Episode 111: Amanda Casari on ACROSS and Measuring Contributions in OSS

Guest Amanda Casari Panelists Richard Littauer | Ben Nickolls |
Eric Berry Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast
where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. We
are very excited for today’s podcast. Our guest is Amanda Casari,
who is a Developer Relations Engineer and Open Source Researcher at
Google Open Source Programs Office (OSPO). Today, we learn about
some open source work Amanda is doing with her research team at the
University of Vermont Complex Systems Center, she tells us about a
project called ACROSS, and a paper that was written by her team
that was actively looking at contributions that are measured for
code centric repositories. Amanda goes in depth about what open
source is to her, she shares advice if you’re looking to
collaborate more effectively with people in open source, she talks
more about how we can support projects financially to other parts
of the world and mentions some great groups she worked with. Go
ahead and download this episode to learn more! [00:02:00] Amanda
fills us in on the open source work that she started working on
with the University of Vermont Complex Systems Center. [00:06:43]
Amanda explains the “assumptions we have that aren’t verified,” as
well as a paper that came from their research team and what they
examined. [00:09:52] We learn more about how people interface with
closed decisions behind doors and open source. [00:13:30] Ben asks
Amanda to tell us what kind of behaviors and differences she sees
between communities that emerge and continue to exists off of
platforms like GitHub and GitLab. [00:15:50] Amanda tells us about
a project their team is working on called ACROSS, and a paper that
won a FOSS award last year that was about actively looking at
contributions that are measured for code centric repositories.
[0019:18] Eric wonders what type of responsibility Amanda sees that
would come from GitHub and if that’s going to affect us long term.
[00:23:01] Amanda explains working as a Control Systems Engineer,
and she explains how she sees open source as blocked diagrams and
feedback loops. [00:27:53] We hear some great advice from Amanda if
you are someone who wants to make the world of open source a more
complex and beautiful place with what you have to offer. [00:32:08]
We hear some thoughts from Amanda for people working in open source
who don’t have a huge amount of privilege to have the ability to
share their energy and find it harder to think laterally.
[00:35:27] Ben wonders what we can do to support projects
financially and what we can do to support the next generation from
the different parts of the world who haven’t had the opportunity to
benefit yet. Amanda shares her thoughts and mentions some really
great groups she worked with such as Open Source Community Africa,
PyCon Africa, and Python Ghana. [00:39:24] Find out where you can
follow Amanda online. Quotes [00:09:01] “A lot of open source
decision making is really behind proprietary or closed doors.”
[00:19:59] “When it feels like there is only one option for any
kind of tool, infrastructure, or access, that’s when I always start
getting concerned.” [00:24:58] “Open source is a ___ system.”
[00:29:59] “Open source is not one thing, it’s many interactive
parts that fit together in different ways.” Spotlight [00:40:10]
Eric’s spotlight is an article Amanda submitted on “Open source
ecosystems need equitable credit across contributions.” [00:40:39]
Ben’s spotlight is a shout out to Jess Sachs and the maintainers of
Faker.js. [00:41:22] Richard’s spotlight is Red Hen Baking in
Vermont. [00:41:47] Amanda’s spotlights are two books: Data
Feminism _and _The Data-Sitters Club that she found on The
Executable Books Project. 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/) Amanda
Casari Twitter
(https://twitter.com/amcasari?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Amanda Casari LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amcasari/) Open
Source Stories (https://www.opensourcestories.org/) The penumbra of
open source: projects outside of centralized platforms are longer
maintained, more academic and more collaborative
(https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.15611) Getting the Giella source code
for your language
(https://giellalt.uit.no/infra/GettingStarted.html) Julia Ferraioli
Blog (https://www.juliaferraioli.com/blog/) What contributions
count? Analysis of attribution in open source (article)
(https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=VRBk-q8AAAAJ&citation_for_view=VRBk-q8AAAAJ:qjMakFHDy7sC)
ACROSS Taxonomy-GitHub (https://github.com/google/across) RubyConf
2021- Black Swan Events in Open Source-That time we broke the
Internet
(https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1g9UDReu80wo14H8beoAJ6n69ZorBYhLjKxOU1ngegeY/edit#slid)
All Contributors bot-GitHub App
(https://github.com/all-contributors/app) All Contributors
(https://allcontributors.org/) Open Source Community Africa
(https://oscafrica.org/) PyCon Africa
(https://pycon-africa-stage.us.aldryn.io/) Python Ghana
(https://www.pythonghana.org/) Open source ecosystems need
equitable credit across contributions (article)
(https://bagrow.com/pdf/casari2021.pdf) Faker
(https://github.com/faker-js/faker) Red Hen Baking Co.
