Episode 188: Maintainer Month with Ruth Cheesley & Josh Goldberg

Guests Ruth Cheesley | Josh Goldberg Panelist Richard Littauer Show
Notes Note: Due to an issue with Gmail sending the edited podcast
to spam (thanks, gmail), this is going out a bit late! Hello and
welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open
source for the long haul. This is a special podcast and one of
several in this series for GitHub’s Maintainer Month. We’re
interviewing maintainers to ask them about their experience of open
source and their experience of living as maintainers. Our first
guest is Ruth Cheesley, a maintainer and community lead for Mautic,
an open source marketing automation platform. Richard and Ruth dive
into open source governance, community engagement, and organizing
virtual conferences. Ruth shares how she reinvigorated the Mautic
community, highlighting the importance of transparency and
empowering community leaders, and she unveils her project focusing
on governance and fundraising to ensure Mautic’s sustainability.
Our next guest is Josh Goldberg, a full-time independent open
source developer who’s contributed significantly to TypeScript.
They discuss Josh’s transition from TSLint to TypeScript-ESLint,
his efforts to boost developer community efficiency, and the
importance of fair compensation for maintainers. Also, there’s a
conversation on the governance proposal of TypeScript-ESLint and
the challenges of fair funding. Hit download to hear more!
[00:01:06] Ruth tells us about Mautic and the growing community.
Also, the core team/leadership team is made up of team leads for
each functional area and Ruth as project lead. [00:03:32] Ruth
thinks of herself as a maintainer because she’s instrumental in the
project’s direction and ongoing development. [00:04:21] We hear
about a challenging time for Ruth when Mautic was first acquired by
Acquia in 2019, she was brought in as community manger to navigate
this change and was successful in regaining trust an keeping the
project moving forward. [00:07:41] Ruth emphasizes the importance
of transparency in building trust, and she encourages maintainers
to empower their community members by providing opportunities for
leadership and ownership. [00:08:57] What’s been fun for Ruth?
Organizing Mautic’s first-ever conference which was an inclusive,
multi-lingual event with over 300 attendees. [00:12:11] Ruth
discusses her excitement about the independent project they’re
working on, focusing on governance and fundraising. She expressed
her vision for Mautic to be among the top options when people
consider marketing automation tools. [00:13:49] We find out Ruth’s
long-term career aspirations in open source and community
management, and how enjoys the challenge of new tasks and strives
to balance her routine administrative duties with more fulfilling
tasks that bring her joy. [00:17:01] She advises community managers
to keep working in public, even it feels like an echo chamber
initially, as people are watching and learning how they can
contribute to the project. She suggested that this approach
prevents burnout and invites others to generously contribute their
time and support to the project. [00:18:09] Find out where you can
learn more about Mautic and Ruth on the web. [00:20:22] Josh
Goldberg joins us and fills us in on his journey into open source.
He discusses the transition from the TSLint project, a linter for
TypeScript, to TypeScript-ESLint, a set of extensions on top of
ESLint that allows linting of TypeScript code, improving the
efficiency and reducing duplication between the ESLint and TSLint
communities. [00:22:13] His work is primarily funded through the
Open Collective platform and some individual sponsorship on GitHub,
and ESLint also sponsors the TypeScript-ESLint project. [00:23:06]
We learn about the co-maintainers that work on the team. He also
tells us they are working on a governance proposal, involving a
system that ranks contributions by points, aiming to encourage
maintainers and contributors to keep contributing. [00:24:39] Josh
mentions his role as an open source maintainer, which has turned
out to be mostly DevRel. [00:25:42] We hear about sustainable
funding, and one of the challenges Josh experiences is the
necessity to ask for funding, but he sees it as a necessary part of
maintaining an open source project that lacks corporate backing.
[00:27:10] There’s a discussion on sustainable funding and Josh
explains how they have different definitions based on their life
situations. [00:28:54] Josh tells us the work is primarily funded
through the Open Collective platform and some individual
sponsorship on GitHub. He also talks about the governance proposal,
involving a system that ranks contributions by points, [00:31:51]
Josh mentions his role as an open source maintainer, which he
initially thought would be half DevRel and half coding, has turned
out to be DevRel, and he enjoys interacting with users and
networking but misses core coding work. [00:33:03] One of the
challenges Josh experiences is the necessity to ask for funding.
[00:33:56] Richard suggests the possibility of expanding the
TypeScript ESLint team to include toles focused on fundraising and
community building, and Josh loves this idea. [00:35:31] Find out
where you can follow Josh on the web. Quotes Ruth: [00:04:04]
“Maintainers are conductors of an open source project orchestra.”
Josh: [00:31:57] “When I came into this, I thought it would half
DevRel, half coding, but it’s not. It’s majority DevRel and I like
that.” Spotlight 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://mastodon.social/tags/sustainoss) Open
Collective-SustainOSS (Contribute)
(https://opencollective.com/sustainoss) Richard Littauer Twitter
(https://twitter.com/richlitt?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Ruth Cheesley Twitter (https://twitter.com/RCheesley) Ruth Cheesley
Website (https://www.ruthcheesley.co.uk/) Mautic
(https://www.mautic.org/) Mautic Leadership Team
(https://www.mautic.org/mautic-leadership-team) Mautic Contribution
(https://www.mautic.org/tag/contribution) Sustain Podcast- 2
episodes featuring guest Ruth Cheesley
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/guests/cheesley) Josh Goldberg
Website (https://www.joshuakgoldberg.com/#contact) Josh Goldberg
Twitter (https://twitter.com/joshuakgoldberg) TypeScript-ESLint
Mastodon (https://fosstodon.org/@tseslint) Open
Collective-typescript-eslint
(https://opencollective.com/typescript-eslint) Learning TypeScript
by Josh Goldberg
(https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/learning-typescript/9781098110321/)
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 Guests:
Josh Goldberg and Ruth Cheesley.