Open Source Projects – Beyond Code – The Open Mainframe Show EP 21

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Open Mainframe Project video series. The Open Mainframe Video Project Video series is a once, once a month, a deep dive into what's going on with the Linux Foundation Open Mainframe Project.

And we, we explore various topics of interest to our audience, which are a lot of folks in the DevOps, cybersecurity, cloud native digital transformation realm, as well as those many, many people who, you know, have spent their careers working in the mainframe space and continue to do so. Um, usually our show has a panel of three or four experts and we, and we delve into topics like what's going on with cobal, what are some of the ways people are using mainframes in hybrid environments and modernization? What are, what are some of the new modern languages and what you could do with them on mainframe, the cybersecurity of mainframes.

But today shows a little different. I'm joined by my co-host of our monthly show, and he's John Murdoch. John is the executive director of the Open Mainframe Project from Linux Foundation.

And today we're gonna turn the spotlight on John. So little, a little turn about Fair play. Yep.

But you know, the reason we are though is John recently had his book, uh, released and it's available now on Amazon or wherever you get your books from in many different formats. John's holding it up here, bring it a little closer to John. It's called Open Source Projects Beyond Code.

And we're gonna dive into this here, John, first of all, thanks for letting us put the spotlight on you this month. Um, I know it's not what we usually do. Yeah.

But many, you know, I'm hoping we can kind of let people know what the book's all about. Absolutely. Thank you, um, for this and, uh, you know, excited to kind of talk about it of a, a project that's I've been, uh, working on and in the background for close to a year now.

But I think the real work on this has been going on for, you know, a couple decades now of, of just building up all the, the knowledge and insight and, you know, uh, fortune and, and, and, and just sort of blessing and being able to work with all of these amazing communities and just sort of learn about some of the dynamics. Absolutely. John, before we dive into the book, you know, I just usually introduce you to the ED for Open Mainframe Project and then we move on to introduce our panel members or to discuss the topic.

But as long as we got you here today, let's, let's dive into a little bit of the John story. Right. You mentioned decades working that kind of contributed to your knowledge in the book, you know, share your story a little bit with our audience, if you don't mind.

Yeah, sure. So, you know, I've, I've always been someone who's just interested in computers. Um, you know, my dad brought a home, a t i 99 foray that I thought one of the funnest things to do was to get, um, the, they used to have, uh, basic programs in the old bite magazines that you could type in and you could, you know, make games and things like that.

Although all of 'em were written for Apple two s, they weren't rid or commodore. So I'd have to transition the basic to, you know, meet the specific dialect. But, you know, from there I went, I was a computer science grad, um, from Kent State University, um, just local to me here in, in Ken Ohio.

And, you know, when I was in university, I, I started beginning to explore open source and open source at that time was really new as a term. And open source as a term came in 1998. Uh, I started college in 1998.

And so I was really at the very early stages. Linux was, had just been a thing for a couple of years. And, you know, I just, I, I always found a lot of fascination by the model and, you know, the code availability and just so much at that time where I was just really learning, uh, a ton.

And one of the first projects I got involved with was the P H P project. Um, P H p, um, really was one of those very transformational in the WebDev realm. And, you know, for, for your listeners and viewers who have been around WebDev for a lot of years, um, you'll, you'll recognize it as sort of the one that transitioned us all from Pearl c g I scripts over to really, truly almost what we see today as web dev, um, programming.

But it was more to me than just using it. But it was getting involved into these various communities. And one of the first real open source projects I got involved with was P H P, where there was a need to have someone maintain the installer for PHP on Windows.

And I jumped in and I did it. Um, you know, there was, it sounded like an area where I, I had interest in, um, at the time I was using Windows. So having, you know, environments set up was really, really helpful.

And, you know, from there I started helping maintain that installer. Um, to the point actually Microsoft had reached out to me at one point and said, Hey, John, we could use some help, um, and near a couple areas, could you fix some things in here for us? And, you know, I'm like, sure, you no problem with that whatsoever.

