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[4373.50 --> 4380.54] cool name for that way of doing things. And, uh, I think ideally the DAT project, since we are like, um, |
[4380.54 --> 4385.02] like a distributed file system, sort of, it's a pretty low level component. Um, and there's a bunch of |
[4385.02 --> 4389.42] different interests. It'd be awesome if we could get a similar thing for debt. So we'd have like a DAT |
[4389.42 --> 4393.98] consortium and we would have the DAT project itself just be the technology, but then we would have all |
[4393.98 --> 4400.30] the different, um, like organizations that have a specific cause be able to support our work. And |
[4400.30 --> 4405.50] maybe, maybe we split up into two teams. Like one of us is the science cause and then all the low |
[4405.50 --> 4410.86] level people go and work on just the infrastructure stuff. Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on here |
[4410.86 --> 4415.90] and talking to us about grant funding. Yeah. Anytime. And, uh, definitely if you're listening to this and you |
[4415.90 --> 4421.82] want to learn more, um, feel free to reach out to me and I can send you some concrete examples of |
[4421.82 --> 4432.78] grants that I've written and stuff like that. Great. Thanks Max. |
[4445.90 --> 4451.82] Thank you. |
[4451.82 --> 4453.82] Thank you. |
[4453.82 --> 4455.82] Thank you. |
[4455.82 --> 4457.82] Thank you. |
• Open source transition from older tools to GitHub and Git |
• Rod Vagg's personal experience with open source, including his low-level technical background and lack of initial involvement in online communities |
• The role of confidence and community in contributing to open source projects |
• Liberal contribution policies and their underlying mechanics |
• Transitioning into a liberal contribution mindset and the potential future of project governance |
• The speaker created the LevelUP project to explore Node add-on area (C++ add-ons) |
• He opened up the project early for feedback and collaboration |
• Max Ogden provided valuable suggestions that helped shape the project's direction |
• The project adopted an "open open source" approach, where contributors have equal ownership and a seat at the table |
• This approach evolved into a set of principles and rules for contribution |
• Some of these rules, such as no false pushes and non-master branches, are considered soft or outdated |
• The emphasis has shifted towards general openness and flexibility in contribution mechanics |
• Mechanisms for collaboration and decision-making in open source projects |
• Liberal contribution policies and how they differ from traditional approaches |
• The use of pull requests as invitations for discussion and implicit approval |
• Onboarding process for new contributors and the importance of getting through the initial gate |
• Consensus-seeking vs. consensus and the role of strong technical opinions |
• Importance of allowing people to say no and participate in discussions |
• Goal of making open source projects more like a Wiki, with contributions being valued regardless of size |
• Release process vs contribution mechanics |
• Differentiating between casual and regular contributors |
• Importance of culture in open source projects |
• Tension between established core group and newcomers |
• Arguments against liberal contribution policies |
• The role of responsibility and inclusion in fostering contributions |
• Long-term evolution and relevance of open source projects |
• Fear of openness and the masses |
• Wisdom of crowds vs chaos |
• Maintainer bottleneck: accepting contributions to alleviate administrative burden |
• Fears of scope creep and outside contributors changing project vision |
• Tension between personal interest and shared interests in open source projects |
• Benefits of liberal contribution policies, including increased ownership and maintenance help from community members |
• Fear of scope creep and the importance of maintaining project culture |
• Liberal contribution model's suitability for evolutionary changes rather than revolutionary ones |
• BDFL (Benevolent Dictator For Life) model's drawbacks, including detachment from users and potential for project stagnation |
• The value of open contribution and user engagement in a project's development |
• Different phases of project development, with varying approaches to openness and contribution |
• Differentiating between BDFL (Benevolent Dictator For Life) model and leadership by respect |
• Importance of leadership in open-source projects, especially early on |
• Emergence of leaders through contributions and expertise, rather than entitlement or authority |
• Distinction between entitlement and respect in open-source governance |
• Meritocracy as a system that can lead to complacency and stagnation if not continually evaluated and respected |
• Need for effective onboarding and off-boarding processes in open-source projects |
• Difficulty in offboarding contributors from projects they've internalized |
• Challenges of welcoming diverse contributions in discussion-heavy cultures |
• Time commitment aspect: valuing input from those who can assert themselves continually vs. casual or infrequent contributors |
• Recognizing and incorporating valuable input from outsiders who don't have the time to engage fully |
