Request For Commits

Changelog Media

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.

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21 episodes
Updated Mar 21, 2018

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Mar 21, 2018 · 42 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 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. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: 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. Linode – Our cloud server of choice. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2018. Start your server - head to linode.com/changelog Rollbar – Our error monitoring partner. Rollbar provides real-time error monitoring, alerting, and analytics to help us resolve production errors in minutes. To start deploying with confidence - head to rollbar.com/changelog Featuring: Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X Show Notes: Listen and subscribe to The Changelog The Changelog #193: Funding and Sustaining Open Source with Nadia Eghbal The Changelog #252 GitHub’s Open Source Survey (2017) with Frannie Zlotnick & Nadia Eghbal Subscribe to Nadia’s infrequent newsletter How I Stumbled Upon The Internet’s Biggest Blind Spot Open source was worth at least $143M of Instagram’s $1B acquisition Open source infrastructure Q&A What if Facebook were a nonprofit? Sustain - a one day conversation for open source software sustainers Maintainerati Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Jan 19, 2018 · 1 hr 10 min
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.js gets new contributors, how they keep them around, and why design isn’t better represented in open source. Join the discussion Changelog++ 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! 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. Featuring: Lauren McCarthy – Website, GitHub, X Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Show Notes: p5.js Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Jan 19, 2018 · 1 hr 2 min
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 brand, and building community. Join the discussion Changelog++ 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! 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. Featuring: Henry Zhu – Website, GitHub, X Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Show Notes: babel js editor Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Jan 19, 2018 · 1 hr 12 min
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. Join the discussion Changelog++ 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! 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. Featuring: Daniel Bachhuber – Website, GitHub Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Show Notes: WP-CLI: Command line interface for WordPress Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Nov 22, 2017 · 1 hr 19 min
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, companies’ relationship to open source, foundations and their role (or not) in governance and sustainability. Join the discussion Changelog++ 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 to get hired. Our listeners get a double hiring bonus of $600. Bugsnag – Mission control for software quality! Monitor website or mobile app errors that impact your customers. Our listeners can try all the features free for 60 days ($118 value). Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Featuring: Danese Cooper – Website, GitHub, X Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Show Notes: Tim O’Reilly: Official Bio Free Software Foundation - working together for free software OSCON Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Nov 1, 2017 · 58 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 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. Join the discussion Changelog++ 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 to get hired. Our listeners get a double hiring bonus of $600. Bugsnag – Mission control for software quality! Monitor website or mobile app errors that impact your customers. Our listeners can try all the features free for 60 days ($118 value). Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Featuring: Christopher Hiller – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Show Notes: Mocha - the fun, simple, flexible JavaScript test framework mochajs/mocha on GitHub Mocha on GitHub Mocha on Open Collective Mocha on npm Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Oct 20, 2017 · 1 hr 5 min
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 right decision, getting paid, sustaining, and more. Join the discussion Changelog++ 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 to get hired. Our listeners get a double hiring bonus of $600. Bugsnag – Mission control for software quality! Monitor website or mobile app errors that impact your customers. Our listeners can try all the features free for 60 days ($118 value). Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Featuring: Ryan Bigg – Website, GitHub, X Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Show Notes: The Asset Pipeline Guide Ryan Bigg on _theInitialCommit Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Jul 12, 2017 · 1 hr 3 min
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 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. Join the discussion Changelog++ 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 to get hired. Our listeners get a double hiring bonus of $600. Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Featuring: Todd Gamblin – GitHub, X Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Show Notes: LLNL’s Website LLNL on GitHub Spack Exascale NumFOCUS Livermore Computing DOE National Laboratories ASC program LDRD SBIR Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Jun 15, 2017 · 1 hr 1 min
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 not crowdfunding is a viable method of sustaining open source, finding balance in life and work, and plans for funding beyond the Patreon campaign. Join the discussion Changelog++ 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 to get hired. Our listeners get a double hiring bonus of $600. Fastly – Our bandwidth partner! Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Featuring: Evan You – Website, GitHub, X Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Show Notes: Season 2 has begun! Evan You is the creator of Vue, a popular progressive JavaScript framework. He works on Vue full time with the funding from its Patreon campaign. He previously worked at Google and Meteor. Vue.js - The progressive JavaScript framework VueConf - The first official Vue.js conference in the world! Vue.js on Patreon Babel - Use next generation JavaScript, today. Henry Zhu - Stay tuned to hear from Henry later on in season 2 Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Dec 22, 2016 · 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 why, how we approach producing this show, our theme music, as well as our plans and timing for season 2. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Featuring: Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X Show Notes: We will begin production of season 2 in Q1 of 2017 and release in Q2. Subscribe to the master feed to get all Changelog podcasts and Changelog Weekly so you don’t skip a beat. The theme music for RFC was created by Breakmaster Cylinder — Listen to it on Bandcamp The Changelog #193: Funding and Sustaining Open Source with Nadia Eghbal If you haven’t yet, read Karl Fogel’s book — Producing Open Source Software Open Source, Then and Now with Karl Fogel (author of Producing Open Source Software) — Part 1 and Part 2 Grant Funding: What Happens When You Pay for Open Source Work? with Max Ogden, creator of Dat Funding the Web with Brendan Eich Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Nov 22, 2016 · 1 hr 14 min
