Sustaining Open Source Software: Tools for Change
How can we sustain open source software?
As multiple companies re-license their projects to move away from open source, and maintainers everywhere are getting burnt out, it’s time to rethink how to make open source sustainable.
We present a checklist for assessing the health of an open source project to see if it might be at risk, and what to do about it.
You’ll learn some approaches for setting up an open source project for long-term success, and some other ideas about how we might keep this thing we all love alive.
See this talk and many more by getting your ticket to PyCon AU now!
I want a ticket!For the last 10 to 15 years, open source software has been dominated by a bunch of VC-funded startups writing software and giving it away for free.
That was, probably, a really silly thing for most of them to do. Why did they do it? And what might we do differently?
Learn how to recognise the economic structures that lead to decisions that are unhelpful for open source sustainability. Learn how to design a project structure that gives provides the best chance at being sustainable. Learn how to diagnose the problems in your own projects before they hit crisis point. Most importantly: learn what changes to make and how to make them.
Justin is the founder and principal analyst at PivotNine, a boutique analyst and consulting firm based in Melbourne, Australia. He covers enterprise infrastructure, cloud, and information security technologies with a particular focus on free and open source software. He has used Linux as his primary desktop environment since 1996. An IT industry veteran with extensive global experience, Justin has worked with enterprise organisations including ANZ bank, IBM, NetApp, Pure Storage, Telstra, and VMware as well as a variety of Silicon Valley startups including Isovalent, Illumio, Pulumi, and Solo.io. His preferred programming language is Python. Justin holds an MBA from Melbourne Business School, and is a graduate member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.