Episode 149: Naytri Sramek on the GitHub Accelerator and M12 GitHub Fund

Guest Naytri Sramek 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. Today, we’re super
excited to have joining us as our guest, Naytri Sramek, who’s the
Senior Director of Strategy at GitHub. Have you heard of the GitHub
Accelerator and M12 GitHub Fund? Well, this is a great day to be
joining us because Naytri is here to talk about these programs that
they’ve been launching to help support and sustain OSS over the
long haul. Naytri shares GitHub’s journey which began with the
GitHub Sponsors launch in 2019, bringing on enterprise sponsors,
and how it led into launching the GitHub Accelerator program and
the M12 GitHub Fund. Go ahead and download this episode now to
learn more. [00:01:23] Naytri reveals the two things they’ve been
launching which are the GitHub Accelerator and the M12 GitHub Fund.
She also tells us about bringing on enterprise sponsors since
they’ve benefited from open source. [00:06:25] Peter Thomas, who
worked at Intuit and is creator of Karate Labs, is brought up and
Justin wonders if he’s involved in this venture or if there are
others. [00:09:37] A question comes up regarding if the growth of
the projects has been tracked with the money that GitHub has given
to developers, if they’ve been able to quit their jobs since the
money was given to them, and if those projects have improved.
[00:15:35] We hear the focus of the GitHub sponsors, the
Accelerator, and the M12 Fund. [00:19:57] Justin brings up the
difficult issue of how to deal with developers that build these
critical pieces of software, but they don’t want to deal with the
responsibility and wonders how Naytri and her team deal with this
issue. [00:23:18] There’s a 10-week course for the accelerator
program and we hear how it works, and if it will be available to
everyone in the future on GitHub. [00:29:28] Naytri explains how
the communities are being funded. [00:32:47] A point is brought up
about how long can these strategies and programs live on so
maintainers and open source developers can make a good living, and
Naytri goes in depth about the need for more sources of funding and
funding models. [00:36:34] Find out where you can learn more about
the GitHub Accelerator and the M12 Fund. Quotes [00:17:40] “The M12
GitHub Fund is all about how we do invest in the tools that are
built on GitHub’s platform.” [00:24:33] “I want 20 people making
$200,000 a year.” [00:24:58] “The GitHub Accelerator course itself
will be open source.” [00:28:08] “As we’ve expanded the program
into more countries, we’ve doubled the number of countries that
sponsors cover right now.” [00:30:10] “Commits aren’t universal.
You shouldn’t just be rewarded for the code.” [00:33:07] “The way
we’re thinking about the accelerator and the fund is we need so
many more sources of funding and funding models to be able to
support open source creators as well as communities.” Spotlight
[00:37:44] Justin’s spotlight is Jessica Lord, who’s the GitHub
Sponsors Product Lead. [00:38:14] Richard’s spotlight is Bill
Watterson, author of Calvin and Hobbes. [00:38:23] Naytri’s
spotlight is Mike Perham and a 10 year anniversary post he wrote to
Sidekiq. 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)
Naytri Sramek LinkedIn
(https://www.linkedin.com/in/naytri-sramek-a6872516?trk=people-guest_people_search-card)
naytri@github.com (mailto:naytri@github.com) fund@github.com
(mailto:fund@github.com) GitHub Accelerator
(https://accelerator.github.com/) GitHub Blog- An open source
economy-built by developers, for developers by Naytri Sramek
(https://github.blog/2022-11-09-an-open-source-economy-built-by-developers-for-developers/)
Sustain Podcast-Episode 56: Dominic Tarr on Coding What You Want,
Living on A Boat, and the Early Days of Node.js
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/56) Karate Labs
(https://www.karatelabs.io/) Hopscotch
(https://www.gethopscotch.com/) Justin Dorfman Tweet: The hard
decisions popular open source project maintainers need to
make…daily.
(https://twitter.com/jdorfman/status/1597991465673596935) Jessica
Lord-GitHub (https://github.com/jlord) Bill Watterson-Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Watterson) Happy 10th Birthday,
Sidekiq! -by Mike Perham
(https://www.mikeperham.com/2022/01/17/happy-10th-birthday-sidekiq/)
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:
Naytri Sramek.