(https://www.redhenbaking.com/) Data Feminism
(https://data-feminism.mitpress.mit.edu/) The Executable Books
Project (https://executablebooks.org/en/latest/) The Data-Sitters
Club (https://datasittersclub.github.io/site/index.html) Credits
Produced by Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Associate
Producer Justin Dorfman (https://www.justindorfman.com/) Edited by
Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/)
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound
(https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Transcript by Layten Pryce
(https://www.fiverr.com/misstranscript) Transcript Richard [00:11]:
Hello, and welcome to Sustain, the podcast where we're talking
about sustaining open-source for the long haul. Who are we? Where
do we come from? Where are we going? What are we going to talk
about today? Very excited for today's podcast. We have an amazing
guest. One of the few guests from the state I am in, which is
really fun for me. I just feel like saying that first before
anything else, because I don't know why, but before we introduce
her, I want to make sure we also talk about the other people you're
going to be hearing on today's podcast. So I am Richard [name].
Hello everyone. And then we also have Benjamin Nichols, sometimes
known as Ben, how are you? Ben [00:48]: I'm good. I'm a bit
enjoying the sun. Thank you. Richard [00:51]: Cool. Okay, great,
Eric, how are you doing? Eric [00:54]: No sun, but I'm really happy
to be here. I'm very well caffeinated. Richard [00:58]: That is
very good. I'm going with apple ciders today. I don't know why, I
think it's because I already have caffeine. Great. So that's the
little tiny stuff at the beginning to set the mood for the show.
And now the actual content. Our guest today is the amazing Amanda
Casari. Amanda Casari is a lot of things. She doesn't like titles
very much, which is cool. So I'm just going to say what she wrote
down in the prep doc, DevRel engineer, plus open source researcher
at Google open-source programs office, which we're going to shorten
to the Google OSPO for the rest of this conversation, because
that's just too much of a word. She also lives in Vermont and has a
long and storied career. Amanda, how are you doing? Amanda [01:39]:
Hi, I'm doing great. It's so good to be here today. And I'm also
absolutely thrilled Richard, that you also live in Vermont. Richard
[01:47]: I know we have this small thing in Vermont where we really
like talking about being in Vermont. I think it's because we're in
a little man's complex because it's a very small state and so it's
just nice to be like, oh, someone else, Amanda, actually that might
be a good intro. So you've been active in open source communities
for over a decade. You've organized local community groups. You've
filed issues. You've cleaned the documentation, you've tested fixes
or fixed tests. You've done all the things. You move chairs around,
but like you're really a systems level person. [02:14] You're all
about thinking about what open-source is and how can we make sure
that the entirety of open-source regenerates builds better, is more
sustainable, is more resilient, is more better for the people
inside of it. Part of that work has been working directly with UVM,
which is confusingly, the University of Vermont and it's based in
Burlington. And it now has, I believe some sort of OSPO. Can you
talk about what that is and how that happened? Amanda [02:40]:
Yeah, so as brief as I can make it, because otherwise I will spend
the next 45 minutes talking about this. I switched into the Google
OSPO office because I started and worked on a partnership and a
research group with the University of Vermont complex system
center. So we started to look within Google and understand how can
we really begin to picture, strategize, think about, learn from
open-source, like you said, from a systems and ecosystems and
networks perspective, which is in line with my background. [03:16]
So in the way, way before, I'm a actually a control systems
engineer. So problems that are dull, dangerous or dirty fit right
with that robotics line of thinking and examining infrastructures
and legacy infrastructures and how things interconnect and where
they need support and where they don't, is absolutely aligned with
what I used to work on. And then I did go to the University of
Vermont and I was a fellow at the complex system center. When I was
studying power systems and I actually looked at electrical
engineering and applied mathematics. [03:48] And so a lot of that
is fundamental for the reason why, like my brain is really shaped
to examine and look at things, as to what scales and what doesn't,
but not from some of the software perspective of how do you scale
things, but where do you actually, and can you find rules that may
or may not apply at different scales and may not work? So we may
try to apply things that work at a smaller group, at a larger scale
and they break down and that's when they actually don't scale. So
working with the University of Vermont, we started in early 2020,
which was a really interesting time to get a new research line
started, especially when one of your core researchers is an
infectious disease modeler. But I would say the benefit from
starting at that time is that we really got lucky in a few places.
[04:37] So one of the places that we got lucky in early 2020, is we
took everything that we were thinking about for the next two years
of life. And we said, this is probably going to change. And we
fundamentally moved some of the money and the grant money around to
start instead examining who needs support now, what can we do now?
