GitHub GitHub Universe 2022 - Community, 21 Nov 2022

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From YouTube: Expanding GitHub Sponsors globally - Universe 2022

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Presented by: Abigail Cabunoc Mayes, Carlos Alexandro Becker, Kovid Goyal, & Youssef Victor

GitHub Sponsors expanded to over 30 new regions this year, Abigail Cabunoc Mayes will chat with three developers from India, Brazil and Egypt about building careers in open source.

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A

Thank you welcome everyone. My name is Abby kumonic Mays I lead github's, open source, maintainer programs and I'll be your host for today. So this year, GitHub sponsors expanded to over 30 new regions around the world. So today we're going to chat with open source maintainers from these regions and hear about how they're building careers in open source and just jumping in so joining me today from Brazil. First, we have Carlos Becker Carlos. Is a software engineer at charm and maintains go releaser helping people release software fast, hello from Egypt.

A

We have Yusef Victor Youssef is a software engineeringstudent.net contributor and Microsoft MVP in developer. Technologies welcome Yousef.

B

Hi hi everyone.

A

And finally, joining us from India we have kovid Goyo covet is an old open source fogy his words, not mine, who has worked on many projects over many years, principally caliber from Book, Lovers and kitty for terminal heads. Thank you, covid hi Abby thanks thanks.

C

For having me here, you.

A

Know just to kick us off. Maybe I'll start with you kovid, as the self-proclaimed open source fogy. How did you get into open source? Let.

C

Me attach my tape drive, try to remember way back 25 years ago, so I was a grad student I used to use I've been using Linux based operating systems for a very long time since I was a kid and so I used to use the key desktop environment at the time KDE and it had something called super karamba, which was a way to put little cool widgets on your screen.

C

um So this you could write your own widgets using python, which was like a nice easy to learn, programs a programming language, something I would handle so I learned it and I made a made a widget to display the email that I would get in different folders Fastback. Then I didn't get a lot of emails which is fairly useless.

D

C

It was fun and I published it, and you know a few a few dozen people downloaded it, and that gave me some confidence so later on. uh When I went on to do more projects, I continued using python I should use it to this day and Calaveras you can buy from Kitty is partly written in Python, so uh that was my start, making a cool uh with a widget for my desktop, which other people seem to like. That's.

A

Awesome so it seems like your open source. Journey has mostly been about building tools that you find useful and.

C

Then, basically,.

A

Everyone finds it useful.

C

I'm always amazed at that. That's.

A

Great and Yusuf, with you um I know, kovid mentioned he was in grad school when he got started, you're actually you're still a student, so I'm always excited to hear about students who are doing open source because I did not do open source and as a student, can you tell me a bit about your journey? Yes,.

B

um I started around three years ago: um it was at beginning about.net document competition like fixing typos, making small enhancements and things like that and at the time actually I I wasn't proficient at using get um but later I I, improved and I started contributing into Roseland um and later in 2021, I was nominated for MVP awards in recognition of my open source contributions. Congratulations.

A

Yes, it seems like your journey has been doing things that people find helpful. Other people find helpful documentation, winning these Awards thanks, Youssef and Carlos. Can you tell me a bit about your journey and how you've come to become a maintainer.

D

Yes, I also started as a student I think 15 years ago, maybe at the time like people were still using SVN, mostly and Google called something I, don't remember the name, uh but my first like video project, was something called GWT bootstrap, which it was the time when Twitter bootstraps started getting somewhat famous and there were like uh there was this thing called Google App toolkit, which is which is a framework for a Java to create web applications and I didn't like any of the component libraries, because they look at like JSF, which faces basically so I kind of created, like a wrapper for it using Twitter, botswap and Google app toolkit basically, and that was it it's also when I started.

D

Learning git uh I didn't speak English, so it was the first time interacting with people from other countries in other languages and all that so I learned a lot. It was good fun. That's.

A

Amazing and that's so interesting that you're able to learn more than just the programming language, but actually a spoken language so Carlos, can you tell me a bit about how you became a maintainer for the project that you're doing now.

