Episode 104: Duane O’Brien and Mandy Grover on Investing in Open Source: The FOSS Contributor Fund

Guest Duane O’Brien | Mandy Grover Panelists Richard Littauer |
Justin Dorfman | Ben Nichols Show Notes Hello and welcome to
Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for
the long haul. On today’s episode we have two excellent guests,
Duane O’Brien and Mandy Grover. Duane is the Head of Open Source at
Indeed and Mandy is a Technical Content Architect III, as well as
manages a team within the Technical Content organization at Indeed.
They are here to talk about the FOSS Fund and the recently released
FOSS Fund report. Duane and Mandy go in detail on the report and
expand on who it is for, how to use it, tools they used, and things
they’ll be writing about in the second report. We also learn the
ups and downs of writing, but more importantly how Duane and Mandy
built their friendship and trust in the process of writing this
report successfully. Go ahead and download this episode now to
learn more! [00:03:11] Mandy and Duane fill us in on the FOSS Fund
report titled, Investing in Open Source: The FOSS Contributor Fund.
[00:04:57] We learn more about how the FOSS Contributor Fund
started, what it is, and how the response has been so far.
[00:09:06] Justin wonders if Duane and Mandy ever thought this
would become the blueprint, and then we hear the story how the
Sentry thing came about. [00:16:08] Learn about some new things
coming out in the second report. [00:19:24] Duane explains how you
can still use this report even if your organization is not huge.
[00:20:56] Richard wonders if you were a coder, how could you make
yourself more eligible to be a recipient of funds. [00:24:19] Find
out about a few of the tools they talk about in the report, one
which is called Starfish. [00:26:28] Mandy fills us in on how
everything went when they released the report and how they set
expectations with each other. Duane also brings up about asking
maintainers to write things. [00:33:54] Find out where you can find
this report and where you can find Duane and Mandy online. Quotes
[00:13:56] “We had this moment where we were like, it’s certainly
projects, it’s certainly money, it’s certainly all these things,
but at the heart of it is people.” [00:21:17] “The biggest problem
that we don’t talk about is this: You are a single project in a sea
of thousands that organizations may depend on.” [00:26:48] “We set
expectations early, we knew the goal, and we were always there
supporting each other and holding each other accountable.”
[00:33:12] “Let’s temper our expectation of what we want
maintainers to do when it comes to documenting things because it’s
not easy.” Spotlight [00:35:15] Justin’s spotlight is
Opensourcestories.org. [00:35:35] Ben’s spotlights are 24 Pull
Requests and The Good Docs Project. [00:36:37] Richard’s spotlight
is John Hill. [00:37:08] Mandy’s spotlight is to watch all movies.
[00:38:29] Duane’s spotlight is the book, A Psalm for the Wild-
Built by Becky Chambers. 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/) Duane
O’Brien Twitter (https://twitter.com/DuaneOBrien) Duane O’Brien
Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/duaneobrien) Mandy Grover
Twitter (https://twitter.com/mandyegrover) Mandy Grover Twitter
(Indeed) (https://twitter.com/agrover_indeed) Mandy Grover Linkedin
(https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandygrovermatc/) Indeed Open Source
(https://opensource.indeedeng.io/) Investing in Open Source: The
FOSS Contributor Fund-(EBOOK)
(https://opensource.indeedeng.io/Investing-in-Open-Source/) Sustain
Podcast-Episode 80: Emma Irwin and the FOSS Fund Program
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/guests/emma-irwin) Sustain
Podcast-Episode 96: Chad Whitacre and how Sentry is giving $150k to
their OSS Dependencies
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/guests/chad-whitacre) Sustain
Podcast- Episode 38: Working Group Updates with Justin & Javi
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/38) Sustain Podcast-Episode 101:
Nicholas Zakas and ESLint (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/101) FOSS
Contributor Fund
(https://engineering.indeedblog.com/blog/2019/11/foss-fund-adopters/)
Starfish-GitHub (https://github.com/indeedeng/starfish) Open Source
Stories (https://www.opensourcestories.org/) 24 Pull Requests
(https://24pullrequests.com/) The Good Docs Project
(https://thegooddocsproject.dev/) John Hill
(https://about.me/jpjhill) John Hill Twitter
(https://twitter.com/jpjhill?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Sunset Blvd (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043014/) All the
President’s Men (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074119/) David Lynch
movies (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000186/) A Psalm for the
Wild-Built (Monk & Robot #1) by Becky Chambers
(https://www.otherscribbles.com/#/a-psalm-for-the-wild-built/)
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 Guests:
Duane O’Brien and Mandy Grover.