00:00:14.040
I really really really wanted to do this this whole day I guess some of you as well yeah so
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um this is the last session for today uh we're super grateful you're you're
00:00:28.320
joining us uh you still have some energy left for this discussion it's going to
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be yeah yeah cheers to you to you guys uh it's it's going to be a Ju Just
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a conversation between us and let's start with a round of intros so we all
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have uh we have absolutely amazing guests here as you guys can see I think
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and I should stop breathing um and um let's do a a round of intros mentioning
00:01:04.159
uh our maybe how we began with the journey
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ahead press the
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button okay I have to turn it on perfect cool am I a technical person okay cool
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my name is Adrian uh I'm the author of AO and and the co-host of friendly RB
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and um I thank you so much appreciate it appreciate it um and how I got into open
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source so of course my first project my first big project Is AO I did build a
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few sdks uh before I did contribute to a few libraries uh from different projects
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but AA was something that had like a big uh big scope and I started with it and
00:02:00.640
that's how I that's where I am right
00:02:06.119
now um hi BOS um I've been building
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software for over 20 years um I'm doing I'm working with Ruby since
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2006 and uh my adventure with open source started with webm Mo uh and it
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continues uh for the last 15 years
00:02:40.280
you hi I'm Jose I also started with Ruby 2006 uh and I think in the in 2006 I did
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my first open source contribution which was a probably a SBN patch sent through
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Gmail because we didn't have GitHub at the time so there's that and uh later on
00:03:04.239
I started working on uh my own projects um and then eventually I joined
00:03:10.799
the raos car team worked on projects like devis and others I don't quite remember
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because has been quite some time and nowadays I'm mostly working uh with the
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the most humble humble intro the author of the language that I've heard
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um yeah um we're going to have um so the the the the conversation is going to be
00:03:42.439
about um sustainable path to open source and we'll take questions uh at some
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point so if you have questions please please prepare them and we'll we'll have
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a moments when when you can ask them but let's let's just start with um a question for me and the question
00:04:03.840
and okay I didn't introduce myself I'm Marina you've just heard my story with
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any cable this is this is my first um open source um project product um but
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let's let's start with just discussing
00:04:24.040
why why open source uh you know without any
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commercial aspects of it why why are we
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all uh drawn to open source to doing
00:04:40.479
something like people say for free um and why are we drawn to uh building
00:04:47.600
something openly with other people and an open
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that total 6 patch for me it started mostly As curiosity and I think at the
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same time like the biggest benefit of Open Source is that like the code is
00:05:11.800
available we can look at the code so I was working at a I was working on a realos application and I had to install
00:05:18.600
dependencies I had to install gems they were open source I could look at the code and for me it was like oh I can
00:05:24.440
look at the code and I can understand what it does and I was just beginning I could not really understand everything
00:05:29.880
that it did but I always had this curious aspect and even today I say like
00:05:35.840
you know every time you install a package in your project you should look at the source right because you never
00:05:42.600
know maybe you'll be the one maintaining it right uh maybe you want to maintain it maybe you don't want to maintain it
00:05:48.440
but you have to and so that's how it started for me and then uh from there
00:05:54.840
it's like hey uh they do something but what if I take a whole different approach is that going to be better is
00:06:00.199
that going to be worse so it led like to experimentation and at the beginning for
00:06:06.840
me it really felt like a lot of like experimentation trying out new ideas being curious learning and then
00:06:14.840
eventually make you know putting something out there that people may or may not use and uh that was where I was
00:06:23.720
when I started with open source
00:06:30.599
um so for me um in in case of webm Mo uh I started
00:06:39.000
with something that was useful for me um and then I
00:06:45.160
thought oh maybe it's useful to others as well so I published it
00:06:52.479
and thanks um and it happens to be actually
00:06:57.840
yeah uh uh something think that many Ruby developers need it as well um and this gave me this personal
00:07:09.360
fulfillment um that I'm doing something
00:07:14.680
for the community I'm giving something to the people um but also this
00:07:23.199
um sense of paying back right so I'm using all this open source software
00:07:30.599
uh I use plenty of Open Source software and now I have a chance to give back to
00:07:35.680
the community uh which feels you know nice and
00:07:41.759
rewarding um so that's really important to me
00:07:52.360
thanks so there are there are a few reasons that come to mind why somebody
00:07:57.400
