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Author: Eric Anderson

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The origin story behind the best open source projects and communities.
81 Episodes
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OpenBB is an open-source investment research platform created by Didier Lopes (@didier_lopes). OpenBB grew out of a project called Gamestonk Terminal that Didier began working on shortly before the Gamestop short squeeze in January 2021. Today, OpenBB has evolved into an infrastructure platform that allows users to build extensions and access financial data with automation and customization. Contributor is looking for a community manager! If you want to know more, shoot us an email at eric@scalevp.com. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications! In this episode we discuss: What Vice Media got wrong about OpenBB Some major contributors to the project and the features or directions that they proposed How a machine learning engineer from Bloomberg reached out about OpenBB Different types of OpenBB users – students, retail investors, and other financial professionals OpenBB’s exciting AI roadmap Links: OpenBB People mentioned: James Maslek (@jmaslek11 Artem Veremey (@artemvv)
OpenTelemetry is an open-source observability framework for collecting and managing telemetry data. OpenTelemetry has been more successful than expected, becoming the second fastest growing project in the CNCF. It allows for flexibility and avoids vendor lock-in, making it attractive to startups and large enterprises alike. On today’s show, Eric (@ericmander) sits down with Austin Parker (@austinlparker), director of open-source at Honeycomb. Contributor is looking for a community manager! If you want to know more, shoot us an email at eric@scalevp.com. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications! In this episode we discuss: How Austin’s interest in complex systems led him to the observability field and developer relations An X argument that contributed to the merger of OpenTelemetry and OpenCensus Why foundations help maintainers to strike a balance with their contributors Austin’s opinion on the secret to OpenTelemetry’s success Links: OpenTelemetry Honeycomb People mentioned: Charity Majors (@mipsytipsy) Christine Yen (@cyen)
OPAL is an open-source administration layer for Policy Engines such as Open Policy Agent (OPA). OPAL provides the necessary infrastructure to load policy and data into multiple policy engines, ensuring they have the information they need to make decisions. Today, we’re talking to Or Weis (@OrWeis), co-creator of OPAL and co-founder of Permit, the end-to-end authorization platform that envisions a world where developers never have to build permissions again.  Contributor is looking for a community manager! If you want to know more, shoot us an email at eric@scalevp.com. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications! In this episode we discuss: History of Permit and OPAL The benefits of an open-foundation model rather than open-core RBAC vs ABAC vs ReBAC Why developers would prefer to not have to deal with authorization Or’s own podcast, Command+Shift+Left Links: OPAL Permit Command+Shift+Left Terraform People mentioned: Asaf Cohen (@asafchn) Filip Grebowski (@developerfilip) Other episodes: Open Policy Agent with Torin Sandall Community Driven IaC: OpenTofu with Kuba Martin
FerretDB enables users to run MongoDB applications on existing Postgres infrastructure. Peter Farkas (@FarkasP), co-founder and CEO of FerretDB, explains the need for an open source interface for document databases. Peter also discusses the licensing change of MongoDB and the uncertainty it created for users. He emphasizes the importance of open standards and collaboration among MongoDB alternatives to provide users with choice and interoperability.  Contributor is looking for a community manager! If you want to know more, shoot us an email at eric@scalevp.com. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications! In this episode we discuss: The epic mountain adventure that inspired FerretDB Why commercial open-source can be additive rather than extractive How compatibility and open standards drives innovation and competition PDFs as an example of corporation-supported standards Three tenets for building a successful open source project Links: FerretDB Percona People: Peter Zaitsev (@PeterZaitsev)
Ben Johnson (@benbjohnson) is the creator of Litestream and LiteFS, two open-source disaster recovery solution for SQLite. Litestream is designed to provide continuous backups for SQLite databases by streaming incremental changes, allowing for easy data recovery in the event of a server crash. LiteFS, on the other hand, is built on LiteStream but uses transactional control to focus on replication and high availability. Join us as Ben discusses the challenges and trade-offs of open source contributions and the future of databases. Contributor is looking for a community manager! If you want to know more, shoot us an email at eric@scalevp.com. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications! In this episode we discuss: The history of how Ben got involved in SQLite development out of “spite” How Litestream “works on a fluke” Different use cases for Litestream vs LiteFS Why fully open contributions isn’t always Ben’s style The greater server-side SQLite landscape Links: Litestream LiteFS Fly.io BoltDB  People mentioned: Philip O’Toole (@general_order24) Other episodes: The Social Miracle: rqlite with Philip O’Toole The Big Fork: libSQL with Glauber Costa
