Sustain - Episodes Tagged with “Maintainer”

Episode 34: Staying Hum-Babel with Henry Zhu

SustainOSS — Fri, 01 May 2020 05:00:00 -0400

Sponsored By:

Panelists

Pia Mancini | Justin Dorfman | Eric Berry | Richard Littauer

Guest

Henry Zhu
Babel

Show Notes

[00:01:30] Henry explains how he got involved in Babel and how it’s funded.

[00:03:18] Eric wonders if Henry wishes he could just step away and just cut ties with it and go do something completely different and how tight is he with this project. He gives a great answer to this!

[00:04:39] Pia was wondering if Henry’s relationship with the project itself or his view with Babel changed since he started working full time there. In the beginning, Henry started this as a side job while he worked at Adobe.

[00:08:06] Since a lot of maintainers may get to a point in their lives where the issues stack up, but not putting into perspective how big this project is, Justin asks Henry how he deals with this since this is such a huge project and he explains.

[00:011:18] Justin wonders how Henry deals with Devs that are coming in and just saying, “Fix it, now,” and hit and run issues.

[00:13:06] Henry talks about how as maintainers view each other as extremes. He brings up the quote from “The Dark Knight” as a reference to what he talks about.

[00:15:10] Henry mentioned earlier about how Open Source communities could look at faith communities, religion, or church communities. Pia wonders if he has anything in mind from his experience that he wants to share, which he does.

[00:20:14] Justin makes a right turn and wants Henry to go into his involvement with TC39 and how it helps him, Babel, and the sustainability with the JavaScript language as a whole. Also, he talks about what he’s accomplished since he joined.

[00:24:57] Justin asks Henry about travel expenses and if anyone pays for them.

[00:26:42] Pia brings up some good points about how we can learn how to heal and support ourselves during these troubling times. She wonders if Henry knows any ways that the community is supporting each other and where can we best spend our time and energy helping the members of our community going through what we’re all going through now.

Spotlight

[00:34:56] Richard’s spotlight is “Hope in Source” podcast.
[00:35:03] Justin’s spotlight is openfoodnetwork.org.
[00:35:38] Pia’s spotlight is mutualaid.nyc.
[00:36:07] Richard has another spotlight which is Gary Snyder’s poetry.
[00:36:50] Henry’s spotlight is his favorite gospel, which is Mark.

Quotes

[00:14:04] “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain.”

Links

Henry Zhu’s Twitter

Henry’s Zoo

“Hope In Source” podcast

Babel

Maintainers Anonymous

Credits

Produced by Justin Dorfman at CodeFund
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Ad Sales by Eric Berry at CodeFund

Special Guest: Henry Zhu.

Support Sustain

Episode 33: Getting Money for Awesome Icons with Dave Gandy

SustainOSS — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 04:00:00 -0400

Sponsored By:

Panelists

Justin Dorfman | Eric Berry | Richard Littauer

Guest

Dave Gandy
Font Awesome Founder | CEO Fonticons, Inc.

Show Notes

If you’ve never heard of Font Awesome, or even if you have, this episode is worth taking a listen to. Our special guest today is Dave Gandy, who is one of the main people behind Font Awesome. He has some super inspiring advice that we all could use right now with everything going on in the world. On a funny note, which way is the best way to hang toilet paper? There is a fascinating conversation on TP that you don’t want to miss. 😂

02:33 Dave talks about what Font Awesome released to help out with COVID-19 awareness and they are ALL Open Sourced.

04:55 It’s been eight years since Font Awesome has been around, and Dave talks about the story behind it and how it gets money for icons.

08:31 Dave explains the process and the response from transitioning to being free to now asking for money. It all came down to what kind of company they wanted to build.

11:30 Richard wonders how Dave pitches all his ideas to investors and he has some great stories to tell.

016:38 Justin wonders how Font Awesome pays their Angel Investors back and is there an exit they are looking for or has he already paid them back?

21:17 Dave talks about how Kickstarter raised 1.076 million dollars which is still a record of most raised and backed by a software Kickstarter. The guys were all backers to it.

24:53 Expectations for the Kickstarter for Font Awesome is discussed and Dave goes into how the video is made.

33:41 Is Font Awesome one of those Cinderella stories or one of those unicorn projects that are likely to be reproduced? Can somebody else be the next Font Awesome? Dave has some great advice and so much inspiration to share that we could all use.

