The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

James Long joined the show to talk about his recent post, “Why I’m Frequently Absent from Open Source”. He shared several points in his blog post that struck a chord with us, so we invited him on the show to talk through the gritty details and peel back the layers of open source — the people involved, sustainability, the responsibility, the guilt, and the balance it takes to keep it all together. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Rollbar – Put errors in their place! npm install --save rollbar for error tracking in your Node.js apps. Toptal – Scale your team and hire from the top 3% of developers and designers with Toptal. Email adam@changelog.com for a personal introduction. Compose – Production ready, cloud hosted databases. Pick your flavor - MongoDB, Elasticsearch, RethinkDB, Redis, Postgres, etcd, or RabbitMQ. When you’re ready to sign up use our special URL compose.com/changelog to get 30-days free on Compose Featuring:James Long – Website, GitHub, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:James recently left Mozilla and shortly after he launched an open source project called Prettier - an opinionated JavaScript formatter. It was a great success. Needless to say, James experienced that overwhelming feeling many indie open source developers feel when faced with all the work required to maintain a successful open source project — the issues, feature requests, PRs, extra time required, and all the communication can really be a burden, especially when you have a full-time contracting gig and a family. His blog post was a response to this feeling as well as a love letter to his wife. Why I’m Frequently Absent From Open Source Prettier gamedev.net Scheme James’ advice for getting away from your monitor is to make pizza. If you plan to take his advice, he recommends that you check out The Pizza Book by Aaron Quint and Michael R. Bernstein. BONUS LINK (from James) — Watch Hammock Driven Development by Rich Hickey Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Nathan Sobo, founding member of the Atom editor team at GitHub, joined the show take us all the way back to the beginning of Atom to learn where it came from, the founding team, the problem it solves, on through to shipping 1.0 and beyond. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Linode – Our cloud server of choice! Get one of the fastest, most efficient SSD cloud servers for only $5/mo. Use the code changelog2017 to get 4 months free! Hired – Get hired. It’s free — in fact, they pay you when you get hired. Our listeners get a double hiring bonus of $2,000. Compose – Production ready, cloud hosted databases. Pick your flavor - MongoDB, Elasticsearch, RethinkDB, Redis, Postgres, etcd, or RabbitMQ. When you’re ready to sign up use our special URL compose.com/changelog to get 60-days free on Compose Featuring:Nathan Sobo – GitHub, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes: Lambda the Ultimate Chris Wanstrath Corey Johnson Github Atom’s Code-Editor Nerds Take Over Their Universe Atom on Libraries.io Treetop on Libraries.io The super early version of Atom was built on Ace Editor Atom: free and open source for everyone Atom homepage @atomeditor on Twitter Atom on GitHub Atom Flight Manual – Documentation for Atom, generated by nanoc, hosted by GitHub Pages Atom Blog Atom Forum The Changelog #216: Electron and Cross Platform Desktop Apps with Zeke Sikelianos Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Ben Ubois, the creator of Feedbin (a simple, good-looking online RSS reader) joined the show to talk about the indie web and developers, how RSS usage has changed over the years – particularly since Google Reader shutdown. We also talked about RSS vs the social web that we’re in now and the idea of an RSS resurgence and taking back control over the content we choose to subscribe to. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Linode – Our cloud server of choice! Get one of the fastest, most efficient SSD cloud servers for only $5/mo. Use the code changelog2017 to get 4 months free! Hired – Get hired. It’s free — in fact, they pay you when you get hired. Our listeners get a double hiring bonus of $2,000. Featuring:Ben Ubois – Website, GitHub, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes: Feedbin Feedbin in GitHub Image Previews in Feedbin OpenCV Sentry Reeder Feedly Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Seth Vargo, the Director of Technical Advocacy at HashiCorp, joined the show to talk about managing secrets with their open source product called Vault which lets you centrally secure, store, and tightly control access to secrets across distributed infrastructure and applications. We talked about Seth’s back story into open source, use cases, what problem it solves, key features like Data Encryption, why they choose to write it in Go, and how they build tooling around the open core model. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:GoCD – GoCD is an on-premise open source continuous delivery server created by ThoughtWorks that lets you automate and streamline your build-test-release cycle for reliable, continuous delivery of your product. Toptal – Scale your team and hire from the top 3% of developers and designers with Toptal. Email adam@changelog.com for a personal introduction. Featuring:Seth Vargo – Website, GitHub, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:JS Party goes live February 24 at Noon PT / 3pm ET. Click here to subscribe or submit an issue to suggest topics for future episodes. Carnegie Mellon University CustomInk Thanks to @DerfOh (Fredrick) for submitting issue #605 to suggest this topic Vault by HashiCorp Vault on GitHub Vault docs Terraform The Tao of HashiCorp is the foundation that guides HashiCorp’s vision, roadmap, and product design. HashiCorp Releases Shamir’s Secret Sharing HashiConf Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Karen Sandler, Rachel Nabors, and Jono Bacon joined the show by way of some great conversations at OSCON in London, UK and All Things Open in Raleigh, NC. We talked about free software, web animation and motion in user interfaces, and how open source communities organize. