Sustain

SustainOSS•podcast.sustainoss.org

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. Newsletter

Last refreshed: March 2nd, 2026 at 9:27 PM ⓘ

Follow this podcast in the Metacast mobile app to refresh it and see new episodes.

Follow on

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

RSS

Podcasts are better in Metacast mobile app

Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more

Episodes

Episode 15: Open Source Leadership With Abigail Cabunoc Mayes

This episode of Sustain our Software features Abigail Cabunoc Mayes. Abigail has a background in bioinformatics and computer science and has an interest in using computers to solve problems in biology. She works for the Mozilla Foundation where she is a practice lead working Open. She has been named in “100 Awesome Women in Open source” and mentioned in Github’s State of the Octoverse 2016. Abigail begins by sharing some of how she got started and what interests her in technology. The discussion...

Oct 22, 2019•47 min

Episode 14: Funding Open Source With Gitcoin

The special guest for this episode of Sustain our Software is Kevin Owocki. Kevin is the founder of Gitcoin, a service that links up freelance developers with people who need them and pays these developers in crypto currency. Gitcoin is a blockchain forward brand that is built on open source software and currently uses Ethereum as its crypto currency of choice rather than creating their own. They like Ethereum because of its relevance as the 2nd most popular cryptocurrency at the time of this ep...

Oct 15, 2019•1 hr 5 min

Episode 13: Elevating Musicians Through Open Source with Robert Kaye

Robert Kaye is the executive director of the MetaBrainz Foundation, the legal umbrella for MusicBrainz. He got started in the late 80’s and early 90’s hacking on some MP3 projects when most of the world hadn’t heard of MP3. The metadata on MP3s was terrible, so he started creating the database known as MusicBrainz. Robert talks about his business model for MusicBrainz. As time has progressed, more and more people have access to a laptop and cheap recording equipment. This constant churn of data ...

Oct 08, 2019•52 min

Episode 12: Funding of open source communities with Benjamin Nickolls

Episode Summary In this episode of the Sustain Our Software podcast, Benjamin Nickolls talks with the panelists about the potential for an open source community that is self-sustaining. Benjamin helped create Octobox, a notification system for GitHub, which helps filter messages that one receives through GitHub. Benjamin and his partner created Octobox hoping it would be a model of a sustainable open source project, and after 9 months of working on it full time they have been able to step away f...

Oct 01, 2019•49 min

Episode 11: Diversity in Open Source with Laura Gaetano

In this week’s episode of Sustain Our Software the panel interviews Laura Gaetano. Laura is a developer and designer, whose main job was running was running Rails Girls Summer of Code. The panel considers how great Rails Girls is and all that they are doing. The panel also expresses their love for the Rails framework. Laura explains the difference between Rails Girls and Rails Girls Summer of Code. The panel asks about the challenges that the Rails Girls Summer of code experience. Laura tells th...

Sep 24, 2019•50 min

Episode 10: Sustaining Unified with Titus Wormer

Episode Summary In this week's episode of Sustain Our software Titus Wormer joins the panel to discuss his experience maintaining Unified.js. Titus is built Unified and is working fulltime maintain Unified. He has a bachelor's in digital design and did his thesis on fixing natural language in wed design using syntax trees. The panel takes a moment to talk about abstract syntax trees. Titus explains how abstract syntax trees help computers understand what is going on in human languages, helping p...

Sep 15, 2019•48 min

Episode 9: The Trade-Offs of Using Open Source with Lou Huang

Episode Summary The panel interviews Lou Huang, who has a background in architecture and urban planning. Lou built an opensource app called Streetmix and uses it to help the panel understand opensource projects from a user's perspective. Lou starts by sharing his background, how he got into opensource and his work making Streetmix sustainable. Lou then explains that most Streetmix users are urban planners and don’t care if it is opensource or not. The panel weighs the trades offs of choosing an ...

Sep 14, 2019•55 min

Episode 8: Writing Good Documentation with Chris Ward

Sponsors Gitlab Commit Adventures in DevOps Podcast The DevEd Podcast Cachefly Panel Richard Littauer Joined By Special Guest: Chris Ward Episode Summary This week, Sustain Our Software welcomes Chris Ward, Technical Writer at Ethereum from Berlin, Germany. Chris shares his story of how he became a technical writer as well tips and resources for good documentation writing. After many years working as a developer, Chris realized he enjoyed helping others understand technical subjects. Chris defin...