D

Yes, like very much like coffee that was just like solving a problem. I had which was I didn't want to run, go build for several platforms and create our tribes manually and create future releases manually and upload everything manually, and all that so I created at first a short scriptural to make that and later I wanted more features and more control over some things, and eventually it became a go program which became the releaser, which is like the the.

A

Main thing I maintain the students and I added a lot of interest. That's great, so yeah Carlos, you have go releaser to solve a problem that you were running into same with covid. He built caliber and kitty to solve his own problems and yusefyard jumped into Roslyn just to be helpful and to help the community. That's great.

C

Yusuf is the nice one Among Us yeah.

A

And maybe at Yusuf I'll start with you. um Do you remember the first time you got funded for your open source work and how did that feel.

B

uh It felt really great um so the feelings that everyone is appreciating Zork I'm doing is just awesome. That's.

A

Great, and was it through GitHub sponsors.

B

A

Nice um covet and Carlos. How did it feel when you first got funded for open source you've been doing it a bit longer? Well,.

C

Back then, there was no GitHub, um so I used to host so and I started caliber as something called lib PRS 500 in the finest tradition of obscure open source Library names.

C

um So the PRS 500 was the first Sony E8 inquiry that was released in the US. When I was there and so I started and didn't work with Linux and I. Usually not so I wanted to reverse engineer it. uh So I joined a community called mobile read.com, where I kind of a mobile reading.

D

C

And together we sort of reverse engineered the PRS 500, which was the proprietary USB protocol and so I released my work as lip, PRS, 500, and so the Sony software. To put it kindly, was not the best. So I ended up adding a little bit of a GUI to it. So people would manage the books on the device you know and basic conversion to Sony's ebook format, which was another proprietary thing so anyway, all that was done and I had live. Prsvi 500 uploaded on mobile, read.com and I was getting a few users.

C

uh So at the time I was grad student and my parents had this deal that I had a credit card from them. That I could use once a week and buy a pizza for myself. It's.

A

Very specific, okay.

C

Yeah it was, it was just a fun thing. um So uh so so what happened was that the car expired? You know whatever, and so then I said. Let me put up a you know: a donate button, maybe I'll get enough money to you know make myself I mean order myself a pizza once a week. So that's what I did I on my website, I put up a PayPal button and uh and surprise surprise: I actually managed to make enough money to order myself a pizza. Every week.

A

Wow, you didn't even have structures in place like we have GitHub sponsors. Now you just added a little PayPal button and people as a user of caliber I, understand why people would donate to you. So that's great yeah.

C

It was a big surprise to me. I I didn't actually expect anything to happen. Yeah.

A

It's funny how life turns out and then Carlos. Do you remember the first time you were funded for your open source work, yeah.

D

It was um open Collective, uh there were like a couple: one dollar donations and the first like bigger donation was from I think this is the ocean. It was like 20 a month they donated for a good time and I felt like wow. Someone is paying for me to do this, like amazing and weird at the same time, because I I just put like coffee I, just put it there and didn't expect anything of it and.

A

Now it's grown even more with GitHub sponsors, and you have so many structures in place. Yeah.

C

Github sponsors is, is an excellent initiative. You know because, as programmers we are often not that interested in you know collecting money dealing with the bureaucracy, yeah yeah I have to like add stuff to my tax returns. I still, remember all that uh um you know so uh yeah, so you know anything that makes it easier for us to focus on what we do. Oil- and you know somebody can take care of as much of the rest as possible. If you necessarily have yeah.

A

You don't want to learn how to be an accountant, you're writing code, um so you're all from different countries and these regions that we launch sponsors in pretty recently um so starting with covid India, actually had the largest wait list for GitHub sponsors and right now it's already the third most has the third most sponsored developers on the platform. So it's grown really quickly.

A

um Can you tell me a bit about the open source community in India, so.

C

uh When I I came back to India from the US after my grad school, which was uh 15 years back now and so back, then there was no open source Community uh in India. It was you yeah. It was me when I would tell people. You know, I write software for a living and basketball. What is it you know how much to charge for it and I said, give it away and they're all like look at me. I didn't know.

