Episode 40: How Open Source Maintainers Don't Get Rich with Bogdan Vasilescu

Sponsored By:
Panelists Justin Dorfman | Eric Berry | Richard Littauer
Guest Bogdan Vasilescu Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain!
Today, we have Bogdan Vasilescu, who is an Assistant Professor at
Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science. We start
out by learning what Bogdan builds at the STRUDEL Lab. Then we
discuss, “The GHTorrent project.” We also learn about the research
that he and his group at CMU have been doing on open source
sustainability. There are a few papers on topics related to
sustainability that we will also discuss. One of his papers really
inspired Justin, and after listening to this podcast you will
probably agree that this is one of our best guests! [00:02:18]
Bogdan tells us more about what he builds at the STRUDEL Lab. He
gives a shout-out to his students and collaborators who are doing
all the work. [00:03:50] Bogdan talks about one of his papers
titled, “How To Not Get Rich.” He also explains The GHTorrent
project which is like a mirror of GitHub. [00:08:43] Justin asks
Bogdan about a website he built and how 46% of packages show a
badge. He asks how long did it take to get to that number? He
describes the process and how they compute that number. [00:11:31]
Eric goes back to the scraping of GitHub’s readme’s and these npm
module badges, and asks Bogdan what is he looking for with those
and how does that translate to the topic of how not to get rich
with open source? [00:15:27] Eric asks Bogdan since he says that
badges add almost validity and gives developers a sense of trust
that this project appears to have an ecosystem around it, but how
does that tie in with donations and how does it tie in with your
report? [00:18:14] Eric explains why he’s so interested in the
donation side. He talks about corporations donating money out of
their charity budget and unless they can donate with the 501C3
which allows it to be tax deductible, it’s a financial loss for
them. He asks Bogdan’s takeaway on this and why are donations a
terrible way to fund open source? [00:22:38] Bogdan lets us know
when the follow-up study of “How To Get Rich with Open Source” is
coming out and what it contains. [00:26:52] Eric wonders if Bogdan
talked to GitHub about getting funds and he lets us know.
[00:28:50] Justin tells Bogdan how he was really inspired by his
paper and how he is the best guest. Eric gives credit to his
phenomenal students and thanks them for all this important work
they are doing. [00:30:00] Richard has a question about donations
for Bogdan. He wants to know is there a light saying you should
even bother with donation models and where is the good news? Bogdan
answers. [00:33:53] Eric wants to know who is doing donations the
right way, what is the ideal scenario, and is there a right way to
go about doing it? [00:35:16] Richard mentions a couple of Bogdan’s
other papers that deal with sustainability from another angle: “Why
do People Give Up FLOSSing? A Study of Contributor Disengagement in
Open Source,” and “Going Farther Together: The Impact of Social
Capital on Sustained Participation in Open Source.” He wants to
know what makes people stay in open projects and what makes people
disengage? Spotlight [00:41:16] Richard’s spotlight is Shields.io.
[00:41:35] Eric’s spotlight is our sponsor Linode. The reason why
the Sustain Podcast exists is because of Tyler Van Fossen and the
Linode Company. [00:42:37] Justin’s spotlight is the Sustain
Podcast newsletter he just launched. You can sign up at
sustain.codefund.fm/newsletter. [00:42:57] Bogdan’s spotlight is a
shout-out to the “Jekyll-Scholar” project. Quotes [00:14:02] “What
we’re observing through this series of studies that we’ve done, and
other people have done too, is that people’s behavior changes when
you have this salience of information.” [00:16:30] “On average,
people submitting PR’s, they are more likely to add tests to their
PR’s when the stuff is being displayed because then there’s some
feedback loop that’s instant and very visible.” [00:17:54] “That
should be a part of the sustainability checklist. If you want to
have a sustainable open source project, you probably need badges,
you probably need a CI indicator. Those are core to making it so
that project becomes adoptable with other developers.” [00:24:08]
“In the real world, organizations asking for charitable donations
are very clear about what the goals of these campaigns are and
we’re not seeing that in open source just yet.” [00:29:51] “But
really, thanks to Cassandra Overney and Jens Meinicke who were the
students working on this paper, they’re the ones who deserve all
the credit, not me, and my collaborator, Christian Kastner form
CMU.” [00:34:09] “I don’t think expecting donations to be the only
way to sustain an open source project is the right approach.” Links
Bogdan Vasilescu Twitter (https://twitter.com/b_vasilescu?lang=en)
Bogdan Vasilescu (http://bvasiles.github.io/) Strudel Research
(https://cmustrudel.github.io/research/) Strudel
(https://cmustrudel.github.io/) The GHTorrent project
(https://ghtorrent.org/) Strudel Publications
(https://cmustrudel.github.io/publications/) “Stress and Burnout in
Open Source: Toward Finding, Understanding, and Mitigating
Unhealthy Interactions.”
(https://cmustrudel.github.io/papers/raman20toxicity.pdf)
“Ecosystem-Level Determinants of Sustained Activity in Open-Source
Projects: A Case Study of the PyPI Ecosystem.”
(https://cmustrudel.github.io/papers/fse18sustainability.pdf) “How
to Not Get Rich: An Empirical Study of Donations in Open Source.”
(https://cmustrudel.github.io/papers/overney20donations.pdf)
Shields.io (https://shields.io/) Sustain Podcast Newsletter
(https://sustain.codefund.fm/) Linode
(https://promo.linode.com/sustain/) Jekyll-Scholar
(https://gist.github.com/roachhd/ed8da4786ba79dfc4d91) Credits
Produced by Justin Dorfman at CodeFund 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 at CodeFund Special Guest: Bogdan Vasilescu.