text stringlengths 0 1.15k |
|---|
**Nadia Eghbal:** That's awesome. |
**Mikeal Rogers:** Awesome. |
**Nadia Eghbal:** You also joined the JavaScript Foundation recently, right? Did you pursue any other form of project-focused funding or support, any of those types of grants? |
**Christopher Hiller:** Yeah, so Mozilla has an open source funding program called MOSS. What the program does is it awards grants to various open source projects. I thought "Well, maybe Mocha would be a good candidate for that." The reason I thought that was because Mozilla publishes a list of open source projects the... |
So part of that grant process is that you need an internal Mozilla employee to sponsor or vouch for the open source project, and I found somebody to do that, but I had also talked with a few people and I had listened to this podcast, the Request For Commits podcast, and sometime back there was an interview with Max Ogd... |
**Nadia Eghbal:** Yes! |
**Christopher Hiller:** And the whole episode was about grants and funding, and how to get a grant for your open source project. So I listened to that and I was kind of like "Eh, I don't think so..." \[laughter\] If you're doing that, if that's your thing and you have time to dedicate to that - sure. It sounds like the... |
\[39:55\] Another issue with Mozilla in particular was if they are to award a grant, they are -- I don't know if the text says they will not or that they're unlikely to, but it's something like they are unlikely to award a grant to an individual. So if I was to get a grant from MOSS, I would need some other entity, a l... |
So I went to the JS Foundation and asked "What if you went ahead and wear my legal entity if I was to apply for this MOSS grant?" The reaction was mixed again, because I don't think they've had great success with paying individual or disbursing funds to individuals for code, so I wasn't sure what the story was there, b... |
At that point I was like "I don't know... I don't have time to write up this grant proposal. I'm not even gonna embark on this if I'm not pretty sure I'm gonna get it", so I didn't. That's kind of the story of the MOSS grant. |
**Nadia Eghbal:** I'm glad we played some small part in that decision. \[laughter\] I mean, one way to read it is it's a not ideal outcome to not have applied for a grant, but I think... I mean, this is my experience with adventure as well of people -- it's better than the belief that some people have of "This is just ... |
**Christopher Hiller:** Well, it's not even about me, it's just like I wouldn't have known that. I wouldn't have know that "Oh, it's not just free money; I can't just apply and wait for a track", you know? I wouldn't have known the difficulty because I don't know anything about grants - I've never applied for a grant -... |
Adam Stacoviak: In this last segment we ask questions like can a project do all it needs to do and be done? Can a project be done? When can a maintainer walk away and say "That's as good as it gets." Specifically, Nadia asks Christopher when does he feel like he can step away from Mocha and what keeps him from doing so... |
**Break:** \[43:29\] |
**Nadia Eghbal:** We've talked to other folks before who have talked about whether a project can just kind of be done at some point, and what that would mean to be a maintainer on a project that could just sort of be done. And you've talked a little bit about this, of trying to figure out the scope of Mocha moving forw... |
**Christopher Hiller:** Yeah, I think we can get there. It could be done now if we wanted it to be done. We could decide not to add any new features. There are certain things that we do have to keep adding, for example as the Node project adds new flags to its coming online client. Mocha kind of supports those and pass... |
Mocha simply is just not there, it's not where at least personally I am kind of happy with it. I don't really want it to be done, because it's -- I guess it's kind of personal; I feel like we could make not just myself happy by adding some things, or refactoring some things, but quite a lot of people, too. There's stil... |
So there's plenty of things that need to be fixed there. I don't really want Mocha to be done, but it works, and it works really well for a lot of people, and from what I can tell, it's pretty solid. Certainly, there's some issues that people come across from time to time. There are quite a few issues that have never b... |
**Mikeal Rogers:** \[49:54\] I'm curious what you think the scope of Mocha is... Because I can see this kind of alternate world where the scope has been completed. You define the test format. A lot of these other competitors that we were talking about earlier actually use your test formats, and you can use the same tes... |
It sounds like what you really wanna see from the project, what your scope is is a much more useful, full-on test runner... So I'm just curious what you feel the full-on scope of Mocha is. |
**Christopher Hiller:** I don't think it's much different from what it had always been declared to be, which... Mocha does two things - it provides a convention for writing tests; actually, it provides several different ones, so you can choose. But it provides this convention for writing tests, and then it provides a w... |
It doesn't have assertions in it, so you need to pull in another library. Mocha won't do much just by itself. I don't think the scope is much more than that. I think what -- I'm talking about in the differences, it's that it does those things that it does, but it does them better, and it does them in a way that allows ... |