So if we're not going to be able to travel, we're not going to be
able to hold community workshops. We're not going to be able to
invite open-source people together to talk to us, what should we be
doing instead? [05:08] One of the things that we did is we hired
another researcher. So we took some of the travel money and some of
the budget for commuting. We moved that into a position at the time
and that, one, was wonderful because that person is brilliant. But
second, it really worked out well because I don't remember if
everyone remember early 2020 academic institutions were shutting
budget and roles and department shut down. And it was really a
crisis mode, but we were sheltered from a lot of that because of
the structure we set up. [05:33] But there's been a lot of great
research coming out of that group and that team. One of the
fundamental things we've been just trying to figure out is where's
the information you would need to understand and what's happening
at open-source at a large scale level? And we found there are a lot
of assumptions that are made that we can't verify. So we find that
we are looking for information always in a way that respects
individuals and respects people in open-source as humans. And
doesn't observe them in a way that is without their consent, but
it's very hard to find the information you need that doesn't just
result from conveniently available information on the internet.
[06:12] But for the OSPO perspective at the University of Vermont,
UVM is a recent recipient of a Sloan tech grant that is going to be
establishing an open-source programs office and also has a research
component to understand and look at open-source communities as they
emerge, especially as they emerge in local communities who have a
directive to really support local effects rather than maybe like a
global effect or a corporate good Richard [06:36]: So much in
there. Most interesting was there were assumptions that we have
that aren't verified. What assumptions are you talking about
regarding open-source and what have you looked at? Amanda [06:47]:
So I rant a lot amongst researchers and groups of people, Richard,
as you know, and I don't have time to verify all of my ranting or
all of my hypothesis. But one of the research lines that I am most
excited about learning and exploring more. There's a paper that
came out from our team and I will add it to the show notes late,r
is called the penumbra of open-source. And so the research team and
I was not on this paper, but the research team examined whether or
not the sample that we used from GitHub is actually representative
of the larger open-source ecosystem. [07:24] And so they went about
looking for individual hosted, but public and open Git servers to
be able to start to look at whether or not, if you choose not to be
on a platform like GitHub or GitLab or any other hosted platform
repository, does your open-source project organization, metadata,
community, organization, decision making, does that look like
what's hosted on GitHub? And they found that it wasn't. So
GitHub itself, they called the convenient sample. It's something
that's used because it's easy for researchers to get to, which I
would also challenge the convenience and ease of getting
specifically that data access, because most of that data is
accessed by researchers, by aggregated collections like the GitHub
archive, or there's a few other aggregation projects, but they're
all open-source or research projects. [08:15] They are funded by
groups like Google or groups like Microsoft. But if you actually
wanted to do aggregated research of what is happening in
open-source and trends in time. That's something that is a huge
data engineering project. And the best that we can do right now is
samples off of those aggregated platforms. But it's not clear in a
way that it used to be. So if you look at a lot of the studies that
are coming out, they may look at something like the Linux kernel,
or they may look at something like projects from the Apache
software foundation, because all of the tools that those developers
use are in a much more aggregated and less distributed format and
also less proprietary systems. [08:57] So that data is actually
accessible and is more transparent. Otherwise, a lot of open-source
decision making is really behind proprietary or closed doors. And
that might be the decision of the community. They may not also
realize that like the effects of those decisions. Richard [09:12]:
I don't know of a lot of projects that are outside of GitHub. I
used to know of one, I just checked and Gela Techno Finn minority
language documentation has now moved to GitHub, which seems to
happen a lot, I assume. And so it's always shocking to me to hear
that people have projects elsewhere and they think about it
elsewhere. One of the things I want to focus on though, besides
that, which always blows my mind, is you talked about open source
decision making happening behind doors. And it seems to me to be at
ends with what we think of as open-source naively when we begin
learning about open=source, we think, oh, open-source, everything's
out in the open. [09:50] It's great. freedom of speech, freedom of
everywhere. I want to know more about how people interface with
closed decisions behind doors and open-source, and whether everyone
knows that, and we're just not talking about it openly, or whether
that's something that actually causes fractures in communities when
they realize that the power is elsewhere. I'm just curious about
your opinion on this. Amanda [10:13]: So to be perfectly frank and
clear, decisions about open-source have always been behind closed
doors. So there is an illusion of access, but not everybody has
always been invited to those meetings. So talking with folks who
have been involved in open-source even much longer than I have,
we've talked about these different kinds of cyclic patterns and
community and transparency and in governance, different kinds of
governance models. So it used to be that folks would show up a few
days before a conference, ahead of time or stay afterwards for a
few conferences. [10:49] And if you were invited to those meetings,
you were part of that decision making group. But I would like to
point out that the first person that became a core dev programmer
contributor for the Cython kernel is actually Mariatta Wijaya. And
she just joined that a few years ago. So she was the first
person who identified as a female who was even invited for this
programming language that's been around for 20 years. And I will
say, I feel like that community's done a wonderful job in
understanding their limitations and where they have and have not
been transparent and open. [11:21] And Guido van Rossum has the
creator of the language has also been one of the staunch
supporters, allies, and movers of change for that. But it took a
long time for that to happen. So the idea that there are these
close off areas where decision are making is nothing new. However,
there was always this idea that at least conversations and
decisions and communication happen as something as open as a
mailing list, and everybody had access to something like the
mailing list. Maybe it was cell hosted or maybe it was hosted on a
centralized platform, but at least you could see it. That's
not the same case anymore. [11:54] We have a ton of developer
platforms now that people choose to have conversations on.