**Nadia Eghbal:** Welcome to Request for Commits, a podcast that explores different perspectives in open source sustainability. On this show, we talk to people about the human side of code; we cover everything from community and governance to businesses and licensing. If you've ever wondered how open source projects ge... |
**Mikeal Rogers:** And I'm Mikeal Rogers. |
**Nadia Eghbal:** On today's show Mikeal and I talk with Rod Vagg, Chief Node Officer at NodeSource. Rod has worked across the Node.js ecosystem, including in the database community and creating several key NodeSchool workshops. He serves as a Technical Steering Committee Chair for Node.js as well as on the Node.js Fou... |
**Mikeal Rogers:** Our focus on today's episode with Rod was around liberal contribution policies. We talked about Rod's early experiments with liberalized common access, the underlying mechanics of liberal contribution management and how to level-up casual contributors. |
**Nadia Eghbal:** We also talked about how projects transition into a liberal contribution mindset and whether there is a place for BDFLs in the future of project governance. |
So Rod, you once said that the history of open source is divided into eras based on the different tools you've used, which I think is a great way to start this episode. All three of us have written and spoken about how there's this new era of open source where there are a lot more casual contributions, kind of like thi... |
**Rod Vagg:** I guess I observed that simply by my involvement, because while I’ve been doing the software thing for a while now, my involvement hasn’t really been significant until this new era of GitHub and Git. |
The friction involved in some of the earlier eras really prevented me from embracing it properly. I can't tell you when it was that I really started to jump in headfirst into open source or why that change happened, but I think it was much more when open source became easier to be involved in the community. |
I don't live in a large city, I don’t have a community of nerds around me that I can just go out and hang out with, I don't have local Meetups, so for me the online community is my nerd community, it's where my people are. For me, when that became easy, that's when I really threw myself out there into open source. So w... |
**Nadia Eghbal:** Did you ever get to a point where you realized that was different from maybe open source projects in the past, or that not all projects were like the ones you were involved in? |
**Rod Vagg:** No. It’s not until really recently when I’ve started to speak about these things and actually think more about open source governance, that I’ve really had to think about the difference there. |
\[03:46\] I wasn’t early on with the GitHub thing; I don’t know if the IDEs are easy to find on Google, I think they are through the API, but my IDE is not particularly low. I didn't jump in early and see this thing was this radical new thing that we're getting involved in. I didn’t recognize that at the time, and so I... |
**Mikeal Rogers:** I find this really interesting, because usually this just complete lack of wanting to jump through hoops to contribute is associated with people that have not as low level of a technical background. But you actually have a very low-level background and have written some very low-level stuff in the No... |
**Rod Vagg:** I think there's a soft confidence thing there. So even though you might identify me as somebody that's comfortable with low-level things, my own personal soft confidence with my technical abilities took a long time to grow. Part of that was because I wasn’t involved as heavily in communities online and di... |
**Mikeal Rogers:** Yeah, I think that the biggest confidence boost isn't the first contribution or the first bug report or even the first push. It's the first time you help somebody else get their commit in or you get to give somebody else advice and improve their work. It’s this huge confidence boost to go, "I’m at a ... |
**Rod Vagg:** Yeah and that’s true, that’s very true. Along with that, the confidence boost can come with just releasing your own code. Sometimes that can be scary to people who are doing open source for the first time and aren’t already involved in interesting projects. Releasing your own code and saying, "Here I am, ... |
\[07:53\] Those of us that have been involved in open source now for a while - I guess I’m addressing this to people who are rough around the edges now and are considering getting involved – we’re used to seeing this spectrum of quality from pretty raw to very mature and high level... I guess you just accept that there... |
It's really rare that somebody’s project gets pointed out and laughed at; it might happen occasionally on Hacker News, but most of the time people release their stuff and it collects a community of some kind, whether that be people of similar interest and skill level, or other people trying to just get involved and mak... |
**Nadia Eghbal:** Can you tell us a little bit about getting involved with LevelDB and then how some of these learning got fed into your experiments with liberal contribution Policies there? |
**Rod Vagg:** Okay, LevelDB - this was one of my first explicit experiments with much more liberal contribution agreements or governance. So to be honest, the LevelDB stuff, I started getting involved there simply because I was looking for a new project to do that would let me do some interesting work on the Node add-o... |
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