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:GoCD – GoCD is an on-premise open source continuous delivery server created by ThoughtWorks that lets you automate and streamline your build-test-release cycle for reliable, continuous delivery of your product. Rollbar – Put errors in their place! Full-stack error tracking for all apps in any language. Toptal – Scale your team and hire from the top 3% of developers and designers with Toptal. Email adam@changelog.com for a personal introduction. Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com. Featuring:Karen Sandler – XRachel Nabors – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, XJono Bacon – Website, GitHub, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:Karen Sandler Karen Sandler is the the executive director of the Software Freedom Conservancy. She has a big heart, literally. Her heart condition requires a pacemaker, but she can’t access the source code that runs it. For this and other reasons, Karen is a passionate advocate for free software. In this interview, Jerod talks with Karen about her convictions, what she’s doing about them, and how this affects her personal life and the lives of those she loves. “I literally want to hack my heart! But I can’t.” - Karen Sandler Software Freedom Conservancy — Become a supporter! Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy Is software freedom a social justice issue? - this is the talk that Karen Sandler gave at OSCON 2016 IANAL (“I am not a lawyer”) — IAAL (“I am a lawyer”) and TINLA (“This is not legal advice”) also redirect to this page on Wikipedia Rachel Nabors Rachel Nabors is a motion design for the web and UI animations expert and she was at All Things Open as a keynote and featured speker. Adam talked to Rachel about discovering repeatable business models, the state of web animation and where we’re heading, the cognitive science behind motion in user interfaces, some great places to start adding motion and animation to your interfaces, and what we might expect to see with animation and motion in Microsoft Edge. The UI Animation Newsletter: weekly web animation resources & inspiration What is Vestibular Disorder? Follow Dan C. Wilson to learn more about motion paths and web animiation If you haven’t been, check out CSS Dev Conf Learn with Rachel — You can check out her courses here. Rachel’s Keynote at All Things Open Microsoft Edge Jono Bacon Jono Bacon is a consultant and leader in community management and strategy. Jono was at All Things Open as a keynote and featured speker. Adam talked with Jono about his talk “Building a Community Exoskeleton” and how open source communities break down into read and write — those with a common interst who get together to consume something (a read community), and those who get together because they want to build something together (a write community). The Art of Community (Jono’s book) Bad Voltage (Jono’s podcast) Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Chris Lamb joined the show to talk about his project Reproducible Builds — which is funded by The Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative. We talked about the importance of having a verifiable path from source code to compiled binary, what this set of software development practices is all about, what it means to have Reproducible Builds, the challenges faced when implementing these development practices, and the inherent security you gain from them. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:GoCD – GoCD is an on-premise open source continuous delivery server created by ThoughtWorks that lets you automate and streamline your build-test-release cycle for reliable, continuous delivery of your product. Flatiron – Are you ready to take the first step to being full-time programmer? Enroll in the FREE Bootcamp Prep course from Flatiron. Free enrollment is offered to the first 500 students only. So if you’re considering enrollment, don’t waste any time. Use our special link when you enroll to get $500 off your first month’s tuition when you move on to a career or certificate course. Linode – Our cloud server of choice! Get one of the fastest, most efficient SSD cloud servers for only $10/mo. We host everything we do on Linode servers. Use the code changelog2017 to get 2 months free! Featuring:Chris Lamb – Website, GitHub, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes: This show began as an issue on GitHub The Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative Funds the Reproducible Builds Project Reproducible Builds apt-secure (Ubuntu) apt-secure (Debian) thread.com Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Mark Nadal joined the show to talk about his hacker story and his venture backed open source datastore project called GunDB — a realtime, decentralized, offline-first, graph database engine. We talked about the details behind this database, how Mark secured funding, why yet another datastore, who’s using the database, how Mark plans to sustain this project through products and services, his thoughts on the RethinkDB postmortem and more. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:GoCD – GoCD is an on-premise open source continuous delivery server created by ThoughtWorks that lets you automate and streamline your build-test-release cycle for reliable, continuous delivery of your product. Linode – Our cloud server of choice! Get one of the fastest, most efficient SSD cloud servers for only $10/mo. We host everything we do on Linode servers. Use the code changelog2017 to get 2 months free! Flatiron – Are you ready to take the first step to being full-time programmer? Enroll in the FREE Bootcamp Prep course from Flatiron. Free enrollment is offered to the first 500 students only. So if you’re considering enrollment, don’t waste any time. Use our special link when you enroll to get $500 off your first month’s tuition when you move on to a career or certificate course. Featuring:Mark Nadal – Website, GitHub, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes: Thanks to Kevin McGee for suggesting this show on GitHub The Changelog #201: Why SQLite Succeeded as a Database GunDB Homepage GunDB on GitHub GunDB on Patreon GubDB todo app tutorial Neo4j Firebase BoostVC Tim Draper on angel.co DFJ Why RethinkDB Failed Comparisons of popular DBs (thanks Anzumana!) If you’ve been enjoying our new beets from Breakmaster Cylinder, give us a shout out on Twitter, we’re @Changelog. Also Breakmaster Cylinder is looking for a video game project to score, so if you know someone or you are that someone email us - editors@changelog.com The best way to keep up with all things open source and software development is to subscribe to Changelog Weekly — subscribe today, don’t miss an issue. Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

