a text to speech voice reader.
[00:44:31] Gil’s spotlight is a project called Denali.
Quotes
[00:04:51] "AOL had an OSPO and they didn’t have an OSPO and they kind of had an OSPO, but when we merged together we brought it together and we just continue to do what we do.”
[00:05:04] “Before OSPO there was Open Source activity because as you know companies do Open Source even without OSPO’s. They just do Open Source better with OSPO’s.”
[00:14:00] “There’s two levels of complications with data that I’m observing and there’s probably more, because there’s always more to everything.”
[00:14:48] “But then there’s this other element which is, I don’t know, maybe it’s the political nature of data.”
[00:16:23] “And I guess all of the paddling that goes on under the surface of the water to collect that data and to be as accurate as you can, but also to connect it to the source so that you could investigate it.”
[00:20:36] “The training set has to be clean, so they actually spend 80% of their effort in cleaning the data.”
[00:34:28] “So, for example, you look at some states now after opening, the numbers shot up. So, is it concerning from business planning perspective? Perhaps.”
[00:37:23] “We have hundreds of millions of entities in this graph that represent billions of pieces of information that we use across the company for all types of things, like how the news stream is ordered.”
Links
Gil Yehuda Twitter
Gil Yehuda LinkedIn
Cindy Wang LinkedIn
Yahoo-Covid-19 Data
Yahoo Covid-19 Dashboard
Yahoo Knowledge COVID-19 API
Yahoo-GitHub
Vespa-Github
Yahoo! Developer Network (YDN)
Yahoo! Developer Dash Open Podcast
Read Aloud
Bridgetown
Denali
OpenStreetMap
Leaflet.js
Credits
Produced by Justin Dorfman at CodeFund
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Ad Sales by Eric Berry at CodeFund
Special Guests: Cindy Wang and Gil Yehuda.Sponsored By:Linode: Whether you’re working on a personal project or managing your enterprise’s infrastructure, Linode has the pricing, support, and scale you need to take your project to the next level. Get started on Linode today. Promo Code: sustain2020Segment: Segment is a customer data platform that makes good data accessible for all teams.Support Sustain

Jun 19, 2020 • 15min
Episode 41: The Donut Diet, Commitments, and More Awesomeness with Dave Gandy
Sponsored By:
Panelists
Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer
Guest
Dave Gandy
Font Awesome
Show Notes
Producer's note: When the show "ends," we are still recording while we all say goodbye. This time our goodbye turned into a great conversation with Dave after we finished recording Episode 33. With Font Awesome 6 coming out soon, we thought, why not celebrate by taking that extra tape and make an extension/bonus/part-2 episode? We hope you enjoy it! 🍩
Hello and welcome to Sustain! In this episode, we have Dave Gandy, from Font Awesome, talking about how he and his wife each lost 50lbs, how they did it, and about how important self-care is today. He will also tell you how he fit two donuts a day for a month into his diet, which he refers to as the “Donut Diet.” Download this episode now to find out how he did this and listen to the great advice he shares with us.
[00:01:38] Dave talks about how he lost 50 lbs with working out and how “Stronger U” nutrition came into his life.
[00:03:57] Dave explains his cheat days and he refers to it as “The Donut Diet,” eating 2 donuts a day for a month, and still kept the weight off.
[00:05:51] Dave tells us about why the Stronger U membership is so good and worth the price to pay.
[00:07:20] Richard talks about how he is trying to meditate every day and how you have to put in time to meditate to get better and Dave brings up prayer which is another form of meditation.
[00:09:45] Richard brings up how all this applies to open source which is all about putting your money where your mouth is and making commitments.
[00:10:58] Dave talks about the best way to self-care. Great advice here!
[00:12:23] Dave talks about how there’s no such thing as failure, because you are growing and developing as person. He also talks about how to not worry about fear.
Quotes
[00:05:10] “I don’t think there is evil and good food. There’s not evil foods and there’s not hero foods, there’s just food and there’s the stuff that we like.”
[00:06:04] “This isn’t a business where free trial can work. You’re not going to see it, unless YOU DO IT!”
[00:06:44] “It’s not so much about extending the years of your life, it’s about taking the ones that you have and making them better!”
