Episode 157: Joel Wasserman on lessons learned with Flossbank

Guest Joel Wasserman 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. Our guest today has been on this podcast before, and we are super excited to have him back on. Joining us is Joel Wasserman, co-founder and Founder of Flossbank and Software Engineer at Google. Today, we’ll find out what happened to Flossbank and what’s happening next as Joel tells the story of how the idea of Flossbank came about, and the challenges and lessons he’s learned along the way. He goes in-depth about the need for funding, the ginormous difference between an open source author and an open source maintainer, and diversity in open source. Download this episode now to hear more! [00:01:23] What is Flossbank? [00:05:59] Onboarding can be difficult, and Joel fills us in on some lessons he’s learned. [00:09:53] Richard brings up a point of finding the right person, and wonders what issues Joel had was because he was the middleman or something else, and if it’s hard to find money for any project in open source. Joel mentions Nadia Eghbal’s book as the best book he’s ever read on the open source ecosystem. [00:12:58] Justin talks about a blog post Joel wrote last June on “The Flossbank Attempt,” where he made a comment “don’t hesitate to reach out,” and he tells us what other projects are actively asking him for advice. [00:15:20] We hear what Joel thinks of the benefits of GitHub sponsors and Open Collective are in comparison to his and why they’re able to garner some money, and his thoughts on that part of the ecosystem. [00:18:26] Joel tells us if there will be any sort of government grants going down the dependency tree and if he’s thought about that kind of money coming into the system and if there are benefits. [00:22:26] We hear what Joel thinks about the idea the maybe Flossbank was never going to work because there’s isn’t as much altruism in the world from companies and that he’s asking for something that’s impossible.