Episode 54: Danese Cooper on the History of Open Source, InnerSource, and What's Next

Panelists Pia Mancini | Richard Littauer Guest Danese Cooper Show
Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! On today’s episode, we have
special guest, Danese Cooper, from her home in West Counties of
Ireland. She currently works for NearForm, as VP of Special
Initiatives. We will learn all about how the InnerSource Commons
and Open Source are related. We find out about Danese’s last tech
job at PayPal, where she started talking about InnerSource and why
she moved to a remote part of Ireland with her new job. We find out
about the concept of “trusted committer” and two companies that are
practicing InnerSource. Also, find out why Danese said, “Open
Source has won.” Download this episode now! [00:01:45] Danese gives
us a bio about herself and fills us in on her job at NearForm and
InnerSource Commons. [00:05:40] Richard is curious to know when
Danese talked about InnerSource and Open Source being related, how
do they both work together to actually sustain open source.
[00:10:50] Danese talks about the “sustainability quotient” and how
there are not enough practitioners of open source. [00:13:02] We
hear the twenty-year old “fake stories” about why people are afraid
when we talk about InnerSource and Danese tells us about the
concept of “trusted committer” and what they do. [00:18:38] Danese
tells us two stories about two companies that are practicing
InnerSource that have been talked about publicly. [00:24:34] Pia
asks Danese if she’s seen a lot of InnerSource or projects that
were born in InnerSource and then they were released to the wild as
successfully and she shares some stories. [00:31:49] Danese
explains what she means when she said says, “Open source has won.”
[00:34:54] Danese fills us in on what she’s doing now, what’s next,
what’s exciting, and where to find her on the internet. Spotlight
Richard’s spotlight is kalm.js.org (https://kalm.js.org/). Danese’s
spotlight is have a look at Mozilla and try to lend them some
support and COVID Green App. Quotes [00:11:17] “I feel like this
area of endeavor has been so generous to me, giving me a means to
make a living and an interesting means to make a living for this
last 35 years. I kind of owe a give back of something to make the
campground better than I found it and I think that is InnerSource.”
[00:11:35] “Getting those poor 85% out of the salt mines and
helping companies modernize now, because in another ten years they
won’t be able to hire people that don’t expect transparency. So,
they are going to have to figure it out, but if they figure it out
now for the right reasons, they have a better chance of being in a
good position to accept those new workers when that’s all you can
hire.” [00:32:23] “There would be no Google if there was not Linux,
period, full stop. It would not exist because their cost of
acquisition for that kernel and their ability to modify it to their
needs meant that they could optimize better than AltaVista, which
was the search engine of choice before there was Google.” Links
Danese Cooper Twitter
(https://twitter.com/DivaDanese?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
InnerSource Commons (https://innersourcecommons.org/) kalm
(http://kalm.js.org/) Mozilla (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/) Ford
Foundation-2020 Digital Infrastructure Research RFP
(https://fordfoundation.forms.fm/2020-digital-infrastructure-research-rfp/forms/8103)
COVID Green App-GitHub
(https://github.com/covidgreen/covid-green-app) 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/) Ad
Sales by Eric Berry Special Guest: Danese Cooper.