should do open source one of the first one is is that you put yourself out
00:08:03.159
there so um success is a combination of work and luck and when luck comes in
00:08:10.319
which could come at any time you have to have the work and that open source that that open source contribution that you
00:08:16.199
made package gem Library whatever that could be your work another reason would be it's going to help you get a job like
00:08:23.199
when I interview people and they show me open source like straight there their um
00:08:30.080
resume that goes on top of the file like that's a special thing another would be
00:08:35.640
that you become a better developer you learn to be independent to figure out
00:08:40.680
solutions to problems to like research more so yeah these are like the the big
00:08:46.880
three reasons why I think more people should contribute to open
00:08:52.000
source yeah I I can also add something about um how we see the evil Mars uh
00:09:00.440
so we have like 50 people and in total there's a huge number of projects on kab
00:09:06.959
that is technically open source uh from our team of course most of them are not
00:09:14.560
used by anybody you guys understand this right it's it's mostly a habit of um
00:09:22.480
open- sourcing some of the tools it's it's very tricky when you started you start
00:09:28.720
thinking oh what can I even open source what can I even open source but then
00:09:35.800
uh maybe in Jas he starts really early and look where I got him um I mean um
00:09:45.000
it's a cool Habit to have um and because at some point like Adrian said
00:09:53.720
you're going to get lucky and something it's going to be something like web mock or something like a or any or um Elixir
00:10:04.120
uh that is used by people that is useful to people but you won't you kind of it's kind of hard to get there from single
00:10:11.680
try so I think it's um sometimes it's just a kind of like a good habit that
00:10:17.640
you have to keep open sourcing keep thinking about your work and what can be
00:10:24.120
kind of generalized a little bit or taken out into the ecosystem
00:10:30.360
and um yeah so how about uh let's let's talk a little bit about the maybe the
00:10:37.920
benefits of Open Source again so Adrian mentioned hiring right um you um if you
00:10:46.959
if you do open source you're looking for a job this is going to help because
00:10:52.240
otherwise um what you have to do the Whiteboard stuff yeah yeah
00:10:59.880
um so and by the way we usually when we give task like home assignments at the
00:11:06.600
we give open source tasks and the idea is that people will a person will spend
00:11:13.000
some time on it right we can of ask them uh of some contribution but it will well
00:11:19.279
remain in their profile and this will remain uh their work and that's kind of
00:11:25.720
kind of meaningful um but yeah what what else uh can think about that
00:11:31.160
is um that is rewarding um before we talk
00:11:37.079
about kind of commercialization
00:11:42.200
paths did anybody did anybody of you kind of get a job thanks to open source
00:11:55.720
source um so yeah I I've never uh I've never got a job on open source
00:12:02.600
um but I got contracts due to uh due to
00:12:08.120
me working on on open on open source um
00:12:14.920
so um so yeah so despite uh for example I I never put much effort into building
00:12:22.959
my name on webmock um but at the same time people still somehow manag to find
00:12:29.880
me through webmo um so there is a funny story um
00:12:35.600
back in the day um GitHub had this uh feature where you could uh list top
00:12:42.560
ranked developers um and that list could be filtered by uh by country and by uh
00:12:50.680
Lang by programming language and uh companies who looked for Ruby
00:12:58.680
Developers um started reaching to me and and uh
00:13:04.279
they said oh we found you you're the top rank developer in in ruin United
00:13:09.920
Kingdom uh on where and uh they said yeah on GitHub so I checked GitHub and
00:13:17.040
yeah there I was um at the top of the at the top of this list um and due to that
00:13:23.959
was due to webm's popularity uh so I never s this kind of recognition but
00:13:30.560
accidentally there I was um and yeah that uh led to some cool contract
00:13:37.399
opportunities as a result so I uh I find it that this is a direct
00:13:46.480
uh consequence of of of me working on open source I I didn't get a job by my open
00:13:55.600
because of my open source contributions but I gave jobs because of other people's open- Source contributions and
00:14:01.839
this is how I met Paul one of of his associates he came on the Discord and on a GitHub and he started speak chatting
00:14:08.440
with me about you know how he hacked it the cool features that we could bring and after some point he told me he wants
00:14:14.079
like to get a second job and I said come work here with with me and now he's like a super associate he's a um a super
00:14:20.399
friend and uh yeah we're building AO together so these things can
00:14:26.079
happen yeah I I I think like uh open SCE is really can I know you don't like this
00:14:32.240
word usually as developers but it's really a powerful marketing tool right you had like GitHub doing all the
00:14:38.360
marketing for you which probably you couldn't pay or get anywhere right and you just got it and uh Adrian said that
00:14:48.079
you know hiring uh it works and uh and
00:14:53.839
most of the time I did open source was with a consultancy and the benefits there was exact
00:14:59.839
easy to hire developers because they saw the open source work that we did right
00:15:04.920
so they wanted to work with us the client wanted to work with us so this was platform attack back then the client
00:15:11.199
wanted to work with us because we did open source right and it's funny because
00:15:16.480
I don't remember the exact order but I believe at plat forch when we started we were four and the first person we hired
00:15:24.440
was Carlos Antonio who is on the rail SC team and it was because of his open source
00:15:29.560
contribs and soon after we hired haa also because of his open source
00:15:35.759
contributions and he's also on the rail quarantine so it was all because you know we're all doing open source
00:15:42.199
together seeing around we we were in Brazil we were all Brazilians like hey Brazil right so um uh yeah and it was
00:15:51.120
all happening because mainly because of Open
00:15:56.759
Source yeah pretty crazy I I remembered something uh when you we were talking you were saying Brazil Brazil
00:16:03.880
um I uh I realized at some point that for evil Marans our uh one of the
