Episode 174: Maintainer Month with Bob Killen & Navendu Pottekkat

Guests Bob Killen | Navendu Pottekkat Panelist Richard Littauer
Show Notes 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 what their
experience is of maintainership and open source. Today, we’re very
excited to have two guests joining us. Our first guest is Bob
Killen, who’s a Program Manager at Google, serves the Kubernetes
project as a Steering Committee member and chair of the Contributor
Experience Special Interest Group. Bob talks about the mentoring
cohort approach the Kubernetes community has, the importance of
titles, and the value of a defined contributor ladder to recognize
and motivate contributors. Our next guest is Navendu Pottekkat,
who’s a Maintainer of Apache APISIX, the Cloud Native API Gateway.
Navendu tells us about his experience in contributing to building,
scaling, and maintaining open source projects, his involvement in
mentorship programs, and the importance of people focusing on
balancing the code with the community aspect. Download this episode
now to hear much more! Bob: [00:02:00] Bob’s role at Google
encourages him to contribute and to be active in the Kubernetes
community and being part of the OSPO, where he’s focused on
maintaining the overall health of the project and keeping track of
various services. [00:03:02] He’s been in the open source space
since mid-2000s and was already working on Kubernetes before
joining Google. [00:04:16] We hear about the Contributor Experience
Special Interest Group, what Bob does there, and the mentoring
cohort approach the Kubernetes community has to help grow people
into maintainer roles. [00:07:56] Since Kubernetes avoids private
Slack channels, Bob explains how he asks questions in an open
place. [00:08:45] Bob finds it challenging to maintain his role in
special interest groups while working full-time, as there is always
an endless backlog of issues and prioritizing and triaging can be
difficult. [00:09:45] What keeps Bob working there? Well, he enjoys
the people he works with and going to KubeCon events has helped him
connect with so many people. [00:11:45] Something Bob is looking
forward to doing is stepping down from some of his leadership roles
and mentoring others to replace him. [00:13:15] Bob shares some
advice to his potential replacement, and he discusses the
importance of titles in helping people understand the time
investment and leadership responsibilities of being a maintainer.
[00:16:12] He explains the value of a defined contributor ladder to
recognize and motivate contributors. [00:16:50] Find out where you
can read more about Bob and his work on the web. Navendu:
[00:19:29] Our next guest is Navendu, and he tells us about APISIX.
[00:21:03] Navendu talks about how he got involved in open source
and how he mentors students and new developers who are interested
in building stuff in the cloud. Also, he tells us about being a
part of the Linux Foundation mentorship program. [00:23:35] We hear
about Navendu’s involvement in mentorship programs like Google
Summer of Code and the Linux Foundation mentorship program.
[00:25:30] There’s a discussion on the importance of stipends for
students and how mentorship is an important aspect of open source
projects. [00:26:42] Navendu mentions that it’s easy to convince
him company and the APISIX community about the importance of
mentorship and community in open source. [00:28:24] What’s hard
about open source for Navendu? He mentions that working on open
source projects can be overwhelming especially when there are
always issues that need to be addressed and pull requests that need
to be reviewed. [00:30:11] We hear some tips for people to step up
to take of the community, and Navendu encourages users and
community members to get involved. [00:32:20] Find out where you
can learn more about Navendu and APISIX online. Quotes Quote from
Bob: [00:14:23] “That title winds up being a much bigger thing
because it’s easier to explain than hey, I’m a lead of this.”
Quotes from Navendu: [00:23:11] “Being online 24/7 is taking a toll
on my health and is not sustainable.” [00:26:52] “There is always
some aspect of mentorship when you’re working on open source
projects.” [00:29:46] “If you have people focus on community it
helps.” [00:30:41] “At some point, some maintainers have to step up
and take care of the community.” 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) Richard Littauer
Twitter
(https://twitter.com/richlitt?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Richard Littauer Mastodon (https://mastodon.social/@richlitt) Bob
Killen Website (https://mrbobbytabl.es/) Bob Killen Twitter
(https://twitter.com/mrbobbytables) Bob Killen Mastodon
(https://hachyderm.io/@mrbobbytables) KubeCon 2023 North America
(https://events.linuxfoundation.org/kubecon-cloudnativecon-north-america/)
KubeCon 2023 China
(https://www.lfasiallc.com/kubecon-cloudnativecon-open-source-summit-china/)
Navendu Pottekkat Website (https://navendu.me/) Apache APISIX
(https://apisix.apache.org/) Apache APISIX-How to Contribute
(https://apisix.apache.org/docs/general/how-to-contribute/) 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: Bob Killen and
Navendu Pottekkat.