Episode 78: Stormy Peters: Sustaining FLOSS at Microsoft's Open Source Programs Office

Guest Stormy Peters Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard
Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! Our amazing guest
today is Stormy Peters, Director of the Open Source Programs Office
at Microsoft and long-time advocate of free and open source
software. Stormy tells us how she started her journey into open
source and how she got involved with the OSPO at Microsoft. We find
out about the impact of Duane O’Brien’s FOSS Fund, what Stormy is
doing at Microsoft to help other nonfinancial ways of supporting
communities and building great open source ecosystems of
communities, and about how they support Outreachy. Also, Stormy
fills us in on where she thinks open source is going in the future,
her team’s goals, and their focus on cultural change. Download this
episode now to find out much more! [00:01:16] We find out how
Stormy got into open source. [00:02:40] Stormy tells us how she got
involved with the Open Source Program Office at Microsoft, if she
ever found herself defending open source more so than today, and if
she ever thought Microsoft would be in a position they are now of
how much they’ve given back to open source. [00:04:14] Richard is
curious how Stormy feels about sustain, how the process has been
like for her, how has it been to see the change from just being a
licensing issue to being a culture, and if she thinks most people
are paid for open source. [00:08:45] Eric wonders what the overall
mentality was for Stormy when she got to Microsoft regarding
supporting open source and if it’s changed since she’s been there.
[00:12:17] Eric asks Stormy if in five years our whole development
environment is on Microsoft platform if we’re going to get locked
in and is that going to cause the same type of negative frustration
as he is with Apple right now. [00:13:40] Richard wonders if tools
are owned by Microsoft how will that affect his development and how
will affect the open source ecosystem if very large corporations
become the main stakeholders in open source and direct the projects
in their own ways, and Stormy replies and also explains how the
people get paid. [00:16:10] Justin wonders how much impact Duane
O’Brien’s program FOSS Fund has made in the way they operate and
the rest of the bigger OSPO’s out there. We also learn what she’s
doing at Microsoft to help other nonfinancial ways of supporting
communities and building great open source ecosystems of
communities. [00:18:53] Stormy fills us in on who makes up their
team of employees at OSPO Microsoft and where you can go to see
what they are doing. [00:20:12] Richard is curious where Stormy
sees the role for OSPO’s for universities, governments, cities, and
anything that’s not a large corporation. She also tells us about
how they support Outreachy. [00:23:08] We learn from Stormy where
she thinks open source is going in the future and why she thinks a
Copyleft is dropped out of the parlance. [00:25:49] Stormy tells us
how she sees Ethical Source progressing and if she sees it being a
major player with people or as being a movement that will cause the
same tensions that GPL used to cause. [00:27:24] Richard wonders if
Microsoft has a mapping of what resources they have used of what
code is in their system, what open source packages they depend on,
and how they are actively working towards giving back to them as a
whole down the stack. [00:29:12] Eric asks Stormy what is on the
forefront of her team’s mind right now, and she fills us in on her
team’s goals. [00:29:56] Find out where you can follow Stormy on
the internet. Quotes [00:01:53] “And this was just about the time
that Linux was getting popular and they had not one, but two
desktops that were popular, GNOME and KDE, and I thought surely we
can collaborate on this like they do.” [00:03:42] “I’d like to joke
now that I think Microsoft’s first contribution to open source was
being the common enemy.” [00:04:54] “I think it’s still evolving,
and I think it always will evolve and so I think it’s important
that all of us continue to think about it and figure out what the
new models look like.” [00:05:32] “I think a much larger majority
than before get paid to work on open source.” [00:06:33] “So, I
know when I was at Mozilla we consciously thought about this with
Firefox OS, having people full-time on it and even more than
full-time, as they worked extra hours to try to get out the door,
could you still welcome people that only had two or three hours a
week to work on it.” [00:08:56] “So to go back to the question
about my career that it looked like it changed with this last move,
I don’t think it did. To me, this was the next step in the path.”
[00:09:27] “Microsoft, I think, is ideally positioned to make the
next big change in open source software.” [00:12:33] “So it’s my
job, extended team’s job, to make sure that Microsoft does open
source well, and part of us being successful in open source is
making sure we have active communities around our projects that are
broader than us so that the projects are broader than us that we’re
not creating that lock-in.” [00:14:51] “Microsoft uses a program
called FOSS Fund that Duane O’Brien at INDEED started, where we let
employees pick a project every month to give them $10,000, and the
idea’s that’s not going to be enough money to support them forever
but we just want to recognize some of the projects that we’re using
that aren’t getting a lot of funding in other ways.” [00:15:54]
“Those companies started doing contract work for an open source
software project and now they work on open source software projects
and other projects in general.” [00:16:34] “I think Duane’s a good
thinker, like when COVID started, he started an effort to raise
money for the events that were impacted, so I hope that’s
empowering to a lot of people that one person can have a good idea
that is a need and get people involved.” [00:17:44] “So, we’re
unofficially giving Azure Credits to a number of open source
software projects. I’m trying to launch an official program by
which people can apply to get Azure Credits whether it’s just do
their builds or whether it’s to make sure that stuff runs on
Azure.” [00:18:05] “We have a lot of Microsoft employees who work
on projects on GitHub. I think it’s definitely over 30,000
Microsoft employees have linked their Microsoft identity to their
GitHub identity.” [00:23:13] “I think if you’d asked me that like
twenty years ago, I would not have realized that Copyleft would
drop out of importance as much as it has.” [00:23:36] “I don’t know
if I would make an accurate prediction, but I hope it’s to continue
to make, not only to make more software available to more people,
but to make it more possible for people that aren’t in tech careers
to write code and make computers do what they need them to do.”
[00:24:20] “I think it’s cause the fear has dropped out. In the
beginning it was fear that I was going to have to open source
something I didn’t want to and fear that somebody was going to take
my stuff and take advantage of my stuff.” [00:29:17] “Our goal is
to make sure that Microsoft business units can use open source
software in their strategy, that they can consume open source, that
they can open source things, and that they have all the tools and
knowledge they need to do that.” Spotlight [00:30:41] Eric’s
spotlight is Kombucha (KeVita). [00:31:29] Justin’s spotlight is
Jekyll Admin. [00:32:04] Richard’s spotlight is Carl Boettiger.
[00:33:04] Stormy’s spotlight is Educational Software Projects like
Khan Academy and Internet-in-a-Box. Links Stormy Peters Twitter
(https://twitter.com/storming) Stormy Peters Linkedin
(https://www.linkedin.com/in/stormy/) Microsoft Open Source
(https://opensource.microsoft.com/) Microsoft Open Source Blog
(https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/opensource/) FOSS Contributor
Fund- Duane O’Brien blog post
(https://engineering.indeedblog.com/blog/2019/07/foss-fund-six-months-in/)
What is copyleft? By Ben Cotton
(https://opensource.com/resources/what-is-copyleft) Outreachy
(https://www.outreachy.org/) KeVita Kombucha
(https://www.kevita.com/) Open Collective
(https://opencollective.com/) Carl Boettiger
(https://ourenvironment.berkeley.edu/people/carl-boettiger)
Internet-in-a-Box (http://internet-in-a-box.org/) Khan Academy
(https://www.khanacademy.org/) 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:
Stormy Peters.