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**Mikeal Rogers:** \[49:54\] I'm curious what you think the scope of Mocha is... Because I can see this kind of alternate world where the scope has been completed. You define the test format. A lot of these other competitors that we were talking about earlier actually use your test formats, and you can use the same tes... |
It sounds like what you really wanna see from the project, what your scope is is a much more useful, full-on test runner... So I'm just curious what you feel the full-on scope of Mocha is. |
**Christopher Hiller:** I don't think it's much different from what it had always been declared to be, which... Mocha does two things - it provides a convention for writing tests; actually, it provides several different ones, so you can choose. But it provides this convention for writing tests, and then it provides a w... |
It doesn't have assertions in it, so you need to pull in another library. Mocha won't do much just by itself. I don't think the scope is much more than that. I think what -- I'm talking about in the differences, it's that it does those things that it does, but it does them better, and it does them in a way that allows ... |
**Nadia Eghbal:** So what about Mocha being done, but then there's you and then there's the projects. At what point do you feel like you could step away from Mocha? And if you haven't done it yet, then what keeps you from doing so? |
**Christopher Hiller:** Well, late last year I started feeling a bit burnt out on the project after feeling very frustrated about what I saw as kind of a failure to get the attention that I wanted for the project, and get the contributions and maintainers that the project needed... So I decided to take a break from it ... |
I did that, and it was okay. There are a couple other maintainers right now who have picked up their contributions. I had kind of raised an alarm on Twitter, I had written a message in our project's readme that we need help. About that time, when I did those things, is when I decided to just kind of take a break... So ... |
There's a few options here. One, if I feel that I've done what I can and there's no way this project is gonna get to where I want it to go, I'm just gonna quit. That's just life. It's kind of out of my hands. Obviously, I can't do it by myself; I need help from other people to get it sustainable, and I need help from o... |
So those are kind of the two ways in which I might feel like my time with Mocha is done. If I can kind of limit my involvement and make sure I don't burn out and not let myself get too frustrated, then I can keep with the project indefinitely. We can make baby steps to where it needs to be, and that's kind of where it'... |
I started contributing again just a couple weeks ago. It felt good, and I'm just gonna keep at it. I was really happy to see that some people answered the call; this project needs a lot of help. And yeah, we'll just play it by ear. |
So that's how I might end up leaving the project. I don't wanna quit Mocha if I don't have to. Or if I stop using Mocha for whatever reason, I might. But I'd like to stay with it. |
**Mikeal Rogers:** I think that's a really good note to take us out on. Thanks for coming on, this has been a really great conversation, actually. |
**Nadia Eghbal:** Yeah, thanks Chris. |
**Mikeal Rogers:** We really appreciate it. We got some incredible insights here, so thank you very much. |
**Christopher Hiller:** Thank you, I had a lot of fun! |
• History of open source sustainability and its beginnings |
• Early companies embracing open source (Sun, IBM) and those opposed to it (Microsoft) |
• Emergence of new companies like Red Hat and their role in promoting open source |
• The "Homebrew Computer Club" and Bill Gates' shift from sharing code to selling executables |
• The creation of the term "open source" by Tim O'Reilly and its initial acceptance |
• How the term "open source" was used to reframe the discussion around software development |
• The role of peer-to-peer computing and music sharing in popularizing open source |
• Confluence of events (Linux, copyright law changes) that contributed to open source's rise |
• The importance of legal obligation (copyleft) in contributing to open source (or not) |
• Permissive licensing was used by Mozilla as a Hail Mary in 1998 to drive adoption of their client software |
• Early open source projects like Mozilla had to reassure individual contributors about patent and copyright jurisdiction |
• The Free Software Foundation (FSF) advocated for copyleft licenses, which were seen as necessary to prevent exploitation of the code |
• As software shifted from client-server to peer-to-peer models, distribution and contribution requirements became less relevant |
• Permissive licensing can drive adoption, but may not result in high-quality contributions |
• The Apache model emphasizes gifts of code over required contributions, prioritizing quality over obligation |
• Enforcement activities by the FSF now focus on encouraging sharing of extensions and improvements rather than punishing freeloaders |
• The concept of "freeloaders" in open source development, where individuals or organizations benefit from the collective effort without contributing equally |
• Concerns about money flow in modern foundations and their impact on project priorities |
• Historical examples of patent pooling and its potential benefits for open source projects |
• The creation and importance of foundations like Apache Software Foundation and Mozilla |
• Mitchell Baker's experience as Lizard Wrangler at Netscape and her role in establishing the Mozilla foundation |