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 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. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: 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. Minio – Minio is an Amazon S3 compatible object storage server built for cloud application developers and devops. It’s also open source! Featuring: Brendan Eich – Website, GitHub, X Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Show Notes: Check out exploit kits like Angler Exploit Kit Brave Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Nov 15, 2016 · 1 hr 7 min
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 contributors, and what projects can do to bring in, retain, and communicate with new people. Join the discussion Changelog++ 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 $10/mo. We host everything we do on Linode servers. Use the code rfc20 to get 2 months free! 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. Featuring: Charlotte Spencer – Website, GitHub, X Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Show Notes: Charlotte Spencer is a software developer who’s done a lot of notable work around making open source more approachable and is a core member of the Hoodie project. First Pull Request — What was the first pull request you sent on GitHub? Your First PR Making Your First Pull Request Open Open Source Hoodie Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Nov 4, 2016 · 1 hr 8 min
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 developers think they know. We also talk about mixing commercial and open source licenses, and how lawyers keep up with an ever-changing landscape. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: 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. 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 rfc20 to get 2 months free! Featuring: Heather Meeker – Website, X Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Show Notes: Heather has spent over twenty years on legal matters related to open source, and has published several books on open source software licensing. Open Source for Business: A Practical Guide to Open Source Software Licensing Technology Licensing: A Practitioner’s Guide Checkout these useful links on Heather’s site about licenses and the legal side of open source O’Melveny & Myers Heather Meekers on O’Melveny & Myers Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Oct 18, 2016 · 1 hr 1 min
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 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. Join the discussion Changelog++ 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 $10/mo. We host everything we do on Linode servers. Use the code rfc20 to get 2 months free! 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. Featuring: David Cramer – Website, GitHub, X Isaac Schlueter – Website, GitHub, X Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Show Notes: Sentry is a developer tool for detecting application errors, and npm is the default package manager for Node.js. Both started as open source projects, which David and Isaac have built into businesses. Sentry npm Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Sep 8, 2016 · 1 hr 18 min
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 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. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: 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. Linode – Our cloud server of choice! We host everything we do on Linode servers. Use the code rfc20 to get 2 months free! Featuring: Rod Vagg – Website, GitHub, X Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Show Notes: Nodesource Was This Trip Really Necessary? Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Sep 1, 2016 · 1 hr 14 min
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 ecosystem, including helping start NodeSchool and publishing hundreds of modules to npm. He was also one of the first Code for America fellows. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: 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. Linode – Our cloud server of choice! We host everything we do on Linode servers. Use the code rfc20 to get 2 months free! Featuring: Max Ogden – Website, GitHub, X Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Show Notes: We talked about how he figured out grants were right for developing Dat, and how he managed to find his first funders. We also got into the mechanics of grant funding. Max shared what it’s like to work with grant funders, and how to build those early relationships if you’re looking for grants yourself. dat Knight Prototype Fund - Knight Foundation Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Substance Consortium Submission to openscienceprize.org MozFest 2016 NodeSchool U.S. Open Data The difference between 18F and USDS Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Aug 25, 2016 · 1 hr 6 min
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 this type of work. They also talked about how Read the Docs grew a documentation community, contribution guides, and why this work matters. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: Linode – Our cloud server of choice! This is what we built our new CMS on. Use the code rfc20 to get 2 months free! Featuring: Eric Holscher – Website, GitHub, X Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Show Notes: Read the Docs Write the Docs Writing Great Documenation Lawrence Journal-World Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Aug 18, 2016 · 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 communities help grow a project, and contributor models. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: 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. Featuring: Jan Lehnardt – Website, GitHub, X Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Show Notes: Hoodie Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Aug 11, 2016 · 1 hr 13 min
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 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. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: Linode – Our cloud server of choice! This is what we built our new CMS on. Use the code rfc20 to get 2 months free! Rollbar – Put errors in their place! Full-stack error tracking for all apps in any language. Get the Bootstrap plan free for 90 days. That’s nearly 300,000 errors tracked totally free. Members can get an extra $200 in credit. Featuring: Andrew Nesbitt – Website, GitHub, X Arfon Smith – Website, GitHub, X Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Show Notes: Andrew Nesbitt is the creator of Libraries.io, and Arfon Smith heads up open source data at GitHub. Andrew’s project, Libraries.io, helps people discover and track open source libraries, which was informed by his work on GitHub Explore. Arfon works to make GitHub data more accessible to the public. Previously, he worked on science initiatives at GitHub and elsewhere, including a popular citizen science platform called Zooniverse. GitHub Stars Libraries.io Zooniverse Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Aug 4, 2016 · 1 hr 4 min
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 its inception. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: Linode – Our cloud server of choice! This is what we built our new CMS on. Use the code rfc20 to get 2 months free! Rollbar – Put errors in their place! Full-stack error tracking for all apps in any language. Get the Bootstrap plan free for 90 days. That’s nearly 300,000 errors tracked totally free. Members can get an extra $200 in credit. Featuring: Karl Fogel – Website, GitHub, X Nadia Eghbal – GitHub, X Mikeal Rogers – GitHub, X Show Notes: Karl served on the board of the Open Source Initiative, which coined the term “open source”, and helped write Subversion, a popular version control system that predates Git. Karl also wrote a popular book on managing open source projects called Producing Open Source Software. He’s currently a partner at Open Tech Strategies, a firm that helps major organizations use open source to achieve their goals. Read Karl Fogel’s book — Producing Open Source Software Make sure you start with part 1 with Karl Fogel where we kick off this conversation. Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!