00:16:09.240
reasons we became U uh kind of
00:16:14.440
international company was open source because I mean we were a local company
00:16:21.880
at the beginning and because of Open Source like you all
00:16:27.639
said yes people people could find us but also it's it's more than that um it's
00:16:34.800
kind of yeah you talk on giab with people from other countries and you kind
00:16:40.639
of start considering um the bigger world around
00:16:46.920
you so that's I think this is an important part of Open Source the open source plain there are no borders and
00:16:54.560
kind of countries and continents uh and um like everybody understands
00:17:03.679
um I mean English is not a really big uh
00:17:08.799
problem like people people speak very simple language I think on GitHub and um
00:17:16.120
it's kind of helping you almost like open up and think about the bigger world
00:17:21.360
and think about what's available there what kind of businesses are built there what kind of projects and Technologies
00:17:27.039
are built there and connect right so you become part of those projects and
00:17:32.160
Technologies like part of rails right and um I don't know you did you consider
00:17:38.480
rails in um American company or American project
00:17:43.880
or european project I know um but yeah I guess American uh
00:17:50.640
so uh okay this is this feels nice uh
00:17:56.840
but at the same time uh what we have is a real big crisis in
00:18:06.120
uh sustainability of Open Source and it now kind of manifests through through
00:18:13.440
those uh security incidents right when
00:18:18.559
um people people realize that uh first of all some projects are not maintained
00:18:25.039
there there problems with basically the core problem is uh
00:18:31.039
projects are hard to maintain and and this becomes a
00:18:36.120
vulnerability for the whole supply chain because the kind of bad actor can
00:18:45.320
come I mean propose help and um inflict uh really big
00:18:52.360
vulnerabilities and uh I wonder what you all think about this problem
00:18:59.320
and if you've at any point in your uh life career felt
00:19:07.559
that you I mean you could feel burnt out because of Open Source let's let's let's
00:19:15.640
say it uh or you could feel that it's just too
00:19:21.120
hard uh what what what do you guys think and what do you guys think of
00:19:26.360
maybe yeah this this problem may be solving this problem I had a few conversations with a
00:19:34.280
few maintainers um some are here some are from our community and one thing I
00:19:41.559
noticed in common in all of their speeches about sustainable open source is that
00:19:46.960
companies don't uh are not incentivized let me do this like forced to to sustain
00:19:55.799
open source uh they feel for to do that when they really need
00:20:01.159
something like a product right they they basically kind of start to pay for a product and U that's one of the big big
00:20:09.120
issues and I had an idea what if like you know how companies
00:20:14.880
have a budget for everything like every developer has a travel budget has an education budget has an event budget
00:20:21.840
what if every developer that works at your company would have an open- Source donations project uh budget right so
00:20:30.080
every developer gets like $20 $50 per month to donate to from the company to
00:20:35.320
the project that they desire that they choose I think that will move the needle
00:20:40.600
quite a lot it's not going to solve the whole problem but it's going to move the needle for a lot of maintainers so you
00:20:46.960
know if there are companies here that could uh that could do that I think that
00:20:52.240
would be like a very cool experiment to to try
00:20:57.480
out yeah yeah but by the way there is a recent initiative called open source pledge that is very similar it's coming
00:21:05.320
from Sentry I think okay uh I think Sentry is trying to move the N um
00:21:12.320
compensate for their decisions I don't know um I'm moving away from open source
00:21:19.000
license themselves I'm kidding um but yeah um that that's interesting so donations
00:21:26.679
um yeah there's also on this area I think I believe there's a company called Ti lift which is a similar idea the
00:21:33.600
companies give money they red rack to open source I think I think it's
00:21:39.159
a I think it's a very hard balance because there are so many open source
00:21:44.600
projects right like if you if you do rail new uh how many packages are already
00:21:50.960
going to be there by default right and so for example I remember when tide lift came out and I was like hey you know
00:21:58.679
maybe we'll get some money and uh and and at the time I was working on devis
00:22:05.120
which was like a pretty big project in the r community and and when I went
00:22:10.320
there and they they allowed at the time I don't know if they they allow it they allowed it to say which Project's yours
00:22:15.400
so you can claim and get some money and then I was like oh great this pays like five minutes of development per Mo right
00:22:23.039
so uh I I feel it I feel it's really really tricky and I I'm going to say
00:22:29.559
some something potentially polemic you said like what burns you out from open source and the first thing that came to
00:22:36.679
my mind is that uh open source doesn't burn me out people burn me
00:22:42.720
out but and the the idea is that and what I mean by that not trying to be mean is that uh because when when I'm
00:22:51.120
working with the code like as I said like I'm curious I am happy and I really
00:22:56.919
stand by the open source license it's like look I've I've put this code it doesn't mean I have to support it it
00:23:03.279
doesn't mean I have to maintain it right and uh and that's the agreement that we
00:23:09.520
all have when we use open source it's like look we don't own anything to each
00:23:14.799
other and I really stand to that that equation starts changing when there is
00:23:20.120
the expectation of a company right that hey that thing has to be maintained my
00:23:25.559
bugs have to be fixed why they're not being addressed in time what is your plans for the project right while
00:23:31.919
according to the license there is no like none of that is meant to be
00:23:37.960
needed of course there is the the opposite side which is one of the reason why we do open source is because of the
00:23:43.919
idea of a community we want to have a community we want people to get together as we are here right now right so it's
00:23:51.080
not like oh people right like we want the people this is great right we love being here but I think that's when