Sometimes those communications get centralized with things like
repositories. And that is for trying to make communication and
understanding more atomic, which is totally understandable. And
every community gets to make these decisions for themselves. And if
you are trying to piece together all of this information, it's a
huge data archeology problem. This is something that Julia Farole
and I talk about a lot, is if you just want to understand what's
happening in a community, who is making decisions, who has access,
who is even doing any of the work, like if we just want to
understand what work is even visible or valued in a community
that's very challenging to see right now. And that's another one of
our core research areas that we're working on, is just making labor
visible across open-source. Ben [12:47]: So I just wanted to kind
of pick up and extend Richards question to a degree. And just, if
you can talk a little bit about the difference that you see in
communities that are based on more kind of some might say modern
traditional platforms, like GitLab, maybe [13:06 inaudible] to
a certain degree, but versus those projects that exist kind of, I
would say off-platform and behind kind of mailing list and so on,
because I think a lot of people would say that some communication
methods like mailing list, mailman and so on could be argued to be
less accessible than say, like GitHubs, that's now got a lot more
kind of discussion based features and so on. So I was just
wondering like what kinds of behaviors you see and what kind of
difference do you see between communities that emerge and continue
to kind of exist off of platforms, like GitHub and GitLab? Amanda
[13:43]: So I will say, I feel like the differences between
centralized platform centric communities and non platform centric
communities. I feel like that actually is still an open research
question because of the fact that again, like the data collection
for it is pretty hard to do, so you have to start like adding
layers at a time. So you can look at things at just like maybe how
the repositories are structured, but that may or may not be
indicative of how decisions are made, which may or may not be
indicative of communication layers. [14:12] But when we start
thinking about this in terms of how do you model that? These are
all actually separate modeling techniques that you use for each of
these different kinds of layers. And I think that is something our
team is actively interested in and working on. I have a lot of
theories that are not founded on that right now. I would love
to start looking at what kinds and if any, are there heard cultural
norms, values, but I would really love to start understanding and
seeing when a decision is made to choose one technology over the
other for dev tool stacks for a community, because there's a lot of
porting that's happened in the last few years. [14:51] How has that
worked out? So not even like the initial choice to choose that dev
tool or that infrastructure stack may have been made five years ago
for different reasons that they would be made now. Has that worked
out to meet the community's goals? Has it changed who has access
and who has voice? Has it changed who's work is visible or is that
something that's still an unsolved problem for the community? And
are there ways that we need to think about focusing on that so that
they get more visibility and transparency regardless of their
decision? \ Ben [15:21]: I kind of feel like those latter points
about whose contributions are recognized and valued and so on is a
little bit of a, hidden nugget of another point, because I would
say that my opinion, which is also not based on fact, but my
experience to date has been communities that are based around
platforms like GitHub are maybe a little bit more code centric and
communities that aren't are possibly a little bit more
interpersonal. And I think that there's a whole load of issues that
we could potentially unpack there. Do you see any of that already?
Is that something that you are already kind of thinking about or
working on? Amanda [15:56]: Yes. So our team has been working on,
we call it the across project and I always forget what the acronym
stands for, but it basically comes to like better attribution and
credit in open source. So we have done research on that. The paper
actually won the Fass award at Minimg Software Repositories
conference last year. And it was actively looking at contributions
that are measured for code centric repositories, as you said,
because this is what we're really trying to show, is that when
you're only looking at code and acknowledging that a lot of people
are trying to shove a lot of things into repos these days that
maybe they weren't intentionally designed for, for, but again,
going along with that idea of atomic information, about a project
or about a community or about an ecosystem. [16:38] So looking at a
repository centric view, we evaluated the difference between how
GitHub contributors shows actions and gives attribution how the
events API does it. There's a tool that one of my colleagues,
Katie McLaughlin wrote called octohatrack, which looks at a code
repo on GitHub and produces a list of contributors for anybody
who's ever interacted with that repository, which is different than
what the GitHub API shows. And then we also compared that against
repositories that were using the all contributors bot. So the all
contributors bot for those listening who are not familiar with
this, the bot it is a way that you can manually add in or add in
through different actions. So it's, auto plus manual. [17:19] Ways
that you can start to give people credit and attribution for things
that may not be reflected by a change in the repo. So we started to
look at the difference between for communities and projects, what
kind of things were getting added manually versus what automatic
contributions would show. And we were able to see that folks
that were using manual additions were giving credit from more of
the kind of work that would never show up in an API. And so part of
this is really starting to think about what kind of mixed methods
tooling, changes to tooling we should be thinking about as a
community to really start to give that visibility into all of the
work that happens like this podcast itself, unless it's in a repo
is not going to be showing up as a part of the open-source
community if you're doing archeology around open-source
contributions. [18:12] But I would argue that discourse and thought
and community should be something that would be recognized. And so
we held some workshops. I mean, we're going to have some more
results coming out from that. But one of the things that we did
find, which we can talk about is that getting everybody in
open-source to agree on what a project is, an organization is, or
an event is a very hard problem. So standardized definitions is not
something that carries across as a global ecosystem level. And so
when we talked earlier about examining different projects, I think
drawing boundaries and open-source is a very challenging problem.