[00:10:38] “The commitments we make to each other help make things stronger!”
[00:11:16] “The way to the best self-care is other care. When you worry about others, you think about them and try to do that first, you end up in a weird way taking care of yourself.”
[00:12:35] “If you’re doing it the way that you think is right to begin with, there is no such thing as failure.”
Links
Dave Gandy Twitter
Font Awesome
Stronger U
Eggslut
Credits
Produced by Justin Dorfman at CodeFund
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Ad Sales by Eric Berry at CodeFund
Special Guest: Dave Gandy.Sponsored By:Linode: Whether you’re working on a personal project or managing your enterprise’s infrastructure, Linode has the pricing, support, and scale you need to take your project to the next level. Get started on Linode today. Promo Code: sustain2020Segment: Segment is a customer data platform that makes good data accessible for all teams.Support Sustain

Jun 12, 2020 • 45min
Episode 40: How Open Source Maintainers Don't Get Rich with Bogdan Vasilescu
Sponsored By:
Panelists
Justin Dorfman | Eric Berry | Richard Littauer
Guest
Bogdan Vasilescu
Show Notes
Hello and welcome to Sustain! Today, we have Bogdan Vasilescu, who is an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science. We start out by learning what Bogdan builds at the STRUDEL Lab. Then we discuss, “The GHTorrent project.” We also learn about the research that he and his group at CMU have been doing on open source sustainability. There are a few papers on topics related to sustainability that we will also discuss. One of his papers really inspired Justin, and after listening to this podcast you will probably agree that this is one of our best guests!
[00:02:18] Bogdan tells us more about what he builds at the STRUDEL Lab. He gives a shout-out to his students and collaborators who are doing all the work.
[00:03:50] Bogdan talks about one of his papers titled, “How To Not Get Rich.” He also explains The GHTorrent project which is like a mirror of GitHub.
[00:08:43] Justin asks Bogdan about a website he built and how 46% of packages show a badge. He asks how long did it take to get to that number? He describes the process and how they compute that number.
[00:11:31] Eric goes back to the scraping of GitHub’s readme’s and these npm module badges, and asks Bogdan what is he looking for with those and how does that translate to the topic of how not to get rich with open source?
[00:15:27] Eric asks Bogdan since he says that badges add almost validity and gives developers a sense of trust that this project appears to have an ecosystem around it, but how does that tie in with donations and how does it tie in with your report?
[00:18:14] Eric explains why he’s so interested in the donation side. He talks about corporations donating money out of their charity budget and unless they can donate with the 501C3 which allows it to be tax deductible, it’s a financial loss for them. He asks Bogdan’s takeaway on this and why are donations a terrible way to fund open source?
[00:22:38] Bogdan lets us know when the follow-up study of “How To Get Rich with Open Source” is coming out and what it contains.
[00:26:52] Eric wonders if Bogdan talked to GitHub about getting funds and he lets us know.
[00:28:50] Justin tells Bogdan how he was really inspired by his paper and how he is the best guest. Eric gives credit to his phenomenal students and thanks them for all this important work they are doing.
[00:30:00] Richard has a question about donations for Bogdan. He wants to know is there a light saying you should even bother with donation models and where is the good news? Bogdan answers.
[00:33:53] Eric wants to know who is doing donations the right way, what is the ideal scenario, and is there a right way to go about doing it?
[00:35:16] Richard mentions a couple of Bogdan’s other papers that deal with sustainability from another angle: “Why do People Give Up FLOSSing? A Study of Contributor Disengagement in Open Source,” and “Going Farther Together: The Impact of Social Capital on Sustained Participation in Open Source.” He wants to know what makes people stay in open projects and what makes people disengage?
Spotlight
[00:41:16] Richard’s spotlight is Shields.io.
[00:41:35] Eric’s spotlight is our sponsor Linode. The reason why the Sustain Podcast exists is because of Tyler Van Fossen and the Linode Company.
[00:42:37] Justin’s spotlight is the Sustain Podcast newsletter he just launched. You can sign up at sustain.codefund.fm/newsletter.
[00:42:57] Bogdan’s spotlight is a shout-out to the “Jekyll-Scholar” project.