Tonic is a native gRPC implementation in Rust that allows users to easily build gRPC servers and clients without extensive async experience. Tonic is part of the Tokio stack, which is a library that provides an asynchronous runtime for Rust and more tools to write async applications. Today, Lucio Franco (@lucio_d_franco) of Turso joins the podcast to discuss his unique experience maintaining Tonic and contributing to the asynchronous Rust ecosystem. Contributor is looking for a community manager! If you want to know more, shoot us an email at eric@scalevp.com. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications! In this episode we discuss: The challenges of async Rust and ways the community has addressed them Lucio’s plan on how to get a job in distributed databases How the Tokio team avoided power dynamics Problems around working on open-source in the corporate world Why Lucio encouraged a collaborator to go on without him  Links: Tonic Tokio Turso Tower People: Carl Lerche (@carllerche) Other episodes: The Big Fork: libSQL with Glauber Costa
rqlite is a lightweight, distributed relational database built on Raft and SQLite. Founder Philip O’Toole (@general_order24) decided to combine these technologies while working at a startup years ago. The startup no longer exists, but rqlite is going strong. Today, Philip is an engineering manager at Google, while he continues to be the driving force behind the open development of rqlite. Contributor is looking for a community manager! If you want to know more, shoot us an email at eric@scalevp.com. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications! In this episode we discuss: The biggest misconceptions about how rqlite differs from SQLite Why writing databases is more interesting than new programmers might think The tradeoff between a large community versus smaller, more focused leadership Reasons why open-source development progresses in bursts of energy How to really pronounce “rqlite” Links: rqlite InfluxData dqlite Litestream libSQL Turso OpenTelemetry People: Ben Johnson (@benbjohnson) Other episodes: libSQL with Glauber Costa
Kuba Martin (@cube2222_2) is Software Engineering Team Lead at Spacelift and Interim Tech Lead of OpenTofu, the open-source fork of Terraform. Terraform is a declarative infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tool that recently switched to a source-available license. Spacelift and other companies that heavily relied on Terraform came together to fork it into a community-driven project originally called OpenTF, which has now become OpenTofu and is governed by the Linux Foundation.  Contributor is looking for a community manager! If you want to know more, shoot us an email at eric@scalevp.com. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications! In this episode we discuss: Two kinds of forks How OpenTofu handled the opportunity to rethink their licensing and copyright Finding hundreds of pledges to the OpenTF Manifesto The benefits of a technical steering committee Recreating the community registry Links: OpenTofu Spacelift Terraform Gruntwork Harness env0 Scalr
Ry Walker (@rywalker) is the founder and CEO of Tembo, the Postgres developer platform for building any and every data service. To Ry, the full capabilities of Postgres appear underappreciated and underused for most users. Tembo is an attempt to harness the large ecosystem of Postgres extensions, and ultimately collapse the database sprawl of the modern data stack.  Contributor is looking for a community manager! If you want to know more, shoot us an email at eric@scalevp.com. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications! In this episode we discuss: Taking the “red pill” of using Postgres for everything Providing universal support for Postgres extensions Why Ry dislikes the current state of the modern data stack How databases across the board have mostly changed into application platforms What makes Tembo “Startup Mt. Everest” Links: Tembo OSSRank Citus Data Modal Supabase Wrappers People mentioned: Erik Bernhardsson (@bernhardsson) Other episodes: Clickhouse with Alexey Milovidov and Ivan Blinkov
Jan Oberhauser (@JanOberhauser) is the founder and CEO of n8n, the free and source-available workflow automation tool for technical users. n8n's flexible architecture allows users to avoid the limitations of other automation tools, while also opening doors for complex automation scenarios. The project has garnered over 30,000 GitHub stars and a thriving community of 55,000+ members. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community! In this episode we discuss: How Jan’s background in film effects laid the groundwork for n8n Why n8n uses a forum over Discord or Slack for a community platform Use cases from scheduling fitness classes to upgrading financial mainframes How n8n might stack up against the well-thought out Python script Why n8n uses a fair-code license rather than open-source Links: n8n n8n Community Other episodes: Temporal with Maxim Fateev From Orchestration to Building Applications: Conductor with Jeu George Rethinking the Workflow Problem: Windmill with Ruben Fiszel
