Open Source: The Power of Collaboration

00:00:00: we all walk through the door of software to participate.

00:00:03: It's not a software developer question, it is an every human being question.

00:00:11: so if you're a marketer or someone with MBAs who likes to write technical docs and whoever you are You have skin in this game because what stands between us?

00:00:25: living societies that are equitable.

00:00:31: Welcome to Hello!

00:00:32: fifty-fifty world, the podcast where we break tech bubbles before they break us and when we talk with people who make tech more humane.

00:00:48: Today's conversation on The Hello!

00:00:49: Fifty-Fifty World Podcast is with Aaron Seigo.

00:00:53: Aaron is a passionate software developer with twenty five years of experience in the tech industry.

00:01:00: He has experienced the industry from several different perspectives.

00:01:03: He founded his own companies, worked at Fortune.

00:01:06: five hundred companies including Nokia work with non-profits and was involved extensively with the open source community since the early days.

00:01:14: Aaron and I we worked together as a mapping technology company today And one of the first questions i asked him even before he joined our team Was whether working for a company producing mostly closed software is creating some inner friction.

00:01:29: Today we talk about open source development and contributor ecosystems, how they have evolved over the last two decades.

00:01:36: And why their being transformed.

00:01:38: right now let's dive in.

00:01:44: Welcome Aaron to The Hello!

00:01:45: fifty-fifty world podcast.

00:01:47: Good morning Lisa.

00:01:48: So you've been part of the Open Source community for over twenty five years.

00:01:53: You actually shared with me that your first open source contribution was in nineteen

00:01:58: ninety eight.

00:01:59: Yes How did it get started?

00:02:00: What first drew you into Contributing to open-store software.

00:02:04: I was in a bookstore, I was picking up a book actually about system administration for Solaris that had just come out about a year before and there's this book on the shelf That caught my eye then.

00:02:15: it said slack wear which i thought Was hilarious.

00:02:18: what is this?

00:02:19: yeah slack or is that like software For slackers right?

00:02:22: This Is The you know mid nineties.

00:02:25: ish I had no idea what it was, so i picked up as im waiting for them to go get my book from the back that id ordered in.

00:02:30: Well Im leaving through it and at the back there is something on top of a CD-ROM.

00:02:37: The CD-rom said its full operating system And I flipped over this book to see how much it cost and remember correctly it was like thirty bucks or something.

00:02:49: That was ridiculous because the cheapest, least expensive per seat license I knew for Unix-like operating system, was literally a thousand dollars US.

00:02:59: Most of them also required really expensive proprietary hardware and it's just like.

00:03:04: this cannot be true.

00:03:05: so I bought the book that took at home in there.

00:03:07: what?

00:03:07: There is very early version of Linux put together primarily by one person this distribution on CD-ROM A person who would meet many years later actually in open source community And iIwas blown away By This!

00:03:20: What Was Even Crazier Was That All Of The Source Code All the engineering behind it was there.

00:03:27: So not only was I getting something of immense value in my mind, right?

00:03:32: This is at least a thousand dollars worth of stuff and It came with just all kinds of things servers for mail and web And this is an expensive stuff.

00:03:42: so that wasn't eye-opener.

00:03:44: i started diving into it using it Getting more familiar With it and indeed i made My first actual contribution to a text editor In uh... That was an exciting moment.

00:03:55: It's like, oh cool I'm you know giving something back but what kept me there and What kind of puts claws in me?

00:04:01: In a very good way Was that?

00:04:03: there is it.

00:04:04: There is a philosophy behind it all right And this philosophy requires us to accept two facts.

00:04:10: one Is that societies we build human societies around tools and shared goods and the level Fairness and equity inequality that's possible in a society is directly related to how much access to participation people have In the workings of that society.

00:04:30: If you can't participate in society, there are very real limits on your ability To get a fair treatment.

00:04:37: be an equitable part Of our own society And we know from history right?

00:04:42: The second fact Is That Our modern societies Are foundationally resting upon Software Whether it's healthcare, whether its government services or work.

00:04:56: You can look at some of the oldest professions in the world like farming.

00:05:00: They're all reliant these days on software.