00:23:57.240
things start to that balance of expectations you know uh
00:24:03.200
that's when things starts getting tricky and you know and then yes and then like look if you want me to spend time fixing
00:24:09.960
buds donations would be nice would be nice if you figure something out right or anything right a paid product and
00:24:17.720
anything that we can make this sustainable if that's the expectation yeah that's that resonates a
00:24:25.120
lot um we uh like the author of posts is our
00:24:30.360
fed front Andre and we use uh headlift for like it's linked to posts and um
00:24:38.799
it's kind of like a maybe it's public data by the way it's like he get about like thousand per month and posts is has
00:24:48.039
uh several times more downloads than react on mpm it's it's it's absolutely
00:24:53.640
everywhere it's literally everywhere uh and this is uh this is the state of the
00:24:59.600
Nations today the state of the Nations is well they are
00:25:05.480
uh like not not cutting it but uh I loved what what you said about U like
00:25:11.840
the balance and again um badar Bas the
00:25:17.360
author of rubocop talked about that how yes as long as this is open source uh
00:25:25.520
you don't want kind of the maintainer to burn out it's not it's not good for
00:25:30.799
anybody by the way it's not good for the community um but um the the the
00:25:38.440
maintainer basically can set the expectations and say look uh this is not
00:25:45.640
going to be supported or this is not going to be even considered and because
00:25:50.760
you have to do this otherwise um you're just going to burn
00:25:56.240
out and there's um this imbalance between asks and help right sometimes
00:26:03.840
yeah and I imagine for a project like rubocop just managing the expectations it's a almost a full-time job in itself
00:26:11.039
right and and that's part of the the challenge as
00:26:17.200
well um yeah so I experienced uh burnout on
00:26:24.120
when working on webmo multiple times um and um what is surprising actually is uh
00:26:33.840
what surprised me is that uh I got more burnout the more webm got
00:26:39.720
popular um and surprisingly even when
00:26:45.559
people were really active and they submitted issues and they submitted poll requests and uh there were times where I
00:26:55.120
was busy where my mind was somewhere else I couldn't f on webm at the same time poll requests were coming that
00:27:01.760
created pressure that you know I'm responsible I have to uh respond to these people I have to
00:27:09.000
review this PO requests analyze them um and that's uh yeah I I think that
00:27:16.720
significantly affected this burnout so this uh this were times where you know I
00:27:23.440
I thought okay I'm abandoning open source uh I'm you know I just I'll just
00:27:29.039
focus on the commercial projects um but then you know after time uh I I I give
00:27:36.440
some space for myself and uh and then I'm Keen again to to you know to develop
00:27:42.960
more to uh I get this burst of of passion for for for webm uh where I you
00:27:50.200
know I can spend the weekend doing webm only and uh so you know it's uh it comes
00:27:57.240
in phases but yeah had um it that was a surprise to me that
00:28:04.720
you know the with with more PO requests coming um the pressure increased and
00:28:11.000
that created uh you know some negative feelings towards open
00:28:18.399
source thanks yeah surprisingly even though people people probably think
00:28:23.760
you're Overjoyed with the success with the popularity with everything and this the same time um yeah it's it's it's
00:28:30.840
almost like you know when you have 100 people saying thank you and one person is saying something rude screw you and
00:28:39.080
the only thing you can think about is this other person so uh yeah so be be
00:28:44.120
kinder to maintainers that's that's what I want to say um um I have this habit of
00:28:50.960
um in U uh in any cable open source uh
00:28:57.039
when somebody comes and they want something I say this phrase
00:29:03.440
um um I mean we consider of course the for example there is a feature request
00:29:09.000
we consider it and then if it kind of fits the the strategy of any cable we
00:29:15.000
say I say I send them an an email usually saying would you guys be willing
00:29:20.519
to commercially support development of this feature and I'm not bothered by it
00:29:28.960
seriously because um I I've seen my my own share of things like big companies
00:29:36.360
reaching out to bosss us asking for something and never donating never doing anything
00:29:43.760
in in return so they just I don't know you got to think about it you got to
00:29:49.279
think of what it takes from you you got to be kind of in charge of your well-being I think and in charge of well
00:29:57.279
asking people for what you need and sometimes it's just just commercial support um and if
00:30:06.399
you are it kind of changing the relationships and kind of um you feel
00:30:13.039
first of all it much more rewarded right even if it's I don't know $2,000 you got
00:30:20.000
right for a feature or something you feel different but but
00:30:26.679
then this changes the relationship to the project as well so you're not burned
00:30:32.120
out by open source now you have somebody paying so uh it's a gig it's a job it's
00:30:38.200
something right so you're not burned out so you you get some benefit it's a different relationship than just some
00:30:45.159
stranger saying you should have this here and you should build it because I need it right if somebody says I'm going
00:30:51.440
to pay you to build this like okay that's cool it's going to be difficult and whatever I don't want to tackle this
00:30:57.600
but what ever if you know I want to do this like you're going to pay for that then it's a different relationship so
00:31:04.440
changes that as well yeah um just can you tell us how
00:31:13.120
um maybe now we can uh move into uh the different models of how we are
00:31:18.919
sustaining sustaining our work and maybe we can talk about Consulting for for a
00:31:25.320
bit and you know the relationship between Consulting open source and how you see
00:31:32.600
that yeah so from my experience the challenge with open source and Consulting
00:31:39.279
is like who is going to work on the open source stuff because anybody who is
00:31:44.840
doing open source they are not on a client project so they it's both a cost
00:31:53.320
and lost revenue and that changes like the and that's like when you look at the if you look at the equation right like
00:31:59.840
