894: Open Source Matters w/ Chad Whitacre
Wes and Scott talk with Chad Whitacre, the newest member of the Syntax team, about all things open source—licenses, controversies, economics, and ethics. Chad breaks down what most people misunderstand, and how companies can support sustainable software development the right way.
Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
00:39 Meet Chad Whitacre
03:39 Chad’s retro headphones Retrospekt
05:00 Chad’s role at Syntax https://syntax.fm/oss
Open Path
09:41 What do people get wrong about open source?
11:11 Why is open source so divisive?
13:01 The evolution of open source and free software
17:55 Single vendor vs. community open source
20:22 How do people build businesses off of a GPL license?
24:40 What’s the most pure version of open source?
26:55 Fair source licensing explained
30:30 Brought to you by Sentry.io
33:09 Should you be concerned about dependencies in your app in relation to licensing? Fair Source
35:16 What’s the most interesting/unusual open source license? Beerware License
40:00 What is Open Source Pledge? Open Source Pledge
45:41 Choosing the right open source license
48:31 Wes’ most popular open source project wait
49:39 Interesting open source projects Mercedes-Benz embraces Open Source
Porsche Open Source Platform
51:33 Licensing for educational content
53:46 The beauty of open source Plausible
56:12 Scott’s various open source projects
56:44 The importance of contributing to open source projects
59:16 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs
Sick Picks Chad: Save The Cat!
Shameless Plugs Chad: Coming soon
Hit us up on Socials! Syntax: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads
Wes: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads
Scott: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads
Randy: X Instagram YouTube Threads
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
The hallway track at All Things Open 2024 — features Carl George, Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat for a discussion on the state of open source enterprise linux and RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), Max Howell, creator of Homebrew and tea.xyz which offers rewards and recognition to open source maintainers, and Chad Whitacre, Head of Open Source at Sentry about the launch of Open Source Pledge and their plans to helps businesses and orgs to do the right thing and support open source.
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Sponsors:
Sentry – Code breaks, fix it faster. Don’t just observe. Take action. Sentry is the only app monitoring platform built for developers that gets to the root cause for every issue. 100,000+ growing teams use sentry to find problems fast. Use the code CHANGELOG when you sign up to get $100 OFF the team plan.
Coder.com – Instantly launch fully configured cloud development environments (CDE) and make your first commit in minutes. No need to traverse README files or await onboarding queues. Learn more at Coder.com
Eight Sleep – Take your sleep and recovery to the next level. Go to eightsleep.com/changelog and use the code CHANGELOG to get $350 off your very own Pod 4 Ultra. You can try it for free for 30 days - but we’re confident you will not want to return it. Once you experience AI-optimized sleep, you’ll wonder how you ever slept without it. Currently shipping to: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia.
AssemblyAI – Turn voice data into summaries with AssemblyAI’s leading Speech AI models. Built by AI experts, their Speech AI models include accurate speech-to-text for voice data (such as calls, virtual meetings, and podcasts), speaker detection, sentiment analysis, chapter detection, PII redaction, and more.
Featuring:
Carl George – GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Max Howell – GitHub, X
Chad Whitacre – GitHub, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
RHEL
AlmaLinux
Rocky Linux
tea.xyz
opensourcepledge.com
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
How companies are sponsoring OSS (Interview)
This week we’re celebrating Maintainer Month along with our friends at GitHub. Open source runs the world, but who runs open source? Maintainers. Open source maintainers are behind the software we use everyday, but they don’t always have the community or support they need. That’s why we’re celebrating open source maintainers during the month of May. Today’s conversation features Alyssa Wright (Bloomberg), Chad Whitacre (Sentry), and Duane O’Brien (Creator of the FOSS Contributor Fund and framework). We get into all the details, the why, the hows, and the struggles involved for companies to support open source.
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Sponsors:
Sentry – Get to the root cause of an error or latency issue faster by seeing all the technical details related to that issue in one visual replay on your web application. Use the code CHANGELOG and get the team plan free for three months.
Rocky Linux – Enterprise Linux, the open source community way.
DevCycle – Build better software with DevCycle. Feature flags, without the tech debt. DevCycle is a Feature Flag Management platform designed to help you build maintainable code at scale.
Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs.
Featuring:
Chad Whitacre – GitHub, X
Alyssa Wright – GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
We’re at Open Source Summit North America 2022 this week. If you’re there, come see us at the Maintainer Month booth in the expo area.
FOSS Funders (fossfunders.com) - Working together to fund open source.