00:05:03: This is not a bad thing because this is an amazing set of tools.

00:05:06: It allows us to do things we just cannot anywhere else.

00:05:10: The human discovery that we could take machines with no moving parts and make them calculate and figure out anything just by changing, you know the levels of electricity in them is it has obviously been revolutionary.

00:05:26: So that's fact number two and if we put those two facts together It quickly becomes apparent That If people do not have fair equitable open access to software Then You're Not Gonna Have Fair Equitable Access To Society Not Our Modern Societies Because Those Two Things Are Just Linked Now And An Example I often used to kind of illustrate this because people, when they first think about it sometimes are like how big is that other thing?

00:05:55: So in two thousand five Hurricane Katrina slammed into the coastline United States.

00:06:01: It devastated Louisiana hit Texas hard and other states as well but those too really took the brunt a bit.

00:06:08: Thankfully FEMA The Federal Emergency Management Agency had just released their brand new website So they could digitize access to emergency services.

00:06:22: They didn't have to send out tens of thousands people into hard-to-reach places, especially in a disaster that could reach out electronically and say I need help or apply for aid... And it can all be done over computers!

00:06:37: Beautiful right?

00:06:39: One problem.

00:06:40: They focused on the dominant web browser at this time which was Internet Explorer, and the people who developed it kind of developed with an eye to the future.

00:06:51: I put that in big quotation marks so they had... It turns out unintentionally.

00:06:58: Put a few features in there that relied on one of the newer versions of Internet Explorer.

00:07:02: You couldn't be using a very old version of it now.

00:07:05: The people In some of these places were hardest hit.

00:07:08: Were not the most.

00:07:10: They weren't even top-one percent of the economic ladder.

00:07:13: let's say right.

00:07:14: These are people that if they had a computer, it was probably not new.

00:07:17: It was probably running older software and there may be the most you know... Computer literate people but basically have a computer where they can get online to do stuff.

00:07:26: For this huge percentage of those people This new website did NOT work Simply because instead using open protocols Open Software FEMA had BAT on a proprietary technology to deliver socially critical, culturally community-critical services.

00:07:48: I mean there's very few things that are more critical than delivering aid in an disaster.

00:07:52: and they decided yeah it's fine if we're using little bit of proprietary stuff here.

00:07:57: And when i did just locked out huge numbers of people unintentionally wasn't...there was no malice or anything like that?

00:08:03: It really caused additional problems which should have been a win became yet another problem in what was to become a very vexing response, too.

00:08:12: To disaster there.

00:08:13: so If you think about that and kind of just transpose That two other parts of society how do we deal with health care?

00:08:20: How do I deal with access the government?

00:08:21: How Do We Deal With Access Education etc.

00:08:23: etc.

00:08:23: etc.

00:08:24: if we say that There are barriers to entry You know i can Say Whether You Can or Cannot Use The Software And How You Can and Cannot use it if It's Up to me whether it'S In Your Language If it's up to me, as the person making this software.

00:08:40: To make sure that its culturally understandable and relevant for you in your community.

00:08:45: You're now beholden to me As a gatekeeper to participation society And That realization...that was not my realisation!

00:08:53: That is something people in broader what they would refer to as free-software community Had been working on refining these concepts and building philosophy.

00:09:06: You mentioned the Internet Explorer and I want to quickly stay on the browser topic because you have also quite a history with Browser technology.

00:09:15: Can you quickly share how you were involved in creating open browsers?

00:09:20: Yeah, so I spent a large number of years In a fantastic community that is actually reaching its thirtieth year now The KDE Community which started by one university student wanting open-source software accessible to the people in his life.

00:09:39: And he realized that, you know, people needed UIs so they could point and click at it on the ones we had

00:09:44: sucked.".

00:09:44: He was like,"We can do

00:09:45: better!".

00:09:46: So he is German...so called up a cool desktop environment with a K and thus Katie was born.

00:09:53: We were building an user interface layer on top of open source operating systems like Linux although not exclusively Linux And we wanted to produce something that anyone, an office worker or a person at home.

00:10:07: A student etc.

