

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.
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Newsletter
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Mentioned books

Mar 13, 2020 • 38min
Episode 28: What "OpenStreetMap US" is with Maggie Cawley & Alyssa Wright
Sponsored By:
#28 Cover art uses imagery by Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Panelists
Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer
Guest
Maggie Cawley
OpenStreetMap US
Alyssa Wright
OpenStreetMap US | Open Source Collective
Show Notes
In this episode Justin and Richard talk with Maggie Cawley, Executive Director of the American OpenStreetMap US and Alyssa Wright, current Board Member of OpenStreetMap US. If you’ve never heard of OpenStreetMap US you will learn all about what it is, how you can use it, how you can edit it (YES, it’s editable like Wikipedia), and how it differs from Google Maps.
1:40** What is OpenStreetMap and OpenStreetMap US? How are they different? The ladies also share how many people are all together in the OpenStreetMap world in their biosphere and how many contributing editors there are.
04:41 Justin wonders how the map data is licensed and was it a hard sell to the community or an easy one?
08:24 OSMF and OSM US are slighty different. Richard is interested to know what Maggie and Alyssa are doing for each one and how do they see them growing.
10:43 Richard wants to know the Code of Conduct and was questioning if it was just started or did it change.
12:40 Justin wants to know what percentage Craig, from Craigslist, give to their annual budget. Also, regarding sustainability, the discussion of what it costs to run OpenStreetMap as a service is answered.
13:34 Maggie talks about who is involved in their membership which is made of many different people.
17:00 Richard wonders if anything is difficult now and what does sustainability look like and if there are any problems. The ladies talk about all the challenges there have been.
23:09 Why would people use OSM vs. Google Maps? Empowerment is a big factor with OSM.
27:18 Justin wonders how Maggie and Alyssa deal with possible misinformation from bad edits, especially with the earthquakes or tornados or if there have been any issues.
32:04 The ladies answer some questions from Richard regarding what sustainability means for OSM and how do you make sure everyone is working on the same product, doing it with the same intention, but with the same sort of guidance.
Quotes
05:43 “ODbL, it’s a unique license.”
15:15 “I always point to my phone, it’s like, you know, this is essentially a map that we’re carrying around with us constantly and whether we’re talking about data privacy in our location, movement, or crime statistics or this Coronavirus, this is grounded in space, and we’re grounded in space.”
21:08 “Billions of people in this world do not have an address. So, without an address that means you don’t have a legal right to your land.”
23:17 “It’s very well known that Google is going to map where they have commercial interest.”
Spotlight
34:07 Justin’s spotlight this week is Dracula PRO-Episode 27.
34:40 Richard’s spotlight is Leaflet JS.
34:57 Maggie’s spotlight is QGIS project.
35:17 Alyssa’s spotlight is PostGIS community.
Links
Maggie Cawley Twitter
Alyssa Wright Twitter
State of the Map U.S. Conference
Craigslist Charitable Fund Donation
OpenStreetMap.US
OpenStreetMap.org
OpenStreetMap on Slack
QGIS
PostGIS
TeachOSM
Dracula Pro-Episode27
Leaflet JSSpecial Guests: Alyssa Wright and Maggie Cawley.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: sustain2020Support Sustain

Mar 6, 2020 • 46min
Episode 27: Creating Dracula PRO with Blood, Sweat, and Tears with Zeno Rocha
Sponsored By:
Panelists
Richard Littauer | Justin Dorfman | Eric Berry
Guest
Zeno Rocha
Liferay Cloud | Dracula Pro
Show Notes
In this episode we talk with Zeno Rocha. He is the Chief Product Officer at Liferay Cloud, a newly created Liferay, Inc division. He is responsible for crafting the product strategy, shaping the features, and defining the future of DXP Cloud. Zeno also created the popular Dracula theme. We talk about the success of clipboard.js, Dracula theme, and the importance not just creating the code, but promoting is as well.
2:38 Zeno talks about how he started out as an Open Source developer. He also explains what the developer scene is like in Brazil.
