Episode 145: Ashley Williams on Open Source Software Sustainability

Guest Ashley Williams 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. We are super excited to have Ashley Williams joining us. Ashley is the Founder and CEO of Axo. She is also a former member of the Rust Core Team, founder of the Rust Foundation, and served as its first Executive Director. She was the leader of the Node.js Community Committee and founded the NodeTogether educational initiative. Today, Ashley shares her background with us from working at NPM, joining Mozilla, building the Rust Foundation, and she fills us in on Axo, which she explains is the tool company for tool companies. She also has some suggestions on how open source projects can get money to become successful in the long term. Go ahead and download this episode now to learn more! [00:01:41] Ashley explains what Axo does. [00:04:07] When Ashley moved from Node to Rust, she tells us what she took to the community there from the lessons she learned from Node, and how she wanted to build great communities in Rust. [00:09:35] We learn more about the process of building the Rust Foundation and why building it was necessary. [00:15:02] Justin wonders what it was that made the organizations calm again and why did they stick with Rust. [00:17:07] Ashley explains what the difference is for her and why one is better for open source software sustainability. [00:21:24] How do open source projects position themselves in the future to continue to have stake in their own governance and their own sustainability and where does Ashley think they should be investing their time? [00:23:28] We hear some tips from Ashley about the best way for a project to have a conversation with each other about setting goals and intentions for their project in a way that isn’t alienating. [00:30:02] Ashley shares a little of her background with us after leaving NPM, joining Mozilla, and she tells us about a tool she built called, wasm-pack. [00:33:35] We find