Maintainer Month
Bloomberg Launches FOSS Fund to Support Free and Open Source Projects
Bloomberg Corporate Philanthropy
Hire My Team
Changelog Interviews #392: Indeed’s FOSS Contributor Fund with Duane O’Brien
Sovereign Tech Fund
Changelog Interviews #490: Schneier on security for tomorrow’s software
Investing in Open Source: The FOSS Contributor Fund by Duane O’Brien, Mandy Grover
Changelog Interviews #515: ANTHOLOGY — Advocating for and supporting open source
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
ANTHOLOGY — Advocating for and supporting open source (Interview)
This week we’re taking you to the hallway track of All Things Open 2022 in Raleigh, NC. Let’s set the stage, here’s what we like do when we go to conferences — we setup our podcast studio at our booth where all the other vendors are and we talk to everyone we can. We give out t-shirts, stickers, pins, high fives…and it’s a blast.
Today’s anthology episode from ATO features: Arun Gupta (VP and GM of Open Ecosystem Initiatives at Intel), long-time friend Chad Whitacre (Head of Open Source at Sentry), and Ricardo Sueiras (Principal Advocate in Open Source at AWS).
The common denominator for each of these conversations is advocating for and supporting open source. Special thanks to Todd Lewis and team for inviting us to come back to ATO. We enjoyed meeting long time fans and new ones too.
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Sponsors:
InfluxData – With its data collectors and scripting languages, a common API across the entire platform, and highly performant time series engine and storage, InfluxDB makes it easy to build once and deploy across multiple products and environments. InfluxDB’s new storage engine allows developers to build real-time applications even faster and with less code. Sign up for the InfluxDB Beta program to give it a try.
Square – Develop on the platform that sellers trust. There is a massive opportunity for developers to support Square sellers by building apps for today’s business needs. Learn more at changelog.com/square to dive into the docs, APIs, SDKs and to create your Square Developer account — tell them Changelog sent you.
Retool – The low-code platform for developers to build internal tools — Some of the best teams out there trust Retool…Brex, Coinbase, Plaid, Doordash, LegalGenius, Amazon, Allbirds, Peloton, and so many more – the developers at these teams trust Retool as the platform to build their internal tools. Try it free at retool.com/changelog
Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs.
Featuring:
Arun Gupta – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Chad Whitacre – GitHub, X
Ricardo Sueiras – GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Arun Gupta
open.intel
Chad Whitacre
The Changelog #87: Sustaining Open Source and Building an Open Company
The Changelog #123: Gittip and Open Companies
Ricardo Sueiras
AWS Open Source
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Gittip and Open Companies (Interview)
Adam and Jerod talk with Chad Whitacre the Founder of Gittip to talk about what’s new this year for Gittip and the directions they are taking things.
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Sponsors:
Codeship – If it works with Docker, it works with Codeship Jet.
Toptal – Join Toptal and work with awesome people from anywhere in the world. Freelance with companies like Airbnb, Artsy & IDEO.
Featuring:
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
The Changelog #87: Sustaining Open Source and Building an Open Company with Chad Whitacre
whit537.org
The Open Company Initiative
whit537 - Gittip
Gittip
Building Gittip
Building Gittip — Medium
ashedryden - Gittip
shanley - Gittip
sudoroom - Gittip
andyet - Gittip
Building Gittip - Mission
Turning Down TechCrunch — Building Gittip — Medium
Bountysource
Patreon: Support the creators you love
Shields.io
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Sustaining Open Source and Building an Open Company (Interview)
Adam Stacoviak, Andrew Thorp and Kenneth Reitz talk with Chad Whitacre about sustaining open source through Gittip, building an open company and more.
Join the discussion
Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!
Featuring:
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Andrew Thorp – Website, GitHub, X
Kenneth Reitz – GitHub, X
Show Notes:
We’re joined by Chad Whitacre of gittip.com
gittip.com allows you to send recurring gifts to people you want to support
Chad is running gittip.com as an open company
Pledgie is a way to raise funds online
The MacArthur Genius Grant is a program that supports awesome people doing awesome things
Balanced Payments is the payment provider behind gittip
Stripe is another payment provider
Watsi is crowd funding for changing the world for good
Balanced has open sourced their dashboard
A BDFL is a Benevolent Dictator for Life
The Lean Startup is a book by Eric Ries
Heroku gives on gittip.
MaxCDN gives on gittip.
Reddit is an open source project and is on github
Share projects and links with us on our subreddit
You can sign up for the gittip newsletter
Medium is a new writing platform
Kenneth loves this tweet from Chad on Twitter
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