Glauber Costa (@glcst) is the founder of Turso and the co-creator of libSQL, an open source, open contribution fork of the database engine library, SQLite. Most people believe that SQLite is open-source software, but it actually exists in the public domain and doesn’t accept external contributions. With their big fork, Glauber and his team have set out to evolve SQLite into a modern database with support for distributed data, an asynchronous interface, compatibility with WASM and Linux, and more. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community! In this episode we discuss: Community reactions to forking SQLite How Glauber was spoiled by starting his career developing for Linux The controversial decision to launch libSQL without writing a single line of code The plan for incorporating upstream changes from SQLite Examples of how application developers need to move code “to the edge” Links: libSQL SQLite Turso LiteFS Litestream rqlite VLCN People mentioned: Avi Kivity (@AviKivity) Dor Laor (@DorLaor) Ben Johnson (@benbjohnson) Phillip O’Toole (@general_order24) Matt Tantaman (@tantaman) Other episodes: Scylla with Dor Laor  Apache Cassandra with Patrick McFadin
Ruben Fiszel (@rubenfiszel) is the creator of Windmill, the open-source developer platform that lets users easily turn scripts into workflows and internal apps with auto-generated UIs. Windmill doesn’t force engineers to change their coding style or adopt a convoluted API, and its low-code design makes it accessible to non-technical users. Tune in to find out how Windmill offers speed, performance and flexibility, while avoiding the limitations of rigid tools. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community! In this episode we discuss: Why many engineers try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to workflow engines When Ruben first saw the need for a platform like Windmill while working at Palantir “Today is the nicest period to build open-source…” Ruben’s incredible presence with support and bug fixes Windmill’s generous open-source offerings and the future of the business Links: Windmill Retool Tokio Apache Airflow Apache Spark Other episodes: Prefect with Jeremiah Lowin Dagster with Nick Schrock Temporal with Maxim Fateev Temporal (Part 2) with Maxim Fateev and Dominik Tornow Apache Cassandra with Patrick McFadin
Jesse Clark (@jn2clark) is a co-founder of Marqo, the end-to-end, multimodal vector search engine. Vector search has exploded along with the rise of generative AI models, so Marqo’s arrival has had excellent timing. The project has quickly grown to almost 3000 GitHub stars, despite being less than a year old. Jesse and his team weren’t exactly expecting this level of immediate success, but they are well-positioned to continue developing Marqo as a fixture in the worlds of information retrieval and machine learning.  Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community! In this episode we discuss: Jesse’s journey from physics research, to Stitch Fix, Amazon, and finally starting Marqo Industry vs academia in the cutting edge of machine learning Why “almost any organization in the world would benefit from Marqo” Talking about machine learning language - tensors, vectors, embeddings How Jesse deals with the stress of knowing how fast the AI space is innovating Links: Marqo People mentioned: Katrina Lake (@kmlake) Eric Colson (@ericcolson)
Jeu George (@jeugeorge) is the co-creator of Conductor, the open-source application building platform. Conductor began as a workflow orchestrator and was originally developed at Netflix. Jeu also co-founded Orkes, a company which offers a cloud product based on Conductor. Tune in to find out how Conductor has evolved into an open-source, battle-tested distributed application platform. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community! In this episode we discuss: The core tenets of building Conductor - reliability, language and cloud agnosticism How Conductor enables teams to share and manage their custom modules The role of Conductor in Netflix’s switch from licensed to original content Jeu’s journey from Netflix, to Uber, and finally to Orkes How Orkes is focusing on integrations and AI orchestration moving forward Links: Conductor Orkes People mentioned: Viren Baraiya (@virenbaraiya) Boney Sekh (@boneyorkes) Dilip Lukose (@diliplukose)
Advait Ruia (@Advait_Ruia) is the co-founder of SuperTokens, the open-source user authentication and authorization framework. SuperTokens integrates natively into both your front-end client and your backend endpoint. This approach gives developers more control over the user experience and allows for custom workflows. Tune in to find out why SuperTokens aims to be the best of both the build and the buy argument for authentication solutions. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community! In this episode we discuss: How SuperTokens evolved from a blog post on session management into a full-fledged infrastructure company Why there is increasing demand for authentication providers Do founders need to be in the Bay Area? Advait’s advice for building community and providing support Areas where SuperTokens could use outside contributions Links: SuperTokens SuperTokens Product Roadmap People mentioned: Rishabh Poddar (@rishpoddar) Other episodes: Hasura with Tanmai Gopal