A

Like that's not how jobs work, yeah.

C

Yeah exactly so, uh you know it was It was kind of unheard of over here I'm saying because you know we are a relatively developing nation and we don't have really good safety nets. So so you know for people having a stable job is, is really important, and so the kind of thing that sort of thing of open sources is very much. uh You know you don't really know how you're going to get paid. You don't know if you're going to get paid. You know when you're going to get paid.

C

So it's it's a difficult thing. It's a difficult job for someone to make uh coming from a background where there, you know, isn't so much safety uh so but now, but uh that has changed us late and the open source Community has growing a lot. uh Just a couple of I. Don't know weeks months back, I was at a open source conference.

C

uh There were thousands of attendees and a lot of enthusiasm at MG, and you know I was plotted out onto the stage as the you know, the mascot or whatever uh so yeah, so I I I really feel good I try to encourage people whenever I meet them that this is something you can do. It's conceivable. uh You know it may or may not work out, I can't guarantee to work out, but it's worth a try.

C

um So you know just just jump in get your feet away and see how it goes.

A

And Yousef, what's the open source Community like in Egypt.

B

Well, um there's not much open source in Egypt, unfortunately, but I I always try to encourage all my colleagues to to contribute to open source. That's.

A

Nice yeah and you can start that community and it's great that you're able to join these International communities with the internet. Now yeah.

C

None of this would have been possible without the internet. um It's very much an enabler of uh what we do.

A

And Carlos, can you tell me a bit about the open source community in Brazil I know it's thriving and I believe he had the second largest wait list for sponsors, yeah.

D

There's a lot of shopping stores here. uh Brazil is really big, so like in area. So there's not a lot I think not at least where I live, but I live in a pretty Rural Water. So here we don't have meetups or anything. I used to live on a bigger city, I actually organized some meetups there, but I think Sao Paulo for the Annapolis and other cities have like more active scenes on that sense. But still we have a lot of great developers a lot of great software like Lua h-top and several others from.

C

Brazilians one of caliber's earliest contributors was from Brazil, so caliber has this uh system where you can download news and so that so for each News website you sort of have a recipe which is like a little python script that tells caliber how to convert the website into a ebook format. So uh one of the uh earliest developers.com related cues from uh Brazil and used contrary a lot of recipes together, and this was way back many many years ago. So cool.

A

That's awesome: it's awesome how the countries are overlapping and contributing to each other's work. uh Yousef I'd love to hear about the impact that funding has had on your life.

B

Yes, um so it is really really very encouraging to see someone sponsoring me, even if, even if it's not a lot, but uh it makes me passionate more about what I'm doing and makes me want to contribute more and more.

A

That's great and I think, especially for you, since you're contributing to like other people's projects and being so helpful, it's nice to see that thanks come back um rather because covet and Carlos are both building something for themselves. Almost I guess: yeah uh Carlos John talk about the impact funding has had on go releaser. Yes,.

D

I it helped a lot to like go to conferences, uh print stickers and get around to people also help like buying computers, Hardware. That kind of thing that is needed to like work and stuff so yeah. It helps a lot and I. Don't know how the USG rate is um like Egypt and India, but if in Brazil it's high, so even one dollar is like a not like a lot of money, but it's more than one dollar. So.

C

Sorry, that's an interesting point. uh So uh if I was if I continue living, the US I probably would not have been able to uh that, we start out uh working full-time I, now work full-time on on open source, but that's a lot of that is because of the difference between the dollar and the rupee. So a lot of my uh donations are from countries where the currencies are much more highly valued than the compared to the rupees. So so you know all those small, it's a small donation for the person donating.

C

But for me it's relatively larger thing. Yeah.

A

So it sounds like it's had a huge impact, even the small donations for all of you.

C

Almost all donations are below 100 I, get no donations from organizations or patrons or building manufacturers, or whatever you call them and they're. Also small donations from individuals who just happen to uh you know, like my sponsoring, feel like supported me.

