Contributor

Ry Walker (@rywalker) is the founder and CEO of Tembo, the Postgres developer platform for building any and every data service. To Ry, the full capabilities of Postgres appear underappreciated and underused for most users. Tembo is an attempt to harness the large ecosystem of Postgres extensions, and ultimately collapse the database sprawl of the modern data stack.  Contributor is looking for a community manager! If you want to know more, shoot us an email at eric@scalevp.com. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications! In this episode we discuss: Taking the “red pill” of using Postgres for everything Providing universal support for Postgres extensions Why Ry dislikes the current state of the modern data stack How databases across the board have mostly changed into application platforms What makes Tembo “Startup Mt. Everest” Links: Tembo OSSRank Citus Data Modal Supabase Wrappers People mentioned: Erik Bernhardsson (@bernhardsson) Other episodes: Clickhouse with Alexey Milovidov and Ivan Blinkov

Jan Oberhauser, founder and CEO of n8n, brings his background in film effects to create a unique workflow automation tool. He discusses how n8n’s flexible architecture allows for complex automations and addresses the challenges of traditional automation tools. Jan explains the innovative 'fair-code license' that balances open-source ideals with project sustainability. He also shares insights on building a vibrant community around n8n, illustrating use cases from scheduling fitness classes to upgrading financial systems.

Glauber Costa (@glcst) is the founder of Turso and the co-creator of libSQL, an open source, open contribution fork of the database engine library, SQLite. Most people believe that SQLite is open-source software, but it actually exists in the public domain and doesn’t accept external contributions. With their big fork, Glauber and his team have set out to evolve SQLite into a modern database with support for distributed data, an asynchronous interface, compatibility with WASM and Linux, and more. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community! In this episode we discuss: Community reactions to forking SQLite How Glauber was spoiled by starting his career developing for Linux The controversial decision to launch libSQL without writing a single line of code The plan for incorporating upstream changes from SQLite Examples of how application developers need to move code “to the edge” Links: libSQL SQLite Turso LiteFS Litestream rqlite VLCN People mentioned: Avi Kivity (@AviKivity) Dor Laor (@DorLaor) Ben Johnson (@benbjohnson) Phillip O’Toole (@general_order24) Matt Tantaman (@tantaman) Other episodes: Scylla with Dor Laor  Apache Cassandra with Patrick McFadin

Ruben Fiszel (@rubenfiszel) is the creator of Windmill, the open-source developer platform that lets users easily turn scripts into workflows and internal apps with auto-generated UIs. Windmill doesn’t force engineers to change their coding style or adopt a convoluted API, and its low-code design makes it accessible to non-technical users. Tune in to find out how Windmill offers speed, performance and flexibility, while avoiding the limitations of rigid tools. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community! In this episode we discuss: Why many engineers try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to workflow engines When Ruben first saw the need for a platform like Windmill while working at Palantir “Today is the nicest period to build open-source…” Ruben’s incredible presence with support and bug fixes Windmill’s generous open-source offerings and the future of the business Links: Windmill Retool Tokio Apache Airflow Apache Spark Other episodes: Prefect with Jeremiah Lowin Dagster with Nick Schrock Temporal with Maxim Fateev Temporal (Part 2) with Maxim Fateev and Dominik Tornow Apache Cassandra with Patrick McFadin

Jesse Clark, co-founder of Marqo, discusses the rapid growth of their multimodal vector search engine. Topics include the importance of Marqo for organizations, machine learning language, dealing with AI innovation stress, and the journey from physics research to starting Marqo.

Jeu George (@jeugeorge) is the co-creator of Conductor, the open-source application building platform. Conductor began as a workflow orchestrator and was originally developed at Netflix. Jeu also co-founded Orkes, a company which offers a cloud product based on Conductor. Tune in to find out how Conductor has evolved into an open-source, battle-tested distributed application platform. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community! In this episode we discuss: The core tenets of building Conductor - reliability, language and cloud agnosticism How Conductor enables teams to share and manage their custom modules The role of Conductor in Netflix’s switch from licensed to original content Jeu’s journey from Netflix, to Uber, and finally to Orkes How Orkes is focusing on integrations and AI orchestration moving forward Links: Conductor Orkes People mentioned: Viren Baraiya (@virenbaraiya) Boney Sekh (@boneyorkes) Dilip Lukose (@diliplukose)

Advait Ruia, Co-founder of SuperTokens, discusses the evolution of SuperTokens from a blog post to an infrastructure company offering user authentication and authorization solutions. Topics include the demand for authentication providers, the need for founders to be in the Bay Area, building community support, and areas for outside contributions.

Loris Degioanni (@lorisdegio) joins Eric Anderson (@ericmander) to chat about Falco, the open-source runtime security tool for modern cloud infrastructures. Loris is the founder and CTO of Sysdig, and co-creator of Wireshark, the legendary open-source packet analysis tool. Today, Loris talks about all these projects and more - tune in to learn about some deep history and Loris’ predictions for the future. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community! In this episode we discuss: How Loris began working with Gerald Combs as a student in Italy Why Loris’ teams name their products after animals The new non-profit Wireshark Foundation Parallel development of cloud technology and containers during Loris’ career The little things that make open-source projects go viral Links: Falco Sysdig Wireshark People mentioned: Solomon Hykes (@solomonhykes)

Emre Baran (@emre) is the CEO and co-founder of Cerbos, the open-source authorization layer for implementing roles and permissions. Cerbos allows developers to decouple authorization logic from core code into its own centrally distributed component. Easier said than done, perhaps - but Cerbos is secure, intentionally simple to implement, and developer-focused. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community! In this episode we discuss: The difference between authentication and authorization Why Cerbos is language-agnostic Authorization patterns in a single application versus a larger network The reason most devs start out trying to do authorization themselves, and sometimes give up How the upcoming Cerbos Cloud will empower less technical users to deploy and manage policies and logs Links: Cerbos Cerbos Cloud Beta Zanzibar: Google’s Consistent, Global Authorization System People mentioned: Charith Ellawala (Github: @charithe) Other episodes: Open Policy Agent with Torin Sandall

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) has a conversation with Liam Randall (@Hectaman) and Bailey Hayes (@baihay) of Cosmonic, the platform-as-a-service environment for building cloud-native applications using WebAssembly. Bailey is also on the steering committee for the Bytecode Alliance, which stewards WebAssembly. In 2021, Cosmonic donated their WebAssembly runtime, wasmCloud, to the CNCF as an open-source project. Today, Liam and Bailey trace the history of WebAssembly, and their personal paths alongside it. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community! In this episode we discuss: How WebAssembly came together over the last decade to become the fourth standardized language of the web The moments when Bailey and Liam both realized they might be changing the future of computing Modding Microsoft Flight Simulator with Wasm modules Liam’s thoughts on how WebAssembly will affect business models going forward Links: Cosmonic WebAssembly Bytecode Alliance CNCF wasmCloud Wasmtime WAMR Better together: A Kubernetes and Wasm case study Spin People mentioned: Kevin Hoffman (@KevinHoffman) Kelsey Hightower (@kelseyhightower) Guy Bedford (@guybedford) Peter Huene (@peterhuene) Chris Aniszczyk (@cra) Other episodes: Envoy Proxy with Matt Klein Suborbital with Connor Hicks