05:15 Zeno has spoken at over 110 conferences now and Richard is interested to know why he has this drive to get more views and work on social problems.
9:54 Zeno explains how he got involved in Dracula Theme and clipboard.js. Let’s just say there are 28,000 stars.
11:54 Zeno gets into the importance of promoting libraries that we create. If you want to reach and help more people. We as a group need to promote! He discusses what he did to promote his stuff.
15:45 One of the guys asked Zeno how did he get from zero to 5,000 stars overnight. He explains it’s not because of Hacker News but from something else.
18:20 Zeno talks about his design capabilities with Dracula. He says he’s not a designer or a marketeer.
20:18 Justin mentions about how he founded a project called BootstrapCDN and how an influencer helped shoot the usage up in one night.
22:54 Richard wonders how Zeno chooses his projects and how does he plan to have projects live beyond him, in terms of Dracula, which is a theming project that has grown beyond him. Zeno explains a hospital stay and a stolen computer is involved in this, so listen on.
30:34 Richard is curious about Dracula Pro and that it’s monetized but how does it work. Zeno answers this talking about dark mode and a keyboard that was crated for Dracula that had record sales.
32:57 Zeno reaches a point where he says he needs to learn about sales to make money. He finds a book that he reads that taught his some very interesting lessons.
Quotes
07:14 “If you really want to learn something you have to teach it.”
08:10 “If I learn that one framework and learn that one language, then I am going to be successful.”
12:07 “If you want to get traction, if you want to reach more people…then you have to spend time promoting to others.
22:36 “Teach first, be welcoming first, communicate 10 times more than you code.”
30:56 “Typically I never monetize my work.”
39:49 “Email is not dead. Whoever says that never sent a newsletter. It works.”
Spotlight
41:07 Justin’s spotlight this week is SHML.xyz (shell markup language)
41:49 Eric’s spotlight is Thoughtbot. Go on github.com/thoughtbot/laptop also a subscription to Dracula Pro, found on Draculatheme.com.
43:41 Richard’s spotlight is Caigmod.com (a newsletter).
44:30 Zeno’s spotlight is HTML5 Boilerplate.
Links
Zeno Rocha
Zeno Rocha Twitter
Zeno Rocha Linkedin
Zeno Rocha GitHub
Dracula Theme
GitHub/Alfred Workflows
Launch: An Internet Millionaire’s Secret Formula TO Sell Almost Anything Online, Build A Business You Love, And Live The Life Of Your Dreams.
SHML.xyz
Thoughtbot
Craigmod.com
HTML5 Boilerplate
GitHub: How did the repo get 5000 stars in a few days?
Hacker News-Modern Copy to ClipboardSpecial Guest: Zeno Rocha.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: sustain2020Support Sustain

Feb 28, 2020 • 43min
Episode 26: The Data Behind Open Source is CHAOSS with Georg Link
Sponsored By:
Panelists
Richard Littauer | Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman
Guest
Georg Link
Bitergia | CHAOSS
Show Notes
In this episode we talk with Georg Link, an Open Source Strategist. He is Director of Sales for Bitergia and Co-Founder, Governing Board Member of the Linux Foundation CHAOSS Project. He’s a native of Germany, but currently resides in Omaha, Nebraska.
04:21 Georg explains how he spent his last five years as he joined the PhD program, how he dove into Open Source, and his research focus.
5:25 The topic of metrics is discussed for Open Source.
07:52 The roots of the CHAOSS Project is explained and how it started at the Open Source Leadership Summit in 2017.
10:36 The topic of Red Hat’s contribution to Prospector as part of Project CHAOSS is explained and how it took the approach of taking metrics and providing an interface for analysis.
11:55 A question was posed to Georg about his perspective of his view when he started getting into the data behind Open Source and what kind of revelations he had.
15:29 One of the guys wants to know what Georg’s expectations are of these projects when they use metrics outlined and what will they do with it.
19:09 Georg talks about the two main reasons why he sees the metrics being implemented.
19:26 Justin brings up how Drupal does a comprehensive state of their community once a year and how they really go into metrics and Richard wants to know what metrics we have, and Georg expands on this topic.
