Episode 191: FOSSY 2023 with Sam Whited

Guest Sam Whited Panelist Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and
welcome to Sustain! Richard is in Portland, OR at FOSSY, the Free
and Open Source Software Yearly conference that is held by the
Software Freedom Conservancy. Today, our guest is Sam Whited, a
bicycle mechanic with a deep involvement in open source software
development. His contributions include work with the XMPP Standards
Foundation, the Internet Engineering Task Force, and the creation
of Mellium, an XMPP library in Go. The conversation delves into the
sustainability challenges faced by Mellium and similar projects
with Sam advocating for support from larger companies and
well-funded open source initiatives. Sam, a strong supporter of
open source co-op consultancies, also shares his personal journey
from tech to bicycle mechanic, underscoring the struggle of
maintaining open source projects while managing living expenses. Go
ahead and download this episode now to hear more! [00:00:38] Sam
tells us about himself, working as a bicycle mechanic while
contributing to open source software in his free time. He’s worked
with the XMPP Standards Foundation, the Internet Engineering Task
Force, and maintains an XMPP library called Mellium. [00:01:45] He
explains XMPP stands for Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol
and is an open standard communication protocol. He believes in it
because of its recognized standards body, resilience, and the
continuing work to keep it open, free, and sustainable. [00:02:38]
XMPP sits at several levels in the communication stack. It’s used
in various applications like Snikket, Cisco’s mobile video
conferencing, Grindr, Zoom, and Jitsi. [00:04:11] Mellium is
explained as an implementation of XMPP in Go. [00:05:13] Richard
asks about the sustainability of Mellium. Sam acknowledges the
challenges of attracting maintainers and funding for the project,
and he explains his goal is to operate Mellium as a cooperative.
[00:08:00] The conversation turns to funding for protocol
implementation and Sam suggests that companies and well-funded open
source projects should give back to the smaller projects they
utilize. He mentions that Mellium sets aside a portion of their
donations for upstream projects that helped him. [00:10:38] Sam
explains “The Seven Cooperative Principles” from the International
Cooperative Alliance. [00:11:30] Sam explains why he decided to
work as a bike mechanic instead of pursuing work related to his
expertise in using Golang. [00:13:43] Find out where you can find
Sam on the internet. Links SustainOSS (https://sustainoss.org/)
SustainOSS Twitter
(https://twitter.com/SustainOSS?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
SustainOSS Discourse (https://discourse.sustainoss.org/)
podcast@sustainoss.org (mailto:podcast@sustainoss.org) SustainOSS
mastodon (https://openoss.sourceforge.net/) Richard Littauer
Twitter (https://twitter.com/richlitt?lang=en) Software Freedom
Conservancy (https://sfconservancy.org/) Open OSS
(https://openoss.sourceforge.net/) Sam Whited-social.coop
(https://social.coop/@sam) Sam Whited Blog
(https://blog.samwhited.com/) Mellium-Go XMPP library
(https://xmpp.org/software/mellium/) XMPP Standards Foundation
(XSF) (https://xmpp.org/about/xmpp-standards-foundation/) Go
(https://go.dev/) Snikket (https://snikket.org/) Jitsi
(https://jitsi.org/) Grindr (https://www.grindr.com/) The Seven
Cooperative Principles (International Cooperative Alliance)
(https://www.ica.coop/en/cooperatives/cooperative-identity) Credits
Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by
Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/)
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound
(https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest: Sam Whited.