00:10:09: could use not just computer scientists right?

00:10:12: and some of the they would like to use even if can make it's something was better approachable in that nice.

00:10:18: so you need all tools right?

00:10:19: You need file manager probably need minesweeper but y'all see browser web browser.

00:10:26: and at time there were no open source web browsers that were graphical.

00:10:33: So this is gonna maybe come as a surprise to a lot of people who listen to this, but there was the time when you had to buy web browsers.

00:10:40: they're proprietary and You could actually trade money to get one which seems insane.

00:10:45: And it was.

00:10:47: then there was Internet Explorer on Windows.

00:10:48: It came with windows But it was also proprietary.

00:10:51: so All of our software was like a hundred percent, it was free and open-source software.

00:10:55: And so I said okay how do we render web pages?

00:10:57: We can't do that... ...and we don't want to force people.

00:11:00: use Netscape for instance which is very large and heavy didn't integrate with anything at the time.

00:11:08: So Netscape was the browser that leads to Firefox.

00:11:12: today A bunch of intrepid people went like How are could be!

00:11:16: A browser engine, something that could render basic HTML and okay run this JavaScript thing.

00:11:22: Okay?

00:11:22: That's cool.

00:11:23: We can do that too And display it in a window and then This gained steam and it became increasingly useful and you Could bait.

00:11:32: I mean i use it for number of years as my daily driver.

00:11:34: It is how got around the web.

00:11:37: The library itself was called khtml.

00:11:38: the browser Was called conqueror lotsa case!

00:11:41: And...this Is great.

00:11:43: So Apple at the time..was going through It's resurrection, so they had brought Steve Jobs back in.

00:11:51: And Steve Jobs is like look we need to gut the operating system bring something new.

00:11:55: and he actually went out and re-platformed The macOS on top of an open source operating system right?

00:12:03: Open Source saved Apple In that sense.

00:12:05: They did not have budget means or people do this work.

00:12:09: So they bought it then That exactly what opensource was about Or part of anyways And also needed a browser.

00:12:15: And they also didn't have the people to do it still, right?

00:12:17: So he looked around and without telling us which is fine.

00:12:20: Again this was part of freedom-of-free software.

00:12:22: They forked the repository of KHTML ported it to Mac OS or what would be called MacOS X and built Safari Then told along with rest world on same day that had done this Which caused a lot friction in open community because we're you know In the open source communities are used working in the Open big word.

00:12:44: for us there, Apple doesn't work that way.

00:12:47: And it would be an ongoing multi-year source of friction and challenges in the people who spend a lot time enough building bridges between them being Apple on the greater community.

00:13:01: but this becomes Safari.

00:13:03: Eventually Google decides they want to do browser.

00:13:06: by this point KCML has evolved into WebKit which is this multi platform really capable thing to render web pages and run JavaScript.

00:13:16: And they take that, and make Chrome out of it.

00:13:19: Meanwhile, WebKit has been invading all sorts of everything from smart TVs to early smart fridges and things like this.

00:13:29: so was really getting out there in the world which is very cool for us.

00:13:34: I don't know if there's even a line of code left anymore after all this time and all these revisions.

00:13:39: But, If you trace back the ancestry of the dominant browsers that say they have to lie in share event he got them back too.

00:13:47: This small open source community with a couple people who are like hey we need to render webpages Yeah.

00:13:53: So yeah That was The long and windy road To Open Browsers And it is kind of ironic now It has been highly controlled by one company.

00:14:02: I think in general, we can say that a lot of even the proprietary software is available today.

00:14:07: It actually relies heavily on free and open software And it's also sometimes super tricky because these libraries might not be well maintained or there are no people managing behind them anymore.

00:14:21: Today you're still very much involved with Open Source Community.

00:14:25: as a package manager yourself Can you share what your doing?

00:14:30: Yeah, various things.

00:14:31: So my most recent hack if you will is yet another iCalendar library.

00:14:37: so it's not always the most glamorous work but its enjoyable.

00:14:40: I've been working on a set of calendar libraries as well building up an open source very much in theme with what we do day to day around GIS.

00:14:53: there are amazing options for storing mapping data and Geoinformatics data, things such as.