22:26 Georg shares checking out CHAOSS.community/metrics to see shared metrics.
25:10 Richard wants to know how people who are not in an OSPO, who have a project, or are solo maintainers, or a team of people working on a project, how can they use these metrics to make their code better in the long run? Georg gives his recommendations on how to do this.
29:08 Georg explains who metrics are useful to and a question was asked from one of the guys as to how people can learn about different things from metrics without getting involved in the CHAOSS community if they don’t have time. Georg gives his advice.
33:38 Georg chats about what was different at the recent CHAOSSCON, what he’s focused on, and what he’s doing moving ahead. Listen on as he states, “It was the BEST we’ve had!”
Spotlights
39:11 Justin’s spotlight this week is a TechRepublic article called, “Linux Foundation study throws the open source sustainability debate into question,” by Matt Asay.
39:38 Eric’s spotlight is a controversial one called Web3 Sustain Event-Blockchain.
40:47 Richard’s pick is Jekyll, to build websites really easily and fast using Ruby.
41:15 Georg gives a shout out to the LibreOffice community.
Links
Georg Link, PhD
Georg Link
Georg Link Twitter
Georg Link Linkedin
Bitergia
Red Hat
OSPO
CHAOSS Participate
CHAOSS Metrics
Finos Foundation
Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE)
Drupal
Cauldron
Tech Republic article by Matt Asay
Sustain Web3 event-Blockchain
Jekyll
LibreOfficeSpecial Guest: Georg Link.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: sustain2020Support Sustain

Feb 21, 2020 • 42min
Episode 25: Creating a Support Network for Maintainers with Don Goodman-Wilson
Sponsored By:
Panelists
Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer
Guest
Don Goodman-Wilson
Maintainerati Foundation
Show Notes
In this episode we talk with Don Goodman-Wilson, from Amsterdam. He’s a philosopher-engineer experienced in developer advocacy, Founder of Katsudon.tech, and Board Member at Maintainerati Foundation.
1:18 Don explains Maintainerati’s mission and brings up a point about how to create a network of support among maintainers.
04:10 Don talks about having no insight in the Japanese open source community and the challenges must face not being able to communicate with others.
7:03 Justin asks Don what does DevRel means to him and he also explains what “empowerment” means to him as well.
10:26 Don explains what issues he tackled at Slack and GitHub.
16:17 Don wrote a post on open source about how it’s a bit broken. He explains how the current situation is radically skewed in favor of the business interests.
18:50 Richard asks Don to talk about what ethical implications might mean for open source and how do we fix it, work on it, and make it better for the developmental maintainers.
22:21 The panel and Don discuss how a maintainer, Seth Vargo, found out that his code was being used by a subcontractor for ICE and how ICE is currently having major humanitarian issues on the border.
28:21 Justin speaks about open source and section five of no discrimination against persons or groups.
32:10 Don chimed in about a talk he did at FOSDEM that challenged the assumption that open is the right thing.
35:27 Richard explains his views on academic linguistics and saving endangered languages and how to do it properly.
Spotlights
38:33 Justin’s spotlight is tickgit
39:15 Richard’s spotlight is Front Porch Forum
40:16 Don’s spotlight is Grape
Links
Don Goodman-Wilson
Open Source is Broken FOSDEM 2020
katsudon.tech
Maintainerati
DEVREL
Slack
GitHub
Seth Vargo
Karl Popper
The Hippocratic License 2.0Special Guest: Don Goodman-Wilson.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: sustain2020Support Sustain

Feb 14, 2020 • 44min
Episode 24: Securing the FOSS Ecosystem with Gareth Rushgrove
Sponsored By:
Panelists
Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer | Allen “Gunner” Gunn
Guest
Gareth Rushgrove
Snyk
Show Notes
In this episode, we talk with Gareth Rushgrove, from Cambridge, UK, Director of Project Management at a security software startup called Snyk. He has spoken at a number of international technology conferences over the past few years, including FOSDEM, RAMP, BACON, QCon, PuppetConf, Monitorama, GOTO and Velocity. Security and Open Source don’t often go together, in this episode we explore the topic and more.
