Episode 142: Nicholas Zakas on Sponsoring Dependencies, All The Way Down

Guest Nicholas Zakas 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 is
a returning guest that we’ve had on before. We are excited to have
joining us, Nicholas Zakas, who’s one of the maintainers on ESLint,
which is a tool that helps you find and fix problems in your
JavaScript code. Today, we’ll learn all about ESLint, the
maintainers, contributors, and how they get paid. Also, we’ll find
out the success behind ESLint, and a post about sponsoring
dependencies that Nicholas wrote on his blog. Go ahead and download
this episode now to learn more! [00:02:23] Nicholas tells us all
about ESLint, their maintainers that work on the project, and how
many people have contributed to the project on GitHub. [00:07:29]
Nicholas tells us how maintainers get paid as part of his
governance strategy. [00:10:04] Justin asked about the fact that
ESLint not only pays contributors, but also pays downstream
dependencies. [00:12:04] Richard wonders where all the money comes
from that gave ESLint this huge surplus, and Nicholas explains how
they raised so much and what it is about ESLint that makes that
possible. [00:16:10] We hear some reflections from Richard as he
congratulates Nicholas and makes some important points about the
success of ESLint. [00:20:19] Nicholas fills us in on the OpenJS
Foundation Project. [00:23:57] Richard talks about a blog post
Nicholas wrote on his blog about sponsoring dependencies, and
Nicholas explains the difference between large charismatic projects
and smaller projects and how he sees the role of large projects in
funding the smaller ones. [00:31:41] We hear what ESLint did with
sponsoring dependencies, and Nicholas tells us about some projects
that they wanted to support financially, but turned them down.
[00:38:06] Find out where you can follow Nicholas and ESLint
online. Quotes [00:07:43] “Everybody on the team, the committers,
reviewers, technical steering committee, gets paid an hourly rate
for their contributions.” [00:07:53] “Contributions can be anything
that contributes to the project, reviewing issues and pull
requests, attending meetings, helping people on discord, helping
people on GitHub discussions, and if people ever go to conferences
or meetings representing the team, they can also charge for that.”
[00:10:15] “We made a decision the beginning of last year that it
was time to start supporting our dependencies.” [00:12:28] “I do
think we are lucky in a lot of ways that we’ve had champions inside
of companies who were working within their company to get ESLint’s
support.” [00:13:13] “In the beginning, we were hesitant to start
spending the money because we didn’t know how reliable that source
of income would be, and we were worried we wouldn’t be able to pay
a living wage.” [00:21:25] “Being in a foundation is one type of a
reputational check mark that an open source project can get.”
[00:26:15] “I think OpenSSL is a great example of [the funding
problem]. It’s a foundational piece of internet infrastructure.”
[00:28:31] “We went on backyourstack.com and started looking for
the projects that we were depending on that had Open Collective
pages and said, as a project, what is good for open source in
general, is also good for ESLint.” [00:29:20] “Open source, in
general, is this collective of projects that are built on top of
projects that are built on top of projects that are built on top of
projects, and we have no problem giving that recognition when we’re
talking about what the project is built upon.” Spotlight [00:39:47]
Justin’s spotlight is the new book, What if? 2 by Randall Munroe.
[00:40:31] Richard’s spotlight is David Troupes, Buttercup Festival
comic strips. [00:41:03] Nicholas’s spotlight is the book,
WebAssembly: The Definitive Guide by Brian Sletten 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)
Nicholas Zakas Twitter (https://twitter.com/slicknet) Nicholas
Zakas GitHub (https://github.com/nzakas) ESLint
(https://eslint.org/) ESLint Twitter
(https://twitter.com/geteslint?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
ESLint GitHub (https://github.com/eslint/eslint) ESLint-Open
Collective (https://opencollective.com/eslint) Sustain
Podcast-Episode 101: Nicholas Zakas and ESLint
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/guests/zakas) Sponsoring
dependencies: The next step in open source sustainability (Human
Who Codes Blog)
(https://humanwhocodes.com/blog/2022/06/sponsoring-dependencies-open-source-sustainability/)
Sustain Podcast-Episode 117: Mike McQuaid of Homebrew on
Sustainably Working on OSS Projects
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/117) Sustain Podcast-Episode 126:
GitHub Maintainer Month with Mike McQuaid of Homebrew and Nina
Breznik of DatDot (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/126)
BackYourStack (https://backyourstack.com/) Securing Open Source
Software Act of 2022 (Sustain)
(https://discourse.sustainoss.org/t/securing-open-source-software-act-of-2022/1098)
What if? 2 by Randall Munroe (https://xkcd.com/what-if-2/) David
Troupes-Buttercup Festival comic strips (Patreon)
(https://www.patreon.com/buttercupfestival) WebAssembly: The
Definitive Guide by Brian Sletten
(https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/webassembly-the-definitive/9781492089834/)
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:
Nicholas Zakas.