oh my God that's too much and that's something that we struggle a lot at platform attack uh back then I was very
00:32:06.399
lucky because when we found the company I was doing my masters in Italy and
00:32:12.880
everybody in the company was in Brazil in s Pao I was like the only person
00:32:18.360
remote and then uh I moved to Poland uh to start a family so I was remote all
00:32:24.240
the time and and so I say like look if I was working in Brazil Elixir wouldn't
00:32:31.080
exist because I would be dragged to projects to client meetings right but I
00:32:36.120
was you know four hours away right 6,000 kilometers maybe it doesn't work
00:32:41.279
nowadays anymore this step like because everything moved to remote we were not as remote back then right 2010
00:32:48.679
2011 um but we always had this struggle like you know and then somebody would
00:32:53.840
work on open source or like two months three months and then they would get to a project and when they are in a project
00:32:59.159
they would not have time to work on open source for six months seven months right
00:33:04.440
and that could be a lot of time they lost the whole context of the project so we always struggled as the consultancy
00:33:11.919
to to balance that out and make the the that equation work I have no companies
00:33:19.799
that were able to figure out by other things like look uh Friday is open source right or uh on you get to a
00:33:28.399
certain size it becomes easier to do this but it was always like it was
00:33:33.960
always a uh Balancing Act uh back then and especially in relation to Elixir
00:33:41.360
because it got so we started the project program language it started getting adoption and it got to a point where
00:33:47.919
we're like look for this project to grow it cannot be a one person a fort and then everybody helping on their free
00:33:55.320
time like you know we have to build like a whole ecosystem it's a new programming language cannot be one person right we
00:34:00.840
need two three people and that's when we started figuring out like uh support and
00:34:07.279
consultancy models that would be more sustainable breaking out a little bit of
00:34:12.520
this like software development consultany thing and more of a
00:34:18.359
uh instead of saying because a lot of the projects that platform Tech would be like software development so we would go
00:34:24.480
would work with them for like six months a year maybe more right and more and then at some point we started we had a
00:34:31.359
small team that would do support and consultancy things that are more punctual but we could do it once and
00:34:38.879
bring a lot of Revenue so we could like not be worried for the next two months
00:34:44.440
or three months and be able to focus on that so yeah I'll I'll stop here to give
00:34:51.119
more opportunity but glad to follow up yeah that that's super interesting um
00:34:58.920
BTO you you're kind of in an interesting spot where you're an individual contractor
00:35:05.599
right yeah so actually I I never thought about uh about monetizing uh webm Mo um
00:35:16.200
from day one the purpose was that I'm working on webm Mo in my spare time and
00:35:23.040
I work on webm for the community um and the other part of my
00:35:29.160
projects are the commercial projects where I make money and these two are
00:35:34.240
separate and I reserve as much time as needed for the commercial projects and webm gets the
00:35:41.280
rest um of of of my spare time I I would say because there is also a balance
00:35:47.440
between spending the spare time on on open source and spending this Spare Time
00:35:53.160
on looking after yourself uh basically uh which is
00:35:58.480
important um because yeah there is no sustainable open source without
00:36:04.680
sustainable programmers I guess true um but yeah I also never felt that there is
00:36:12.040
a good model for monetizing webmo you know it's a tool for testing uh used only in
00:36:20.560
test environments or or development environments sometimes uh it's never used in
00:36:26.040
production um but yeah I I also yeah I could maybe
00:36:32.440
put some buy me a coffee badges uh but I I never thought it would uh change
00:36:40.520
things enough to for me to to focus way more time uh on webm than uh than I do
00:36:49.400
um so yeah so in my case it was always work on Commercial projects for money
00:36:55.520
and work work on webm for the commun my yeah makes sense so maybe andrean can
00:37:03.520
now say something to inspire you to produc iser uh Adrian what's your story of producti
00:37:09.640
now so when I think about ways of monetizing
00:37:15.119
Open Source um it is a little bit tied to me and AO uh is that there are many
00:37:22.040
many ways of doing that you can do Consulting you can do hosted like any
00:37:27.760
hosted options you can do uh special paid uh tiers like uh sidekick you can
00:37:35.480
do a lot of stuff but there's no shoe that fits all sizes and one of your jobs
00:37:41.480
is similarly to how you went out there and you know figure out the problem and you figure out the solution one one one
00:37:46.760
of your jobs is to figure out what works for you and for that product so yeah for
00:37:52.280
webm maybe there's no I know there's no webm Plus or Pro version out there that
00:37:58.240
you could sell what you could get like maybe donations is one thing maybe you know consultan is another one right like
00:38:04.480
Jose is doing uh so you got to go out there and figure that out for yourself
00:38:09.720
of course talk to people talk to to Mike Perham talk to me like people that uh maybe found uh found their way so
00:38:18.040
definitely there's a little bit of research to be done there yes so uh I'm curious what our um
00:38:27.560
I was at one of your talks about it and um so I understand you guys are
00:38:35.720
basically uh went um maybe the Venture Road right yeah uh
00:38:42.400
C can you can you maybe tell us a little bit about that like how you I don't know how are you making
00:38:48.640
money with a how are you balancing a open source and a uh Pro um
00:38:58.760
and how is it working for you you know yeah so we have always an open core
00:39:05.880
product we have the community version which is open source it's lgpl 3 uh you
00:39:11.119
can take it you can use it it's uh it's not totally MIT but it's pretty free it's an open source license and then we
00:39:17.280
have the pro and the advanced tiers and we have some more gems for which uh if you need those features you can you can
00:39:24.640
pay us to to get them it's a yearly subscription uh this is how we make money um and um
00:39:32.599