Sep 13, 2019•53 min

Episode 7: Sustaining Open Source Projects in the International Development and Humanitarian Sector with Heath Arensen

Sponsors Gitlab Commit Adventures in DevOps Cachefly Panel Eric Berry Joined By Special Guest: Heath Arensen Episode Summary Heath Arensen is the Director of Business Planning and Sustainability at the Digital Impact Alliance's Open Source Center. He also supports Open Source projects with consulting and advising in Business Models for sustainability. The discussion opens with a discussion about a quote Heath has in his Twitter account “Belief that the world's best software can be built in the m...

Aug 12, 2019•48 min

Episode 6: Open Source Software Maintenance Lessons Learned with Bastien Guerry

Sponsors React Native Radio iPhreaks Show Ruby Rogues Cachefly Panel Eric Berry Richard Littauer Joined By Special Guest: Bastien Guerry Episode Summary Bastien Guerry is employed by the French Administration in a program named Entrepreneurs d'intérêt général inspired by Presidential Innovation Fellows . He is also the Release Manager of Org Mode , an information management and outlining tool for Emacs. Bastien wrote his first software for his girlfriend to help her with her thesis. He then went...

Aug 12, 2019•50 min

Episode 5: Trademark Versus Copyright to Sustain OSS with Mehdi Medjaoui

Sponsors Cachefly Panel Richard Littauer Jon Schlinkert Eric Berry Joined By Special Guest: Mehdi Medjaoui Episode Summary Mehdi Medjaoui is the Steering Committee Member of The Maintainers and the founder of OAuth.io and APIdays Conferences . He is also the EU commission 2020 expert on open data and open APIs. He has co-authored O’Reilly Book “Continuous API management” and created the Maintainers Contract and ALIAS protocol. Mehdi and the panel shine a light on the lack of compensation for dev...

Aug 10, 2019•58 min

Episode 4: Open Source Community Activities Around the World with Samson Goddy and Vipul Gupta

Sponsors Cachefly Panel Pia Mancini Richard Littauer Joined By Special Guest: Samson Goddy and Vipul Gupta Episode Summary Samson Goddy and Vipul Gupta join the panelists Pia Mancini and Richard Littauer to talk about open source activities in Nigeria and India. Samson is the Member of the Oversight Board at Sugar Labs and co-founder of Open Source Community Africa and Vipul is a Global Outreach Team Lead at Sugar Labs. Sugar Labs is an activity-focused open-source software learning platform for...

Aug 09, 2019•54 min

Episode 3: Greg Bloom discusses the Principles of Commons Governance

Sponsors Cachefly Panel Pia Mancini Eric Berry Joined By Special Guest: Greg Bloom Episode Summary Greg Bloom, the Chief Organizing Officer of Open Referral Initiative , a community of practice that develops data standards and open source tools that make it easier to share, find and use information about health, human, and social services.Greg talks about the evolution of Open Referral Initiative and defines what "commons" is. He mentions how some of the dilemmas developers are facing in open so...

Aug 08, 2019•1 hr 8 min

Episode 2: Is GitHub Sponsors Good for OSS?

Sponsors: CacheFly Panel Richard Littauer Jon Schlinkert Eric Berry Episode Summary The panel discusses the announcement of the beta GitHub Sponsors , a new way to financially support the developers who build the open source software. They list the features they like that GitHub Sponsors offers but think the beta roll-out could have been handled differently. A lot of critical software is dependent on open source software and many of these open source software libraries are maintained by unsuppor...

Aug 07, 2019•47 min

Episode 1: Funding Open-Source Projects

Subscribe Sponsors Cachefly Panel Pia Mancini Richard Littauer Eric Berry Jon Schlinkert Episode Summary This new addition to the Devchat.tv podcast family is about software sustainability, open source projects funding and software maintenance. The panelists introduce themselves and their roles and backgrounds in software sustainability. The panelists also mention that 57% of all software built is open-source and the economic value of open source is over 360 billion dollars so it is crucial to k...

Aug 06, 2019•49 min

← Prev

For the best experience, listen in Metacast app for iOS or Android