Quotes
[00:14:02] “What we’re observing through this series of studies that we’ve done, and other people have done too, is that people’s behavior changes when you have this salience of information.”
[00:16:30] “On average, people submitting PR’s, they are more likely to add tests to their PR’s when the stuff is being displayed because then there’s some feedback loop that’s instant and very visible.”
[00:17:54] “That should be a part of the sustainability checklist. If you want to have a sustainable open source project, you probably need badges, you probably need a CI indicator. Those are core to making it so that project becomes adoptable with other developers.”
[00:24:08] “In the real world, organizations asking for charitable donations are very clear about what the goals of these campaigns are and we’re not seeing that in open source just yet.”
[00:29:51] “But really, thanks to Cassandra Overney and Jens Meinicke who were the students working on this paper, they’re the ones who deserve all the credit, not me, and my collaborator, Christian Kastner form CMU.”
[00:34:09] “I don’t think expecting donations to be the only way to sustain an open source project is the right approach.”
Links
Bogdan Vasilescu Twitter
Bogdan Vasilescu
Strudel Research
Strudel
The GHTorrent project
Strudel Publications
“Stress and Burnout in Open Source: Toward Finding, Understanding, and Mitigating Unhealthy Interactions.”
“Ecosystem-Level Determinants of Sustained Activity in Open-Source Projects: A Case Study of the PyPI Ecosystem.”
“How to Not Get Rich: An Empirical Study of Donations in Open Source.”
Shields.io
Sustain Podcast Newsletter
Linode
Jekyll-Scholar
Credits
Produced by Justin Dorfman at CodeFund
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Ad Sales by Eric Berry at CodeFund
Special Guest: Bogdan Vasilescu.Sponsored By:Linode: Whether you’re working on a personal project or managing your enterprise’s infrastructure, Linode has the pricing, support, and scale you need to take your project to the next level. Get started on Linode today. Promo Code: sustain2020Segment: Segment is a customer data platform that makes good data accessible for all teams.Support Sustain

Jun 5, 2020 • 36min
Episode 39: How $2 Million Dollars Helped Build CROSS with Dr. Carlos Maltzahn
Sponsored By:
Panelists
Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer
Guest
Dr. Carlos Maltzahn
Show Notes
💬 Discuss this episode
Hello and welcome to Sustain! In this episode, we have a really interesting guest, Dr. Carlos Maltzahn, who’s a Professor at University of California at Santa Cruz. He teaches Computer Science and Engineering and specializes in storage systems. Carlos is going to teach us all about his project CROSS (Center for Research in Open Source Software). He will tell us how they get projects, how they get funded for projects, and he will explain the Ceph storage system to us as well as SkyhookDM. Interested in finding out how to enroll in CROSS? Go ahead and download this episode to find out!
[00:01:45] Carlos explains a project that is dear to his heart and he’s been directing for a while. called CROSS. He also walks us through how to get involved and what’s the life cycle look like for people.
[00:04:21] Carlos explains funding Open Source Autonomous Vehicles. He tells us how they get the projects and how they get the projects funded.
[00:09:25] Carlos explains about the funding part. He talks about “Ceph Storage System” that Sage Weil created as part of his PhD project. Great story here!
[00:19:33] Find out here the key advice CROSS got from Sage Weil about OpenStack.
[00:23:53] Richard asks Carlos since he’s so many successes thus far, have there been any other success stories he’s had? He shares some good news here.
[00:26:25] Carlos tells us about SkyhookDM, a programmable storage for databases.
[00:30:07] Richard mentions a great book he’s been reading that he highly suggests reading called, “Designing Data- Intensive Applications,” by Martin Kleppmann.
[00:30:33] If someone wants to enroll in CROSS, Carlos tells us four possibilities how to do this.
Spotlight
[00:32:52] Richard spotlight is ROpenSci, an awesome project to help people get into the sciences and keep it open source and collaborate.
[00:33:27] Justin’s spotlight is an article on ZDNet, “Mozilla starts funding open source coronavirus tech projects.” It’s a good read! ☺
[00:34:06] Carlos’s spotlight is an incubator project at CROSS called “Popper,” by Ivo Jimenez.
Quotes
[00:04:56] “It turns out there’s a lot of interesting things going on in the university and the faculty are kind of discovering the usefulness of open-source software in their research.”