A

So the next question I have it's actually for Carlos. um What surprised you about funding an open source.

D

uh One thing that surprised me, but it's kind of obvious when you think about it, is that smaller companies and individuals donate a lot more than bigger companies, and it's obvious also think about it, because of bureaucracy and all that. But in the beginning it was surprising to me because I was like wow, like bigger companies have more money. So why why this smaller companies are giving me more money.

C

I got a lot of donations from people who tell me that they're retired and they don't have a lot of money or they have lost their jobs and I'm, always amazed that such people still find it in their hearts to donate to somebody. But there are a lot of such people and I think that, in my experience at least you know having a lot of money is not correlated with how much you donate.

D

I think I thought it would be because, like I saw bigger companies using my software and I was like okay, maybe maybe they will help, but did that happen so.

A

Yeah, that's definitely something sponsors is thinking of like how can you make it easier for companies to donate to their their dependencies, their Stacks, so hopefully in the future, we'll start seeing the big companies uh kick it up? A notch amen.

C

A

I'm excited for the next few questions, because I asked you all what questions you want to ask each other and here's a few from all of you. um So actually I'll ask um Youssef this. uh What ideas do you have to grow as an individual in the open source community.

B

So contributing to more repositories is definitely one thing to improve, and also opening or reporting bugs to to repositories can be very helpful to those to the containers of the project and actually I I got a good opportunity on for own platform when my contributions were recognized by them and I worked for them in summer 2021 and 2022.

B

um Also, it is not only about doing contributions, but also one can benefit from doing good reviews for people who are better than me and like when I ask questions, or why did you do they think that way? It can really make me much better and makes me able to do more things when I later contribute and bug fix or do a feature or something like that.

D

Yeah I totally agree: I learned a lot by learning by reading pwt code at the time. I was writing Java professionally already, but when I read like better content like the code that wasn't right but wrote by students, I learned that I didn't know a lot about Java. So I learned a lot really good something most people don't take in consideration when, when when we talk about them about officers like the reading code, also, it's a good thing like you, don't need to actually write, contribute or anything.

D

If you just record you, you already learn a lot. Yeah.

A

That's a great point because I think often when I see like code reviewer or someone's asking for a review, I think they're asking for someone who's like way up there. Who like really knows this language and is an expert. They want an expert to review it, but no like anyone can review the code and it's still helpful and you might catch something that they don't know, um but it is such a great learning experience exactly like all three of you have said. Thank you for bringing that up next question.

A

I want to ask, is: uh do you offer anything to your sponsors or provide tears, I believe Carlos, uh you provide something. Can you explain a bit more.

D

Yeah I do, uh depending on how much you donate. You can have like your logo on some of my repos and also talk with me for an hour about any issue you have or I know. Anything basically has.

A

Anyone taken you up on talking with you for an hour I.

D

Don't think people want to talk.

A

Maybe someone watching this piano Carlos here is open source wisdom kovid. Actually, this question might be good for you. uh Do you have any tips on how to make your project sustainable you've been running caliber and kitty for book for a long time.

C

um So the first most important tip I can say is think about it from the beginning or post to the beginning, um because if you want your project to last the long term, it has to some in some sense be sustainable, uh because the donations grew enough. I felt that I could possibly leave my physics, career and work full time on Calavera.

C

Something I was passionate about, so I was so then I started really thinking about how how to uh you know, make it sustainable, and so some of the things that you have to do are obvious. You know you make it easy for people to contribute uh to contribute money to you, but some things are a little less obvious.

C

You have to make it easy for people to use your software and to get your software, because uh you know many many developers, uh you know find are obviously proficient with computers and they don't realize the difficulties that uh say Ordinary People are non-developers might have with their software, so they don't go out of the way to make it easy, especially if you're writing in an end user product like caliber, uh you need you need to. You need to put in that effort to make it easy.