So you have to be very distinct when you talk about where the
boundaries around people are or around technology is as opposed to
being able to say open source is like this big, broad thing. Ben
[19:01]: I was wondering the role of GitHub. And I'm curious your
thoughts on how much control we actually have as an open-source
community to make really effective changes when the tool that
basically we all kind of go to for open source is a private company
with their own interests. I was wondering what type of
responsibility you see that would come from GitHub and is that
going to affect us long term and how so? Amanda [19:26] : I mean,
obviously I work for a for-profit company. I don't work for a
nonprofit, I don't work for, I'm not an independent consultant or
contractor. So for me, I do look at the question of what is the
goal of a community to moving to a centralized platform at any
time. And I think that when done intentionally and if always done
with a feeling of independence and autonomy, that's the right
decision for that team to be able to move and choose which dev
tools and platforms work best for them. When it feels like there
are only one option for any kind of tool or infrastructure or
access, that's when I always will start getting concern. [20:10] So
for me, when we think about centralized platforms, I think the
trade offs for that is considering whether or not this is serving
the community, or is this serving the platform and the product? And
always taking the perspective and understanding that whenever you
choose to be on a product, even if it's a free tier, it's not that
are giving nothing in response for getting everything. So in
the before, like before I used to, I had this job, I think one of
the jokes I used to have with my friends is, if you would like me
to tear down your terms and conditions from a data perspective, I'm
happy to do that for you to talk about what kind of things the data
teams may be working with based on what you sign off as a user.
[20:51] It's something I've been highly aware of my entire career,
but I don't know if everybody else views it that way. So I also
know that when I talk with folks about doing productivity studies
of open-source, it makes people feel a little bit nervous. Nobody
wants to observed in a way that they are not opting into. So when I
try to think about the work that we're doing and where we encourage
and think about transparency, not just as a cultural communal
trait, but as a source of representation and census. [21:21] So
when we hear or think or talk about the larger effects that
open-source has in the world, who gets to be represented in that,
how is their work represented in that? Your decisions around
transparency and proprietary information, how is that influencing
or changing the way that larger view has? How does it change the
conversation? How does that change the global business and how
investments are made? And I think that we can want to pretend that
all of those analogies and realities don't exist, but the fact is
that they do, and individual efforts can add up to collective and
cumulative effects. [22:04] But that's when we really have to start
talking as to who does it serve and why. And so I think for me,
when I think about centralized platforms and whether or not that
gives access, or it removes access, as long as communities are
understanding that and understanding who it leaves out and who it
includes, that's really the decision that I look for when I'm
trying to see why and how people are choosing to be on different
kinds of managed services. Richard [22:33]: I'm really enjoying
this conversation and I'm really enjoying listening to you, but
it's been difficult for me to formulate a question effectively,
partially because a lot of the words you are using are not things
that I have here on autopilot. A lot of our guests, no offense to
them, they're wonderful guests, but I can just be like, cool, where
is your business model coming from? How's that going? How are you
making things better? And with you, the concepts that you're
throwing out during the conversation are ones that I don't
regularly wrestle with, using this verbiage which I find very
effective. One of the things that I know we've talked about before
is open-source as different types of systems, open-source X kind of
a system. You mentioned earlier that you worked as a control. I,
don't even remember the term because I don't really know what it
is, like a control engineer or something I'm guessing that's more
like low level. Amanda [23:22]: Okay. I will give you a little bit
of a break Richard in that, control systems engineer comes up on
exactly zero drop menus. Anytime I've ever had to input. So I don't
even know how many programs have that, but it is what's on my
bachelor's degree and it's not something that is, and to be quite
fair, it's weapons and control systems engineering. Because I went
to the United States Naval academy. So that definitely not on
there, but my focus while I was there was robotic systems and
environmental engineering, which at the time was why are microgrids
not yet feasible and how much does solar cost? So totally fine. If
that doesn't didn't originally. Richard [24:05]: That's excellent.