00:15:00: there's a database called PostgreSQL that has just amazing extensions for this.

00:15:04: There is an embedded database called SQLite that has an extension for this as well.

00:15:08: they're both amazing but using them is extraordinarily arcane And so I've been working on some libraries to simplify that.

00:15:15: So you can in your application put a single line of code and start getting vector map tiles coming out Of your database then send across the browser and render.

00:15:25: So yeah, I'm working on those sorts of projects these days.

00:15:29: And you have so many years of experience as part of the open source community?

00:15:32: How have you seen the whole movement?

00:15:35: basically because it is based on a lot of philosophical concepts... ...so i would call this like an movement as well.

00:15:41: how has that evolved over the years from early days to today and where do you also see some challenges?

00:15:48: That Is A Big Question!

00:15:52: In The Very Early Days It Was A Political Movement right, against the proprietization of technology.

00:16:00: People forget that software used to be all open because it was very tied to hardware they came with and so nobody even thought about selling software?

00:16:09: That's an innovation that comes out mostly in late seventies especially for consumers And this selling part led to the proprietisation Using computers at the time, we're not used to that and when it started happening.

00:16:25: It felt wrong to them And they start thinking about realize their political ramifications of this since so starting taking action.

00:16:32: So in the beginning was very much a political movement But rapidly became one where people found value.

00:16:37: in its various ways I mean The number of motivations People have as many is.

00:16:41: there are people some people or There because just like doing and they like doing it with a community.

00:16:47: Other people are doing as part of their research, some people see it as a way to build the CV.

00:16:53: other people say that has away too billed large complex shared technologies.

00:16:59: so they can then use two do-other things.

00:17:02: make business my friends that work in Asia for instance to bring emergency response open source or emergency response systems in two places that are experiencing disasters.

00:17:16: So people have like so many different reasons they do it, That...in the last let's I don't know fifteen years twenty years?

00:17:25: Open source kind of won again these quotation marks In that The pendulum had swung in the nineties to where proprietary was the standard Everything.

00:17:35: if anything wasn't It would be like wha that is weird Those shareware people and By the two thousand tens or so it had swung back.

00:17:45: The other way and now open was almost a standard.

00:17:48: It's like, oh we've released this library that Was no longer newsworthy.

00:17:54: an entire generation of developers which is amazing kind of you know grew up or entered the industry with That as their reality.

00:18:00: I just go to you know github And there are eight billion You know, repositories you can just grab and use.

00:18:07: And then go to NPMJS or the Python repositories... Or wherever!

00:18:12: You could just grab huge numbers of all this technology.

00:18:15: Boom there we are welcome!

00:18:18: It felt like something was right here in a library.

00:18:20: who knows where it comes from?

00:18:22: Who writes all those books?

00:18:24: I don't write books but i do go to libraries.

00:18:27: so for developers That was the experience and that is really, really shifted kind of in middle where they open-source user and developer community.

00:18:37: So even people who contribute to Open Source these days are often doing it as a tangent.

00:18:44: their work use of it.

00:18:47: They've come through work or through studies sometimes And now they're contributing because of exposure I come across, you know in these communities now that are there for say political reasons is diminished to a very-very tiny number.

00:19:06: The number of people who were therefore reasoned so just hey i love doing it.

00:19:11: they're still their but its smaller as well.

00:19:14: So It's kind of de diversified In the sense which isn't on its own bad But unfortunately majority who are enjoying and reaping the benefits of open source, which is fantastic.

00:19:26: Don't have a real connection to it?

00:19:28: It's just another commodity for them to use again like going into the library picking out a book um... And that has had implications you mentioned earlier.

00:19:35: it's like well maybe the libraries aren't maintained.

00:19:37: You know may be its-it has issues..and that makes me smile because Its'a bit like saying nobody's done the dishes in the kitchen.

00:19:47: Well yes they don't do themselves.

00:19:49: Alright somebody does the dishes.

00:19:51: It's not the most enjoyable job at times, but maybe it is.

00:19:53: Maybe you hang out and listen to a podcast... ...maybe hanging with friends when they do their dishes And that can be at least palatable But it doesn't magically happen.