[00:06:22] “That is only possible with this open source concept, where you basically make it available, and that’s good for reproducibility of the science, but it’s also good too for learning, for bringing in the classroom all these things.”
[00:11:03] “We asked Sage whether it would be nice to give back a little bit to the university. And so, he gave me 2 million dollars to essentially build CROSS. It was the second largest gift ever given to the School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz and it was a big deal.”
[00:19:42] “One of the key factors that made Ceph successful was that it fit into the ecosystem of OpenStack.”
Links
Dr. Carlos Maltzahn
CROSS at UC Santa Cruz
Ceph
SkyhookDM
“Designing Data-Intensive Applications” Martin Kleppmann
ROpenSci
“Mozilla starts funding open source coronavirus tech projects,” ZDNet
Falsifiable-Popper Project
Credits
Produced by Justin Dorfman at CodeFund
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Ad Sales by Eric Berry at CodeFund
Special Guest: Dr. Carlos Maltzahn.Support Sustain

May 29, 2020 • 42min
Episode 38: Working Group Updates with Justin & Javi
Sponsored By:
Panelists
Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer
Guests
Justin Flory
RIT
Javier “Javi” Canovas
Open University of Catalonia
Show Notes
This is a special episode where we are talking about the working groups that came out of the Sustain Summit in Brussels back in January. Today, we have Justin Flory, a student at Rochester Institute of Technology and Javier “Javi” Canovas, from Barcelona, an Assistant Professor at the Open University of Catalonia, who are very involved in the Sustain Working Groups. Javi is the bottom liner for the Governance Readiness Group and Justin is the bottom liner for the Principles of Authentic Participation (PAP). They will both talk about their groups and their involvement in them. They also talk about the Transparency Working Group. Also, Richard talks about the Nvie Git Flow Model. If you want to learn more about the different working groups, then this episode is for you!
[00:01:31] Richard gives an overview of what the Sustain Working Group is all about and how you can join in on the conversation on the discourse forum.
[00:05:22] Justin Flory tells us what PAP is and what does it mean to be authentically participating in something. He also explains navigating core values that don’t match up.
[00:11:07] Richard wonders if Justin Flory ever tried to figure out what does it mean to be authentic as a large corporation versus what does it mean to be authentic as a lone script kitty and if those ever clashed? Justin explains.
[00:15:35] Javi explains what Governance Readiness is and how that has materialized for him over the past couple of months.
[00:18:17] Javi talks about some of the Governance Models that he’s looked at or put together. He is asked by Justin D. if any of his students know what he’s working on. Also, he talks about how many people are involved in his group. Justin F. tells us how many people are in the PAP group.
[00:21:54] Justin F. builds on the Javi’s discussion about where the working group sits and explains that this working group is also another place where they’re trying to build that common language.
[00:24:15] Richard talks about the “Nvie Git Flow Model” and a blog post that came out 10 years ago.
[00:25:51] Justin F. talks about the Transparency Working Group and its focus. He also gives a shout out to Gunner’s interview on Episode 19 of Sustain’s Podcast, which helped him frame the way he’s going into some of this sustainability work.
[00:31:35] Javi explains what his working group is looking at for the next meeting and what topics he’s looking to get feedback on for the working group right now.
[00:34:09] Justin F. asks Javi what the working group is planning to do next and what would he want the working groups accomplishments to be? He explains.
[00:35:43] Justin F. tells us where he wants to go with PAP and what’s next. He talks about “Boundary spanning.”
[00:37:50] Richard says for any listeners out there who want to start listening actively or actively contributing to go to sustainoss.org/working-groups.
Spotlight
[00:38:49] Justin’s spotlight is a project he works for CodeFund which is Open Source. They passed 400 million ethical ads served. Big Milestone for them! Congratulations! ☺
[00:39:20] Javi’s spotlight is a project called, “Community Rule.”
[00:39:59] Justin Flory’s spotlight is first a shout-out for the place where we have defined the Governance Model, which is open for issues and pull requests. Also, a cool initiative in the Fedora Project Community, an Open Source Linux Project.
[00:40:54] Richard’s spotlight is NVIE Git Flow Model. He loves it!
