Episode 15: Analytics for Open Source Maintainers with Avi Press

Update: 2021-06-28

Description

Sponsored by Reblaze, creators of Curiefense

Panelists

Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer

Guest

Avi Press

Show Notes

Hello and welcome to Committing to Cloud Native Podcast! It’s the podcast by Reblaze where we talk about open source maintainers, contributors, sustainers, and their experiences in the Cloud Native space. We are super excited to have as our guest today, Avi Press, Co-Founder and CEO of Scarf. We learn all about Scarf, how it works, and what it has to do with Cloud Native. Also, Avi tells us about the newest product, The Scarf Gateway, how Linkerd and Rocket.Chat are using it, and a new longer-term project they are working on called Nomia. Avi shares what he’s most excited about for Scarf in the future, his mission for Scarf, resources Scarf is providing to users, and he tells us more about why they are focusing more on the tooling right now and not the monetization. Download this episode now to find out more from Avi!

[00:01:10 ] Avi tells us what Scarf is, how it works, and what it has to do with Cloud Native.

[00:02:28 ] We learn how Linkerd is using the new product, Scarf Gateway, and what they’re doing.

[00:05:23 ] Justin asks if there’s a company or something they do at Scarf, that tracks uptime of different container rate registries. Avi explains one of things they are working on with the Gateway.

[00:06:11 ] Avi talks about their infrastructure and CloudStack.

[00:07:43 ] AWS billed Scarf for $482 for the “support” needed to fix their original monthly bill and Avi explains.

[00:09:25 ] Since Scarf is the middle layer for interfacing with other large cloud providers that gives more data to the users, Richard wonders why the cloud providers are working with Avi and why doesn’t AWS just block all of their ports and requests.

[00:11:51 ] Richard is curious to know Avi’s perspective on the Legion aspect and wonders how Avi helps show Google is using his product and how does he connect people to people at Google without violating GDPR or other massive privacy concerns.

[00:14:25 ] If you’re a developer who’s running a Cloud Native project, find out how easy it is to set up the process to start using Scarf. Justin mentions some of Scarf’s users and Avi talks about Rocket.Chat using the Gateway.

[00:16:38 ] Avi fills us in on a new longer-term project they are working on called Nomia.

[00:18:54 ] Avi tells us how they found Shea and all about his vision when he came to Scarf.

[00:21:59 ] Besides Nomia, Avi shares what he’s most excited about for Scarf in the future and Justin asks him how his friend Havi Hoffman is doing.

[00:25:32 ] Avi talks about how they’re focusing on the growth of their tooling right now, not the monetization.

[00:26:24 ] Justin asks Avi to describe his company in five words, or more, his mission, and what it would be like.

[00:28:27 ] Richard asks what Avi is doing to ensure that he’s not myopically focused on helping developers only focus on what companies that they can get something out of, how is he making sure that the tools he builds empower disempowered communities of developers and people of color and women, and what is he doing to make sure that these users are also being cared for and are a priority in what he’s doing.

[00:29:35 ] Avi tells us what he’s doing to listen to other voices in how he develops these dev tools. He also tells us what resources Scarf is providing to users.

[00:34:14 ] Find out where you can follow Avi online.

Quotes

[00:10:03 ] “And so in that way, we’re basically an element of letting projects and companies choose the best registry.”

[00:10:44 ] “And so by being an agent of shifting some of that leverage back to the project owners we are creating a space where the best registry should win and not the registry that’s just most established should continue to win.”

[00:18:21 ] “And so our goals for Nomia is that by offering a very generic framework and ecosystem around resource management, we can help maintainers with even more information about how their dependencies that they maintain the distributor getting used kind of regardless of how and where and from what registries, etc.”

[00:19:10 ] “Can Scarf help me monetize it and like figure out how I can make a sustainable business out of Nomia?”

[00:22:07 ] “I think in the long run what I’m really excited about for Scarf’s future is how we can really help the businesses behind a lot of these Cloud Native projects and help them be more successful.”

[00:23:49 ] “And I think that the secret to that success is really not anything that I’m doing, but really just the problem we’re working on and trying to solve these problems in open source of how we share data with each other and how that can be a driving force for change and improvement in the Open Source and Cloud Native spaces is something that resonates with a lot of people.”

[00:25:00 ] “You can never really put enough effort into the docs.”

[00:25:36 ] “We’re really focusing right now on the growth of our tooling.”

[00:26:49 ] “We want to empower open source developers to have sustainable businesses and projects.”

[00:31:05 ] “And so, I think that’s what I would point to that not everything that we try is going to be popular or stick, and what we do is we just listen, and we adapt, and that’s how documentation insights came to be.”