00:20:04: Open Source isn't like the result of The Fairy Kingdom.

00:20:06: Its people Like You & Me That are putting in bit time A bit effort Making it better.

00:20:13: The reason why libraries become un-maintained Is because two things happened.

00:20:19: One, people are not sufficiently aware that you can participate and how to participate.

00:20:24: It's almost a permission problem which is weird because it's the permissionless thing but lots of people don't know like oh... How do I...?

00:20:32: Can I?

00:20:33: How does that work?

00:20:35: And then on this side there was a lot other people who were writing.

00:20:37: these libraries did not sufficiently come up in community.

00:20:42: that started whole open-source movement where we relied heavily and everyone was very afraid of being the one who let each other down.

00:20:53: And so if I was working on something or you were working on some thing, we would make sure that there is another person could pick up when weren't?

00:21:00: they're because we are doing in our spare time.

00:21:04: i'm going to go vacation lose interest you go away they get sick it happens.

00:21:10: And so there is always, like the sith.

00:21:12: There's always two right at least and these days that's really often not the case.

00:21:16: a lot of people That are working on free software or open source libraries Fail to think about this and they're just happy making The thing that they're making.

00:21:23: They get their thing they need done then other People contribute to it?

00:21:27: And they're Like yeah This Is Really exciting and you know woof but Then They don't Think About what happens in five Years.

00:21:33: and So You have A group Of People that Don't.

00:21:36: In a sense, it's cultural loss between the open source community that existed in the two thousands and what exists now.

00:21:42: Where... The knowledge of how to do secession management And making sure that bus number is more than one.

00:21:51: That did not translate into this new community or generation of developers, and it's not healthy.

00:21:57: I have an anecdote here from the non-profit world where also at Hello!

00:22:00: Fifty-Fifty World we're mostly volunteers And what i always say is like We are building a very large pedal boat and we have to have enough people on the boat so that we don't always have to all paddle at the same time, but it's okay just sometimes take a break or kind of enjoy their ride.

00:22:18: And others are paddling and then we can switch

00:22:20: again.".

00:22:20: So this is I think very similar experience you're sharing in open source community where more people contribute.

00:22:29: Absolutely!

00:22:29: That's perfect analogy.

00:22:31: And I do want to give you back this question that you actually put in the room on how can people actually contribute or just sort of getting over this hurdle of jumping and making their first contribution.

00:22:42: What would you recommend for someone interested?

00:22:44: So if your first contributions, like I do recommend not trying takeover a maybe an un-maintained library especially big one at the beginning find somewhere there's already a healthy community around those activity merge requests or pull request from and kind of see health there.

00:23:03: If that's your first time, it'll help a lot because I'm making it go a lot smoother.

00:23:06: if you see anything try it.

00:23:09: And what if your patch makes it better?

00:23:12: Contribute.

00:23:13: It doesn't have to be big, it doesn't need to be hugely important.

00:23:16: You don't even reinvent the world Or just something small Right!

00:23:20: And it does not always has to code.

00:23:21: Documentation needs to be written Bugs need to triaged.

00:23:25: All the usual stuff right is still software development all the things that we do, that aren't only writing lines of code and testing.

00:23:34: And what not?

00:23:35: All it needs to be done!

00:23:36: It can be something really small.

00:23:38: My own first contribution to KDE was... The last thing I did before going into bed one night.. ..I saw a bug- I was trying out their brand new very crashy version or other thing.

00:23:48: The desktop is pre two point.

00:23:50: oh It was very crashing.

00:23:52: It's called Crash actually Very funny.

00:23:55: And i found this small little bug annoying me because it was in the run dialogue and I couldn't run things properly all of a time.

00:24:00: So, yeah i looked at him like oh see where from bug is?

00:24:02: I fixed an email that we emailed patches between people so he's stone ages.

00:24:07: I e-mailed the patch off went to bed next morning It was merged And then got an e-mail back form person who said thank you very much.

00:24:14: its been yeah thats correct Yeah!

00:24:16: That blew my mind right.

00:24:17: cool this is nice and very addictive.

