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**Jerod Santo:** Yeah. So there's lots of facets to these decisions. |
**Brett Cannon:** They're gonna take it in the direction that they think makes sense, just like Python's gonna be taking the direction that the dev team thinks makes sense, and everyone's gonna do it their own way. And I don't wanna say that you can't rely on community open source versus corporate, but you can know the... |
But even community-based, you have people who are getting GitHub sponsorships to keep stuff going, or Patreon potentially, or Tidelift, or whatever... Which, once again, also potentially changes things. Tidelift is very explicit about what that means. GitHub Sponsors - the person you're sponsoring says they will do bec... |
And I know a lot of people go "Well, I can't do that, I don't know." Like, if you're in the Node world, "I can't go through my 365 dependencies to see what their promises are." |
**Jerod Santo:** \[52:42\] Right. Especially your transitive dependencies that you didn't even -- you didn't even opt into those. You opted into somebody who opted into them. |
**Brett Cannon:** Yeah, it's hard. It's tricky. And I'm not saying there's a good answer to any of this to be able to understand this. But this is also why almost regardless of all that taxonomy I just said, if you just went in with the expectation that this is a gift, one time, and \[unintelligible 00:53:01.27\] you w... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Brett Cannon:** And sometimes I wonder if we have to work out a balance here of how much open source does a company pull in versus "We just have to hire someone to do it, just because it's that critical." You don't always have to go that way. But if there is a way to make it work with the open source project and have... |
**Jerod Santo:** Pff... |
**Brett Cannon:** Yeah, exactly, right? We thought we were gonna have a need, so I went to the project and said "Hey, we have a need for this thing", and I worked with the team there, and I got it up, and now I'm a maintainer of the project. So I'm able to help out and get what we need from the project. But it's one of... |
I just realized that's a reasonable analogy, and I wish I had come up with that years ago... The open source technical debt of maintaining that is still there, right? Open source from a cost might seem free to you, but there's still a cost to me in terms of my life, literally in terms of time. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Brett Cannon:** There's also to you a technical debt of what happens if that project never gets another commit, ever again? |
**Jerod Santo:** Blog post coming soon. You just created one right there. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** There's always a cost. |
**Brett Cannon:** I have to save it for the new podcast, "Dr. Brett teaches you open source." |
**Jerod Santo:** That's right, there you go. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, there's always a cost, and it just shifts. There's always a cost to somebody... |
**Jerod Santo:** Yeah, there's no free lunch... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** ...to the organization, to the individual... |
**Jerod Santo:** ...just someone else pays for your lunch. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** There's never a free lunch, yeah. Is that what you're keying off of? There isn't. There's always a cost, and it's paid by somebody... But the premise of open source isn't necessarily just simply free as in money, but free in always - free to contribute, free to work, liberal licenses, very permissiv... |
**Jerod Santo:** Yeah. |
**Brett Cannon:** Yeah, I mean - ideally, the best situation is the "You pull down this code, and your technical debt was literally just integrating that code the one time, and it's perfect for the rest of that code's days in your project, and you never have to pull another version again, and it's perfect, and it's the... |
After that, maybe Dependabot or something else comes along and says "Yeah, we've gotta pull a new version." Either a security hole, or stuff that runs faster, or whatever, and you just tweak a thing, and you pull down a newer version, and everything just works... Great. |
\[56:16\] Maybe its integration and new version breaks some things, so now you have to update your APIs. It varies. But it can go all the way up to project's gone, maintainer's gone, code's gone... Right? It could have been deleted. This is why major corporations who have the staffing mirror the hell out of all the ope... |
And code's gone, the maintainer's gone, something broke, and now we've gotta fix it. And that is potential technical debt that I think everyone who takes on open source has to be ready to deal with, regardless of who backs it. Because life happens, stuff happens, companies go out of business. Who knows. There's no guar... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Companies shift. They don't even have to go out of business, it could be "I'm just done. I'm just done. Moving on." |
**Jerod Santo:** Right. And these aren't hypotheticals. I've been an open source user long enough, I've been through every one of those scenarios as a user. Like, project changes to a direction that I don't like, or project ceases to exist, code is gone, or bug just remains open forever, and they ignore me... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** License changes... |
**Jerod Santo:** License change... I've been through them all. And sometimes you've gotta take different action, but you've gotta do something. Because once you receive the gift, you own the code. It's your problem now. I received the gift from you, it was a gift; I'm not gonna look the gift horse in the mouth... Maybe... |
**Brett Cannon:** Yup. |
**Jerod Santo:** So - very good point there. Let's change gears slightly here at the end. It's related - so you have your 18 years plus, you're hitting up on your two decades involved in Python... And we know we've had the BDFL retire. I'm just curious - you did face burnout at one point; you can go back and listen to ... |
**Brett Cannon:** So yes, thanks, I'm doing better than I have in the past, on occasion. It's one of these fluctuating things, basically. I did not have anything negative happen to me in open source today, so I'm good... |
**Jerod Santo:** \[laughs\] Okay. Today was a good day. |
**Brett Cannon:** Today was a good day. The hairball from the cat was yesterday, so that's all good. \[unintelligible 00:58:45.24\] so things are in a good trajectory. Yeah, end game - the joke I've been making lately is the dev manager at Microsoft to pay for my open source addiction... So the end game is to get to re... |
**Jerod Santo:** \[laughs\] Okay... Open source retirement. I like it. |
**Brett Cannon:** Yeah... To be honest, that'd probably be what I'd do, just because I do this because I enjoy it. Once again, this is a passion thing for me, right? I went to Microsoft because they gave me that 20% time that I wanted to get to do what I wanted. Plus, I get to work on open source the other 80% of the t... |
**Jerod Santo:** Right. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Ha! |
**Brett Cannon:** \[59:56\] I know plenty of developers who still think I'm bonkers when I tell them that. But yeah, I'd like to think that I will get to the point where I don't burn out. And honestly, even if I did, what I would probably do is I would just do code dumps. One of the ways I've learned to cope with it --... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You need a buffer. |
**Brett Cannon:** I need a buffer. I need that guarantee that I'm not gonna read that email or that issue or anything like that that's somehow gonna be a trigger of someone being mad. Because when it hits, my wife sees it on my face and goes "What's wrong?" So it's very visible that it ruins my day, or at least it ruin... |
And I've actually started to be a bit more opinionated in my projects... Because by having an opinion, it makes it easier to say no, because that also helps set expectations for people that "This is going to go the way I want it to go. If it works for you - great. You're welcome to come along on the ride and get what y... |
That's helped a lot too, because as I said, saying no is a lot easier now. It's a little unfortunate, I'd like to be able to potentially be more helpful, but it simplifies my life enough that it allows me to keep doing this. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, you need that protection. I think that your coping is a version of protection, right? How you cope with the threats of the world, to your physical being, your mental health etc. How you think of the world today because of what you've dealt with; the cat ball, as you mentioned. The furball, or ... |
**Brett Cannon:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It seems like you've put a lot of thought into how you -- because Jerod asked you about end game... I'm curious how -- can you get specific? Maybe what would a day in retirement in open source look like for you? Would you be advising on the community, would you be writing code? Give me an example of... |
**Brett Cannon:** What's my perfect Sunday? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
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