Thank you for explaining, what did that mean again? Amanda [24:10]:
Well, okay. So the TLDR control systems is how do you take what
could be inoperable systems and actually make them work together,
in a way where you can abstract enough of the way the physics that
you can understand where they interconnect. And for me basically
it's how do I now see the world as block diagrams and feedback
loops? Richard [24:29]: So how do you see open-source as block
diagram and feedback loops? What is open-source then to you? Amanda
[24:34]: Okay. So I have a full list of these kinds of things and I
will say like I have open documents in writing that I have not yet
pushed out. And Julie and I do did touch on this in our Ruby comp
talk. So we gave a talk last year called black swans of
open-source. And that's a research line we're still working on
because we're so fascinated by this issue. But the way that we talk
about it is open-source. Like you said, open-source is a blank
system. And then it's all these different layers and lenses and
views that we are looking at this system as. [25:07] And so talking
about, I think we talked about before that open-source is a complex
system, which is why Vermont complex systems work so well, then I
can go through complexity theory or drop some links into the show
notes for folks who need to be able to work on that. But we also
view the lens that open-source is a sociotechnical system that you
cannot divorce the human and social elements and constructs from
the technical decisions and effects that it has. Open-source is
distributed. It's cooperative. It's an economic system that we
don't talk about enough what that means and the effects that it has
again on people in it and how it evolves over time. [25:40] And
most recently I've also been trying to parse out in my brain that
if we view open-source as a legacy system. The concept of
open-source as a legacy system, what does that mean for me and a
Jing, like an aging global system construct while still keeping it
running and then evolving it moving forward. Where are the magnetic
tape mainframes of open-source that we just stick these clients and
these things on top of? And then build fatter clients on top of,
and then we look at it and we're like, well, everything's fine,
right? [26:20] But then we start to have things like critical
vulnerabilities that are deep down in these older infrastructures
and it strikes us by surprise. So I think this is where the black
swans area moves into is because Julie and I really try to parse
apart and understand what are the analogies and assumptions that we
use to describe open-source and are those valid, do they exist? Are
they just constructs in our minds that we've used as either
recruiting tales or onboarding tales or based on life experience,
but don't really exist outside of our own time-frame. [26:56] So
this is, I think for me trying to like really take a step back and
understand not to is based off of my experience, people ,I know
what I can see online, and this was the Genesis for our open-source
stories project too. So for those who don't know, Julie and I run a
Story Corp project where we are gathering stories from folks in
open-source and making them visible in public. And the purpose of
that isn't even to talk about people's journeys in open source,
it's just to talk about them as humans so that we really start
bringing that cultural perspective together, especially before some
folks just decide they no longer want to be involved. [27:31] So
these are all the different ways that like, let's say background,
current work, everything kind of blends together. How are we
actually thinking about this and how does the world that we all
love and are apart of work and how can we describe it better so
that we could better support it? Richard [27:46]: I couldn't hard
agree more with everything that you're saying around different ways
of viewing open-source. One of the main question I have personally,
and I'm going to try to phrase it in a way that's not just about
Richard, is what advice would you give to someone who has these
thoughts about open-source? You seem to be very and looking at a
complex system and finagling other people to pay you to work on
that complex system and then be able to actually effectively get
your ideas about that system out there into the world.
[28:14] I'm curious for those who are doing other open-source
projects, for those who want to try a different economic system in
their project, who want to talk about open-source is an ethics
system, who want to collaborate more effectively with other people
about whether open-source is even the term they want to use
anymore, et cetera, et cetera. How would you suggest that they make
the world of open-source a more complex and beautiful place with
what they offer? What should they do? Amanda [28:41]: First of all,
call me maybe, because I love co conspirator and people to talk to
and work with. And I would say we talked earlier about how I'm not
a fan of titles. Part of that is because so much of my career has
been really non-linear, job titles, experiences, roles. And this
even goes into, when I talk about thinking of representing labor
and open source, I really try to avoid nouns and focus on verbs
because it's less about what a person is called and more about the
work that they do based on what's needed at the time or required.
And so I think one of my verbs I would turn into a noun Richard is
professional nerd sniper, and that's hard. [29:16] I don't want
sniper in there. So it needs to be like snippet, maybe professional
nerd snippet, because going back to the XKCD comic, I am very good
in conversations at picking up on what brings people energy and
then trying to examine in my like mind map of files, where is there
a gap that I see in the world or in my projects or interests or
someone else's interests and how can I help this energetic person
fit with the thing that gives them energy? [29:48] So for other
people, I would say that first of all, if you do have the idea that
open source is a complex system, keeping in mind that then open
source is not one thing. It's many interacting components and parts
that interact together in multiple ways, which also tells us that
there are local rules you can look at so that there's no one way to
go about being in open-source, doing open-source, contributing to
open-source, leading in open-source. So giving yourself, first of
all, the permission to examine what is it that brings you energy
and where can you put that, versus trying to follow someone else's
path or pattern to what it is that they think being a leader in
open-source looks like. I mean, I started being a data scientist in
2009. Nobody knew what being a data scientist would look like in
2021, 12 years ago. [30:46] So for people who are trying to examine
what to do with their time, energy, talent, is really looking at, I
try to view things as we're working in an emergent system. There's
no map for what's happening next, especially now. There's so much
chaos in what's happening in so many different things that we're
working on that if you're trying to move things forward in a
linear, like exponential scale, you will probably fail right now.