In this anthology episode we’re featuring three awesome hacker stories from OSCON, All Things Open, and Node Interactive — Giovanni Caligaris about how he brought LibreOffice to the people of Paraguay by translating it to their native tongue. Stu Keroff about the Linux user group he started for kids called The Asian Penguins. Shiya Luo about how China does Node, translations of documentation and books from English to Chinese, and the Great Firewall of China. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:GoCD – GoCD is an on-premise open source continuous delivery server created by ThoughtWorks that lets you automate and streamline your build-test-release cycle for reliable, continuous delivery of your product. OSCON – O’Reilly’s Open Source Convention combines the experience of the open source community with ideas and strategies for using open source tools and technologies. There’s no event quite like OSCON! Make plans now to be at OSCON May 8-11, 2017, in Austin, TX. Registration is now open — save 20% on most passes by using the code CHANGELOG20 when you register. All Things Open – Join 2,000+ technologists and decision makers in Raleigh, NC — The epicenter of innovation, technology and open source, and home to one of the most sophisticated audiences on Earth. Node.js Interactive – Node.js Interactive is a conference for the Node community focused on education and community building. Use the code CNGJS16 to get 15% off registration. Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com. Featuring:Giovanni Caligaris – XStu Keroff – Website, XShiya Luo – Website, GitHub, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:First, we talk with Giovanni Caligaris about how he brought LibreOffice to the people of Paraguay by translating it to their native tongue: Guaraní. Second, we talk with Stu Keroff about the Linux user group he started for kids called The Asian Penguins in a school for Asian refugees where they learn to install, use, and configure Linux and open source software. Last, we talk with Shiya Luo about how China does Node, translations of documentation and books from English to Chinese, and the Great Firewall of China (a censorship and surveillance project of the Chinese government) which makes it very difficult for the people of China to interact with the rest of the web. LibreOffice Asian Penguins Stu Keroff’s talk at ATO 2016 - Middle Schoolers, Linux, and the Digital Divide and the talk’s details on the ATO site. Shiya Luo’s talk at Node Interactive - How China Does Node cnpm - npm client for China mirror of npm Thanks Breakmaster Cylinder! Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Pia Mancini joined the show to talk about Open Collective, her background and where she came from, her passion to upgrade democracy, funding and sustaining open source, what open collective is, how it works, how you can support your favorite open source communities, but more importably how you can take part and start your own collective. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:GoCD – GoCD is an on-premise open source continuous delivery server created by ThoughtWorks that lets you automate and streamline your build-test-release cycle for reliable, continuous delivery of your product. Toptal – Scale your team and hire the top 3% of developers and designers at Toptal. Email Adam at adam@changelog.com for a personal introduction to Toptal. Rollbar – Put errors in their place! Full-stack error tracking for all apps in any language. Featuring:Pia Mancini – Website, GitHub, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes: Pia gave a talk at TEDGlobal 2014 on How to upgrade democracy for the Internet era (over a million views 😱) DemocracyOS Democracy Earth OpenCollective.com Open Collective — Open Source Collective Webpack on Open Collective 2016 on Open Collective, and what’s in the works for 2017! Open Collective Issues Support for paid events - Issue #177 Together we crowdfunded a yearly budget of over $100,000 for Open Source Check out Gratipay and our past episode with Chad Whitacre. Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Sean Larkin joined the show to talk about Webpack, how fast open sources moves, how fast Webpack is moving, the core team, the formation, joining JS Foundation, the problem it’s solving, the bleeding edge features, sustainability, Sean and team’s efforts to build the community, their work on Open Collective, and more. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Code School – Give the gift of code! You can gift someone Code School for 1 month for $29, 6 months for $99, or a full year for $189 (46% off). Offer starts December 12, 2016 and ends January 6, 2017. Toptal – Scale your team and hire the top 3% of developers and designers at Toptal. Email Adam at adam@changelog.com for a personal introduction to Toptal. Rollbar – Put errors in their place! npm install --save rollbar for error tracking in your JavaScript apps. Featuring:Sean Larkin – GitHub, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes: Webpack homepage Webpack docs Webpack on Medium Webpack on GitHub Donate to Webpack on Open Collective “The first time you demo #webpack for a friend 😅” – @Changelog SurviveJS Read Sustaining Webpack for the Future — Part 1 and Part 2 “Tobias Koppers (sokra, the creator of webpack) has made my life as a developer so much better. So I gave him 💰💰💰💰 – sokra.github.io” — @kentcdodds Webpack team members mentioned by Sean. Tobias Koppers Juho Vepsäläinen Kees Kluskens Johannes Ewald Pavithra Kodmad Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!