And I did it. And they were, you know, really felt thankful for it. They sent me a Zoom in the mail, um, you know, for those of you in your, I remember those, If you remember the Zooms, I think I still have it.

It's in a box somewhere. I used it for a while, but it's one of the, you could Probably download some MP3s, do I? Oh Yeah.

Oh yeah. No, they're still, they're still cool. Hey, you know, what am I No Stranger to Retro Technology.

Lemme Tell. I I see, right? We looked behind you there.

Yes. But that's like it. But those are all building blocks in my career that built from, you know, my first job working in, you know, the, the finance, you know, the, a local, um, lean Bond company to working at Sugar crm, um, as a developer and using sort of the, the work I did in that community that helped propel me to that when I was at Sugar CRM is when I transferred, I transitioned sort of outta software development and into, um, really open source project leadership.

I was a community manager there for a number of years, and, you know, was able to participate in, you know, various different projects, the Open Social Foundation and, and a number of others. And, you know, from there, my work in Open Source helped, you know, transition me to my next, um, career at Vietnam where I spent time helping build up an I S V program, but also working with a ton of open source communities. And in the background from there, um, it was a leap to the Linux Foundation.

And again, it was really this building upon working with these various communities, both internal external meeting tons of people in open source, um, you know, early in my career, went to my first open source conference, which I felt like I was, you know, almost a little bit starstruck in a little ways, which is, is kind of funny, you know, sitting back now, but, you know, a a kid from Ohio here, um, you know, meeting the Rasmus Leor and the, and those folks that are, are really the moving and shaking of not just open source, but technology as a whole. And, you know, having those interactions with them, um, was really fascinating. But it's also just for me was just sort of finding my way within all of those communities and finding out like who these people are, what's interesting to them, what motivates them, what are the, the back and force that they have to consider, um, as they, as they grow and move these projects along.

And, and also within their own careers. I mean, there's people I worked with in Open Source a couple decades ago that still are an open source, some not in it at all. Um, and, you know, some in different, you know, career paths and whatnot.

So, and it sort of led me where I'm today, um, you know, a, a meeting with Jim Zemlin, um, and a year and a half later I was, uh, able to, you know, join the Linux Foundation and I've been, um, with them since, uh, 2015. And it's, it's been an exciting ride and, and really seeing communities from just not just a technology level and a technologist, but also understanding it sort of from the business and the other drivers as well, which has just really taught me a lot. And, you know, that's, that's the journey to where I am today.

Very cool. And, and what a journey it's been though, you know, but John, in many ways, your journey also, I don't wanna say parallels, but follows the journey that Open Source has gone through right? In 1998.

So I, I was using, you don't want to call it open source, let's call it openly licensed software, free software back in, you know, pre-internet days. Mm-hmm. Well, you know, pre-commercial internet bbbs days and Yep.

That kind of thing. And, um, you know, then I, I started what became a hosting company in 19 95, 96. Mm-hmm.

And I think Apache was at, or May, no, so it was probably in The early days that you thought it was ncsa Mosaic, one of the two or somewhere Else, right? Well, that was it. You could use NCA as a web server.

You had the Mosaic or Netscape Right. Came out with a web server and then Microsoft came out with internet information server and then, but quickly, Apache. Yeah.

Wow. You know, just took over. And I, and at the time also, you know, this was a world of OS two and Unix, if you didn't like Windows those, or Mac was you, where you, your choices.

And then Linux came on the scene and my God, right. What a, yeah, what a revelation. But you know, I, I, so I can I still call that era, you know, the Dr.

Stallman era of the, of the cathedral and the Bazaar mm-hmm. Very famous book about Oh yes. Open source, you know, and then we sort of graduated to what I call the big brother era of soft, of open source, where every open, almost every successful open source project it seemed had a, a corporate sponsor that kinda ran it very much.

Not very, some did it better than others, let's say that, but every corporate sponsor did it for their own somewhat selfish reasons. Right. And as long as the community's interest dovetailed with the corporate sponsor's interest, all was, you know, good in the world.

But when the corporate overlord had a different agenda than maybe the community wanted, you know, it went Oh, so good. Yeah. It went, yeah.

