Episode 148: Ali Nehzat of thanks.dev and OSS Funding

Guest Ali Nehzat Panelists Richard Littauer | Justin Dorfman Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Get ready for an exciting guest today as we welcome, Ali Nehzat, who’s a Software Engineer with a preference for embedded systems and Founder of thanks.dev. Ali’s been around for a while, and he realized that the open source ecosystem needs some help, and his focus is specifically on the OSS funding problem. Today, we’ll learn more about Ali’s story of why he started thanks.dev, what motivated him, people that inspired him through his journey, and he reveals his mission for OSS developers. But it doesn’t stop there! Ali dives into different aspects he’s experimenting for funding, he tells us how payouts are supported so developers get paid, and how he’s planning on making this more sustainable. Download this episode now to find out more! [00:02:53] We find out the difference between thanks.dev and the other platforms, and Ali tells us his story about being motivated by Brian Carlson from the Node.js community, who’s behind node-postgres. [00:08:13] Ali talks about thanks.dev’s approach with helping to convince people to give money to open source. [00:11:20] We hear the tools that thanks.dev offers to its engineers to help them figure out how to sell giving back to open source. [00:14:07] After having conversations with OSPO companies, Ali explains how everything is a learning experience currently with thanks.dev, and he states the reason for thanks.dev not getting involved with code of conduct right now and what the mission is. [00:17:51] Licensing landscape is brought up by Ali and the conversations happening around it. [00:20:51] Ali fills us in on the insightful conversations he had with Joel Wasserman who really helped him in his journey, as well as other people, with thanks.dev, as well as some ideas to solve the funding with open source and make sure thanks.dev is sustainable going forward. [00:23:05] As far as projects go, Ali te