Episode 157: Joel Wasserman on lessons learned with Flossbank

Guest Joel Wasserman Panelists Richard Littauer | Justin Dorfman
Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk
about sustaining open source for the long haul. Our guest today has
been on this podcast before, and we are super excited to have him
back on. Joining us is Joel Wasserman, co-founder and Founder of
Flossbank and Software Engineer at Google. Today, we’ll find out
what happened to Flossbank and what’s happening next as Joel tells
the story of how the idea of Flossbank came about, and the
challenges and lessons he’s learned along the way. He goes in-depth
about the need for funding, the ginormous difference between an
open source author and an open source maintainer, and diversity in
open source. Download this episode now to hear more! [00:01:23]
What is Flossbank? [00:05:59] Onboarding can be difficult, and Joel
fills us in on some lessons he’s learned. [00:09:53] Richard brings
up a point of finding the right person, and wonders what issues
Joel had was because he was the middleman or something else, and if
it’s hard to find money for any project in open source. Joel
mentions Nadia Eghbal’s book as the best book he’s ever read on the
open source ecosystem. [00:12:58] Justin talks about a blog post
Joel wrote last June on “The Flossbank Attempt,” where he made a
comment “don’t hesitate to reach out,” and he tells us what other
projects are actively asking him for advice. [00:15:20] We hear
what Joel thinks of the benefits of GitHub sponsors and Open
Collective are in comparison to his and why they’re able to garner
some money, and his thoughts on that part of the ecosystem.
[00:18:26] Joel tells us if there will be any sort of government
grants going down the dependency tree and if he’s thought about
that kind of money coming into the system and if there are
benefits. [00:22:26] We hear what Joel thinks about the idea the
maybe Flossbank was never going to work because there’s isn’t as
much altruism in the world from companies and that he’s asking for
something that’s impossible. [00:29:38] Joel talks about payment
mechanisms and something cool they did with Flossbank, working with
a company called Coil that uses Interledger. [00:32:13] Joel
details his realistic and optimistic view on people wanting to
invest in open source and getting money off it, and about diversity
in open source. [00:38:50] Find out where you can follow Joel on
the web. Quotes [00:05:04] “What we didn’t know and what we quickly
found out is that a lot of companies want to have a relationship
with the maintainer they are donating to.” [00:06:21] “Small
companies, startups, are acutely aware of the open source they rely
on.” [00:18:53] “People just take it for granted and they say,
“Well, why should I fund it if the next person isn’t funding it?”
[00:22:48] “There’s a ginormous rarely spoken difference between an
open source author and an open source maintainer. An author chooses
to put that license up. An author has given no promise to working
on this, to securing it toward making sure that other companies get
what they want, bug fixes, future maintenance, making sure their
dependencies, no guarantees.” [00:24:00] “Open source maintainers
are what I’m advocating to get paid and open source maintainers are
the ones who are keeping code up to date, making sure it’s secure,
making sure the dependencies are up to date, making sure the
dependencies are secure, those people are putting in work.”
[00:28:09] “Maintainership is work. It’s a triage of bugs, a triage
of feature requests, it’s actual improvements to a package, it’s a
long-term commitment, it’s a dramatically different persona and
role than author.” [00:32:26] “You should be giving to your entire
open source dependency tree because you don’t know what you depend
on, or you don’t know what maintainer needs that money to do their
work, to keep their package secured, to keep their package up to
date until it breaks.” Spotlight [00:39:01] Joel’s spotlight is
Nadia Eghbal’s book, Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance
of Open Source Software. [00:40:01] Justin’s spotlight is the Open
Technology Fund. [00:40:19] Richard’s spotlight is the book, Sacred
Economics: Money, Gift & Society in The Age of Transition by
Charles Eisenstein. 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) Richard
Littauer Twitter
(https://twitter.com/richlitt?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Justin Dorfman Twitter
(https://twitter.com/jdorfman?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Joel Wasserman Twitter (https://twitter.com/joel_wasserman_)
Flossbank (https://flossbank.com/) Sustain Podcast-Episode 58: Joel
Wasserman on Flossbank and Sustainability Giving Back to
Dependencies (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/58) Feross-Introducing
‘funding’ experiment (https://feross.org/npm-install-funding/)
[Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source
Software by Nadia
Eghbal](https://www.amazon.com/Working-Public-Making-Maintenance-Software/dp/0578675862/ref=sr11?crid=2KZZFJPGJ6QPN&keywords=nadia+eghbal&qid=1675632306&sprefix=nadia+eg%2Caps%2C118&sr=8-1)
The Flossbank Attempt by Joel Wasserman
(https://medium.com/@joelwass/the-flossbank-attempt-de9d8ecc1dcf)
Sustain Podcast-Episode 148-Ali Nehzat of thanks.dev and OSS
Funding (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/148) Sustain
Podcast-Episode 152-Dudley Carr and Wes Carr on StackAid
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/152) thanks.dev
(https://thanks.dev/home) Stackaid (https://www.stackaid.us/) Coil
(https://coil.com/) Interledger Foundation
(https://interledger.org/) Open Technology Fund
(https://www.opentech.fund/news/open-technology-fund-announces-free-and-open-source-software-sustainability-fund/)
Sacred Economics: Money, Gift & Society in The Age of
Transition by Charles Eisenstein (https://sacred-economics.com/)
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:
Joel Wasserman.