I mean, you know, and that's how you started getting all these forks and stuff. So for instance, in the DevOps world, right? We saw, uh, Jenkins split off from, I think it was Hudson.

Yep. Right. If you remember.

Yep. Hudson Kok did that. Mm-hmm.

Um, and then of course, the Linux Foundation, the Apache Foundation eclipse, you know, we saw the rise of today, what I call the foundational era of open source. Mm-hmm. And I'm a Nasoor fan, so I dig that whole foundation thing anyway.

But, um, you know, and it's really allowed companies that used to compete with each other to collaborate and, and everybody works for common good, which I think is probably one of the main reasons behind the phenomenal, not just success, but dominance of open source software today. Mm-hmm. So, I mean, and you've been, it sounds like you've, you've read this, you've rode this wave.

I've seen, I've seen a lot. Um, I've not seen it all yet, but I've darn near seen a lot. And you know, it's, it's really interesting of, of, of how you sort of phrase that because I, you know, even if you backtrack back into the fifties and sixties when you saw, um, you know, systems operators that were collaborating on using some of the sort of the early IBM hardware and, and a lot of chapter one actually sort of goes through this sort of lineage of open source and sort of less of kind of a, you know, detailed history, but understanding the milestones along there.

And, you know, where we had the IBM litigation, the IBM antitrust, uh, case in, in the late sixties and into the seventies, actually didn't get resolved into the early eighties. And, you know, apple versus Franklin computer, all of these pieces here started to formulate of how, how this collaboration model between software creators, software users, and then across organizations really began to form. I mean, you know, back in the sixties and seventies, the hardware was, was the value point of software they just gave you.

And they, they gave you all the source code. And, you know, that slowly changed, that changed over time with some of the antitrust cases that happened in the sixties and seventies. But you, you look at folks, you know, like Richard Stallman, um, you know, you look at, uh, all of these folks that you've mentioned that have been really along the way, that have taken that in their time and place, saw the interesting opportunity because of a market need and a personal interest to do something innovative.

Um, you know, for, for everything that, you know, one might, you know, say about Richard Stallman, he saw an innovative opportunity to build together a, a number of common toolings that still underpin so much of technology that we have today. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, the, the, the work around the cathedral and the bazaar was just a really fascinating look at the differences sort of between the hacker communities and how software had been traditionally built at that point.

And, you know, even when the Netscape source code was, you know, released to the world in 97, 98, people really weren't sure quite what to make of it. You know, it's like, okay, this source code's out here now, now what? And and frankly, it took Netscape probably about 10 years to figure out what to do with it.

Sure. You know, and that's really how long it took the Mozilla project to sort of, you know, come into its own and, and you know, that to become sort of a dominant browser technology that, that we see today. So it's, it, it is really, really interesting of how we've got here.

And, and, and I think, Alan, you do a, I mean, you see a tons of technology trends and the trends we always see is something new comes out and you see a pen, pendulum swing hard at it, everyone's all about it. It's the solution to everything. And then the cracks start to happen in the armor, and then the swing comes all the way back.

And eventually as pendulums do, it lands somewhere in the middle. And, and they figure out the where we're at. And I feel like we're getting to that area in open source in general.

You know, we, the, the concept even behind free software and these, these hacker communities that, that really came to be the basis of it was this hard shift against, you know, the heavy commercialization and those sort of structures of software and came from, it was really interesting collaboration models and really innovate really interesting innovation models. But then as the cracks in the armor started to happen, you know, within there, um, especially as it related to businesses being able to adopt some of these technologies and whatnot, we saw the pendulum start to swing back the other way, which is where we saw some of the models that he referred to as kinda like open core. Um, you know, one of the companies I worked for Sugar CRM was, was one of the major open core, you know, software vendors.

Absolutely. And we, we were customers. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Um, and, and so that shift started to happen and then there was a lot of great things to that model, but then the, the cracks of those armor started to see in, as these companies would change licensing models for their code. And so then the next shift and, and it was hard to really get true collaboration happening.

