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From YouTube: The Maintainers: Aaron Stannard and the Akka.NET Project
Description
In this series, I'll be interviewing Open Source Maintainers and talk about what open source means to them and why they do it. This episode:
Aaron Stannard and the Akka.NET Project
Aaron Stannard, is the CEO and founder of Petabridge, where he's making distributed programming for .NET developers easy by working on Akka.NET, NBench, and dozens of other OSS projects.
He also just recently founded Sdkbin - think NuGet meets the App Store, to help OSS and .NET developers build sustainable businesses around their work.
Prior to Petabridge he founded MarkedUp Analytics, a real-time in-app marketing and analytics service used by 1000+ developers. Prior to that he worked at Microsoft as a Startup Developer Evangelist.
- Twitter: @Aaronontheweb
- GitHub: https://github.com/Aaronontheweb
- Blog: https://aaronstannard.com/
- Petabridge: https://petabridge.com/
A
A
So
the
first
time
I
tried
to
use
open
source
was,
I
think
this
must
have
been
like
2008
2009.
I
started
using,
I
think
blog
engine.net
and
I
contributed
a
plug-in
for
it
on
codeplex.
I
think
it
was
for
adding
footnotes
to
to
like
make
citations
and
some
of
the
posts
I
was
doing
so.
That
was
like
the
very
first
time
I
had
ever
had
to
look
through
the
source
code
of
another
project
before
and
then
I
created
set
up
my
own
little
codeplex
suppository
and
I
think
I
was
using
mercurial
back.
A
Akka.Net
was
a
problem,
the
biggest
open
source
project
that
I've
been
sort
of
heavily
involved
with
for
a
long
time,
I've
been
working
on
akka.net
in
some
way,
shape
or
form.
Since
november
of
2013.
we
needed
the
ability
to
do
real-time
stream
processing.
It
took
me
forever
to
figure
out
that's
what
I
needed,
because
I
had
never
worked
with
anything
like
that
before.
A
But
when
I
started
looking
at
it,
it
seemed
like
actors,
which
is
a
computing
concept
that
goes
all
the
way
back
to
the
early
1970s
were
the
the
right
tool
for
the
job,
and
so
I
read
about
erlang
and
then
I
discovered
akka,
which
is
originally
written
in
scala,
and
then
I
figured
well.
You
know
the
actor
model's
been
around
for
gosh.
You
know
40
years.
A
Surely
something
like
this
exists
in.net,
and
this
is
back
in
2013,
mind
you
and
the
answer
was
there
was
a
bunch
of
like
abandoned
microsoft,
research
projects,
and
that
was
about
it.
So
I
briefly
contemplated
having
us
rewrite
a
major
portion
of
our
analytics
system
in
the
in
java,
so
we
could
work
with
the
aka
framework
there.
A
That
sort
of
thing,
so
we
ultimately
decided
the
lesser
two
evils
was
to
port
the
thing
we
didn't
know,
which
was
akka
and
actor
programming
to
port,
that
to
the
runtime
that
we
did
know
just.net
and
as
it
turned
out,
there
were
other
people
who
were
working
on
doing
the
exact
same
thing
right
around
the
same
time.
We
started
doing
it,
so
we
all
joined
forces
and
by
I
guess
I
would
say,
kind
of
around
february
2014.
A
We
went
live
into
production
with
our
product
that
used
it
about
three
months
later
and
we
had
to
fix
all
sorts
of
bugs
that
we
found
inside
the
networking
layer.
We
started
attracting
more
and
more
people.
I
had
people
start
hitting
me
up
for
consulting
around
akka.net
one
after
I
sort
of
published
the
blog
post,
announcing
that
our
company
was
dead
and
I
was
out
of
a
job.
A
I
had
a
bunch
of
people
hit
me
up
on
linkedin
asking
for
help
using
akka.net
for
building
all
sorts
of
things,
and
we
had
a
bunch
of
other
customers
spread
out
all
over
the
world
who
are
interested
in
using
akka.net,
and
we
ended
up
deciding
you
know
what.
Maybe
we
can
make
a
business
out
of
this
out
of
and
that's
sort
of
how
I
ended
up
starting
my
my
company
petabridge,
which
is
all
about
helping
businesses
that
want
to
build
high
scale.
A
A
So
the
primary
funding
source
for
akka.net
it's
either
been
my
first
startup
funded
my
own
labor
and
the
labor
of
one
of
my
other
employees.
I
helped
co-author
some
of
it
and
then
petabridge,
which
has
been
in
business
since
january.
2015
we've
been
self-funded.
We,
we
originally
sort
of
self-funded
the
company
by
selling
online
trainings
for
learning
how
to
do
academic
architecture,
remoting
and
clustering.
Clustering
is
how
you
build
like
a
really
highly
available
application
with
akka.net,
and
so
we
started
teaching
these
online
courses
eventually
that
led
to
doing
group
trainings
for
businesses.
A
We
also
started
making
some
money,
doing
architecture,
reviews
and
consulting
later.
We
added
support
plans
and
then,
a
couple
years
ago
we
started
selling
performance
monitoring
products
for
being
able
to
monitor
how
well
your
akadana
application
is
working
at
scale.
