Request For Commits Changelog Media

In this finale episode of Request For Commits – we regroup to discuss how we got here, lessons learned, community impact, and where the conversations around open source sustainability are taking place now and in the future. This might be the end of this podcast, but the conversation will continue on The Changelog. You should subscribe if you’re not already.

Lauren McCarthy joined Nadia and Mikeal to discuss her work on p5.js, contributions and culture, her before and after take on open source, her path to becoming a maintainer, how p5.js gets new contributors, how they keep them around, and why design isn’t better represented in open source.

Henry Zhu joined Nadia and Mikeal to discuss his work on Babel, how he became and accidental maintainer, why he thinks maintainers aren’t special, paid open source work, the Babel brand, and building community.

Daniel Bachhuber joined Nadia and Mikeal to discuss his work on wp-cli, the economics, origins, staying productive as a maintainer, fund raising, and the state of wp-cli today.

Danese Cooper joined Nadia and Mikeal to discuss the history of open source, how the term became a thing via Tim O’Reilly, feeling empowered as an open source contributor, companies’ relationship to open source, foundations and their role (or not) in governance and sustainability.

Christopher Hiller joined Nadia and Mikeal to discuss the ups and downs of maintaining Mocha - a JavaScript test framework that runs on Node.js and in the browser. Discussions included maintaining a popular project, getting funding, the challenges of having money, raising the profile of a project, focusing on the needs of a community, and managing burnout.