And so then you saw, you know, the pendulum is starting to land somewhere in the foundation area. And again, I I, I think there's even some breadth in there of where we will fully land. I think a lot of important technologies are landing in there, but, you know, there's technologies that are outside of that that, you know, are, are able to sort of live in these user communities, um, you know, fairly well.

And, and you see people, you know, having little businesses around them. You know, one interesting one is the computers behind me, um, which we see on all these, uh, you know, various podcasts and videocasts we do, uh, the technology that is used, um, for the scuzzy hard drives within those, cause you can't buy a scuzzy hard drive anymore, is this project called Pi Scuzzy, which is basically a custom header that sits on top of where Raspberry Pi, um, that emulates a scuzzy device. So you can, you know, basically have hard drive in these things.

And that there has a huge hacker community of enthusiasts and retro computing enthusiasts. Cause it's not just Maxine, you know, AGAs and, you know, all sorts of other computers that, that, you know, use the similar tribes at the time you use them. But what becomes really interesting is from there, you saw, you know, you see a bunch of Tendy shops open, you see a bunch of, you know, different sort of entrepreneurial things of people building up this hardware, um, to sell it.

Right? Not exactly a foundational model, you know, that, that we would be accustomed to in like an open mainframe project or an LF Energy Foundation or anything, or, you know, Apache software. But you see sort of, again, this sort of community that's found its own ethos of how these things work together.

So it's, it's really, really fascinating how we've got here and it's so much of just writing a lot of the current and seeing what's worked, what doesn't, and knowing the fact that each community is unique of how it works. And, and I think that's Yep. That's the most fascinating of all of this.

Absolutely. You know, John, you're right, I do, we get pitched all day. We see a lot of stuff come by our desk here.

One of the things I get though, is a lot of people who, you know, they all have one or two great blogs in them. They have a great idea for an article, and they really feel passionate about it because without passion mm-hmm. It, it's very hard to write.

It's very hard to do anything if you're not passionate about it, quite frankly. And, you know, everyone has one great novel in them. They say it's almost everyone.

A lot of people never really write it though. They never really rec realize their dream about that. What drove you to write this book?

You know, I, it's, I think there was two pieces to it. To me, one is, is a lot of the topics I address in the book were things, I talk with people all the time. So there was a pragmatic side of me of like, you know, geez, I should just write all this down.

Um, to have it in there. Um, you know, maybe it's a slight joke of, you know, hey, if a project wants to ask me a question, read the book first and then come to back me. Nope.

I'm just joking. I would never make people do that. But I, I think the second part of it is, I, I am, I really find a lot of fascination on these various systems of how people in groups come together.

And, you know, there's great, there's a lot of books in open source that go into licensing. Um, and, you know, in various aspects, you know, John o Bacon, the Art of Community is a fantastic book, um, that goes into community building. But the one thing that I think we've not seen a lot of great real writing, at least from what I've saw, is trying to look at the amorphous and interestingness of these open source projects.

Because, you know, I I even run to it with my own family of trying to explain to me how these things work. And sometimes they look at me like I'm a little bit crazy, but I, I, I saw this sort of passion and this idea of, you know, I just kind of wanna explore this. Like, I wanna see kind of what these different projects do and, and, and sort of understand the dynamics that that happen in there.

So there was as much of a pragmatic of, I, I wanna write down everything in my brain, but at the same time, I just kind of wanted to explore sort of these areas a little bit and, you know, these ideas and thoughts and premises and, you know, in areas in the book, I, I go find projects that have done a lot of this, some good, some bad. I've tried to leave the bad names of the projects out there because that's just not fair to them. Um, but really understanding the uniquenesses that, that all of these are a part of, because I mean, I, I joked about it earlier, but it's, it's dead serious.

Like, none of these two projects are the same. Yeah. And you, you don't, I I've never seen everything.

I've seen a lot, but I've not seen everything. But you see so much interesting patterns across the board here and, and that sort of driven me to, to do this. So, you know, it's somebody else that, you know, might be a technical folk person that really understands their craft, they really understand their technology, the amorphousness of how these projects work.

