Episode 89: Leslie Hawthorn, OSPOs, Digital Sovereignty, and Cultivating Open Source Communities

Guest Leslie Hawthorn Panelists Allen "Gunner" Gunn | Eric Berry |
Eriol Fox | Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to
Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for
the long haul. We have an excellent guest on today and she is here
to talk about real stuff! Our guest is Leslie Hawthorn, who is the
Manager for the Vertical Community Strategy in Red Hat’s Open
Source Programs Office in the Office of the CTO. She has spent her
career creating, cultivating, and enabling open source communities
and we are so fortunate to have her with us today to speak her
eloquent words of wisdom. We learn more about what Leslie does in
her position, the Open Source Program Office and how she sees it
growing and changing, and a deep conversation of European digital
sovereignty and how it is both a threat and opportunity for open
source and open standards. Also, Leslie keeps it real and shares
awesome advice on what it takes to be the best kind of corporate
open source program officer. Go ahead and download this episode now
to learn much more! [00:02:37] We learn what Leslie she does in her
position. [00:05:13] Richard is curious about what Leslie thinks
about the OSPO concept in general and how does she see it growing
and changing in the past five years. [00:07:43] Leslie talks about
digital sovereignty and the movement towards open source program
offices focusing on that. [00:13:13] Eriol brings up a design
phrase “human-centered” and asks Leslie to talk more about examples
she has seen where humans, users, and citizens have been centered
at the creation of various open source software projects. Leslie
mentions a really great panel discussion to check out with Claudia
Barrosa and Pia Karter where they talked about Open Source and Open
Standards, Supporting European Innovation. [00:18:21] Leslie tells
us what made her move to Germany and how that’s reflected in the
work she’s doing at Red Hat. [00:23:16] Richard wonders why Leslie
feels that the OSPO at Red Hat is the place where you can affect
the most change, how is she doing ecosystem level change in her
current position, and where does she think it will lead her over
the next few years. [00:27:42] Gunner is curious to know if Leslie
has a taxonomy of how she thinks about different types of open
source program offices and their motivations or contributions to
open source communities, and any guiding principles that she thinks
any accountable open source program office or officer might want to
be following or guided by. [00:33:02] Find out where you can follow
Leslie online. Quotes [00:02:49] “And when we think about
traditional community management, quote on quote, there’s typically
a community focused human who is looking at the universe from the
perspective of, how does my singular community engage with other
entities?” [00:07:45] “Those who are not familiar with this concept
of digital sovereignty, just the really quick rundown is this idea
that folks in Europe are, I would say for some good reasons and for
some bad reasons, deeply concerned about making sure that there is
control of IT infrastructure and data and everything associated
with just having a technological life, which turns out is now true
of every citizen.” [00:08:14] “And there is, I will say, especially
given my past employer, there is legitimate concern for what does
it mean if your IT infrastructure is outsourced to someone far, far
away from you who is not necessarily beholden to the same laws or
to the same values system of the place in which you reside.”
[00:09:31] “Pia Karger, who is the head of the Open Source Program
Office in Germany, you know, pointed out that one of the reasons
why there was this change in the name of the office that she shares
was because this notion of digital sovereignty and being, let’s
create open source that is exclusively to be contributed to by
Europeans, that is explicitly to be used by Europeans, was not in
keeping with the value system that folks in her office wanted to
enact nor with Germany in general.” [00:10:04] “So instead, you
know, she pointed out digital sovereignty is not about excluding
people from contribution or excluding people from participation,
it’s about ensuring that that there is freedom of choice.”
[00:10:22] “You don’t want to do any single sourcing of any
particular vendor or any particular, you know, one place where
you’re going to get all your technology if you’re any
organization.” [00:11:10] “The ability to collaborate amongst one
another and share best practices, and this moniker of the OSPO is
this critical anchor because turns out, if you described your work
using common language, it’s very easy for folks to connect to one
another and be able to do that knowledge sharing and best practice
and collaboration because they can actually find each other.”
[00:11:43] “Yes, OSPO is a locus of collaboration, my friends.”
[00:14:45] “And then not only did she take us through their entire
evolution, but then pointed out the different ways in which their
agency also accounted for the fact that this digital first future
that they were envisioning was going to leave a lot of citizens
behind.” [00:15:50] “If you do not talk to your actual users, you
have absolutely no idea what they need and whatever you produce is
going to not actually meet the needs of anyone.” [00:29:38] “And I
think that my charge to folks who are working in open source
offices is to think back to the words that Richard said earlier,
projects come and go, your employer is going to come and go.”
[00:30:11] “And, if you’re going to be looking at your investment
strategy as a corporate open source officer, don’t just be looking
at whether or not you think that your open source strategy is going
to provide you with developer acquisition that’s going to provide
you with specific ROI, or allow you to hit some vague milestone.”
[00:31:47] “And that’s the kind of corporate open source program
officer that you want to be. You want to be somebody that is
genuinely respected because you show genuine respect for other
people regardless of what the dollar Euro pound won value is that
interaction.” Spotlight [00:34:52] Richard’s spotlight is the
legendary, Cat Allman at Google. [00:35:10] Eric's spotlight is a
show he highly recommends called, Ted Lasso. [00:35:36] Eriol’s
spotlight is a project she’s been following by Daniel Burka called,
Resolve to Save Lives, on GitHub. [00:36:04] Gunner’s spotlight is
a community he’s been working with called, Gathering for Open
Science Hardware. [00:36:45] Leslie’s spotlight is a project in
Sweden called “Smarta Byar.” 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/) Leslie
Hawthorn Twitter (https://twitter.com/lhawthorn?lang=en) Leslie
Hawthorn Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesliehawthorn/) Cat
Allman Twitter
(https://twitter.com/catallman?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Ted Lasso
(https://tv.apple.com/show/umc.cmc.vtoh0mn0xn7t3c643xqonfzy?ign-itscg=MC_20000&ign-itsct=atvp_brand_omd&mttn3pid=Google%20AdWords&mttnagencyid=a5e&mttncc=US&mttnsiteid=143238&mttnsubad=OUS2019863_1-535101970956-c&mttnsubkw=106182847425__rdMG7cVq_&mttnsubplmnt=)
Resolve to Save Lives-Health Icons
(https://github.com/resolvetosavelives/healthicons) Gathering for
Open Science Hardware (https://openhardware.science/) Smarta Byar
(https://veberod.nu/category/smarta-byar/) Panel discussion: Open
Source and Open Standards, Supporting European Innovation OSL2021
(featuring Cláudia Barroso and Pia Karger)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHzVsEAxpnA&t=6s) Sustain
Podcast-Episode 49-What OpenUK Does with Amanda Brock & Andrew
Katz (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/49) Sustain Podcast-Episode
56-Dominic Tarr on Coding What You Want, Living On A Boat, and the
Early Days of Node.js (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/56) Sustain
Podcast-Episode 82-Steve Helvie and the Open Compute Project
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/82) 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 at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/)
Special Guest: Leslie Hawthorn.