Episode 101: Nicholas Zakas and ESLint

Guest Nicholas C. Zakas Panelists Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello
and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining
open source for the long haul. You may know my guest today,
Nicholas Zakas, because he is the creator of a very popular
JavaScript project called ESLint, which has been downloaded 13
million times each week. Nicholas is an independent software
engineer, consultant, and coach, and has written numerous books
including, Understanding ECMAScript 6, The Principles of
Object-Oriented JavaScript, and Maintainable JavaScript. With over
sixteen years of web application development experience and
speaking at conferences around the world, he’s putting his focus
now on mentoring and coaching the next generation of JavaScript
engineers. Nicholas brings us on his journey sharing his story of
becoming a developer, starting ESLint, and what he’s doing to make
sure everybody in the ESLint community is able to benefit from the
money they are bringing in. We also learn more about an interesting
blog post he wrote, how contributors get paid, and other open
source projects ESLint donates to. Why should you use ESLint? Go
ahead and download this episode now to find out! [00:01:39]
Nicholas shares his story with us starting out as a developer and
how it led him to starting ESLint. [00:03:01] What did Nicholas
mean when he said he fell in love with JavaScript? [00:03:47] We
find out how long ESLint has been around, how many people are
working full-time, and how he keeps himself in funds. [00:05:04]
Nicholas talks about the Open Collective and GitHub sponsors they
set up for donations. [00:07:42] Richard brings up a blog post
Nicholas wrote on, “How to talk to your company about sponsoring an
open source project” and he tells us what iterations he’s gone
through with ESLint. [00:10:59] Nicholas talks about the
difficulties in multi-tasking, and he tells us the next thing they
tried with paying a straight per hour rate for team members.
[00:17:15] Richard wonders where Nicholas came up with the less
than standard rate for hourly work which is not really a Silicon
Valley salary, and he also tells us how many hours per month he is
paying out and for the people that have been paid, how they feel
about it, and having no caps on what people can make. [00:20:43]
Nicholas mentions using Tidelift, how much money it brings in, and
the money going to TSC members. [00:22:04] Find out what else
Nicholas is doing with the money besides paying contributors. He
mentions several other open source projects they are donating to,
and one person in particular he mentions is Sindre Sorhus.
[00:27:58] Richard wonders more about the governance process and
how Nicholas feels about it. [00:31:52] Nicholas dives deep as he
explains three things that would convince him that ESLint would be
a project that he would want to use. [00:34:20] We learn some
future plans for what Nicholas would do with funds to make the
project more sustainable. [00:38:09] Find out where you follow
Nicholas online. Quotes [00:03:26] “And I see ESLint as really,
this will sound cheesy, as an act of love on your code that we
aren’t trying to change what it does.” [00:04:24] “We found that
people who have kids are looking for something to do after the kids
go to bed.” [00:05:52] “And so, if that is your starting point
where even folks who are just coming right out of college are
getting 120k each year, that means that’s the minimum that you need
to raise in order to hire someone full-time if they’re in a major
metropolitan area in the United States.” [00:22:17] “The first
thing is we have what’s called a contributor pool, which is money
that we set aside every month to pay non-team members for
contributions to ESLint.” [00:22:46] “Generally, anything that is
of benefit to the project we will potentially pay you for.”
[00:24:43] “So, one of the things that we were looking at in terms
of sustainability is we’re bringing in a certain amount of money
each month.” [00:24:53] “We are building on top of the work of
others. And so, why shouldn’t we be spreading that money to those
others, because without them ESLint either wouldn’t exist or be a
lot harder to maintain.” [00:28:17] “Well, what’s interesting is
that when I started ESLint, in my mind this was like a one-year
project.” [00:29:16] “And I just kept coming back to, what’s in it
for them?” [00:30:44] “And so, how can I ensure the future survival
of the project outside of me working on it?” Spotlight [00:38:52]
Richard’s spotlight is StandardJS. [00:39:27] Nicholas’s spotlight
is a project called Release Please. 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/) Nicholas
C. Zakas Twitter
(https://twitter.com/slicknet?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Human Who Codes (http://humanwhocodes.com/) Open Collective- ESLint
(https://opencollective.com/eslint) How to talk to your company
about sponsoring an open source project by Nicholas C. Zakas- Human
Who Codes
(https://humanwhocodes.com/blog/2021/05/talk-to-your-company-sponsoring-open-source/)
Reading List-Human Who Codes (https://humanwhocodes.com/reading/)
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal
Newport
(https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692/ref=sr_1_1?crid=20RZZIIP2GWVG&dchild=1&keywords=deep+work+cal+newport&qid=1634932822&qsid=140-9480495-9312539&sprefix=deep+work%2Caps%2C101&sr=81&sres=0349411905%2C9123832355%2C9123781467%2C912411412X%2CB07DBRBP7G%2C1401962122%2C0735211299%2C9123963255%2C0525536558%2C1443460710%2CB009CMO8JQ%2C1544512279%2CB00IWYP5NI%2CB07SBX56MC%2C0374533555%2CB08817M9SS&srpt=ABIS_BOOK)
A year of paying contributors (ESLint)
(https://eslint.org/blog/2020/10/year-paying-contributors-review)
Sindre Sorhus (https://sindresorhus.com/) ESLint
(https://eslint.org/) Standard JS-GitHub
(https://github.com/standard/standard) Release Please-GitHib
(https://github.com/googleapis/release-please) [Understanding
ECMAScript 6: The Definitive Guide for JavaScript Developers by
Nicholas C.
Zakas](https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-ECMAScript-Definitive-JavaScript-Developers/dp/1593277571/ref=sr15?crid=299FWWAJ52K4H&dchild=1&keywords=nicholas+Zakas+books&qid=1634926017&qsid=140-9480495-9312539&sprefix=nicholas+zakas+book%2Caps%2C86&sr=85&sres=059680279X%2CB00I87B1H8%2C1593277571%2C1449327680%2C1118026691%2C0470109491%2CB011DBHZ2K%2C3944540573%2CB011DB19KE%2CB088P9Q6BB%2CB00BQ7RMW0%2CB01A65ALSY%2CB01A64IRUY%2CB00HK37CXS%2C0470227818%2CB089LJTMPJ&srpt=ABISBOOK)_
[The Principles of Object-Oriented JavaScript by Nicholas C.
Zakas](https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Object-Oriented-JavaScript-Nicholas-Zakas-dp-1593275404/dp/1593275404/ref=mtother?encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1634926112)
[Maintainable JavaScript: Writing Readable Code by Nicholas C.
Zakas](https://www.amazon.com/Maintainable-JavaScript-Writing-Readable-Code/dp/1449327680/ref=sr15?crid=299FWWAJ52K4H&dchild=1&keywords=nicholas+Zakas+books&qid=1634926112&qsid=140-9480495-9312539&sprefix=nicholas+zakas+book%2Caps%2C86&sr=85&sres=059680279X%2CB00I87B1H8%2C1593277571%2C1449327680%2C1118026691%2C0470109491%2CB011DBHZ2K%2C3944540573%2CB011DB19KE%2CB088P9Q6BB%2CB00BQ7RMW0%2CB01A65ALSY%2CB01A64IRUY%2CB00HK37CXS%2C0470227818%2CB089LJTMPJ&srpt=ABISBOOK)_
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.