And, you know, the nuance, it's hard. You know, one of the first things somebody told me when I got into community management is John, you know, and, and I was a, like I was said when I was a software engineer, hacking codes, easy hacking. These people are hard.

And being able to sort of, not necessarily, I mean, this book is not like a, a full, like, do all of these things like, you know, what have you. But I look at it as sort of a bit of like a cookbook where there's these topics explored, there's, you know, these cases and things within these topics that are explored, but it leaves you sort of as the reader with maybe not knowing the answers, but at least knowing all the right questions to think about and being able to build from there. So, yeah.

Yeah. Love it. You know what, being you brought it up, let, let's explore sort of, uh, the topography of the book, if you will, by at least just going through some chapters.

So it starts off in my mind, like really the first three chapters are foundational. Mm-hmm. Right?

The Watson Wives of open source, open source licensees, and IP management, which I have to tell you is still a very misunderstood topic Oh yeah. Of how a company, you know, let's say donates a project to the Linux Foundation, what does owning that IP mean? Right.

And, and and so forth versus just managing a project or being involved in a Oh, and, and I, cata and I, and I always categorize that as I am not alert, do not provide any legal advice in that. Right? Well, I mean, but, but you know what?

Look, as someone who's been in the open source world a long time, this is an area that's undergone, I mean, this is what people this used to get religious. Oh yeah. Right.

The final points of the lower G P L versus the regular G P L versus the M I T license. And god forbid, we, we wanted an open source of project we were working on at a previous company I co-founded in like 2000 4 0 5. But we really, we didn't like the existing OSI models for licensing.

And so we kind of rode our own. Mm-hmm. It was kind of a live and let live.

But you know, we own the, I pick and man, did we get our heads handed to us because, you know, there were only six licenses, or maybe it was seven licenses that were approved at the time. Yeah. And if you weren't using one of those, the claim was you couldn't call what you were doing.

Open source, make up another name for it. Mm-hmm. But if it's not under one of those licenses, it's not open source.

And you know, to me that was a little too orthodox. I was more of a, a form guy to tell you the truth. But, um, I think we're not quite as rigid as that anymore when it comes to it.

Well, I Think, I think we're trying to align on less, cause licensed proliferation is an issue, there's no doubt. Mm-hmm. That, But I think, I think the one thing that I often have seen in communities is, you're right, people take licensing from sort of a religious standpoint.

And I think it's getting better. But as opposed to looking at it from sort of a pragmatic standpoint of what is the problem you're trying to solve? Who is your community?

Because I mean, I'll be honest, like there's some, there's some projects that A A G P L V3 makes absolutely perfect sense for. Yeah. There's some that A M I T license makes perfect sense for.

There's some that it's all over the place. And it's, it's the same thing anybody asks me is like, what license do you recommend? I first start off by answering, well, I am not a lawyer and I cannot provide legal advice.

You should talk to your own counsel. But the second thing that I will say is that each project's different. Each community is different.

Like we see a lot of folks gravitate towards these, but there's a lot of circumstances that make you pick that. And that's, that's like where the nuance that comes into open source comes from and it gravitates even through the governance half of it. So it's, I I, I'm with you.

It's, it's, it's complicated, but it's kind of like complicated on purpose cuz you sort of have to wrestle with who you, the people are that are using your code and what, what you hope they do with it and where, what you hope they do upstream with you. Yep. No doubt.

Yeah. So then the, the next, the next chapter is again, deal with kind of, hey, if you're an organization using opensource, right? And today just about every single, you know, 98 out of hundred are using opensource probably even more than that now, you know, how do you align around it?

How do you understand that you're in license compliance and governance and hosting. Mm-hmm. Um, but then from that point, John, the book kind of takes a little bit of a slightly bend to the left, right?

And it's about, all right, hey, if you're starting your own open source project or you're a maintainer or you're a, you know, you're someone in the community helping to run a project, how do you run a successful project beyond the users, if you will? You know, what, what's what's involved in running an open source project? And that is something that I think a lot of people may not realize everything that goes into it.

Do you know what I mean? Oh Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's hard.