00:24:20: You can just be small thing couple lines Just get used to practice or start the practice of what it's like to contribute back and be patient.

00:24:30: The people on the other side, It's not being in an office environment where you put a PR in You can be rightfully annoyed if that person doesn't look at it for a week.

00:24:39: If they don't know who their other person is They might have things on their plate or even be there Right now.

00:24:44: Be patient!

00:24:45: And its okay.

00:24:46: if thing take couple days Its ok.

00:24:47: if they come back with comments They dont' know who YOU are maybe.

00:24:51: So here comes this random contribution from A random person and they're probably also getting to know you.

00:24:57: So the first contribution often takes a little bit of back-and-forth, um... And some people are gentler more helpful than others in some people or a little more rough and this is normal human behavior.

00:25:10: but be patient with yourself and with them.

00:25:14: or experience, not even learning just experiencing the flow of it.

00:25:18: It becomes easier and easy and easier.

00:25:20: And then at some point yeah go grab that library.

00:25:22: you're like.

00:25:22: That should be better maintained and maintain it better if necessary.

00:25:26: You know fork in to make your own thing out of it?

00:25:29: That's one of the beautiful freedoms Of open source.

00:25:32: say you can take it you're required To work with those people on that code.

00:25:37: you Can Take it.

00:25:38: Make Your Own Thing With It.

00:25:40: Give yourself permission to do that.

00:25:41: Ninety-nine percent of it is permission and patience.

00:25:46: I'd love to hear from our listeners if they tried that.

00:25:48: So let us know in the comments, If you made your first contribution after listening to this podcast?

00:25:53: Um...I want to come back to the sort of tension or friction as you called it around closed software and open software And maybe then also touching on some newer developments recent technological changes Around automation Artificial intelligence and how does has impacted The Open Source community.

00:26:11: Can he share a bit about your own experience Of How This Currently Looks Like In The Contribute future ecosystem.

00:26:45: Average quality, they just said we're gonna spend our whole lives doing this.

00:26:48: Let's not.

00:26:49: that is highly damaging.

00:26:51: the other thing That's really concerning that started to happen Is some people have begun?

00:26:57: Some companies in fact had begun to take large language models and ask them to rewrite open source projects so that They can use them under different licenses.

00:27:08: To call that legally dubious is to be generous.

00:27:11: these are models that were trained on this exact You know, body of software and code.

00:27:16: And now you're asking it to regurgitate but change a little bit.

00:27:21: that's not how reverse engineering works.

00:27:24: It really is just taking advantage.

00:27:26: other people work an effort fractures which the exact opposite what we want in collaborative endeavor like open source fractures community into several constituent parts.

00:27:39: What gets left over?

00:27:42: quality of code that's not the best, but now people are going to be using it in production.

00:27:46: This happened at Cloudflare.

00:27:47: they did this with one product done with a couple now... People immediately put into production and there were several major security flaws found The rate-of-pace that people are trying to go with is uncalled for.

00:27:59: It just isn't justified by the quality or technology.

00:28:02: That's not exclusive open source But these technologies being used in the context of open source to try and work around some of the legal and social contracts.

00:28:13: Around them, that's unfortunate.

00:28:16: there are people with very kind of high hopes that it would help relieve the burden of maintenance because we just have machines maintaining things.

00:28:24: We're not there yet.

00:28:26: It remains to be seen whether will get their yet And what has done more than is drown people too much content.

00:28:33: so I think you know to moderate that and figure out how do work with it.

00:28:40: I guess the most famous example in this is Wikipedia, right?

00:28:46: It's not necessarily just open software but also open knowledge And these large language models.

00:28:52: they've been hugely trained on.

00:28:54: all of their knowledge people have shared for free.

00:28:56: Their infrastructure has completely overwhelmed by requests.

00:28:59: They don't really know what to cope.

00:29:00: So these communities are seeing more reaching-out society with these issues, how do you think they will cope?

00:29:09: or like what are you seeing?

00:29:10: How people organize themselves.

00:29:12: What is maybe a way forward to also support and help

00:29:16: them?".

