Episode 188: Maintainer Month with Ruth Cheesley & Josh Goldberg

Guests Ruth Cheesley | Josh Goldberg Panelist Richard Littauer Show Notes Note: Due to an issue with Gmail sending the edited podcast to spam (thanks, gmail), this is going out a bit late! Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. This is a special podcast and one of several in this series for GitHub’s Maintainer Month. We’re interviewing maintainers to ask them about their experience of open source and their experience of living as maintainers. Our first guest is Ruth Cheesley, a maintainer and community lead for Mautic, an open source marketing automation platform. Richard and Ruth dive into open source governance, community engagement, and organizing virtual conferences. Ruth shares how she reinvigorated the Mautic community, highlighting the importance of transparency and empowering community leaders, and she unveils her project focusing on governance and fundraising to ensure Mautic’s sustainability. Our next guest is Josh Goldberg, a full-time independent open source developer who’s contributed significantly to TypeScript. They discuss Josh’s transition from TSLint to TypeScript-ESLint, his efforts to boost developer community efficiency, and the importance of fair compensation for maintainers. Also, there’s a conversation on the governance proposal of TypeScript-ESLint and the challenges of fair funding. Hit download to hear more! [00:01:06] Ruth tells us about Mautic and the growing community. Also, the core team/leadership team is made up of team leads for each functional area and Ruth as project lead. [00:03:32] Ruth thinks of herself as a maintainer because she’s instrumental in the project’s direction and ongoing development. [00:04:21] We hear about a challenging time for Ruth when Mautic was first acquired by Acquia in 2019, she was brought in as community manger to navigate this change and was successful in regaining trust an keeping the project moving forward. [00:07:41] Ruth emphasizes the importance of transparency in building trust