It's, it's something that frankly every single open source project out there sort of struggles with all of that to some degree. Mm-hmm. Um, and, and, and for various reasons.

But it's also, it's also something that just doesn't work itself out by happenstance. You have to intentionally think about it and you have to intentionally work on it. And I, I, I think that's one thing I really, why I spent so much time in there, because you kind of need to have so much of that mindset of, you know, what it's like not just being a maintainer, but what it's also like being a contributor.

You know, because I mean, you see sometimes an open source project like, well, geez, I don't know why people aren't coming using this. Or I have like, I have all these people using this code, but nobody's contributing everything upstream. And so you kind of have this view of these like users or your enemy and it's Like, so I I've seen that.

Oh Yeah, Yeah. Where maintainers, I think they're just, they all of a sudden those users are just a pia. Oh yeah.

Right. Yeah. And they don't and they're parasites.

Exactly. Right. And it's, and it's hard to get out of that mindset because you kind of, and I, and I've learned a little bit of this, you know, um, with a lot of my kids.

Um, I have a couple of my kids that come from some pretty hard places. And there's, and in one chapter of the book, we kind of deal talk about dealing with conflict. And, and one of the areas I really dig into is understanding sort of the human brain and you know, the difference areas that motivate people.

And you know, when you see people lash out of how they're sort of thinking more into the lower brain, you know, which is sort of more the reactionary parts of your brain versus your upper brain, that's more logical. But then also the other half of it is, you know, I talk with projects that kind of wonder if people are coming and, and I kind of point out to them, I say, well, come sit in the areas, sit in the shoes of the contributors, maybe a project. Nobody knows how to get involved.

Like maybe they want to, but they don't know where even to start. Or even one time, and I have one project I joked about this with, is you realize that people in your community think that you are at the top of this mountain top so high that there is no way that they feel that they can measure it. Right.

You're not accessible. Yeah. And, and sometimes it's nothing you have done, but it's just your position and your role within there.

Like, and, and it's, and it's hard to kind of get past and, you know, you meet these people and you talk to them and they're just like, chill people you can chat with all day, have a, you know, go out to have a, you know, a dinner and all sorts of with, but it's, it's sort of those mindsets that if as you're a maintainer, you don't think about, and then as you're a contributor, you're, you're also sort of not thinking about, and you might also be thinking as a contributor of your own sort of personal biases or maybe your own apprehensions and your own sort of sense of self-worth and all of those things that hinder you of wanting to contribute. Cuz you might have a cool idea, but you may not think you're good enough to do it. And, and so anyways, I I'm kind of a little bit, you know, going in a lot of different directions there, but it just talks to really how delicate and how nuance all of these interactions become.

Yep. I, I, you know, I think part of it too though, John, is that if you're involved in an open source project or you're using open source and you look at, you know, is this a project I want to be involved in? Is this a pro?

Because there's, you know, there's the pure user who says, yeah, I, you know, I have a problem. This little piece of code here solves and I'm using that code in all fine and dandy in the world, you know, then maybe I modified it and I want to contribute it back. Or maybe I wanted to do something else and I want to see are there others out there like me who want that to work this way and you know, I need some help or, or what have you.

And that's how people kind of get pulled into these communities. Um, but what, but the, the reality is, right, I don't care how big your open source community is, you could probably count the people who actually contribute code on your hands and toes. Oh Yeah.

Yeah. For the most part, right? The average open source project probably has less than 20 code contributors or something like that.

And, you know, and then the other, you know, look, 94, oh, excuse me. If 96% of the people who are using your open source project are just using the pure open source and don't pay any money for support training or the commercial version or the hosted version or whatever your business model is to monetize this project. If, if that's what you're doing, a 96% people who don't do it, but 4% of the people are, you're crushing it.

Mm-hmm. 4% of the users paying means you've got a very successful open source project. Is it a crazy, I know, but you gotta you gotta wrap your head around those numbers Yeah.

To understand what does success look like here? And that's the other thing. And then, and then combine that with where are you at in your project's maturity, because success is measured a lot of different ways.