01:20 Gareth explains that Snyk provides tools for developers who use Open Source Software and help them stay secure. He also expands on vulnerability landscapes.
02:10 Justin asks Gareth at what point does he think the collective community decided that we need to start digging into security holes within our software and he answers the question.
04:00 One of the guys asks Gareth if security is a passion of his and if he joined the company because that’s what he loves or was it more for Open Source.
05:30 The guys talk about Guy Podjarney (a.k.a Guypod) and Steve Souders and how they started the web performance movement.
07:30 Richard states Snyk has 400,000 users on the website and three times more vulnerability than a public database. Gareth goes further in-depth about this and what his company does using Java, Ruby, or Python and how he does a bunch of propriety research and helps projects do profit disclosure.
11:10 Gareth discusses the Heartbleed attack & the Equifax data breach and its effect on the industry’s view on Open Source. Companies want Open Source ecosystem to be more secure,
17:50 Gunner chimes in with a question about if there is a list of things Gareth wishes Open Source projects would do to be better members of ecosystems visa the security and if there are checklists or places to go for best practices. Gareth expands on this.
23:49 Gareth talks about DevSecCon which is a conference that brings developers and security together in one place. There are eight conferences around the world this year.
24:33 One of the guys is curious about the effect of security and how people out there have packages that are used by millions of other users and how often they don’t know how many users are using it. Gareth explains.
26:44 Gunner asks about the role of threat modeling in the work Gareth does and what he recommends.
28:25 Gareth goes in-depth about the Helm Project and CNCF sponsoring.
37:31 Gareth gives advice on where people can go to find more information about security besides talking to Snyk.
Spotlight
38:40 Justin’s spotlight this week is a blog post by Andrew Mason about [Ruby on Rails Development with VS Code](ttps://andrewm.codes/posts/ruby-on-rails-development-with-vs-code-p1i/)
39:07 Eric suggests getting off Google Chrome and using Firefox (Developer Edition).
40:15 Gunner’s pick is guix.gnu.org
40:46 Richard’s pick is crubadan.org
41:34 Finally, Gareth’s pick is openpolicyagent.org
Links
Snyk
Gareth Rushgrove Twitter
Puppet
Heartbleed
CNCF
DevSecCon
Helm
HeavyBit
Open Policy Agent GitHub
Guy Podjarny Twitter
Steve Souders Twitter
Andrew Mason - Ruby On Rails
Firefox
Guix
An Crúbadán
Open PolicySpecial Guest: Gareth Rushgrove.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: sustain2020Support Sustain

Feb 7, 2020 • 54min
Episode 23: Why Companies Should Invest Money in Open Source with Josh Simmons
Sponsored By:
Panelists
Pia Mancini | Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer | Allen “Gunner” Gunn
Guest
Josh Simmons
Salesforce | Open Source Initiative
Show Notes
In this episode we talk with Josh Simmons, Senior Open Source Strategist at Salesforce Engineering. He is a community strategist, open source advocate, and dusty- foot philosopher. He also serves as Vice President of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).
4:10 Josh talks about how he started in Open Source and his background.
7:27 Josh explains why companies/people should invest money in Open Source even though it’s free and why it’s a good business, adding features, fixing bugs, and risk mitigation.
10:28 Richard says, “As a dusty-foot philosopher,” Josh believes it’s ethical to give back and non-ethical for enterprise companies not to give back.
11:03 We are lucky to have this concept of Open Source. Our fore fathers twenty plus years ago realized there was another approach to intellectual property. Open Source was such a radical concept. Also, as contributors, if we don’t give back who will? If no one does, what are we here for?
20:50 A panelist asks Josh, “What are the challenges of running an OSPO?” In an organization with over 8,000 developers, Josh explains how he tries to pull all the docs and pool everything together and create coherent set of documents and policies. Also, the main challenge is the outreach to the staff.
25:27 Josh tells us tools he likes using such as CLA Assistant (BOT) and OSS Review Toolkit. He also gives a shout out to the TODO Group: talk openly, develop openly which is a project for the LINUX Foundation. Both tools were found through the “To Do Group.”