00:29:17: Well I mean from the you-and me perspective just continue contributing as regular normal human beings for groups such like Wikimedia Like OpenStreetMap These large bodies of information right?

00:29:32: And software is just another body of information.

00:29:34: if you want to look at that way.

00:29:36: You know, you can support them financially as well.

00:29:38: they often have ways to contribute monetarily If you can't with time and whatnot.

00:29:42: That's very helpful because a lot of the responses to these issues require resources To be spent.

00:29:49: compute resources often As well.

00:29:51: manpower actually like figure out what are the solutions in implement them so that could really help and as individuals we also.

00:29:58: We can raise our voices.

00:30:01: you know, kind of vote with our feet as well.

00:30:04: It's a big topic and I think we're years from knowing exactly how it will sort out.

00:30:09: if anything i've learned though is that when really big hype machines roll into town one the best things you can do is not lose your head.

00:30:18: keep your homestead going stay doing what you are doing.

00:30:22: don't let it rock too much.

00:30:24: I think the moral dilemma that you also touched on a little bit is, That open source community really relies on people giving back.

00:30:31: Right?

00:30:31: And they would be wanting to do that out of an intrinsic motivation.

00:30:35: and it feels like at the moment with some of these developments we're seeing there's a lot of people taking advantage or making use what available for free.

00:30:44: but if nobody gives back then this system will not work anymore right?

00:30:49: so How do you see that?

00:30:51: or how does the community also deal with that?

00:30:53: So, they-the core of the community will never go away unless it's forced to go away.

00:30:58: Right there have been legal threats in various places in the world.

00:31:01: make that happen.

00:31:02: They've none other than successful thankfully and then that core community Will Never Go Away.

00:31:05: In some sense open source is an immune response To The Denial Of Access To Society through technology, and that immune response is not going to disappear.

00:31:16: It will always be there for as long as the threat

00:31:18: exists.".

00:31:19: The question was can we keep it at a level because we've achieved an immense of open source in terms of reach quality breadth footprint?

00:31:27: The questions are whether or not we'll have atrophy right?

00:31:30: Interestingly enough one way that Open Source got to work now isn't by all but essentially tricking companies into starting to use it and invest, we get so much value out of this.

00:31:45: IBM could drop literal billions per year departments working on operating systems and replace that with open source operating

00:31:54: system.".

00:31:54: They're like yes!

00:31:55: We will do that...we'll happily do that.

00:31:58: but that tied them into the ecosystem.

00:32:00: now they were betting their company on this ecosystem being vibrant and sustainable And they still do, and continue to.

00:32:10: That's just one

00:32:10: company.".

00:32:11: If that wasn't a goodness at the heart of people in IBM... ...that it was not even an intrinsic thing.

00:32:17: like you know what we should do?

00:32:19: It is decision-making business decisions.

00:32:22: then how can I protect those business decisions right?

00:32:28: So there were people actively talking with the people on every level in IBM all the way up into CXO offices talking to them regularly and walking through this process, telling them hey here are the opportunities.

00:32:42: Here's how you maintain it right?

00:32:44: Those people who did that work over decades or great heroes...to me anyways there was a time when we'd have to tell people so this is what open source means.

00:32:53: This is what free software.

00:32:54: You don't have to do that anymore, but what's still needed and is now missing in my opinion anyways Is that outreach?

00:33:02: And those people who can sit down with you across from the boardroom table go look here.

00:33:07: Here's the business opportunity.

00:33:08: So what you're basically saying is that the open source community doesn't only need developers, but also people with different skills like sales marketing outreach to sort of evangelism and that's missing a bit at the moment.

00:33:21: Business acumen etc... Yeah I mean there was time when in the community There were group of people who went off and got MBAs just so they could understand how talk-to-people insuits And it was extremely effective.

00:33:32: It's what tipped over The hump really In the two thousands was the birth of those efforts.

00:33:37: So yeah, that's missing and those are not developer skills right?

00:33:41: This is a cultural social movement.

00:33:43: I think people need to remember that this Is it gateway to our society.

00:33:47: Right we all walk through the door software to participate.

00:33:51: It's notice.

00:33:51: its not a software developer question And it's not a business manager Question.