**Nadia Eghbal:** So what about Mocha being done, but then there's you and then there's the projects. At what point do you feel like you could step away from Mocha? And if you haven't done it yet, then what keeps you from doing so? |
**Christopher Hiller:** Well, late last year I started feeling a bit burnt out on the project after feeling very frustrated about what I saw as kind of a failure to get the attention that I wanted for the project, and get the contributions and maintainers that the project needed... So I decided to take a break from it ... |
I did that, and it was okay. There are a couple other maintainers right now who have picked up their contributions. I had kind of raised an alarm on Twitter, I had written a message in our project's readme that we need help. About that time, when I did those things, is when I decided to just kind of take a break... So ... |
There's a few options here. One, if I feel that I've done what I can and there's no way this project is gonna get to where I want it to go, I'm just gonna quit. That's just life. It's kind of out of my hands. Obviously, I can't do it by myself; I need help from other people to get it sustainable, and I need help from o... |
So those are kind of the two ways in which I might feel like my time with Mocha is done. If I can kind of limit my involvement and make sure I don't burn out and not let myself get too frustrated, then I can keep with the project indefinitely. We can make baby steps to where it needs to be, and that's kind of where it'... |
I started contributing again just a couple weeks ago. It felt good, and I'm just gonna keep at it. I was really happy to see that some people answered the call; this project needs a lot of help. And yeah, we'll just play it by ear. |
So that's how I might end up leaving the project. I don't wanna quit Mocha if I don't have to. Or if I stop using Mocha for whatever reason, I might. But I'd like to stay with it. |
**Mikeal Rogers:** I think that's a really good note to take us out on. Thanks for coming on, this has been a really great conversation, actually. |
**Nadia Eghbal:** Yeah, thanks Chris. |
**Mikeal Rogers:** We really appreciate it. We got some incredible insights here, so thank you very much. |
**Christopher Hiller:** Thank you, I had a lot of fun! |
• History of open source sustainability and its beginnings |
• Early companies embracing open source (Sun, IBM) and those opposed to it (Microsoft) |
• Emergence of new companies like Red Hat and their role in promoting open source |
• The "Homebrew Computer Club" and Bill Gates' shift from sharing code to selling executables |
• The creation of the term "open source" by Tim O'Reilly and its initial acceptance |
• How the term "open source" was used to reframe the discussion around software development |
• The role of peer-to-peer computing and music sharing in popularizing open source |
• Confluence of events (Linux, copyright law changes) that contributed to open source's rise |
• The importance of legal obligation (copyleft) in contributing to open source (or not) |
• Permissive licensing was used by Mozilla as a Hail Mary in 1998 to drive adoption of their client software |
• Early open source projects like Mozilla had to reassure individual contributors about patent and copyright jurisdiction |
• The Free Software Foundation (FSF) advocated for copyleft licenses, which were seen as necessary to prevent exploitation of the code |
• As software shifted from client-server to peer-to-peer models, distribution and contribution requirements became less relevant |
• Permissive licensing can drive adoption, but may not result in high-quality contributions |
• The Apache model emphasizes gifts of code over required contributions, prioritizing quality over obligation |
• Enforcement activities by the FSF now focus on encouraging sharing of extensions and improvements rather than punishing freeloaders |
• The concept of "freeloaders" in open source development, where individuals or organizations benefit from the collective effort without contributing equally |
• Concerns about money flow in modern foundations and their impact on project priorities |
• Historical examples of patent pooling and its potential benefits for open source projects |
• The creation and importance of foundations like Apache Software Foundation and Mozilla |
• Mitchell Baker's experience as Lizard Wrangler at Netscape and her role in establishing the Mozilla foundation |
• The need for open source developers to stand up and push back against threats to their project's sustainability. |
• Microsoft's opposition to open source due to its impact on their developer base |
• Two types of programmers: inventors and those who work with tools provided by others (e.g. Microsoft) |
• The role of abstraction in programming and how it relates to the ease of working with code |
• Open source as a foundation for software development, with contributors often unaware of their influence and power |
• The importance of recognizing one's own influence and advocating for oneself within open source projects |
• The evolution of open source from a community-driven effort to a more institutionalized structure |
• The role of foundations in supporting large-scale open source projects |
• Companies' relationships with their open source employees, including the importance of giving them autonomy and support |
• Determining when a project needs a foundation or institutional support |
• Apple's failure to create an open source foundation for their R&D efforts led to conflicts with other open source projects |
• Foundations like Apache provided transparent governance and democratization of standards development |
• Node.js was moved to a foundation due to a community rebellion against its BDFL organization |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.