Episode 85: Geoffrey Huntley and Sustaining OSS with Gitpod

Guest Geoffrey Huntley Panelists Eric Berry | Richard Littauer Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. We are super excited to be going “down under” with our guest today, Geoff Huntley, who works at Gitpod as part of a team that focuses on community and he works with the engineering team. He is also a long-time open source developer advocate, and general coder dude from Australia. We learn from Geoff how he got started in coding, how he loves to teach people coming into the field, and the importance of turning up, sticking around, and helping out in this industry. He tells us all about Gitpod, what he does there, why more people are adopting it, what beer money does for maintainers, and how he’s using Gitpod to try to solve the problem of maintainers sustainability. Also, Geoff shares some awesome advice to help the sustainers out there, and his advice on how to use money, which you really need to hear! Download this episode now to find out much more from Geoff #vanlife! [00:01:45] Geoff tells us about the van he lives in and the project he maintains called ReactiveUI. [00:02:50] We learn how Geoff got started with coding and how he ended up willing to take over an open source project that takes a lot of maintenance. [00:06:00] Richard asks Geoff to talk about the amount of maintainers out there and any opinions he has about the engineering code versus the maintainer parable he just mentioned. [00:08:49] We learn more about Gitpod from Geoff. [00:10:49] Eric asks why people are adopting Gitpod, what makes that different between that and Codespaces, and Geoff tells us what the response has been so far. [00:14:40] Geoff talks about how he’s using Gitpod to try to solve this problem of maintainers sustainability, and how it goes back to Nadia Eghbal with her Roads and Bridges and the pivotal work she did with the Ford Foundation. [00:17:43] Eric wonders what Geoff thinks that beer money does for the maintainers, and when he was talking