28:16 Josh talks about his role in OSI (Open Source Initiative). Josh is Vice President of the Open Source Initiative. He gives us the history of how it started and how their goal is to protect and promote Open Source, including maintaining the approved OSI license list.
36:55 Richard and Josh debate whether or not OSI is a vehicle for the community. Richard brings up how dual licensing does not fall under Open Source under OSI’s definitions.
Spotlight
50:04 Justin's spotlight this week is cURL
50:20 Eric’s pick is Ruby-Grape.org
51:22 Gunner’s pick is F-Droid.org
51:52 Richard gives Pia a shout out to Open Collective
52:02 Richard’s pick is SpoofMAC on GitHub
52:40 Josh’s spotlight is Drupal.org
Sponsor
Linode
Links
Josh Simmons Website
Josh Simmons LinkedIn
Josh Simmons Twitter
TODO
The Linux Foundation
F-Droid
SpoofMAC
Drupal
Open Collective
Open Source Initiative
CLA Assistant
OSS Review ToolkitSpecial Guest: Josh Simmons.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: sustain2020Support Sustain

Jan 24, 2020 • 41min
Episode 22: Teaching the Future Open Source Programmers with Ibiam Chihurumnaya
Sponsored By:
Panelists
Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer
Guest
Ibiam Chihurumnaya
Sugar Labs
Show Notes
00:55 In today’s episode, we have Ibiam Chihurumnaya. He is a developer based in Nigeria. Ibiam works with Sugar Labs where he develops and maintains software for children. Also, as a way of giving back to society, he trains children how to code. So far, they have trained over 800 children. He is here to share with us how he started his programming journey and the wonderful things he is doing for future programmers.
Imagine growing up in a village where every child is expected to either be a lawyer, an engineer or a doctor and anything to do with technology is unheard off. Can you imagine depending on a cyber café for you to learn how to code? Our guest narrates to us how he overcame all that he went through for him to become the great developer he is today.
07:10 How did he start coding? Ibiam was fortunate enough to attend a school that offered coding training. He was lucky enough to grab a chance to attend some of the training, and it created a base for his coding passion.
10:10 The laptop he was using at that time had limited RAM and hard disk space; therefore, he resulted in learning Python. It was not a walk in the park. He had to sacrifice to afford cyber services. For parents who are listening, it is good for you to allow your children to choose what they want to do. Ibiam’s mother supported him to the best of her ability. Our guest started the FOSSFA movement.
15:30 He drew inspiration from a developer in Uruguay who teaches coding as an extra-curricular activity to children between the age of nine and twelve who are interested in coding. The results in Uruguay are amazing. When Ibiam started teaching kids programming in Nigeria, it was not easy for him but the desire to see people who will carry on the coding work once he is not there kept him going. He teaches open-source.
21:09 Ibiam is working with the Nigerian government to help teach the interested children coding as an extra-curricular activity along with other activities like robotics, design and drones classes. The foundation encourages children to be whatever they want to be without necessarily choosing a career in the technology world.
33:06 In Africa, Rwanda is doing an exceptionally good job in encouraging the children to love coding. In the next 10 to 20 years, Ibiam sees Africa as a tech space with collaboration and innovations. Also, he wants to see a lot of engineers in Africa from Africa, still in Africa and working with companies in Africa and outside Africa.
Spotlights
Ibiam Chihurumnaya - Delta
Justin Dorfman Sketch CSV Mail Merge
Richard Littauer - Semantic Release
Eric Berry - RestForce
Links
Python
Listen to How The Python Software Foundation Works
Sugar Labs
FOSSFA
OLPC
Ibiam on Twitter
Sponsored By
Linode - https://linode.com/sustain/
Special Guest: Ibiam Chihurumnaya.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: sustain2020Support Sustain

Jan 17, 2020 • 39min
Episode 21: How Playing Minecraft Opened a Door to the Open Source World with Justin W. Flory
Sponsored By:
Panelists
Eric Berry | Pia Mancini | Justin Dorfman | Allen “Gunner” Gunn
Guest
Justin W. Flory
Rochester Institute of Technology
Show Notes
In this episode we talk with Justin Flory, quite possibly the future of Open Source Sustainability. Justin fell into the Open Source world as a 15-year-old out of necessity while trying to build and maintain his Minecraft server. Justin currently attends the Rochester Institute of Technology, currently the only institute of higher learning offering a Free and Open Source Software and Free Culture minor. He is best known as an Open Source contributor in the U.S.