Spotlight

37:04 Richard’s spotlight is a book called, “War of Art,” by Steven Pressfield.
37:25 Eric’s spotlight is a project website called, helpwithcovid.com.
38:18 Justin’s spotlight is to Google, “Font Awesome 5 Kickstarter Video.”
39:34 Dave’s spotlight is a book series, “Mistborn Trilogy,” by Brandon Sanderson.

Quotes

22:39 “It turns out all of that failure was actually not failure, because all of those things we had done leading up to it, ended up being tremendous assets when it came time for Kickstarter.”

23:36 “No matter how good your intuition is on the first version of a product, the only way to get better is to talk to customers.”

34:02 “Everything is impossible until it’s done and then it was always inevitable.”

34:13 “When you believe before you start something that you can’t do it, you will always be right. No matter what, you’ll always be right!”

34:35 “If we don’t have faith in something that doesn’t exist, it can’t come into existence, until you believe that something could become real that doesn’t exist yet, it can’t.”

Links

Dave Gandy Twitter

“The War of Art”

Helpwithcovid.com

Font Awesome 5 Kickstart

“Mistborn Trilogy”

Credits

Produced by Justin Dorfman at CodeFund
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Ad Sales by Eric Berry at CodeFund

Special Guest: Dave Gandy.

Sponsored By:

Support Sustain

Episode 27: Creating Dracula PRO with Blood, Sweat, and Tears with Zeno Rocha

SustainOSS — Fri, 06 Mar 2020 04:00:00 -0500

Sponsored By:

Panelists

Richard Littauer | Justin Dorfman | Eric Berry

Guest

Zeno Rocha
Liferay Cloud | Dracula Pro

Show Notes

In this episode we talk with Zeno Rocha. He is the Chief Product Officer at Liferay Cloud, a newly created Liferay, Inc division. He is responsible for crafting the product strategy, shaping the features, and defining the future of DXP Cloud. Zeno also created the popular Dracula theme. We talk about the success of clipboard.js, Dracula theme, and the importance not just creating the code, but promoting is as well.

2:38 Zeno talks about how he started out as an Open Source developer. He also explains what the developer scene is like in Brazil.

05:15 Zeno has spoken at over 110 conferences now and Richard is interested to know why he has this drive to get more views and work on social problems.

9:54 Zeno explains how he got involved in Dracula Theme and clipboard.js. Let’s just say there are 28,000 stars.

11:54 Zeno gets into the importance of promoting libraries that we create. If you want to reach and help more people. We as a group need to promote! He discusses what he did to promote his stuff.

15:45 One of the guys asked Zeno how did he get from zero to 5,000 stars overnight. He explains it’s not because of Hacker News but from something else.

18:20 Zeno talks about his design capabilities with Dracula. He says he’s not a designer or a marketeer.

20:18 Justin mentions about how he founded a project called BootstrapCDN and how an influencer helped shoot the usage up in one night.

22:54 Richard wonders how Zeno chooses his projects and how does he plan to have projects live beyond him, in terms of Dracula, which is a theming project that has grown beyond him. Zeno explains a hospital stay and a stolen computer is involved in this, so listen on.

30:34 Richard is curious about Dracula Pro and that it’s monetized but how does it work. Zeno answers this talking about dark mode and a keyboard that was crated for Dracula that had record sales.

32:57 Zeno reaches a point where he says he needs to learn about sales to make money. He finds a book that he reads that taught his some very interesting lessons.

Quotes

07:14 “If you really want to learn something you have to teach it.”

08:10 “If I learn that one framework and learn that one language, then I am going to be successful.”

12:07 “If you want to get traction, if you want to reach more people…then you have to spend time promoting to others.

22:36 “Teach first, be welcoming first, communicate 10 times more than you code.”

30:56 “Typically I never monetize my work.”

39:49 “Email is not dead. Whoever says that never sent a newsletter. It works.”

Spotlight

41:07 Justin’s spotlight this week is SHML.xyz (shell markup language)
41:49 Eric’s spotlight is Thoughtbot. Go on github.com/thoughtbot/laptop also a subscription to Dracula Pro, found on Draculatheme.com.
43:41 Richard’s spotlight is Caigmod.com (a newsletter).
44:30 Zeno’s spotlight is HTML5 Boilerplate.

Episode 17: How Formidable Supports Open Source With Lorenzo Sciandra

SustainOSS — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 19:00:00 -0500

Sponsored By:

Summary

Lorenzo Sciandra talks about being an Open Source maintainer, how Formidable provides Open Source, the benefits of open source, expanding open source, and who is behind Formidable.