how how is it going for us it's going okay it's definitely going better than a few years ago um and um if this is the
00:39:40.680
right thing for AO I don't know we're doing a little bit of Consulting on site just AO support we have a look at you
00:39:48.280
know avoc code for our customers we write some avoc code for our customers uh but we're still playing around so
00:39:54.560
this is why pricing and figuring out a a method to actually make money out of
00:40:00.119
Open Source uh is very tricky and very very fiddly some projects will be as
00:40:05.720
simple as yes throw another gem in there or another package another tier for
00:40:10.800
which people can pay or have a hosted version some are a little bit more fly and you have to figure out the um have
00:40:18.240
to figure out things yeah yeah nice all right uh how about this uh I have a
00:40:26.119
couple more questions but maybe we we should open uh the floor for the
00:40:31.160
questions from the audience I wonder what what you guys are thinking oh there's a there's a couple
00:40:46.000
hand this one okay hi um so I
00:40:51.560
think in terms of funding when you puts aside open course stuff you just talked
00:40:58.359
about I think there's a little bit of an elant in the room because everybody here
00:41:03.800
understands that companies when you have just put the open source out there you can use it we all understand that the
00:41:09.440
companies get a value but the companies seem to understand it only at the sort
00:41:15.920
of GitHub and Shopify size where Shopify implements wiet and there Ser bill goes
00:41:22.160
down right it's very direct why do you think it's so hard
00:41:27.400
to make a case for the actual Financial benefit for smaller companies from
00:41:34.839
investing in open source can can I begin can I begin to
00:41:41.400
answer uh okay I'm I'm in the past I was an
00:41:46.560
economist I think one big problem with open source is that um when something
00:41:51.960
doesn't have a price it's really hard to understand the value
00:41:58.079
it's really hard to understand the value of a dependency in your graph is it easy to
00:42:04.800
replace with somebody something that is out there something else or is it the
00:42:11.599
only thing that exists out there that your whole organization depends on it's
00:42:17.440
really hard to understand and uh I think the existing tools that we have in the
00:42:25.040
ecosystem including GitHub and not helping understand
00:42:31.040
that we have very companies have very little insight into the value of uh
00:42:40.960
dependencies that they're using in the open source they're using yes um like you said big companies have
00:42:48.160
those open- Source program offices uh or
00:42:53.359
just kind of Ruby teams rails teams um Elixir teens
00:42:59.359
maybe I'm not sure if some somebody else has it but uh where they found basically
00:43:05.200
uh teams working on open source but um this is only uh kind of in relation to
00:43:12.480
big things right Frameworks uh languages uh if it's like
00:43:20.079
my my dream would be that uh you can specialize on something
00:43:26.640
like like web Mark and people get people
00:43:31.839
get value from it and you can uh get like a part of that value
00:43:39.119
right this is what we're looking for ideally in the ideal World um I think
00:43:44.720
it's a matter so I'm going to say a few things nothing is absolute if I say big companies doesn't that all big companies
00:43:50.559
if I say small companies does so I think it's a matter of budgets so I think all
00:43:57.119
companies small and big they have problems that can be fixed with open source and definitely everybody would
00:44:02.839
win if all the companies would contribute to open source but there's a harsh reality that all companies they
00:44:10.839
work for money like they have to make money so they can pay their salaries they can pay AWS bills and whatever
00:44:17.200
right so what does it mean for a company with two employees that you know they have like a small AR uh to invest some
00:44:26.200
hours of those Engineers into open source and what does it mean for a company like Shopify or GitHub to pay 20
00:44:33.280
30 people to work on like Ruby and rails and and the infrastructure and like very
00:44:39.599
deep problems so it's again in my opinion it's it's not the full problem but it's a problem of budgets so that's
00:44:46.400
why um you know if we wouldn't build just AO if we would build I know just a
00:44:52.160
SAS thing online on cloud I don't know how much time we would be able to spend
00:44:57.520
on okay let's just work on open source and bring some new feature to features to flex today or like whatever because
00:45:03.480
we feel like it and it's going to be better the community yes we want to do that but the harsh reality is that we
00:45:08.720
have to pay some salaries at the end and so on so big companies they have some more spending money this is how I see
00:45:14.559
they have some more spending money that they can throw on throw on people to fix those uh those
00:45:22.240
issues yeah I think the the reason it's not is not happening is in Game Theory it's called tragedy of
00:45:29.680
Commons uh tragedy of Commons is uh the systematic underinvestment in public
00:45:35.720
goods it explains this it's uh this idea that okay those 10 people should do this
00:45:41.960
not me right and I know they will do this if they you know have to so I don't
00:45:48.040
have to invest my share and this is what's happening for sure and you can
00:45:53.640
think of um this approach and again this VIs of Open Source as similar to the
00:45:59.240
problem of let's say climate change you know uh it's also something systematic
00:46:05.520
that has to happen and it goes the only way it can of um it maybe is happening
00:46:13.000
is through kind of society level uh mechanisms through politics let's let's
00:46:19.720
be honest um but yeah um that that was a good question
00:46:27.000
question maybe do you guys want um maybe let's go to next
00:46:35.160
one hand I saw a couple hands come up I'll try and go all of you by
00:46:40.599
order yeah um I was wondering why we instead of asking companies to um donate
00:46:48.559
money um not ask them to donate developer time on open source because I
00:46:54.680
think I've seen that working uh quite well at one of the startups that I worked at we had um after a so-called
00:47:04.040
season of Sprints we had one week off season where we were actually allowed to do open source work or whatever we uh
00:47:12.319
desired um and uh it was really cool because you had like the whole week of
00:47:18.280
