Episode 245: Brian Douglas of Open Sauced on Sustainability through Effective Metrics

Guest Brian Douglas Panelist Richard Littauer Show Notes In this
episode of Sustain, host Richard Littauer talks with Brian
“bdougie” Douglas, founder and CEO of Open Sauced. They discuss the
multifaceted aspects of sustaining open source projects, Brian’s
journey in developer advocacy, and the unique goals of Open Sauced.
Brian shares insights from his experiences at GitHub and Netlify,
elaborates on concepts like lottery factor and the significance of
unique issue authors, and tackles the challenges of maintaining
open source sustainability. He also explores the balance of
addressing enterprise needs while supporting smaller, less visible
projects and emphasizes the importance of education and community
engagement in open source. Press download now! [00:01:54] Brian
discusses his background at GitHub and Netlify, his role in
promoting GraphQL, GitHub Actions, Codespaces, and the inception of
Open Sauced. [00:03:08] We hear about the features of Open Sauced’s
dashboard which enhances GitHub insights, OSSF scorecards, and
workspace customizations for managing multiple projects. [00:04:31]
Open Sauced’s business model is currently founded by VC money and
aims to serve large organizations with significant open source
dependencies, and Brian talks about the team size and funding
history. [00:06:08] Brian elaborates on Open Sauced’s long-term
sustainability plan, focusing on enterprise-level solutions for
open source project observability and contributions. [00:09:31]
There’s a discussion on how Open Sauced interacts with open source
communities and the importance of real-world testing and
contributions to open source projects. [00:11:06] Richard
highlights the FOSS Funders initiative, encouraging companies to
support open source projects financially and through active
participation. [00:12:44] Brian shares insights on effective
metrics for evaluating open source projects, emphasizing the
importance of engaging with unique issue authors rather than
focusing solely on superficial metrics like pull requests, and
discusses his approach to starting meaningful conversations in the
open source community. [00:16:08] Brian explains why he renamed
“Lottery Factor” to “Contributor Absence Factor,” and discusses the
Pgvector project to illustrate the importance of understanding the
“Contributor Absence Factor” and the sustainability concerns when a
project relies heavily on a few contributors. [00:18:20] We learn
more about how Open Sauced sources its data, including their use of
GitHub’s events feed and their development of the “Pizza Oven” tool
to generate insights from Git repositories. [00:20:21] Richard and
Brian discuss the challenges of maintaining an open source ethos
when dealing with large companies’ internal projects, avoiding
becoming merely service providers for large corporate entities.
[00:24:14] Brian discusses the long-term implications of open
source projects that receive substantial funding or become
integrated into larger corporate frameworks. [00:27:27] Richard
brings up the difficulty many open source projects face in
accessing significant funding and Brian shares his vision for
supporting less prominent open source projects drawing analogies
from his personal experiences. [00:32:42] Richard questions the “up
the chain” analogy, comparing it to a pyramid scheme or academia’s
tenure track. Brian acknowledges the need to support contributors
at all levels, not just those at the top, and he introduces the
concept of a S Bomb to provide transparency about project
dependencies. [00:39:36] Find out where you can follow Brian on the
web. Spotlight [00:40:17] Richard’s spotlight is Mr. Carreras, an
awesome music teacher. [00:40:59] Brian’s spotlight is Dawn Foster
at the CHAOSS Project and the CHAOSS Practitioner Guides. Links
SustainOSS (https://sustainoss.org/) podcast@sustainoss.org (email)
(mailto:podcast@sustainoss.org) richard@theuserismymom.com (email)
(mailto:richard@theuserismymom.com) SustainOSS Discourse
(https://discourse.sustainoss.org/) SustainOSS Mastodon
(https://mastodon.social/tags/sustainoss) Open
Collective-SustainOSS (Contribute)
(https://opencollective.com/sustainoss) Richard Littauer Socials
(https://www.burntfen.com/2023-05-30/socials) Brian Douglas- Open
Sauced (https://app.opensauced.pizza/u/bdougie) Brian Douglas
Website (https://b.dougie.dev/) Brian Douglas GitHub
(https://github.com/bdougie) Brian Douglas X/Twitter
(https://github.com/bdougie) The Secret Sauce Open Sauced Podcast
(https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-secret-sauce/id1644263270)
The Secret Sauce Podcast: ‘The Future of Cloud Native and AI with
Brendan Burns’
(https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/the-future-of-cloud-native-and-ai-with-brendan-burns/id1644263270?i=1000658092259)
Open Sauced (https://opensauced.pizza/) Renaming Bus Factor #632
(CHAOSS community)
(https://github.com/chaoss/community/issues/632#issuecomment-2152929617)
FOSS Funders (https://fossfunders.com/) Andrew Kane GitHub
(https://github.com/ankane) Chad Whitacre Website
(https://chadwhitacre.com/) Fair Source (https://fair.io/) CHAOSS
(https://chaoss.community/) Your Copilot for Git History (Open
Sauced) (https://opensauced.pizza/docs/features/star-search/) Open
Sauced GitHub (https://github.com/open-sauced/pizza) InnerSource
Commons (https://innersourcecommons.org/) Sustain Podcast-Episode
148: Ali Nehzat of thanks.dev and OSS Funding
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/148) Learning in Public with Kelsey
Hightower (Curiefense)
(https://www.curiefense.io/blog/learning-in-public-with-kelsey-hightower/)
Welcome to Wrexham
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_Wrexham) Sustain
Podcast-Episode 159: Dawn Foster & Andrew Nesbitt at State of
Open Con 2023 (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/guests/foster) Dr.
Dawn Foster Mastodon (https://hachyderm.io/@geekygirldawn) About
the CHAOSS Practitioner Guides
(https://chaoss.community/about-chaoss-practitioner-guides/)
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
Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Special Guest:
Brian Douglas.