Episode 138: Ruth Cheesley, the Mautic Project Lead at Acquia, on Building and Growing Open Source Communities

Guest Ruth Cheesley Panelists Richard Littauer | Ben Nickolls |
Eriol Fox | Justin Dorfman Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain!
The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long
haul. Today, we are excited to have as our guest, Ruth Cheesley,
joining us from the UK. She is an open-source advocate and Project
Lead for Mautic at Acquia. We invited Ruth on this podcast because
we don’t seem to have enough talks from people who are part of an
actual community of coders. Today, Ruth tells us all about Mautic
and her job there as Project Lead, she fills us in on Drupal and
Acquia, and a tool they used in managing community health called,
Savannah. We’ll also hear Ruth’s strategy when she helped with
governance, why Open Source Friday is so important, she explains
how she diversifies the contributor base, and we hear her ten-year
vision for Mautic she’s working on. Go ahead and download this
episode now to learn more! [00:02:38] Ruth explains what Mautic is,
how she became the Project Lead and being on the Community
Leadership Team at Joomla. [00:04:48] Find out the difference
between Joomla, Drupal, Acquia, and Mautic. [00:06:17] From someone
that organizes open source communities at his job, Justin asks Ruth
what tools she uses, and she tells us about one called, Savannah.
[00:08:54] Ruth tells us about what her strategy was when she
helped with governance. [00:12:47] Richard wonders if the
assessment also applies to Mautic and if Mautic is just the same as
every other open source project on the web. [00:16:03] Eriol asks
Ruth to tell us some success stories or things that have been
tricky between different kinds of functions within the open source.
[00:19:14] We learn how Ruth sees her role or the roles of other
people who are being paid as being part of a sustainable path for
Mautic itself, and how money has a play in the ecosystem as well as
attribution. [00:21:59] Ruth explains if Acquia pays for full-time
engineers and for traditional coder roles for Mautic, and she tells
us about Open Source Friday. [00:24:20] Eriol wonders if there’s
anything people can go read or listen to around how smaller
organizations or individuals can make that kind of contribution
sustainable and are there things we can implement. [00:27:09] Ruth
tells us about a partner’s program they created in Mautic.
[00:29:27] How does Ruth manage to diversify the contributor base,
given that not everyone has the access or time to do that sort of
work? [00:32:01] Ruth shares a ten-year vision with a three-year
strategy for Mautic. [00:34:10] Find out where you can follow Ruth
online. Quotes [00:09:14] “There wasn’t really a community
empowerment process to set up workflows and training for people to
take on the releases, so the project just sort of slowed down.”
[00:32:28] “It’s quite tricky during longer term plans when you
have lots of businesses that are depending on your software,
because what one business thinks the product should do is maybe
different to what another business thinks the product should do.”
Spotlight [00:35:27] Justin’s spotlight is Tour de Source
newsletter. [00:35:46] Eriol’s spotlight is Fantasy Map Generator.
[00:36:20] Ben’s spotlight is Roden open source bike design.
[00:37:02] Richard’s spotlight is Richard Matthews and his Oyster
Yachts, and the Royal Naval Tot Club of Antigua & Barbuda.
[00:37:46] Ruth’s spotlight is Ardour, a tool to compose music.
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)
Ben Nickolls Twitter
(https://twitter.com/BenJam?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Justin Dorfman Twitter (https://twitter.com/jdorfman?lang=en) Eriol
Fox Twitter (https://twitter.com/EriolDoesDesign) Ruth Cheesley
Twitter (https://twitter.com/RCheesley) Ruth Cheesley LinkedIn
(https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ruthcheesley) Ruth Cheesley Website
(https://www.ruthcheesley.co.uk/) Mautic (https://www.mautic.org/)
Joomla (https://www.joomla.org/) Sustain Podcast-Episode 109: Dries
Buytaert of Drupal on Balancing Makers and Takers to Scale and
Sustain Open Source
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/guests/buytaert) Drupal
(https://www.drupal.org/) Mautic Open-Source Marketing Automation
Project (Open Collective) (https://opencollective.com/mautic)
Savannah (https://www.savannahhq.com/) Mautic Community Manifesto
(https://www.mautic.org/blog/community/mautic-community-manifesto)
Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source
Software by Nadia Eghbal
(https://press.stripe.com/working-in-public) Google Season of Docs
(https://developers.google.com/season-of-docs) Open Source Friday
(https://opensourcefriday.com/) Acquia’s Drupal Acceleration Team
(https://dev.acquia.com/blog/acquias-drupal-acceleration-team)
Acquia’s response to the Mautic Community Manifesto
(https://www.mautic.org/blog/press/acquias-response-to-the-mautic-community-manifesto)
Mautic Community Governance Model
(https://www.mautic.org/blog/press/mautic-community-governance-model)
Response to Community Consultation on the Governance Model Proposal
(https://www.mautic.org/blog/press/response-to-community-consultation-on-the-governance-model-proposal)
Establishing an incentivised partners programme in an open source
project
(https://speaking.ruthcheesley.co.uk/uIAJxk/establishing-an-incentivised-partners-programme-in-an-open-source-project)
Tour de Source (https://tourdesource.substack.com/) Fantasy Map
Generator (https://github.com/Azgaar/Fantasy-Map-Generator) Roden
(https://opencollective.com/roden) Oyster Yachts
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_Yachts) Royal Naval Tot Club
of Antigua & Barbuda (http://rntc.club/) Ardour
(https://ardour.org/) Ardour-GitHub (https://github.com/Ardour)
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:
Ruth Cheesley.