Episode 244: Jan Lehnardt & Alba Herrerías Ramírez of Neighbourhood.ie

Guests Jan Lehnardt | Alba Herrerías Ramírez Panelist Richard
Littauer Show Notes In this episode of Sustain, host Richard
Littauer engages with Jan Lehnardt and Alba Herrerías Ramírez from
Neighbourhoodie, a consultancy company based in Berlin and the
Canary Islands. The discussion delves into Neighbourhoodie’s work
on sustaining open source projects, their collaboration with the
Sovereign Tech Fund for enhancing open source project's bug
resilience, and the technical and ethical facets of their
consultancy services. Insights are shared into their past and
current projects, including PouchDB, CouchDB, and their
contributions to humanitarian causes, emphasizing their focus on
creating a sustainable impact in the open source community. Press
download now to hear more! [00:01:55] Jan explains the origin of
Neighbourhoodie, which began with the Hoodie open source project,
how the company evolved, the decline of the Hoodie project due to
timing and resources, and how CouchDB and PouchDB continued to
thrive. [00:04:27] Richard asks about the company’s name and its
novelty domain, and Jan gives an overview of Neighbourhoodie’s size
and slow and steady growth, and their focus on a positive work
environment. [00:05:51] Jan gives a detail explanation of CouchDB
and PouchDB’s functionality, particularly their offline-first and
synchronization capabilities, and how this has been used in
critical projects like the Ebola vaccine. [00:08:41] Richard asks
about maintaining ethical work practices and avoiding projects that
conflict with Neighbourhoodie’s values. [00:09:53] Jan discusses
how Neighbourhoodie balances reinvesting in open source projects
and expanding the company, focusing on professional services around
CouchDB and PouchDB. [00:11:53] Alba describes her role in leading
Sovereign Tech Fund (STF) projects within Neighbourhoodie, and how
they engage with various projects to offer support. [00:13:31] Jan
explains the STF’s Bug Resilience Program. [00:16:33] Richard asks
about the potential ethical dilemma when third-party consultants
like Neighbourhoodie might be taking work that could have otherwise
gone to maintainers themselves. We hear how Neighbourhoodie, the
projects, and the STF agree on statements of work, including
milestones and time estimates, to ensure fairness and proper
allocation of resources. [00:21:23] We learn from Jan that dealing
with low-quality bug reports isn’t a primary focus of their work,
but improving test coverage, dependency updates, and CI/CD
processes helps mitigate these issues as a side effect. [00:22:54]
Alba talks about the different types of projects they work in, such
as OpenPGP.js, Sequioa, Yocto, PyPi, Systemd, PHP, Log4j, and
reproducible builds. [00:23:49] Jan discusses the challenges and
learning opportunities that comes with working across diverse
projects, each with its own set of tools, communication styles, and
cultural contexts. [00:25:29] Richard reflects on the complexity of
open source sustainability and Alba describes how they research
projects and identify areas where they can provide the most help,
tailoring their approach to the specific needs of each project.
[00:27:25] Jan explains that they don’t dictate solutions but
rather collaborate with projects to address their most pressing
needs, often helping to mediate between different parts of a
project to find common ground. [00:30:07] Jan explains how they
educate clients to take responsibility for the scripts they
deliver, unless there’s a long-term support contract in place.
[00:32:00] We learn how the Neighbourhoodie transition was organic
and not part of a grand strategy and how they continue to
contribute to open source through their consulting work. [00:34:54]
Richard questions the choice of open source as the main focus given
its limitations, and Jan explains that open source is widely
understood and accessible, making it a practical choice for their
work. [00:37:35] Alba and Jan share some highlights and fun things
from their work. [00:39:32] Find out where you can follow Jan and
Alba online. Quotes [00:02:19] “The goal was to have two separate
entities so that when the company puts out an open source project
in its own name, and then the company goes under, and the project
goes away, we wanted to not have that.” [00:24:08] “If you do
software long enough, you realize that the technical problems are
just the sideshow and everything else you have to solve things on
the people layer instead of the technology layer.” [00:25:06] “The
current monoculture of everything is on GitHub is not the only
truth out there.” [00:35:34] “Open source is the thing that
everybody understands.” Spotlight [00:40:57] Richard’s spotlight is
Gregor Martynus. [00:41:54] Jan’s spotlight is AdonisJS. [00:42:45]
Alba’s spotlight is PouchDB. 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) Alba Herrerías
Ramírez LinkedIn
(https://www.linkedin.com/in/alba-herrerias-ramirez/) Alba
Herrerías Ramírez Website (https://www.albaherrerias.dev/) Alba
Herrerías Ramírez Mastodon (https://mastodon.social/@albaherrerias)
Alba Herrerías Ramírez email (mailto:alba@neighbourhood.ie) Jan
Lehnardt LinkedIn
(https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-lehnardt-750b0816b/) Jan Lehnardt
Website (https://writing.jan.io/) Jan Lehnardt Mastodon
(https://narrativ.es/@janl) Jan Lehnardt email
(mailto:jan@neighbourhood.ie) Neighbourhoodie Software
(https://neighbourhood.ie/) CouchDB (https://couchdb.apache.org/)
Sovereign Tech Fund (https://www.sovereigntechfund.de/) Bug
Resilience Program (STF)
(https://www.sovereigntechfund.de/programs/bug-resilience) Sustain
Podcast: 2 episodes with guest Daniel Stenburg
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/guests/stenberg) Gregor
Martynus-GitHub (https://github.com/gr2m) AdonisJS
(https://adonisjs.com/) PouchDB (https://pouchdb.com/) 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 Guests: Alba Herrerías
Ramírez and Jan Lehnardt.