B

C

Another tip is don't be shy, so, for example, when you, when you, when you run caliber, there's like a beating red heart uh which beats for like two seconds in the toolbar, uh you know which you can click on to donate when I, when I, when I first thought about doing this, I was kind of hesitant. I didn't want to seem like I was you know, panhandling or begging for money, but it's been very positive, so I I get metrics uh about from you know what channels I get donations.

C

um So this is about 30 of my donations.

A

If I'd hear from you funds you most individuals or.

B

um This is all all the individuals and mostly from wrestling team, which is that you might contributing to oh.

A

That's so nice, so you're, getting like real gratitude from the people paid to work on that project. Yes and I'd love to know what are your like open source career aspirations? Are you hoping to get enough of these sponsorships to to make a career out of it? I know you're still a student, um but I wonder if you've thought that far ahead.

B

um My career goal is to actually work for a company but I I love. If the project I'm working on is open source to to get engaged with um other other community contributors might have been that I turned into a full-time, open source.

A

Yeah, so it's a bit different from uh from covid who you're actually sustaining yourself through these uh open source donations. Can you tell me: was that always the plan? How did that happen? Well,.

C

At all, like I, said, I started off, get a pizza, um so caliber grew a lot more than I expected it to, um and so you know, once I put up the Donate button, complete I started getting a little more than a pizza and uh so I remember there was this night where my wife and I, uh which was sat together and we've talked about it, and uh so the thing was that I would not apply for postdoctoral position.

C

um I would Instead try to make this goal full time and she would apply for a postdoc proposition and I called it with her, and uh you know we'll see how it went and that's that's kind of what we did and it went well so uh yeah it's been going well ever since, but.

A

That worked out really well because I know in Academia, especially if you're, both in Academia and you're, both applying for post-docs. You can't really guarantee that you'll end up in the same city.

C

Yeah, it was, it was from from the perspective of my family. Life. Open source has been a big lesson.

A

And what about you, Carlos? Have you found open source to be like more flexible yeah.

D

I think currently I work at charm and we already do a lot of open service there so that I'm kind of off off there at least but I, would like to eventually work like only on officers and maybe like like Fargo, releaser or other software are eventually create or I don't know, but yeah. It's not something. I tried too hard to to go to do, but it's getting there regardless. So.

A

Yeah and with all three of you just the rate of um how quickly we're able to get sponsors in such a short time, it seems like you're on the right track.

C

For me, uh GitHub sponsors in particular, is mostly for Kitty has been established. uh You know, donation channels already, so mostly people who become my sponsors are for my kitty work and that's uh great, because that allows me to Goof Off from my day, job, which is caliber and spend more time on Kitty I'm not feel too bad, but uh not putting Bread on my family still so to speak. Yeah.

A

And I'd love to hear about the other maintainers on your projects, um so Yousef I know you've mentioned that there's a team working on wrestling and you're also contributing how many maintainers are there I.

B

Don't know number exactly but um probably or definitely more than 10, but I I don't know the exact number. That's.

A

That's fine, uh but it is interesting to see how you've been able to get sponsorship on a project that already has quite a few maintainers. So you shouldn't shy away from contributing to a big project. If you're looking for appreciation and looking for some sponsorship.

A

Pizza, if you're looking for some pizza, maybe yeah, that's a good way to phrase it and Carlos. What about with go really, sir? How many maintainers are there? There are.

D

I think a dozen or so that contributes more or less frequently uh but still like I do most of the work, but but they they help a lot. A lot of people also like just come and work on a future. They need, or something and just like, do that one contribution and that's awesome, totally. Fine. That's.

A

Good, it sounds um like a healthy mix of outside contributors. Plus, your consistency, yeah.

D

Yeah I think they they call yeah. They say that your boss factor.

C

Is still one right yeah it is. He.

A

Said there's a dozen of them, but.

C

D

But I Think It's Tricky yeah, I'm kind of the benevolent. Oh, they say benevolent the.

A

Benelovan dictator for Life.

D

Yeah, that's the word always looking for yeah.

A

A lot of projects start that way and then they'll eventually get more mature governance. um So it seems like with your growing community and your growing sponsorship, you'll, be on your way.