But if instead you're viewing and looking at your work, your
contributions, what you want to have as really kind of interacting
and nudging things in a way where greater things can emerge from
it, I feel like you'll get more satisfaction. [31:28] So I feel
like a lot of that disconnect that folks have who view things
either as a system or from a complexity point, is that they feel
like they keep being shoved into these other expectations and these
other expectations of time or scale or the way things work. And I
would say if you draw back to the things that you really think to
be true and examine that and find other people who value that
you'll be much more satisfied. Richard [31:53]: I know you're a
huge fan of DEI work in open source. A lot of what you said strikes
me as very easy to accomplish if you're privileged, not saying that
was intentional about what you said, I'm just saying that's how it
struck me. And one of the things I'm curious about is, how would
you ask people who are less privileged in open-source to be able to
have the ability to do that and to share that energy and to open
those doors. What would you suggest for people working open-source
who don't have a huge amount of privilege and may find it harder to
laterally? Amanda [32:23]: So, first of all, I do want to say, I
think working in open-source isn't always going to be recognized as
a centralized platform contribution profile. So when we're trying
to say who and how do we actually recognize that work, please do
not use that as the measurement for your own contributions, which
is why I talk a lot about how some of my main contributions in
open-source have been making pies for people because it makes me
happy and it makes them happy. And that just makes general
community good. [32:48] One of the questions I have is when we are
looking at understanding what is best and what's next and needed in
open-source, I am concerned that we have an increasingly weird
bias. And so weird in that case would be categorized as Western
educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. I mean, it's
something I'm aware of. I talk to people about, and like
incognizant of when we are trying to understand the future, are we
increasing that or are we decreasing that? [33:15] And for me that
means a lot more connection, outreach and learning from people who
don't grow up or contribute or form communities that look like
that. And I'll say, I have a ton of work to do there. And I'm very
excited to meet more folks who create community, contribute to
technology, who don't fit that profile and learning more about what
engages them, what keeps them there and what challenges they face,
because we know what challenges some folks face. We know that some
folks work at technology companies and are extremely talented and
rich, but none of their work ever shows up in a public place. And
then when they get home, they have other things that they have to
do and they will never have anything it's in a public place, but it
doesn't make them any less of a contributor in the world. [34:02]
Or maybe even a contributor towards asking questions and
clarifications and making documentation improved in a way that
their name will never show up. But I do think the centralized idea
of finding and connecting with community is universal and ensuring
that everyone has access to information and communication networks
is a human right. And so making sure that people all have access to
global communication regardless of where they live and the devices
that allow them those communication is something we should all be
concerned with and that we should make sure that we are in a way
that increases equity and not in a way that actually separates us
even more. Ben [34:39]: I love this conversation. There have been
so many touch points for me that I'm just massively interested in.
And to be honest, a little bit obsessed by, and I think there is a
moment, an intersection here between kind of a philosophical kind
of view of open-source. You kind of get to decide whether it is
about the peopl or it's about the code, which for me is kind of
like the discussions that you sometimes hear about market
economics, is demand and supply actually decided by the demand side
or by the supply side, because the supply side creates the demand
side? [35:14] I was wondering with that in mind, and talking about
the privilege that people have at the moment to be able to use
their free time to contribute to open-source software versus those
that necessarily don't, what are your thoughts on kind of emerging
ways of being able to support projects financially and things that
we can do to support that, to bring the next generation from the
developing world, from the global [35:38 inaudible], from
however you want to kind of refer to the parts of the world where
people just haven't really had the opportunity to benefit yet.
Amanda [35:45]: So I think one of the best things we can think
about doing is technology companies can start building more offices
in places that are not the United States and Europe and certain
countries in Asia. So encouraging, not just offshore or remote job.
And I know that the idea of offices right now still feels like
perhaps either a scary thing. But the reason I bring that up is
because very concretely that also changes tax structures and
incentives and benefits for companies. [36:11] So there's a big
difference between being able to hire someone as a contract, which
is fine. That's sometimes the job structure that some people want,
but that's a very different benefit structure for other people than
sometimes being a full-time employee. So when I think about equity,
one of the first things I started thinking about is where are you
investing in offices? Where are you investing in incorporating your
company? Where are you invested in hiring people from? And the very
clear economics of link communities in those countries and
countries that are not places that other companies do business is
sometimes it can be very challenging as you well know, to get money
transferred across borders. [36:47] And in a way where it respects
regulatory requirements and actually understands all of those tax
incentives. So sometimes one of the hard problems in open-source is
getting resources to the groups. If you have resources and someone
else needs them moving the thing you have to the thing in need can
be very challenging because we only have so many systems that are
set up to be able to do that. And being able to do that at scale is
an entirely different problem. So when I start thinking about
growing places, first of all, I do think about also asking the
people who are already there and who are already creating those
groups and those challenges. [37:25] So I really have learned a lot
and I absolutely love working with the folks from open-source
community Africa, and also from Python, Africa and Python, Ghana or
some really interesting groups. Python, Ghana is interesting for me
because is a countrywide Python community. It's both distributed
and centralized in the same way that seems to be working well for
folks that they work with. And it incorporates a lot of other kind
of groups. Open-source community Africa, I had a chance to go to
their open-source festival right before the shutdown in 2020.
