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**Brett Cannon:** Yeah... They were days. I don't know if they were good days. |
**Jerod Santo:** They were actually bad days. I remember when I was trying to load IGN, which was -- I think it's still the same website, which is like video game reviews, and news, and stuff... And I was on -- what's the next one up from 28k? Like a 54k modem? I don't know... |
**Brett Cannon:** Yeah, 54k or 56k. |
**Jerod Santo:** Yeah, somewhere in that-- |
**Brett Cannon:** 56k, because it's 28k times two. |
**Jerod Santo:** There you go. It rings a bell. And there was a picture of a new Zelda game, or something... I remember being all about this picture. And it was loading in one line at a time, pixel by pixel... And I'm like "Here it comes... 30%." I can see Link's head." And it just took minutes, probably 7-8 minutes to... |
**Brett Cannon:** Yeah. Remember all those articles back in the day talking about the various ways to progressively load your images? Back when every kilobyte matters, and now most websites are like measured in the megs just from JavaScript alone, to load... It's a very different world. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, the cool thing is that you've been around for a long time, and that's sort of like part of your journey, too. What you've been doing -- I didn't realize you've got a commit bit to Python that far back... That's like, what we've just said, more than my entire career. |
**Brett Cannon:** Yeah, it was far enough back that -- so I took a gap year between my bachelor's and starting my master's program, because jumping from a philosophy degree to computer science, I knew I was gonna have to kind of build up almost like a programming resume to prove to masters programs that I know what I'm... |
\[08:33\] So I got the commit bit, and then I showed up at my masters program and some people were like "Oh yeah, what do you do for fun?" and I was like "Well, I contribute to this open source project called Python." And half the time people would go "What's that?" and the other half would go "Is that that language wh... |
I mean, nowadays I can't remember the last time I ran into someone who didn't know what Python was, so it's very much an interesting and wild progression of popularity in my open source life with Python to see it go from people not knowing what the heck it is, to top three programming languages in the world. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Relying upon it. Helicopters landing on Mars because some of the underpinnings with Python. |
**Jerod Santo:** That's right. |
**Brett Cannon:** Yeah, we have Martian helicopters, we get you your cat photos on Instagram... I don't know the state, but for a long time all your YouTube videos were thanks to Python... Yeah, it's crazy. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's a big deal. |
**Jerod Santo:** So we wanna fast-forward to today and talk about a very interesting article. I think you have a keynote, you have a presentation, you've been talking about this social contract of open source. So you've been doing this for a very long time, you've been a maintainer of the Python language, and the commu... |
**Brett Cannon:** Yeah. I should admit my wife Andrea is HR, which probably adds to my caring about community and how people are treated and how that works. My mother was a fourth grade teacher, so that also kind of ties into "Be kind to each other" kind of thing. |
**Jerod Santo:** Right. |
**Brett Cannon:** But yeah, the general philosophy is making sure everyone treats each other with respect, and just basically being kind to each other, because this grand experiment with open source does not work if we don't treat each other well, both from a maintainer, contributor and user perspective... Because ther... |
Literally, people just have to walk away for their own mental safety, to be able to keep doing open source... Or not even do open source; that's the problem - they burn out and they walk away and they stop. And then that has a cascading effect that users don't get that software anymore, because guess what, they're gone... |
So for me, it's a little frustrating to an extent that this still has to be said, but I think it's just kind of inherent to the way this system works, that open source is just this huge, wide, broadly global thing that I think if we weren't in, most of us just would never have this level of exposure to the rest of the ... |
\[12:04\] Just learning how to interact with others from different cultures and different places, with different expectations has certain requirements. And part of that is being kind and setting proper expectations as well, because there's interactions, and then there's setting the expectation of it all. Because to me,... |
But when you stop viewing that as a gift and viewing it as something that you are owed or expecting, it shifts your mental model and it leaves you feeling like people are in a position to be mad at you. Like, "I didn't get a release out when I expected. I didn't fix this bug. I broke something. I said I was gonna try a... |
Trying to set this proper level of expectation of how to interact with each other and not basically get worked up is this message I'm trying to get out, so that hopefully we can all kind of step back a bit, realize that all these volunteers and all these maintainers are mostly doing out of the kindness of their heart, ... |
Maintainers get to keep doing what they love and enjoy, you just continue to get wonderful, free, top-quality software because they just want to, and contributors get to help mold and shape and move that software in the way that they need it to go, and just to also support the maintainers, and maybe eventually become m... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. That's why I like this idea that open source is a gift. These commits are a gift because that sets the expectation... And I wonder if whomever might be an abuser out there, to some degree maybe unintentionally, maybe it definitely moves into intentional, because maybe the clarity of the expect... |
