Episode 15: Open Source Leadership With Abigail Cabunoc Mayes

This episode of Sustain our Software features Abigail Cabunoc
Mayes. Abigail has a background in bioinformatics and computer
science and has an interest in using computers to solve problems
in biology. She works for the Mozilla Foundation where she is a
practice lead working Open. She has been named in “100 Awesome
Women in Open source” and mentioned in Github’s State of the
Octoverse 2016. Abigail begins by sharing some of how she got
started and what interests her in technology. The discussion then
moves to altmetrics and how Abigail helps people publish code and
get recognition for their work. 


Richard asks Abigail how her work for mozilla fits into the type
of work she is known for. Abigail shares that Mozilla is much
more than the Firefox browser that it is known for. Abigail
shares that “Mozilla’s mission is to ensure that the Internet is
a global, public resource” that is “open and accessible to all”.
This mission at Mozilla goes back to the browser wars of the
early 2000’s when they created Firefox to ensure that a web
browser was available to all. Abigail goes into further detail
how the Mozilla foundation helps to further the internet and open
source as well as what she is currently working on. 


The next topic covered by the open source experts is the tooling
used by Mozilla to maintain privacy. Abigail notes that some of
the issues that prevent a healthy internet are privacy and
security, openness, decentralization, web literacy, and digital
inclusion. She shares that Mozilla is very conscious of
protecting users and how they walk the line between privacy and
openness. They also discuss how Abigail grows leaders in the
community. She shares how it starts with identifying potential
leaders and how she finds them. Currently Abigail is teaching a
course on how leaders can run their own versions of Mozilla’s
Open Leaders through an online program that meets every two
weeks. Abigail goes through the details of how the Open Leaders
program works. 


Eric then asks Abigail to explain what openness means to her. She
shares that openness and movement building really work together.
They are means of rallying people together and empowering them to
work towards a shared goal. Openness means to both be public and
participatory and be active in the community. Richard follows up
by agreeing that openness means to be participatory and is a
pillar of open source. Abigail adds that as a leader it is very
important to be able to delegate tasks and entrust responsibility
to other members of the group. She goes on to say that it is
vital to open source sustainability for others to be able to
contribute to a project. 


The panelists then lead into a discussion on why maintainers
leave a project and what happens when they do. Eric asks Abigail
how to teach someone to delegate to which she explains that it is
important to help people see how a broader community with diverse
perspectives can help propel a project forward. To get
contributors to stick around, it is important to give them
ownership over a piece of a project. The panelists conclude this
episode with covering how to avoid abstracting too much and
talking about what’s coming up next for Abigail.
Panelists



Eric Berry




Richard Littauer


Guest



Abigail Cabunoc Mayes


Sponsors



Dev Ed




Views on Vue




Adventures in DevOps


Links



Mozilla Foundation




Mozilla Open Leaders




100 Awesome Women in Open source




State of the Octoverse 2016




Abigail’s Website




Mozilla Science Lab




Open Leadership training series on github




Mozilla’s 2019 Internet Health Report




Increasing Developer Engagement at Mozilla




Open Leadership Training Series




Open Leadership Framework




Introducing Open Leaders X (OLˣ) Blog Post




What Does Openness Mean to You? Blog Post




Apply Now For Open Leaders X




Open Source Archetypes Report




Mozilla Open Source Support Awards




@abbycabs on Twitter




acabunoc on github


Picks

Richard Littauer




Found someone's bird at Adelaide and Spadina Reddit




The Crisis for Birds Is a Crisis for Us All




Global Climate Strike




Eric Berry




Project Code Rush - The Beginnings of Netscape / Mozilla
Documentary




Zyloware Eyewear




Abigail Cabunoc Mayes




Chris Adams Blog




Stardew Valley


Special Guest: Abigail Cabunoc Mayes.