Request For Commits
Technology Podcasts
Request For Commits explored different perspectives in open source sustainability (retired). Hosts Nadia Eghbal and Mikeal Rogers dive deep into the trials and tribulations of being an open source maintainer, building communities, and navigating the business side of software. Common topics include software licensing, copyright, documentation, governance models, funding platforms such as Open Collective, Kickstarter, etc., measuring success, and more.
Location:
United States
Description:
Request For Commits explored different perspectives in open source sustainability (retired). Hosts Nadia Eghbal and Mikeal Rogers dive deep into the trials and tribulations of being an open source maintainer, building communities, and navigating the business side of software. Common topics include software licensing, copyright, documentation, governance models, funding platforms such as Open Collective, Kickstarter, etc., measuring success, and more.
Twitter:
@Changelog
Language:
English
Contact:
1-888-974-2454
Website:
https://changelog.com/rfc
Email:
editors@changeog.com
Episodes
Finale, thank you!
3/21/2018
In this finale episode of Request For Commits – we regroup to discuss how we got here, lessons learned, community impact, and where the conversations around open source sustainability are taking place now and in the future. This might be the end of this podcast, but the conversation will continue on The Changelog. You should subscribe if you’re not already.
Duration:00:42:28
Design, software, and open source
1/19/2018
Lauren McCarthy joined Nadia and Mikeal to discuss her work on p5.js, contributions and culture, her before and after take on open source, her path to becoming a maintainer, how p5.js gets new contributors, how they keep them around, and why design isn’t better represented in open source.
Duration:01:10:11
Maintaining a popular project and sponsored time
1/19/2018
Henry Zhu joined Nadia and Mikeal to discuss his work on Babel, how he became and accidental maintainer, why he thinks maintainers aren’t special, paid open source work, the Babel brand, and building community.
Duration:01:02:07
Experiments and the Economics of Open Source
1/19/2018
Daniel Bachhuber joined Nadia and Mikeal to discuss his work on wp-cli, the economics, origins, staying productive as a maintainer, fund raising, and the state of wp-cli today.
Duration:01:12:35
Open Source History, Foundations, Sustainability
11/22/2017
Danese Cooper joined Nadia and Mikeal to discuss the history of open source, how the term became a thing via Tim O’Reilly, feeling empowered as an open source contributor, companies’ relationship to open source, foundations and their role (or not) in governance and sustainability.
Duration:01:19:26
Maintaining a Popular Project and Managing Burnout
11/1/2017
Christopher Hiller joined Nadia and Mikeal to discuss the ups and downs of maintaining Mocha - a JavaScript test framework that runs on Node.js and in the browser. Discussions included maintaining a popular project, getting funding, the challenges of having money, raising the profile of a project, focusing on the needs of a community, and managing burnout.
Duration:00:58:39
Documentation and Quitting Open Source
10/20/2017
Ryan Bigg joined the show to talk about his open source work on the documentation of Ruby on Rails, fund raising, crowd sourcing, departure, handing off, not quitting, making the right decision, getting paid, sustaining, and more.
Duration:01:05:11
Open source and supercomputers (Spack)
7/12/2017
Todd Gamblin – a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Lab – tells Nadia and Mikeal all about bringing open source to his peers in the national labs. They discuss what it’s like to open source a project inside the government, how Todd found contributors for Spack, why he got involved with NumFOCUS, and much more.
Duration:01:03:32
Crowdfunding Open Source (Vue.js)
6/15/2017
Evan You joined the show to talk about his work on Vue.js. We learn how Evan found users and got Vue.js off the ground, the details behind their crowdfunding on Patreon, whether or not crowdfunding is a viable method of sustaining open source, finding balance in life and work, and plans for funding beyond the Patreon campaign.
Duration:01:01:19
BONUS – Behind the Scenes of Season 1 and 2
12/22/2016
In this special episode of Request For Commits we close out the first season with a look behind the scenes of the show. We talked about how the show was formed, who’s involved and why, how we approach producing this show, our theme music, as well as our plans and timing for season 2.
Duration:00:48:18
Funding the Web
11/22/2016
Brendan Eich, founder of Brave and creator of JavaScript, joined the show to talk about the history of the web, how it has been funded, and the backstory on the early browser wars and emerging monetization models. We also talked about why big problems are hard to solve for the Internet and the tradeoffs between centralization and distribution.
Duration:01:14:15
Finding New Contributors
11/15/2016
Charlotte Spencer joined the show to talk about making open source more approachable, Your First PR, helping people make their first open source contribution, attracting new contributors, and what projects can do to bring in, retain, and communicate with new people.
Duration:01:07:14
Open source and licensing
11/4/2016
Heather Meeker joined the show to talk about open source licensing, why open source licenses are historically significant, how much developers really need to know, and how much developers think they know. We also talk about mixing commercial and open source licenses, and how lawyers keep up with an ever-changing landscape.
Duration:01:08:03
Open Source and Business
10/18/2016
David Cramer (CEO of Sentry) and Isaac Schlueter (CEO of npm) joined the show to talk about building businesses in open source, why they decided to turn their side projects into full-time work, how they experimented with finding steady sources of revenue, raising venture capital, working with investors and with community, and different company approaches to developing open source projects.
Duration:01:01:01
Liberal Contribution and Governance Models
9/8/2016
On today’s show Nadia and Mikeal talk with Rod Vagg, Chief Node Officer at NodeSource, about liberal contribution agreements and the underlying mechanics of liberal contribution management, how to level up casual contributors, how projects transition into a liberal contribution mindset and whether there is a place for BDFLs in the future of project governance.
Duration:01:18:06
Grant Funding: What Happens When You Pay for Open Source Work?
9/1/2016
On today’s show Nadia and Mikeal talk with Max Ogden, creator of Dat, an open source, decentralized tool for distributing data sets. Max has also done a lot of work in the Node.js ecosystem, including helping start NodeSchool and publishing hundreds of modules to npm. He was also one of the first Code for America fellows.
Duration:01:14:04
Documentation and the Value of Non-Code Contributions
8/25/2016
On today’s show Nadia and Mikeal are joined by Eric Holscher to discuss non-code contributions, how they are regarded in open source culture, their value, and how to incentivize this type of work. They also talked about how Read the Docs grew a documentation community, contribution guides, and why this work matters.
Duration:01:06:40
Building Communities
8/18/2016
On today’s show Nadia and Mikeal are joined by Jan Lehnardt to discuss the value of building communities to reduce burden on maintainers and create sustainable projects, how communities help grow a project, and contributor models.
Duration:00:59:02
Measuring Success in Open Source
8/11/2016
On today’s show Nadia and Mikeal are joined by Andrew Nesbitt and Arfon Smith to talk about open source metrics, and how to interpret data around dependencies and usage. They talked about what we currently can, and can not measure in today’s open source ecosystem. They also talked about individual project metrics, how we can measure success, what maintainers should be paying attention to, and whether or not GitHub stars really matter.
Duration:01:13:13
Open Source, Then and Now (Part 2)
8/4/2016
Nadia Eghbal and Mikeal Rogers kick off Season 1 of Request For Commits with a two part conversation with Karl Fogel — a software developer who has been active in open source since its inception.
Duration:01:04:29