Open Source: The Big Picture with Nadia Eghbal

About this Episode

Open Source: The Big Picture with Nadia Eghbal

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Guest

Nadia Eghbal: Works on Open Source Initiatives at GitHub, Author of Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure; Read her essays on Open Source on Medium

Summary

The Internet runs on Open Source. Open Source runs on maintainers and contributors. Is that sustainable? We talk to Nadia Eghbal about her work documenting and analyzing the Open Source ecosystem. How did we get here, and how did GitHub change Open Source? Nadia answers why Open Source makes economic sense, and discusses what can make projects more sustainable (hint: it's not just money).

Notes

01:22 - Researching the Open Source Community

03:14 - How the Relationship Between Open Source and the Rest of Technology Changed in the Mid-2000s

07:22 - Where is Open Source going? How will it evolve?

09:28 - What do successful projects do that others can learn from?

12:34 - Standardization of Funding

13:33 - As Projects Mature

17:26 - The Open Source Ecosystem: Excludable and Non-Excludable

21:42 - The Reputational Economy

25:20 - “Worse is Better”: Sharing Between Ecosystems; Fragmentation

30:03 - Diversity and Being New in the Open Source Community

34:16 - Hopes for the Future: Better Tooling for Maintainers, Shared Understanding of Best Practices, Supporting Open Source

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