just focus time uh contributing to open source libraries that you were using and
00:47:24.359
um super helpful and I think this is like way easier to organize budget wise
00:47:30.920
also I'm encouraging if any companies are here that make these
00:47:46.200
the first to click the button yeah yeah I just uh it's 100% a valid way to
00:47:51.359
contribute to to open source and yeah I recommend everybody doing it uh you're
00:48:00.040
the your engineers are going to get value from it the Open Source Products going to get value from it you as a
00:48:06.760
company are going to get value from it it's yeah go for it can I offer another
00:48:13.200
perspective I think this is on the maintainer side as well so contribu
00:48:18.920
contributing to open source that's cool and all but sometimes it's difficult like some projects don't have
00:48:25.079
contribution guides don't have like naming conventions they don't explain what what what things are what's going
00:48:31.079
on in there so it's it also falls like so for a company to say okay let's contribute like for some anybody to say
00:48:37.839
let's contribute I want to contribute on this if they have to do a lot of context loading about okay how does this work uh
00:48:45.079
why isn't the docker putting up why is it working with this because they said it should work and whatever that's a lot
00:48:51.720
of like burnout like temporary burnout and they say like screw that I I can
00:48:57.280
work on something else right so it's a little bit on the maintainers as well to say okay this is how we contribute this
00:49:02.480
is this is how you clone it you install it set up y y y and then you go do your
00:49:07.559
stuff right go do your thing so um yeah it's a little call to action to on the maintainers as well because that that's
00:49:13.440
going to help out yeah I I I like to put more value on the process than on the
00:49:18.640
result in the sense that uh you also always have to remember that you may
00:49:23.880
work for two weeks or longer and it won't be merged right it's uh so I I
00:49:31.760
usually think look it's more like having that merge button becoming purple and
00:49:37.960
seeing that your code got in yes it's the better the best outcome yeah but uh
00:49:45.200
but yeah keep that in mind that you know um it's it can still not be accepted and
00:49:51.960
the other thing is uh and I agree yes it's responsibility of the maintainer
00:49:57.200
but I also like to say that get the code in is only half of the job or not even
00:50:03.640
half because then it's on the maintainer on the team to maintain that feeling for the rest of their lives
00:50:09.799
right well rest of their lives sound too dramatic but you true but it's
00:50:16.680
true yeah I I always feel guilty when I receive a poll request and I see that
00:50:21.720
someone put lots of effort lot of thinking um and and wrote of code and
00:50:27.880
then you know I'm not sure it should be merged actually so yeah but usually people uh
00:50:36.280
often approach me earlier and and say I have this idea what do you think if if
00:50:41.480
you agree I'm going to write the code and submit the requests which is way
00:50:47.040
better yeah when when it's when I get a large request that I'm not going to accept and exactly like this like look
00:50:53.280
there was a lot of code of a for it was welld designed you know it's just that it doesn't align
00:50:59.000
what you want to do right I usually try to comment on that and say like look this I usually go and reveal the code if
00:51:05.640
not going to merge just with the feedback look I think this was well done the design is perfect you made the
00:51:11.559
design the same decisions that I would make if I was writing this code I have nothing to complain so the person at
00:51:17.640
least comes with like with the benefit of that experience of you know like hey
00:51:22.799
you know like I got the code I did something I built something and for a tech tech technicality it did not get
00:51:29.720
any yeah but try to have some of that feedback can help as well thanks this is
00:51:35.799
turning into a different fireside chat where you know have empathy for the maintainer right because like what
00:51:42.119
what's the other guy thinking about right guy or girl like the maintainer right which is which would be a cool
00:51:47.359
fireside chat I think and I I mean empathy for maintainer is necessary
00:51:53.799
anyways it's necessary for sustainable open source um but um yeah I love I love this
00:52:01.200
question and so basically I think we can all agree that um as as the industry
00:52:06.760
maybe we should normalize the idea that engineers at least at some point should
00:52:13.760
have time to work in open source because we all use open source
00:52:20.880
technology and uh we it's like super important that
00:52:27.200
especially if we want to Upstream something that we are able to do this um
00:52:34.000
and but then on the other hand sometimes uh some Engineers will say well I don't know
00:52:41.079
what to contribute to sometimes this happens and maybe we also need better
00:52:46.440
Tools in seeing or you can go and contribute here uh and because this project has a
00:52:53.760
really nice contribution guide and this is like relevant for your work uh somehow somehow right so I I'd love this
00:53:02.119
um I don't know Tinder for contributions where uh there's a match and you can say
00:53:07.720
or looks good and I I want to contribute here um so cool idea uh we have more
00:53:15.839
questions I think um it's just more of a a comment
00:53:21.319
and then kind of your thoughts on the comment um I find it absolutely outrageous like I do a lot of work in
00:53:27.280
the observability space I think it's absolutely outrageous there are certain companies charging other small startups
00:53:35.680
10 grand 20 grand 50 Grand 100 grand for logging or or other observability stuff
00:53:42.480
they're not really using and here you all are having dedicated 10 15 years of
00:53:47.720
your life there's some incredible imbalance here right it's it's pretty obvious so I wonder if there's a
00:53:55.839
potential new pricing model something like revshare which is kind of like fairly accepted in the business world we
00:54:03.040
don't have money to pay you upfront but when we start making money you'll get a fraction of that money and then that
00:54:09.680
kind of ties in the value of Open Source back and it gives you a potential Revenue
00:54:18.680
stream I think that um we all chose to be here in a sense
00:54:27.040
uh I think that's how I would start with that I I I I I I feel outrageous on part
00:54:34.240