• The need for open source developers to stand up and push back against threats to their project's sustainability. |
• Microsoft's opposition to open source due to its impact on their developer base |
• Two types of programmers: inventors and those who work with tools provided by others (e.g. Microsoft) |
• The role of abstraction in programming and how it relates to the ease of working with code |
• Open source as a foundation for software development, with contributors often unaware of their influence and power |
• The importance of recognizing one's own influence and advocating for oneself within open source projects |
• The evolution of open source from a community-driven effort to a more institutionalized structure |
• The role of foundations in supporting large-scale open source projects |
• Companies' relationships with their open source employees, including the importance of giving them autonomy and support |
• Determining when a project needs a foundation or institutional support |
• Apple's failure to create an open source foundation for their R&D efforts led to conflicts with other open source projects |
• Foundations like Apache provided transparent governance and democratization of standards development |
• Node.js was moved to a foundation due to a community rebellion against its BDFL organization |
• Historically, foundations were designed to bring transparency and governance to projects, not just fundraise or pay maintainers |
• Open source foundations have become valuable entities that are now subject to taxation and regulatory scrutiny |
• Jim Zemlin streamlined the process of creating new foundations through his work at OSDL |
• Comparing different open source foundations (FSF, Software Freedom Law Center, Eclipse, Apache) |
• Discussion of Eclipse's origins as a competitive move by IBM against Sun |
• Characteristics of various foundations: FSF's restrictive approach, Apache's developer-driven governance |
• Disparities in what foundations offer to projects: support for marketing, PR, and fundraising |
• Importance of separating project governance from institutional governance |
• Future of open source: potential need for umbrella foundations that are less involved in projects, using tools like GitHub instead of hosting own development environments |
• Concerns about creating numerous foundations and potential tax issues |
• Definition of an "umbrella" foundation and its implications |
• Pros and cons of joining an existing umbrella foundation |
• Copyright aggregation and its role in protecting open source projects |
• Importance of contributor agreements and long-term legal viability |
• Challenges of establishing provenance for open source contributions |
• Tension between short-term sustainability and long-term legal protection |
• The GPL's legal challenges and the potential for a formal court challenge |
• The difficulties in enforcing open-source licenses across complex software stacks |
• The trade-offs between individual project maintainers' rights and contributors' rights |
• The influence of money on open-source projects and the motivations behind decisions |
• The evolution of governance models, including BDFL, consensus, and foundation-based approaches |
• The long-term viability of open-source software and its potential for continued growth |
**Mikeal Rogers:** We talk about open source sustainability on this show, it's a really hot topic now... But you've been working on open source sustainability I think maybe before it was called open source, so why don't you give us some of that kind of history and back-story through the lens of sustainability? |
**Danese Cooper:** Sure. So when I got into open source, it was just kind of the beginning of companies caring about open source, and there was an early vanguard of companies that either they already kind of had open source as part of their history, although maybe it was called 'free software' when that started, or the... |
And then there were up and coming companies like Red Hat, that were just starting out, and were tiny, but were so deeply based on open source that they cared a great deal, and they were building alliances all the time... So that's sort of the point at which I came in. |
It's important to say that there was a good 15-18 years of people developing software in this way, that would be called the modern era... Because we all know that in the early, early, early days of computing everybody shared everything, because it was just a hobby, and they had to share everything because it was the on... |
\[03:50\] The point at which that all changed has been classically tied to the Homebrew Computer Club and Bill Gates' realization that he wanted to charge for essentially access to the sources, although that's not how he framed it. But he wanted to start selling non-source-accessible executables, and he made a very suc... |
In those days, the corporations wanted in on the marketing lift of the coining of the term 'open source'. Tim had that famous meeting and they came up with that cool term, and then he used his media arm to make that term interesting to people, and almost immediately there were people that just wanted to take advantage ... |
Some existing projects that had been around a long time and were pretty successful all of a sudden had to deal with that, the hype factor. People were code dumping, for instance, at Apache. Apache had to change its license and also some of its practices to make sure that people got it, that they didn't have access to t... |
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