00:33:57: it isn't every human being question.

00:33:59: so if you're if your marketer If you are someone with an MBA, if you're someone who likes to write technical docs and whoever you are.

00:34:08: You have skin in this game because it's what stands between us at living in societies that are equitable and open as a society is there not?

00:34:22: We now going dive into the rapid fire questions to wrap it all up.

00:34:27: very ready for this.

00:34:28: I'm ready

00:34:28: All right.

00:34:29: The first one Is if you could rewrite One line of code or maybe few lines of code In any product.

00:34:36: What would you do?

00:34:37: If I could, and I would go back in time.

00:34:39: And do two things.

00:34:40: one make Netscape open source so that we start with opensource browsers.

00:34:44: the web was held together by Open Source servers.

00:34:48: they Web Could have been much better with open-source browsers.

00:34:50: second thing it Would've changed is get rid of JavaScript and let them put TCL instead

00:34:54: to The next One.

00:34:55: what's an everyday active allyship That anyone can Do maybe also related To open source?

00:35:02: share your light.

00:35:04: It's a Thing that Costs you Nothing and means a lot to the people that you do that for.

00:35:09: Take a moment, one-on-one.

00:35:11: just let someone know something you've noticed they have done That's...that is impressed or that you think it value.

00:35:19: A lot of people are not able see in themselves.

00:35:21: It really easy not too Super Easy Not To.

00:35:24: And its one thing that injects more energy More positivity and more robustness into people than almost anything else.

00:35:31: I know Everyone can do it.

00:35:32: Just keep your eyes opening let someone know when they've done something that you'd like while it was cool.

00:35:37: Awesome, and the next one is about The Voices in Tech.

00:35:40: do think we should hear more from?

00:35:43: Yeah people outside of the usual tech industry.

00:35:46: One of most impactful moments I ever experienced was learning that farmers in South Africa were using software That i had written among with other People In their own language And They Were able to use It To Start Running Their Farms For The First Time.

00:35:58: Because And They Translated Themself They Had People Translate into their own language that you didn't ask for permission, they just did it.

00:36:04: There are billions of people who do not have a voice in what we're doing and each and every one of them is beholden to the same software that we are.

00:36:13: We need to be listening to these people.

00:36:15: They have voices...they have minds..They have needs & priorities And we don't listen to them.

00:36:20: We'll wrap up with last one.

00:36:22: If listeners remember this whole episode What should It Be?

00:36:26: I'd like People To really think about The real connection between computing technology in particular and free societies.

00:36:36: It's easy to, again not think about but it is absolutely critical if you want a free society If You Want To Be A Free Person.

00:36:43: ,If You Want People To Have Equity And Fairness That Requires Fair, Free & Open Access The Technologies That Drive Our Societies.

00:36:54: Awesome, thank you so much Aaron for being on the podcast and sharing everything.

00:36:58: You know I have learned along the way.

00:37:00: it was great being here.

00:37:01: thanks

00:37:07: Super awesome to be talking with Aaron about open source and going down the memory lane, learning about the history of Open Source development.

00:37:17: What stuck with me is that the Open Source Development is actually super important for software development as a whole but also for society because software today is everywhere and everybody's using it all the time and making it accessible for both the usage, but also for people to contribute.

00:37:34: And participate is essential for a healthy

00:37:36: society.".

00:37:38: I was also amazed that people that are contributing to open source software they do this for various reasons from their political or ethical motivations.

00:37:49: all of way too using if you work in.

00:37:51: actually the involvement of bigger organizations and corporations has helped to scale up with impact on quality of open-source throughout the last two decades.

00:38:02: I also love that everyone can contribute to open source, not just developers.

00:38:07: so whatever your skill set if you're excited about this jump in and find a way to give back.

00:38:14: Thank you all so much for listening in.

00:38:16: And as always, we'd love to hear from you.

00:38:19: let us know how you experience the open source community.

00:38:23: if you contribute yourself share it in the comments or on the podgy website of this podcast episode If there's someone that should be listening please forward and also subscribe or rate our podcasts.

00:38:38: This really helps us reach more people.