**Brett Cannon:** Yeah. The blog post that Jerod alluded to - I used the analogy that it's like putting a bunch of USB flash drives on your front lawn, with a sign that says "Free." Every commit to some project is gonna be on that flash drive. It's the Git repo, right? And you can just come by and grab it and do whatev... |
\[16:14\] Now, that isn't to say that -- people could end up with certain expectations. Tidelift's model of paying the maintainers, so that they actually do have a financial not only incentive, but almost expectation to do certain things - that makes sense, and I do understand that, and I think that's great. But for a ... |
When you search or receive money for your open source work, which I'm totally accepting of, and support, and I think it's great when it works out for people - that sets a certain expectation. But when it's a volunteer, I think that completely shifts it. You don't go to the soup kitchen and yell at the person \[unintell... |
We are all here on this planet for a very finite amount of time... And I am choosing to spend a part of that finite amount of time creating software that I'm going to give out to the rest of the world... And that's my decision. But be aware of the fact that that has a cost. People forget that. I am literally using up m... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** And that's happened before., the yanking off, and taking away, and things like that. There is this backlash -- and you know, this is Maintainer Week; this week is a collaboration between the community, GitHub, Tidelift... We're obviously putting something out on Thursday. This is for upstream here i... |
**Brett Cannon:** Yeah. I think a good way to summarize that is there's a separation between the person and the code, and I think a lot of us forget that. In the blog post I talk about Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative \[unintelligible 00:19:14.07\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** There you go. |
**Jerod Santo:** Teach us. |
**Brett Cannon:** And part of what that says is "Don't treat people as a means to an end, treat them as an end in and of themself." Basically, what that means is don't treat people as something to get from them, treat them as human beings, as they are on their own. Don't go to a maintainer and say "Oh, you're the way I... |
\[20:11\] Once again, it's all perspective. And I understand that not everyone necessarily thinks this way. Once again, if it wasn't for this crazy world, the internet... I mean, even on the internet, how often do you interact with someone from another state, if you're in the U.S...? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Constantly. |
**Brett Cannon:** ...or another province, like - I'm in Canada. We happen to, but if we weren't in the tech industry and happened to have the outreach and the speaking we do, chances are you won't talk to other people. So kind of slowly growing -- ending up in this situation where you're interacting with people in othe... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Brett Cannon:** "Assuming you didn't, this is what I think you're asking." And I try to use it as a way to teach people at least once. Pass that if you're not listening; then fine, you're a jerk, and I have to wash my hand of you, because I don't wanna burn out. I'd rather get to year 19 of contributing to Python, an... |
So it's a very interesting here of -- it's psychologically even just learning how to treat people as people. It's not even just treating people as a means to an end in terms of software, it's literally just learning how to communicate with human beings and how to treat people. As I said, I don't fault people when they ... |
**Break:** \[22:43\] to \[23:50\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I'm glad you mentioned psychology. I'm curious if part of your philosophy degree if you had to do anything of psychology... Because it's thinking, humanity... Because the one piece that I think is important to mention is that often in a digital interaction you're missing some data. To treat a human ... |
**Brett Cannon:** Right. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** But in most of our interactions on the internet, or in digital spaces, tend to have the human element removed. And like you said, it's probably not the fault of them until maybe you say "Hey, the way you said this, I heard this this way" etc. But I think it's important to remember and to point out t... |
**Brett Cannon:** Yeah, so I did not have specifically have any side-courses as part of my philosophy degree. This partially comes from my wife, who has a minor in Psychology, from my mother, who just being a teacher just innately taught me to think about how people might be coming to school for her, what \[unintelligi... |
I was just lucky enough -- I happened to live in a situation in terms of who surrounds me to just have contemplated this and be able to piece that together as a potential reason as why people are the way they are, and how this affects this grand experiment of open source, and how this kind of just plays out. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, your career shows the grand experiment. I mean, since the time \[unintelligible 00:25:59.10\] the world's software now sort of relies upon open source as its foundation. It went that way in the beginning of your career when you got the commitment, as you mentioned. You would say "I work on Pyt... |
**Brett Cannon:** Yeah. And to that point, there's structure you have to put in as projects grow and become more mature. And there's two aspects to that, too. There's the maturation of open source in general, which I think also is what kind of leads to some of this grumpiness... There seems to always be a tipping point... |
From a popularity and size perspective, there's an absolute versus relative number here. Let's say Python has ten million users. It's probably more; I don't know the numbers. Ten million is a nice, round number. Even if 0.1% or 0.01% of those users are real jerks - and we all know that number is way higher percentage-w... |
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