but I also could just pack my bags and leave you know like get a full-time job
00:54:40.240
somewhere you know uh raking cash allegedly um and and not do that right
00:54:48.480
so I I I think there is also there's a lot of like you know uh I so I've go
00:54:57.240
maybe every two years I go through kind of a existential crisis kind of thing
00:55:02.319
you know where I'm like and then I write this blog post uh which I never publish because I
00:55:08.839
don't think it would be helpful if I publish that overall to the discussion and I the latest one I I I
00:55:16.880
don't remember exactly what was the the title but exactly that um I personally
00:55:22.480
feel and of course people can disagree that I I gave more value to open source
00:55:32.000
or to companies or value in general then I took from it that's like my general
00:55:38.440
assessment uh and and the reason why I don't publish it's because it's easy to
00:55:44.880
think about me in the micro scale thing but in
00:55:51.880
the it it doesn't mean necessarily a zero sum game like maybe over all like
00:55:57.599
people are getting more value that they are gaining in general and that can be good for society even if it means that
00:56:04.880
you know I am not getting everything that I feel I should have gotten right
00:56:12.160
so I think I guess the point I'm trying to to to get to this is that like I think like we want to make things
00:56:18.599
sustainable but it's also like it's also our choice to be on this journey and be on this path and there are like a lot of
00:56:27.599
feelings and thoughts being attached to it which sometimes like the reason I
00:56:33.000
don't publish is because I think there's still kind of a stigma even in talking about those
00:56:39.440
things right it's like uh you know I if
00:56:44.760
I publish that like at the moment I'm writing I like I write a sentence and then I can I can see the comment in my
00:56:50.960
hand like why is he complaining Elixir is used by a bunch of people right and
00:56:56.400
I'm mostly talking about like my mental health and just being comfortable with myself but we don't feel sometimes it's
00:57:03.280
fine enough to talk about those things I think I went to a completely different tangent from what you asked but I think
00:57:08.880
it's important to this like yes we want to find we we want to make it sustainable and that's an idea we can
00:57:16.160
explore uh Adrian said like uh no there are other ideas and other ways that we
00:57:21.400
can explore and we need to find something but that Journey can be like really really off like you know Elixir
00:57:28.079
is probably my life's work but I can't charge for it like Microsoft try try
00:57:33.680
charge for programming languages they did not succeed how how am I going to do
00:57:39.680
that and I also uh I don't want to build a large consultancy because you know
00:57:45.359
I've been in one where we had 80 people and that's not my thing right so I can build a product but the product is and
00:57:53.920
it works like you know it's going to work in certain cases but if I want like
00:57:59.319
but that's a separate thing right that goes with like anyway I hope like this
00:58:05.240
kind of uh shows you the ex uh 10% of the existential crisis that it comes
00:58:12.599
with this kind of questions and the challenges and trying to reason about all those things and how we can make it
00:58:19.440
work and yeah I think Adin said well like there is no super bullet
00:58:25.079
unfortunately and and sometimes we have to figure
00:58:31.640
out sorry that was great um maybe we only
00:58:39.119
have like a few minutes but let's take more questions I'm afraid we're out of time
00:58:46.559
I'm so sorry everyone it is the end of the day no we're not end on a great note
00:58:54.200
uh yeah that was really yeah let let us give us just just uh maybe just a quick
00:59:00.039
U uh thank you notes and stuff stuff like that so
00:59:05.160
uh J thank you for sharing this it's it's super important yeah thank you and
00:59:11.200
uh guys maybe if if you want to share something um like as the as the closing remarks that that'd be
00:59:18.760
nice um so equally equally uh honest you know yeah um about existential crisis I
00:59:26.160
de it um so yeah I you know I created webm
00:59:31.480
uh during a one day company hakatan it wasn't planned uh and uh then people at
00:59:41.240
the company found it useful also and I published it and and lots of people
00:59:46.799
found found it useful um so what I can say is I
00:59:52.079
encourage you if you you know if you come up with some solution write some code and it works for you it's useful
00:59:57.799
for you publish it uh let people know about this and uh this can reward you in
01:00:07.039
unexpected ways thanks I
01:00:20.839
that button a little bit more and say that you have the power to build you know that product that open source the
01:00:27.680
thing that you want to build but you also have the power to not do it so you can you can you can Wonder you can delay
01:00:35.400
you can not start but tell people about it or or you can just go and do it so go
01:00:41.160
out there and build something people want yeah you can put it on GitHub and
01:00:46.200
never look at it again and that's completely fine yeah that's completely fine yeah exactly
01:00:56.799
yeah I just want to say I'm uh I'm super hopeful that uh those things uh that we
01:01:02.119
are discussing as as here is this like relatively small group and bigger and
01:01:07.200
bigger from bigger perspective as a industry um I'm I'm pretty sure uh they
01:01:13.319
there are going to be uh more solutions for that do we have the solution today
01:01:19.640
no right uh but something you mentioned today was very important is the power uh
01:01:26.319
the power of the maintainer and we want the maintainers to have more
01:01:32.400
power uh and because right now I feel that there's an imbalance where the
01:01:39.240
maintainer has all the responsibility and very little choice and power and
01:01:44.280
control and very little data also about um and I'm just going to say maybe in a
01:01:50.680
few years we're going to have uh J having at least
01:01:56.039
like uh some visibility of people using Elixir and connection to them so they
01:02:02.760
they can uh immediately um pay you your your your company and
01:02:10.480
yourself for something related to their projects so I think there's a lot to be
01:02:16.599
done here in this space and it has to be built
01:02:36.039
sorry you know what I couldn't help but notice that that was not the standing ovation I hoped it was can we try that
01:02:48.960
yes thank you