[37:56] And they had, I think they were expecting like a few
hundred people. And by the final day it was over a thousand. I
mean, it was tons of students and people brought together and it
was absolutely wonderful. When I think also too, about another
thing I'm working on now, I would love to improve documentation
transparency and reporting around sponsorships for open-source of
just making it more clear, what organizations need in a way that is
discoverable accessible and able to be found by groups. [38:30] I
would love the people who have resources to give, to cast wider
nets and have better places to be able to connect with those they
depend on and in return, I would love transparency reporting for
those sponsorships and the impacts of those sponsorships to be
accessible in ways that when we see organizations or foundations or
very small projects, be recipients of sponsors, giving them the
support and the tools they need to be able to show what impact that
had also for holding each other more accountable. There's a lot of
money moving around in these ecosystems. And the questions that I
constantly have is, are those the right places they should be
moving? Richard [39:15]: I think that's probably a really good
place to wrap up because it was just so succinct and perfect. So
thank you so much, Amanda, for people who want to get in touch with
you on the internet to learn more how they can collaborate and get
these things done with your help, if you're available, where can
they find you online? Amanda [39:30]: Twitter is the best place to
contact me, which I know is a closed platform, but it's the easiest
way for me to go through all of the direct contact. If you're
curious about the open-source stories project, we are on GitHub,
but we also have a website with links to be able to contact there
as well. Richard [39:49]LThank you so much. And Twitter will also
be in the show notes for those of you who want to reach her on
Twitter. Amanda this has been excellent, but don't go yet. This is
the part of the show where we talk about people, projects or
things, which we think we should shed light on and or that need
more love, that's right. It's spotlight, Eric Barry, what is your
spotlight today? Eric [40:11]: First I got to say, I'm just
overwhelmed on how amazing the show has been. So thank you, Amanda.
Absolutely incredible podcast episode. I'm a big fan boy. So what
I'd like to spotlight is actually an article you had submitted on
open-source ecosystems, which need equitable credit across all of
the contributions and stuff. I read through that, it was just
really fascinating. I recommend anybody to read it. The link will
be in the show notes. Richard [40:35]: Thank you so much.
Excellent. Ben Nichols. Ben [40:38]: This is incredibly timely. So
excuse me if it doesn't age too well, but I just wanted to give a
big shout out to Jess Sax and the maintainers of [inaudible] JS
that have picked up the project and are kind of providing a huge
value to the community that depend on that project. We've been
working with them over the course of the last week and the way that
they have acted to try to kind of set things up in the best
interests of all of the users, all of the kind of contributors, the
previous maintainers and everything. Like it's just, it's been
great to work with them. So I just wanted to kind of call out Jess
specifically, but all of the new maintainers of [inaudible] JS.
Richard [41:18]: Awesome. Thank you. In a left turn, I'm going to
just give a shout out to Red Hen baking. If you're in Vermont
and you want to go to a really nice bakery, there's a place in
Middlesex, which is really nice. It's called Red Hen. If you don't
have a local baker, I'd suggest looking around because if you're in
the United States, there's probably a bakery near you somewhere
that makes really good bread. This is mine. So Red Hen baking is
excellent. Really like their mad river loaf, highly suggest.
Amanda, what is your spotlight today? Amanda [41:47]: Yeah. So for
those who don't know, I'm also a complete library and book nerd.
And so I get really excited about the open-access projects and
books. And so my recommendation, I couldn't narrow it down. So I'm
going to say my recommendations today. I love the data feminism
book that came out in 2020. It is available via open-access. I
recently found a project called the data sitters club, which
attracted to me because I found it on the executable book project,
which is a whole community around Jupiter book, open-access and
computational publishing. [42:16] The data sitters club is this
group of people who are helping to explain computational text
analysis and open data using open-access, open data and actual
exploring fair use. And it is completely fair use of the
babysitters club that I grew up with. And I absolutely adore the
way that they've adopted that. They have a lovely debt of public
health posters for the pandemic that they created in 2020 that
still bring me joy to read. Richard [42:46]: Love it. Awesome,
Amanda, thank you. Once again, it was great having you on, look
forward to talking to you further in the future and best of luck
with everything. Thanks. Amanda [42:55]: Thank you. This is great.
Special Guest: Amanda Casari.