Yep. Um, I go, I think we talk a little bit, I think I forget, I think the commercialization, um, chapter where we talk about the Malt Tech Open source Project Malt is a, uh, open source marketing automation platform. And you can see sort of through their journeys of time of where they're trying to measure where their success is at.

You know, in the early days it's very user-centric, but then they're like, okay, well we wanna build a community around this. And when you ever, whenever I hear somebody, I wanna build a community around something, you know, that's, you know, that's about the most broad statement you can possibly make. Absolutely.

What Kinda community, like what do you expect from this community? What does the community want out of this? Um, and so you can sort of see some of those thought processes that begin to sort of change over time where kind of both groups are sort of defining in a way, like what is sort of the interaction model and where do the roles of people fit in?

And frankly, contributing code is an important part of it, but it's not, it, there's a lot around it. You know, all those users that maybe don't think they can contribute code or could be the same people that are out there answering questions cause that's just as important or Sure. Those people are finding the right questions and then they're, you're able to poke that and realize hopefully I should fix something upstream for it.

So it's, it's, it's just, so I, I, like I said, Alan, I'm just, I'm always fascinated by the dynamic models here because it's just, it's not, I mean, not that any, like business is a very linear one in a lot of ways, but with open source projects, there's, you almost have this contract with your community that is sort of understood that these are the expectations of sort of what you're bringing and these are the expectations of what they're bringing. Um, and when that starts to break down is, is sort of where you see things start to hit, you know, the rocks and it get complicated. But if you sort of see that homeostasis continue to occur, you know, things roll on and things, things are doing great, but it's intentional.

You gotta pay attention to it. You have to put the hard work into it. And oftentimes you see people that start open source projects, they're technologists, and that's just, that's not a skill that becomes a very native Right.

And, and it not only is it not a skill, it's not a passion. And as I said earlier, if you're not passionate about it, it's a job. Oh yeah.

Passionate about the technology bill, but not necessarily about the community around It. Right. About running it.

Yeah. And, you know, that brings two of the final chapters in the book are things that you don't see discussed very much around open source communities. And that is transitioning leadership and then sun setting.

Right. Because no one, no one thinks about those when we start a project or we're building a community, but, you know, I've seen this in real life. People's lives move on.

They work in different companies, they work in different fields. There's new technology that is the apple of their eye. Mm-hmm.

And you know, they're, they're not interested in, in being that guy or that gal anymore in this community. They, you know, they, they love the community. They'll help when they come, but they got, they've got other fish to fry other mountains to climb.

Yeah. And you know, a lot of times, not a lot, but I've seen projects kind of die out when that charismatic, you know, founder, leader, community person moves on and maybe a lot of people follow them on. Right.

And then, you know, there, there's a, there's a vacuum. Mm-hmm. And, and it could go one in two ways, right?

You can get a new, a new generation of leaders, right. People who have maybe been in the background have a chance to step out and step forward or, or, or frankly not. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's, and it's one of those things that it's, it's hard. I mean, I mean, you know, owning a business, one of the things you always have to think about is succession planning.

Sure. Every, and I don't mean like the H B O show necessarily, just to be clear. No, But I mean, you know, even if, like, if you talk to like, you know, any Fortune 500 company, you know, the second they appoint a board appoints a new ceo, O the first thing that that board's thinking about is the succession plan, what comes after that C ceo?

Yep. Absolutely. It's, it's hard for an open source project to think that because usually they're just so nascent and early on that it's the last thing you're thinking about.

You're, you're in huge growth mode and so you're trying to pull this all together. The funny thing is when I'm usually kicking off new open source projects, um, and we sort of have like a technical steering committee, most of the ones I work with are, are structured that way. We have this awkward moment of the first meeting where we're trying to elect a chairperson and everyone's really quiet and then all of a sudden somebody says, well, I think such and such would be good at it.

Or, Hey, I'd be happy to maybe do it for a little while. And immediately everyone jumps on and say, yeah, that's a great idea. Yeah.

You should do it. Yeah. You should do it.

And the thing, and then I always say, well, let's do a vote here before this person changes their mind. Yeah. Or someone talks some sense to them.

