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.
Latest episodes
-
43 min
Finale, thank you!
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 sustainabil…
-
1 h 10
Design, software, and open source
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…
-
1 h 02
Maintaining a popular project and sponsored time
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…
-
1 h 12
Experiments and the Economics of Open Source
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. Lea…
-
1 h 19
Open Source History, Foundations, Sustainability
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, companie…
-
59 min
Maintaining a Popular Project and Managing Burnout
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 incl…
-
1 h 05
Documentation and Quitting Open Source
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 r…
-
1 h 03
Open source and supercomputers (Spack)
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…
-
1 h 01
Crowdfunding Open Source (Vue.js)
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…
-
48 min
BONUS – Behind the Scenes of Season 1 and 2
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…
-
1 h 14
Funding the Web
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…
-
1 h 07
Finding New Contributors
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 contri…
-
1 h 08
Open source and licensing
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 dev…
-
1 h 01
Open Source and Business
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 fu…
-
1 h 18
Liberal Contribution and Governance Models
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 ma…
-
1 h 14
Grant Funding: What Happens When You Pay for Open Source Work?
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…
-
1 h 06
Documentation and the Value of Non-Code Contributions
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 th…
-
59 min
Building Communities
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 commun…
-
1 h 13
Measuring Success in Open Source
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 talke…
-
1 h 04
Open Source, Then and Now (Part 2)
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…