Loris Degioanni (@lorisdegio) joins Eric Anderson (@ericmander) to chat about Falco, the open-source runtime security tool for modern cloud infrastructures. Loris is the founder and CTO of Sysdig, and co-creator of Wireshark, the legendary open-source packet analysis tool. Today, Loris talks about all these projects and more - tune in to learn about some deep history and Loris’ predictions for the future. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community! In this episode we discuss: How Loris began working with Gerald Combs as a student in Italy Why Loris’ teams name their products after animals The new non-profit Wireshark Foundation Parallel development of cloud technology and containers during Loris’ career The little things that make open-source projects go viral Links: Falco Sysdig Wireshark People mentioned: Solomon Hykes (@solomonhykes)
Emre Baran (@emre) is the CEO and co-founder of Cerbos, the open-source authorization layer for implementing roles and permissions. Cerbos allows developers to decouple authorization logic from core code into its own centrally distributed component. Easier said than done, perhaps - but Cerbos is secure, intentionally simple to implement, and developer-focused. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community! In this episode we discuss: The difference between authentication and authorization Why Cerbos is language-agnostic Authorization patterns in a single application versus a larger network The reason most devs start out trying to do authorization themselves, and sometimes give up How the upcoming Cerbos Cloud will empower less technical users to deploy and manage policies and logs Links: Cerbos Cerbos Cloud Beta Zanzibar: Google’s Consistent, Global Authorization System People mentioned: Charith Ellawala (Github: @charithe) Other episodes: Open Policy Agent with Torin Sandall
Eric Anderson (@ericmander) has a conversation with Liam Randall (@Hectaman) and Bailey Hayes (@baihay) of Cosmonic, the platform-as-a-service environment for building cloud-native applications using WebAssembly. Bailey is also on the steering committee for the Bytecode Alliance, which stewards WebAssembly. In 2021, Cosmonic donated their WebAssembly runtime, wasmCloud, to the CNCF as an open-source project. Today, Liam and Bailey trace the history of WebAssembly, and their personal paths alongside it. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community! In this episode we discuss: How WebAssembly came together over the last decade to become the fourth standardized language of the web The moments when Bailey and Liam both realized they might be changing the future of computing Modding Microsoft Flight Simulator with Wasm modules Liam’s thoughts on how WebAssembly will affect business models going forward Links: Cosmonic WebAssembly Bytecode Alliance CNCF wasmCloud Wasmtime WAMR Better together: A Kubernetes and Wasm case study Spin People mentioned: Kevin Hoffman (@KevinHoffman) Kelsey Hightower (@kelseyhightower) Guy Bedford (@guybedford) Peter Huene (@peterhuene) Chris Aniszczyk (@cra) Other episodes: Envoy Proxy with Matt Klein Suborbital with Connor Hicks
Eric Anderson (@ericmander) is joined by Milos Rusic (@rusic_milos) to discuss Haystack, the open-source NLP framework for leveraging Transformer models and building intelligent search systems. Milos and his colleagues at deepset were early contributors to Hugging Face’s Transformer models, and began building pipelines for searching large document stores. Today, Haystack is wildly popular, with an active Discord community and over 6,000 GitHub stars. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community! In this episode we discuss: A deep dive into how Haystack works and its many use cases How a customer demo with one-minute long queries helped inspire Haystack Marketing open-source projects vs word of mouth NLP applications working with structured data and translating between types of data Imagining a world where every person has their own personal ChatGPT Links: Haystack deepset Hugging Face Notion Other episodes: Milvus with Frank Liu
Eric Anderson (@ericmander) talks with Artyom Keydunov (@keydunov) about Cube, the semantic layer for building data applications. Cube helps engineers bridge data warehouses and data experiences, and provides access control, security, caching, and more helpful features. The project began in open-source and has evolved quite a lot over the last few years with a ton of community support. Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community! In this episode we discuss: What is a semantic layer? Coming up with the idea to open-source during a game of ping pong Setting a ten-company-deployment goal Using Cube to track COVID stats in lockdown How one contributor built a GraphQL API Links: Cube Superset Metabase Observable Streamlit People mentioned: Pavel Tiunov (@paveltiunov87)
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