Episode 64: Travis Oliphant and Russell Pekrul on NumPy, Anaconda, and giving back with FairOSS

Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Alyssa Wright | Richard
Littauer Guest Travis Oliphant | Russell Pekrul Show Notes Hello
and welcome to Sustain! Today, we have two guests from OpenTeams in
Austin, Travis Oliphant and Russell Pekrul. Travis is the CEO and
Russell is the Program Manager and the Founder and Director of
FairOSS. We learn all about what OpenTeams and FairOSS are and how
they work. Also, Travis tells us about the non-profit he started
called NumFOCUS. Other topics discussed are dependencies and how
their values are assigned, NumPy and SciPy, and building
relationships with companies, which Russell mentions there is a bit
of a “chicken and egg” problem here. There is some incredible
advice and fascinating stories shared today so go ahead and
download this episode now! [00:01:10] We find out what OpenTeams is
and how it works. Travis also tells us when he wrote NumPy and
SciPy and when he started OpenTeams. [00:07:18] Travis tells us
about a non-profit he started with a bunch of people called
NumFOCUS so there could be a home for the fiscal sponsor for open
source projects. [00:09:24] Russell tells us what FairOSS is and
how it works. [00:11:32] Alyssa asks Russell how does he first see
the dependencies and then how does he assign that value? He
mentions BackYourStack as a starting point. [00:13:00] Eric brings
up one of the problems he’s found with trying to fund up open
source is that it’s very difficult to solve the problem on more a
grand scale. He wonders how Travis and Russell make the impact they
want with the magnitude of problems they see. A key piece Travis
brings up that they recognize is there’s a data gap and projects
have to be participating. Alyssa wonders if projects are aware of
their dependencies. [00:17:22] Richard asks about the dependency
graph that they are making. He wonders how do you go down the stack
and look all the way at the base and how do you judge the
usefulness of what dependencies really matter for what code matters
for the business proposition? Richard also wonders if anyone has
done equity stuff for open source maintainers. [00:23:06] Alyssa is
interested in learning more about how Travis and Russell are
building the relationships with these companies and what we can do
to help. [00:26:35] Alyssa asks Travis and Russell to talk about
why this, why now, with this being a time of economic contraction,
why is this important? Also, why have they been seeing traction
during what can be difficult times for a lot of companies?
[00:27:40] Eric asks if Travis can give an example of a project
that he feels does that well, that doesn’t have to go through and
do it twice, essentially. [00:29:48] Alyssa brings up investments
around open source start-ups and how they start with a commitment
towards open source and once the investment happens there’s a
pivot. She wonders if Travis could talk about how this type of
sustainability is shifting that model of these investments. Travis
tells a story about speaking to the Founder of SaltStack and how
their views matched. [00:34:03] We find out where you can learn
more about FairOSS and follow them on this journey, invest, and
join in. Spotlight [00:34:52] Justin’s spotlight is Curiefense,
which extends Envoy proxy to protect all forms of web traffic.
[00:35:15] Alyssa’s spotlight is Pixel8.earth. [00:36:06] Eric’s
spotlight is OctoPrint. [00:36:53] Richard’s spotlight is Michael
Oliphant’s work. [00:37:36] Russell’s spotlight is Conda.
[00:38:20] Travis’s spotlight is Matplotlib. Quotes [00:03:25] “We
were connecting and creating a social network long before the
social networks started. That was the early days of social networks
and it was addicting.” [00:04:14] “New libraries are starting to be
written on numarray and we had SciPy written on numeric and there
was this fork in this flegging scientific community in Python.”
[00:21:18] “So that was a very exciting day. Actually, I remember I
told my wife you know the problem I’ve been searching on for twenty
years, I finally figured it out. I’ve been trying to figure out
twenty years how to make this work, and I finally figured it out. I
had to go start several companies and start a venture fund and get
involved in finance and cap tables to really pull it off, but that
got me excited. Now I also said, but we’re at the base of Mount
Everest, like all we’ve got to do is climb to the top of this
mountain and we’re there.” [00:22:44] “So you basically have a
company and its value is spread to all the values of the projects.
You have a bunch of those, have a thousand of those, that each add
incrementally the value of a project. Invert the matrix and every
project now has a linear dependency on companies that effectively
you created an index fund out of every project.” [00:24:52] “The
idea is if you can get open source contributors to recognize that
they want to work only for companies that are participating people
want to hire open source contributors. They’re some of the best
people to bring into your company.” [00:25:21] “We found that
companies would absolutely sponsor PyData and the reason they would
is because they’re trying to hire people. They wanted to hire the
best developers and they would. So, they really didn’t care so much
about the projects they started, but they wanted the people.”
[00:27:10] “Go make an open source project, then get somebody or
connect with somebody who’s going to help you build a company that
they’ll vest in and build something else. So, you basically have to
do it twice.” [00:28:34] “I’ve had the chance to work at companies
large and small, go in and see that’s used to do x, and realized
it’s added billions of dollars of value to a lot of work for the
world. And yet, the same time NumPy struggled, not enough funding
to maintain itself.” [00:30:15] “I spoke to the founder of
SaltStack that just got acquired by VMware. I spoke to him about
his view and it was amazing how much it matched mine, in a sense
that he recognized that open source is you build some of the value
and you use it. The way you need to make money is to build
something that uses it but isn’t the open source.” [00:32:41] “It’s
not you’re monetizing open source, you’re empowering, you’re
sustaining open source, by selling and connecting the economic
value to the functional value that’s there.” [00:33:04] “There will
still be challenges. I’m not naïve. Every new thing comes with a
whole set of new challenges.” Links OpenTeams
(https://openteams.com/about) FairOSS (https://faiross.org/)
FairOSS, PBC Twitter (https://twitter.com/faiross_pbc) FairOSS
Community (https://community.faiross.org/login) Travis Oliphant
Twitter (https://twitter.com/teoliphant?lang=en) Anaconda Dividend
Program
(https://www.anaconda.com/blog/sustaining-the-open-source-ds-ml-ecosystem-with-the-anaconda-dividend-program)
Quansight (https://www.quansight.com/) NumFOCUS
(https://numfocus.org/) BackYourStack (https://backyourstack.com/)
Dask (https://dask.org/) SaltStack (https://www.saltstack.com/)
SciPy (https://www.scipy.org/) NumPy (https://numpy.org/)
Curiefense (https://www.curiefense.io/) Pixel8.earth Ambassador
Program
(https://pixel8earth.medium.com/kicking-off-the-pixel8-earth-ambassador-program-80a87a70fb3a)
OctoPrint (https://octoprint.org/) Michael Oliphant’s work
(https://langev.com/index.php/author/moliphant/Michael+Oliphant)
Conda (https://github.com/conda/conda) Matplotlib.com
(https://matplotlib.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 Guests:
Russell Pekrul and Travis Oliphant.