Open Source Ready

On episode 43 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride speak with Madelyn Olson. The Valkey maintainer and AWS principal engineer explains how AI is changing open source contributions, code review, and the work of keeping shared infrastructure reliable. They also explore Valkey’s origins, semantic caching, and why community governance still matters when anyone can customize the code.

On episode 42 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride sit down with Will Cory, creator of Smithers. Will explains how workflows can simplify agent orchestration and why AI-assisted development could make specialized open source forks more practical. They also explore his planned TypeScript redesign, the trade-offs behind agent tooling, and what maintainers can learn from users who build their own solutions.

On episode 41 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride sit down with Phil Estes. They explore why the definition of a container remains surprisingly fuzzy, how microVM-backed sandboxes could support the next generation of AI agents, and what AI-generated contributions mean for projects like containerd. Phil also explains why the future of open source depends as much on trusted maintainers and healthy communities as it does on code.

On episode 40 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride sit down with Orhun Parmaksiz to explore Ratty, his experimental GPU-rendered terminal emulator that combines traditional command-line workflows with interactive 3D graphics. They discuss the future of terminal user interfaces, how AI is accelerating developer tooling, and what recent supply chain attacks on Arch Linux reveal about the evolving security landscape for open source software.

On episode 39 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride speak with Zach Smith, creator of Kplane, about rethinking Kubernetes for an AI-driven future. Zach explains how virtualized control planes could enable isolated cluster experiences at massive scale, while the conversation explores developer experience, AI tooling, and the possibility that future AI agents may each require their own cloud.