Quotes
[00:22:36] “But now we’re in this changing world where Open Source is starting to become really popular or it’s being looked at a different way than it was twenty years ago.”
[00:29:52] “We all eat, and it’s really important to eat. And if you don’t eat, you get angry. And if you get angry you close issues a lot faster without saying thank you, right?”
Links
Justin Flory Twitter
Justin Flory Blog
Javier Canovas Twitter
NVIE Git Flow Model
Boundary spanning
Sustain Working Groups
CommunityRule
CodeFund “400 Million Ad Served”
Fedora Project
Sustain Podcast-Episode 19
Credits
Produced by Justin Dorfman at CodeFund
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Ad Sales by Eric Berry at CodeFund
Special Guests: Javier “Javi” Canovas and Justin W. Flory.Support Sustain

May 22, 2020 • 45min
Episode 37: An Open Source History Lesson & More with Patrick Masson
Sponsored By:
Panelists
Pia Mancini | Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer
Guest
Patrick Masson
Open Source Initiative
Show Notes
In this episode, we have Patrick Masson, who is the General Manager and Board Director of OSI (Open Source Initiative). Patrick gives some very interesting “nerd history” on Open Source Software. Did you know that you can find Open Source Intelligence as a reference to World War 2? Listen here to find out more interesting things about OSI.
[00:01:33] We start off with Patrick telling us about his job with the OSI.
[00:03:22] Patrick fills us in on the history of OSI, how it started, how long it’s been going, and what are the main things that he does. There is some very cool history revealed here.
[00:08:07] Patrick talks more about communities of collaborative contributors and he touches again on the history of OSI. The term “Openwashing” is explained.
[00:21:00] Pia brings up a topic to Patrick about lately, there has been some friction with groups or other projects trying to use different Open Source licenses in the name of creating better sustainability opportunities for Open Source. He comments about it.
[00:24:31] Patrick answers a question about the idea of avoiding the business model trap of sustainability. He talks about it and also has a great quote.
[00:28:36] Justin chimes in to say he always hears that 98% of companies use Open Source Software. Where did that come from, is it true, and who’s behind that? Patrick answers this.
[00:30:49] Eric brings up a study done by Black Duck Software with the Northbridge survey done in 1915, to back up the number of users. Patrick is on a “roll” with stats here.
[00:36:51] Pia wants to clarify with Patrick about a point he made about if the path to the sustainability of these projects would be if companies are hiring folks to work on these projects, projects that serve many companies? Patrick explains.
[00:38:38] Pia also wonders if the way to join an Open Source project, in a way that is sustainable, is just being hired by a company to work on a project and how is that growing the diversity of our communities and opening the door for more joiners instead of just a few that can be part of those companies? Patrick answers.
Spotlight
[00:41:31] Justin’s spotlight is Show HN. It has great information and it could change your life.
[00:42:01] Eric’s spotlight is a piece of hardware, Dell Precision T7610. It is a screamer!
[00:42:39] Pia’s spotlight is a project called Open Mind, to help protect the user’s data privacy properly.
[00:43:15] Richard’s spotlight is D3, for graphing, and super fun.
[00:43:39] Patrick’s spotlight is FLOSS Desktops for Kids, a program that takes decommissioned hardware and puts it in the hands of underserved districts and the kids there.
Quotes
[00:24:42] “I really think Open Source will take off once all the software companies are gone.”
[00:35:50] “We need to have more joiners of projects than starters of projects. And so, again, there’s no real reason to differentiate any of these.”
Links
Patrick Masson Twitter
Open Source Initiative
Openwashing
US Department of Defense Use of Open Source Software
Show HN
Dell Precision T7610
Open Mind Project
D3js
FLOSS Desktops for Kids
Black Duck Software Survey
Credits
Produced by Justin Dorfman at CodeFund
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Ad Sales by Eric Berry at CodeFund
Special Guest: Patrick Masson.Sponsored By:Linode: Whether you’re working on a personal project or managing your enterprise’s infrastructure, Linode has the pricing, support, and scale you need to take your project to the next level. Get started on Linode today. Promo Code: sustain2020Sustain Podcast Newsletter: Subscribe and get exclusive bonus episodes and more.Support Sustain