Episode 148: Ali Nehzat of thanks.dev and OSS Funding

Guest Ali Nehzat 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. Get ready for an exciting
guest today as we welcome, Ali Nehzat, who’s a Software Engineer
with a preference for embedded systems and Founder of thanks.dev.
Ali’s been around for a while, and he realized that the open source
ecosystem needs some help, and his focus is specifically on the OSS
funding problem. Today, we’ll learn more about Ali’s story of why
he started thanks.dev, what motivated him, people that inspired him
through his journey, and he reveals his mission for OSS developers.
But it doesn’t stop there! Ali dives into different aspects he’s
experimenting for funding, he tells us how payouts are supported so
developers get paid, and how he’s planning on making this more
sustainable. Download this episode now to find out more! [00:02:53]
We find out the difference between thanks.dev and the other
platforms, and Ali tells us his story about being motivated by
Brian Carlson from the Node.js community, who’s behind
node-postgres. [00:08:13] Ali talks about thanks.dev’s approach
with helping to convince people to give money to open source.
[00:11:20] We hear the tools that thanks.dev offers to its
engineers to help them figure out how to sell giving back to open
source. [00:14:07] After having conversations with OSPO companies,
Ali explains how everything is a learning experience currently with
thanks.dev, and he states the reason for thanks.dev not getting
involved with code of conduct right now and what the mission is.
[00:17:51] Licensing landscape is brought up by Ali and the
conversations happening around it. [00:20:51] Ali fills us in on
the insightful conversations he had with Joel Wasserman who really
helped him in his journey, as well as other people, with
thanks.dev, as well as some ideas to solve the funding with open
source and make sure thanks.dev is sustainable going forward.
[00:23:05] As far as projects go, Ali tells us who’s he’s worked
with to get more funding. [00:26:06] Justin wonders if there’s any
papers Ali’s read dealing with the complexities and edge cases, he
explains how he would like to publish blog posts he wrote, and the
testing and the experiments he’s been doing, and the impact Duane
O’Brien from Indeed has made. [00:29:28] Richard brings up payment
payouts and wonders how Ali is making sure the money actually gets
to the developers and that helps the sustainability of those
projects. [00:33:50] Ali is currently not getting a salary for
this, but he tells us how fundraising through family and friends
helped him, and how he’s planning to make this sustainable for him.
[00:35:37] Find out where you can follow Ali on the web. Quotes
[00:03:20] “Currently, thanks.dev is focusing on an experiment if
you make it super easy for companies to donate to their dependency
trees, what would be the outcome of that?” [00:04:41] “When I got
interested in the funding space and in the challenges that open
source maintainers face, it was actually all motivated by Brian
Carlson in the Node.js community, who’s the person behind
node-postgres.” [00:06:35] “It’s not just funding, it’s project
management and it’s community management. There’s a whole array of
other problems that can be attacked.” [00:09:12] “When I hit that
barrier, the approach I took was to add a line item to my invoices
for the OSS ecosystem.” [00:22:02] “The biggest learning is that to
solve the funding problem in open source, you have to look at it
from the perspective of the marketplace.” [00:23:50] “Then there’s
a whole cohort of donors on GitHub and Open Collective that are
engineering managers that are going to their own organizations and
getting donations done and figuring out the motivations and actions
behind these people.” [00:26:52] “The input that Duane O'Brien has
had on thanks.dev has made such a huge impact.” Spotlight
[00:37:32] Justin’s spotlight is CodeMirror. [00:38:19] Richard’s
spotlight is Atom. [00:39:04] Ali’s spotlight is Brian Carlson.
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)
Ali Nehzat LinkedIn (https://au.linkedin.com/in/ali-nehzat-75428a7)
Ali Nehzat Twitter (https://mobile.twitter.com/nehzata) thanks.dev
Twitter (https://mobile.twitter.com/thanks_dev) ali@thanks.dev
(mailto:ali@thanks.dev) thanks.dev (https://thanks.dev/home)
Sustain Podcast-Episode 58: Joel Wasserman on Flossbank and
Sustainably Giving Back to Dependencies
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/58) Sustain Podcast-Episode 96:
Chad Whitacre and how Sentry is giving $150 to their OSS
Dependencies (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/96) Sustain Podcast- 2
episodes featuring guest, Duane O’Brien
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/guests/duane-obrien) Sustain
Podcast-2 episodes featuring guest, Nicholas Zakas
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/guests/zakas) CodeMirror
(https://codemirror.net/) Atom (https://atom.io/) Brian
Carlson-GitHub (https://github.com/brianc) node-postgres
(https://github.com/brianc/node-postgres) 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: Ali Nehzat.