Yeah, exactly. But it's, it's, it's a, it's at a really important thing. But at the same time, like you said, like just because you start a project just cuz you're already on doesn't mean you're chained to it forever.

And, but you have to respect that the fact that there is users that are gonna take this technology and they are going to use it for a long period of time. Yep. And you can't let them, you know, you don't wanna leave them holding the bag.

I mean it, you know, life happens and we all recognize that. Yeah. And then look, unfortunately there, you know, whether, you know, I always say old technology never dies, it just fades away like Douglas MacArthur, right?

Mm-hmm. But sometimes you do, you know, open source projects kind of die out your end of life, 'em your sunset them. Right.

And how does one do that in a way that that doesn't leave people holding the bag that doesn't put companies in a bad place. Right. Um, you know, and open source is funny, John, because one could always say, okay, the project may be dying out, but you know what, the code is open, I'm just gonna continue to maintain it and evolve it.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And Of course people are free to do that.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's sort of the fun, interesting part of it.

You know, cuz if you think about it from like a product perspective, the end of li end of life of product, and, and there's a lot of parallels between it. But at the, at the same token, there's also some uniquenesses for it. You know, somebody can resurrect this, the code's gonna be out there forever.

Um, and you know, you oftentimes you will see occasionally an open source. I actually had a project a couple weeks ago that did this that was sunsetted and somebody came outta the woodwork and said, Hey, this code's really useful. There's some things I'd like to do with it.

And they restarted the project and they got it re-going again. And, you know, so sunsetting isn't always for a negative reason. And I think that's an also important thing to think about.

It's not, it's not a question of failure. Mm-hmm. It's just a question of, of life.

It's a question of, it's The circle of life my friend. Yeah. Things make a run and that's, and, and it solves a pro thing for a period of time.

And, you know, eventually just like, you know, all fashion trends, what's old is new and uh, sometimes these things come back around, Just recycle back. Absolutely. Hey John, we're running low on time.

Yes ma'am. Can I ask you to hold that book up again? I sure can.

All right. So it's open source projects beyond Code John. It's available on Amazon.

Yes. And most other book outlets as well, I'm gonna assume. Yes.

Yep. And there's the obviously the printed version that we see there, but is there's a Kindle version or, or an ebook version? Yeah, there's a Kindle ebook version.

Yeah. What about audio? I do not believe there's an audio version as a, Well, there's something else to work on.

Maybe, Maybe that's what I'll be doing is the, you know, the hundred hours of reading my book for audio. Maybe that would be something to do. I like that.

Sounds like a plan. Can't wait. Yes, John, it's been great spending time with you.

Just you, yeah, it was fun. Uh, This is a lot of fun. Congratulations on the book though.

I know, even though it was a labor of love, it was nevertheless a labor and it takes a lot of time and effort. So congratulations. Well done.

Thank you. Thank you. Check it out.

It's Open Source Projects Beyond Code by my friend John Murdoch. John, we're gonna be back next week though, with our Open Mainframe project and we're gonna have the panel again. We're gonna get the panelists all back in here.

So this is just a quick repeat from that, but then we're gonna go right back at it. All right. And, and just a reminder, uh, as I said earlier, our, our team is actually out in Vancouver.

By the time you see this, they'll be home at the Lennox Foundation, open Source, uh, summit, couple of different organizations, I think Open, S S F and C D F, were doing some, you know, show conferences within the conference. But the Open Mainframe project conference is, was it October, November, September, yeah. So we're, we're, we're gonna be doing an announcement on this.

Um, but we're on one part, we're partnering with our Finos Foundation, uh, right at their open source and finance, um, forum. And then we are working on another partnership, um, which I don't think we almost have everything settled on. So, um, we'll be able to talk about it after our next episode a little bit.

Um, but that's coming up very similar in time to that. And we're looking forward to being there in person on that one and doing some video. Yep.

John, thanks again. We will see you on the next edition of the Open Mainframe Project by Techstrong and the Lennox Foundation. But until then, this is Alan Shimel.

Take care everyone. We'll see you soon.