We've
taken
a
lot
of
the
money
that
we
earned
from
doing
all
those
things
and
we've
reinvested
it
back
into
akka.net,
either
in
the
form
of
hiring
contractors
to
go
ahead
and
do
work
directly
on
the
source
code,
for
instance,
some
of
the
other
contributors
who
worked
on
the
project
for
years.
A
I
would
you
know,
turn
around
and
say
to
them:
hey
I've
got
a
project,
that's
very
labor
intensive,
but
I
don't
have
the
time
to
do
it.
If
I
give
you
let's
say
a
few
thousand
dollars,
do
you
think
you'd
be
able
to
go
ahead
and
do
this
over
the
course
of
the
next
three
weeks
and
they'd,
say
well
sure
great?
They
could
go
ahead
and
make
a
little
bit
of
money
on
the
side.
These
developers
all
had
full-time
jobs
too.
A
So
we
kind
of
started
doing
small
stuff
like
that
now
petabridge
has
two
full-time
employees
in
addition
to
me
who
work
on
akka.net
or
they
work
on
some
of
the
other
plugins
that
are
built
on
top
of
it,
such
as
like
some
of
our
persistence
plugins.
They
do
that.
You
know
five
days
a
week
and
we're
looking
at
trying
to
hire
some
more
people
for
working
on
things
like
our
documentation
and
tutorials
sort
of
another
area
that
we're
looking
at
trying
to
get
a
full-time
resource
for
doing
that.
A
The
open
source
business
model
is
built
on
this
kind
of
value
plus
model,
where
the
idea
is
that
you
take
a
you
should
give
away
80
of
what
you
make
for
free,
that's
sort
of
the
core
open
source
technology
that
businesses
are
going
to
invest
a
lot
of
time
into
and
having
that
technology
be
free,
is
actually
a
big
competitive
advantage.
It
means
that
developers
can
start
trying
it
out
and
working
with
it
without
having
to
talk
to
someone
in
the
procurement
department.
A
Most
of
your
paying
customers
are
going
to
be
big
corporations
that
want
to
comply
with
licenses.
They
want
training,
they
want
to
know
this
technology
is
really
going
to
work
because
they're
going
to
end
up
writing
an
application
that
generates
tens
of
millions
of
dollars
to
billions
of
dollars
revenue
a
year
on
top
of
it,
depending
on
what
what
what
the
application
is
being
used
for,
but
either
way
it's
important
enough
that
it
works
right
that
they're
willing
to
spend
the
money
to
find
out.
A
Your
business
model
is
not
typically
going
to
generate
much
money
from
students
startups
and
other
people
who
wouldn't
ever
use
your
software.
If
it
wasn't
free,
those
people
are
probably
not
going
to
be
your
paying
customers,
but
they
might
be
your
evangelists.
They
might
be
some
of
the
people
who
turn
around
and
tell
their
friend
who
works
for
a
big
bank
or
a
health
insurance
company.
Hey
check
out
this
really
cool
framework.
I
was
able
to
use
to
solve
this
concurrent
programming
problem.
I
had.
I
was
able
to
use
it
for
a
homegrown.
A
You
know
iot
application.
I
wrote
for
fun
those
that's
sort
of
the
some
of
the
trade-offs
there,
but
the
way
you
really
make
money
as
an
open
source
business
is
you
need
to
find
a
way
to
sell
things
in
addition
to
what
your
open
source
technology
does.
So,
for
instance,
with
our
phobos
product,
we
sell
these
performance
monitoring,
instrumentation
capabilities
that
you
don't
get
in
the
built-in
sort
of
framework,
so
there's
a
sort
of
open
core,
which
is
what
you
use
to
build
your
application.
A
A
Has
it
been
difficult
to
find
contributors
outside
of
like
my
paid
employees?
It's
all
it's
a
challenge
with
every
open
source
project
we've
had
a
core
development
team
on
akka.net,
that's
stuck
around
for
years,
but
people
change
jobs
and
move
on
to
other
things,
and
ultimately,
that
sort
of
volunteer
contribution
effort
is
only
only
last
as
long
as
that
person
is
it
as
invested
in
the
outcomes
they're
going
to
get
from
akka.net
or
any
open
source
project
really.
A
A
We
get
those
periodically
from
contributors
who
maybe
contribute
one
or
two
things.
We
also
have
a
handful
of
people
who
are
really
using
akka.net
heavily
at
work
and
when
they
find
bugs
and
performance
issues
that
really
affect
their
business,
their
employer
is
more
than
happy
to
let
them
spend
you
know
tens
of
hours
going
through
and
finding
pretty
nuanced
bugs
or
performance
optimizations
inside
akka.net
and
we've
had.
A
We
also
have
a
couple
of
evangelists
who
are
people
who
contribute
to
the
project
and
have
contributed
to
the
project
and
successfully
evangelized
akka.net,
like
multiple
employers
they've
had
over
the
years
where
they
start
off.
With
this
one
company
get
aka.net
build
an
application
on
top
of
it,
then
they
change
jobs,
maybe
two
or
three
years
later.
Then
they
do
it
again
and
they
keep
showing
up
the
same
github
usernames,
even
though
the
organization
they
belong
to
is
different.
So
you
get
a
lot
of
that.
You
know.