01:21: Justin Flory discusses his contribution to the Linux open source community and getting involved with his University’s open source program.
02:11: The driving force at an early age was playing Minecraft as a kid and wanting to have his own server to build a community to play with friends. This led to learning networking, system administration, and eventually drove him to some Minecraft open source software. It was there he helped out and eventually became a community manger.
07:32: Justin talks about the Spigot Project and how they funded it through a web store, contests, and donation drives.
09:18: While at RIT, he became more involved in the open source world through such things as the FOSS Initiative, Libre Corps, UNICEF, Open APS, Night Scout, and Sugarlabs, and the One Laptop per Child ecosystem.
12:51: Also at RIT, and as part of his minor, discusses his class on FOSS.
14:29: Breaks down the 2006 post on Linux.com by Bruce Byfield on why FOSS is not on activists’ agenda and how he was ahead of his time.
21:54: Justin talks about one of the sessions he went to at the Mozilla Festival in 2019 about the Extinction Rebellion.
23:40: Gunner joins in and Eric talks about the upcoming events in Brussels: Sustain, CHAOSS, and FOSDEM. Justin Flory and Michael Nolan will be speaking at FOSDEM and he gave us a preview of his “Freedom and AI” which will showcase the Four Essentials of Freedom. This will be held on Saturday, February 2, 2020.
Spotlights
• 34:24: Justin Dorfman spotlight this week is Tailwind CDN.
• 34:55 Pia’s is Queer JS.
• 35:43: Gunner picks the harden Linux movement, Tails OS, and Qube
• 36:19: Eric brings back one of his old favorites, Mert by Brian Gonzalez
• 36:52: Finally, Justin Flory picks Spigot, the open source Minecraft server software.
Links
Justin W Flory
Rochester Institute of Technology
unicef
Libre Corps
Justin's blog about Bruce Byfield’s post
Why FOSS Isn’t On Activist Agendas
FOSDEM 2020
Justin Flory's Sustain Summit 2018 Blog
Extinction Rebellion
Tailwind CDN
Queer JS
Tails OS
Qubes
Mert
Spigot ProjectSpecial Guest: Justin W. Flory.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: sustain2020Support Sustain

Jan 10, 2020 • 48min
Episode 20: The Keys to Open Source Sustainability with Gidi Morris
Sponsored By:
Panelists
Justin Dorfman | Eric Berry
Guest
Gidi (Gideon) Morris
Principal software engineer at Elastic
Show Notes
00:44: The special guest for this episode of Sustain is Gidi (Gideon) Morris. Gidi is the principal software engineer at Elastic and has been in the industry for about two decades now.
03:08: He discusses his worries within not just the open source world, but the entire tech industry. Justin furthers the questions that Gidi raise about the open source world and the various psychological impacts it can have on the employees, due to his own experience. Gideon address the pressures and shifts relating to newcomers in the industry, specifically focusing on the world of open source. He raises the two issues he’s concerned about which is why people come into the industry and how do we support them? And are we creating an environment where they’re burning themselves out the way I did?
06:45 Eric begins the discussion by addressing the term Gidi raises which is, burnout. He relates his own experience where he felt this way about his work in the past year and brings up Gidi current employer, Elastic. Eric talks about his time when he was working at a startup called Mahalo and he used a product called Elastic search.
07:45 The question was posted in IRC and it was answered in 30 seconds according to Eric, which he exclaims was very surprising and that it represented that healthy environment Gidi brought up. Eric says he’s heard the work on Elk Stack is the environment striving to prevent the burnout that Gidi raises issues about.