D

Soon, yeah it already improved a lot. It was a lot more dependent on me. That's.

A

Good and then covid how many maintainers are there for caliber and Kitty.

C

um There's one janitor: that's me, I do all the dirty work and.

D

C

There are lots of regular contributors who do work on stuff that you know they like and they're. uh They want, and a lot of people have told me that they find it fun to work on uh caliber or getting so very much fun, uh calibers or ebooks are useful for older people, so caliber actually has a lot of retired Developers.

C

um It was very sad about oh.

A

C

One of our long-time contributors, uh David Forrest, has just passed away a few weeks back but yeah. There are a lot of older uh contributors and I'm I'm, I'm, um very, very, very afraid of what will happen um as time passes and I will become responsible for all of their great code, um but uh yeah. That's what I over the years I worked with hundreds of people, literally some of them have become friends. Some of them have a long time. Contributors.

C

um It's I've met a few of them in real life as well right.

A

So we have one last question: I I'd love to hear from each of you I just to close us all off. um But let's start with Yousef. uh What advice do you have for others who are looking to get sponsored for their open source work.

B

um I'd say just do what you love uh and when you, when you do something you love, you will do it great and you you will end up with uh with the sponsors and actually, as there is something I I remembered, um it is not actually something that is sponsoring me, but it was something I fixed it on Russian, side and I got a message uh from a graduate of my University and she she was thanking me for for fixing the work that was impacting her in her work, and it was really great.

A

That's so nice to hear a recognition like that, just to hear how your work has helped people thanks, you Seth uh kovid, do you have any advice for those looking to get sponsored for the open source work.

C

Think about it actively do don't just sit back and expect it to happen automatically think about it, see what you can do to increase the probability a bit, it's very much a probability game. So so, like you know, caliber has x million users, um it's like one percent or less than one percent of them. With an answer you know making it sustainable is all about increasing that probability as much as you can figure out ways to maximize uh uh your donation income, not in obnoxious ways.

C

Obviously, but uh you know in ways that uh just remind people gently that there's a human being behind whatever software we're using.

A

I think that's also why we wanted to do this panel. We wanted to highlight and really celebrate the people behind this open source that we all use, I, think maintainers Bears. So much of this work, but they're often not recognized. So it's so exciting to see you getting sponsorships and being able to feature you here at GitHub universe, so Carlos to close this off. What advice do you have for others, looking to get sponsored for their open source work.

D

I think what Yusuf and kovitz is that like do something you love and like? Do they gently reminder that there's a people there's a person behind it, because it is a game of probability like marketing connections, luck, everything plays a role. There, it'll probably create a lot of projects that you'll get nowhere and that's fine. You probably learned something from them. I know, I did a lot of projects that went nowhere before some of them went somewhere and the others, after that they also went nowhere.

D

So it's not like a recipe that, when you get one right, you'll get all the others right. So uh don't worry too much about it. I'll say I just do something you like, and hopefully that like fixes something some problem you have and maybe for other people, children that you can.

A

Yeah thanks Carla, so just to summarize Yusef said: do what you love covid, said think about it strategically from the beginning and Carlos says, be lucky yeah.

D

Look Blazer on everything in your life I.

A

Don't know, oh no I definitely agree. Look plays a big part in this.

D

You might like just just create the greatest software ever published everywhere and just at this at that time, like someone famous, is like scrolling, tutor and sees and likes and Retreat and you've got one result and if you do like five minutes later, that person doesn't see it and nothing happens. So.

A

So luck and marketing.

C

Sounds like a little bit a little bit of both yeah yeah.

A

A little bit yeah well! Thank you all so much for joining us today. This was an amazing discussion about sponsors. I learned so much from each of you and just how the open source Community is really growing in your parts of the world, so I hope that will continue to grow and I hope. We'll see you back at GitHub University thanks.

C

For having us, it was fun talking to all of you and people Consulting. Thanks for having me.

D

Yeah, thank you, everyone. It was awesome. Yay.