08:18 Gidi then goes into detail about how companies can prevent the burnout of their employers and how they can learn from companies, like Elastic. He explains Elastic and what they do, he says it mainly works on a product called Elastic search, which is a search engine as well as a variety of satellite products.
10:30 He also states that it’s also one of the biggest remote companies across the tech world. He joined because all of the development within Elastic is developed like an open source project. Gidi also discusses how well the communication is within the employers and the flexibility within the company.
12:50 Eric then moves the conversation to working in a remote company and the benefits and downsides that it can possess. Gidi explains how his team works across 5 different time zones. Eric then asks Gidi about licensing working on a source available product, which allows users to look at the source.
16:30 Gidi discusses the benefits of the open source project and the healthy environment it provides. There is nothing secretive about what's being done within the company which he states as being less limited than more limited. Gidi explains how there are certain folders that have what used to be closed source and are now source available. Eric agrees with Gidi in that the key to open source sustainability is licensing and being honest with customers and contributors.
22:01 Gidi also brings up the recent dilemma about the expectations of the open-source community to shift without the help of those companies, which is where the dilemma comes up between balancing that and licensing agreements. Gidi explains some of the mistakes they’ve made along the way with the dual-licensing model, however it has mostly worked out for them in the end. Eric says that Elastic has taken a good approach to licensing with open source.
36:40 Gideon ends the conversation explaining why he joined Elastic from the start. The main thing was the difference between a company being asynchronous and synchronous and that is what Elastic brought into question for him. He emphasized that if we as a community adopt these ways of working, there will be a big change in how others get involved with the open source community.
43:25 Eric and Justin wrap up the conversation by discussing what they’re planning to do with every podcast, which is every podcast they share an open-source project or library that has provided value or an impact for their personal career or life. They spotlight Erik Rasmussen, Laravel Charts, and a charity called BEAM.
Spotlights
Gidi - Not an OS project, but plugging Beam - a charity worth mentioning and founded by a fellow developer
Eric - Final Form by Erik Rasmussen
Justin - Laravel Charts
Special Guest: Gidi Morris.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: sustain2020Support Sustain

Jan 6, 2020 • 48min
Episode 19: Recovering Software Engineer to a Believer in Open Source with Gunner
Summary
Allen Gunn aka Gunner self-identifies as a recovering software engineer and CTO. After the dot-com bubble popped circa 2000 he founded a non-profit called Aspiration which is a values-driven nonprofit technology organization. For those lucky enough to have attended an event Gunner has facilitated will know, he has the gift of gab. He was so good on this episode that we asked him to become a permanent host/panelist and he said YES!
Panelists
Justin Dorfman | Pia Mancini | Richard Littauer | Eric Berry
Guest
Allen Gunn (Gunner) of Aspiration
Show Notes
01:10 Allen’s Background
02:32 Conferences
05:10 Allen’s Experience That Lead Him to Where He Is
09:01 Building Capacity Toward Sustainability
10:15 What You Would See at Allen’s Conferences
Cognitive Dissonance
Equitable Knowledge Transactions
13:30 Hard Conversations in Open Source Communities and How To Bridge Those Conversations at the Conferences
20:07 Self-Obsolescence
Reading Suggestions
https://www.torproject.org/download/
https://www.amazon.com/Linchpin-Are-Indispensable-Seth-Godin/dp/1591844096
https://aspirationtech.org/publications/manifesto
https://facilitation.aspirationtech.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
25:30 Control Takers vs. Love Bringers
29:55 Why Gunner is in Tech and not Politics
39:16 Gunner’s Thoughts on Sustainability
Personal Sustainability
Jamis Buck Talk on Burnout
Justin W. Flory's Episode Notes
Mentions
Nadia Eghbal
Brandon Keepers
Cat Allman
Spotlights
Justin - Carbon - A simple PHP API extension for DateTime
Pia - CodeBuddies
Richard - HackMD
Eric - Bulk Insert Ruby Gem
Allen - Allied Media ProjectSponsored 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: sustain2020Support Sustain


