Episode 176: Maintainer Month with Russell Keith-Magee & Uriel Ofir

Guests Russell Keith-Magee | Uriel Ofir Panelist Richard Littauer Show Notes 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 Dr. Russell Keith-Magee, who’s the Founder of the BeeWare Project and Software Engineer at Anaconda working on BeeWare in the OSS team. Russell talks about starting the project, the challenges of transitioning from an author to a maintainer, and the role of Anaconda in the Python ecosystem. Then we’ll have a conversation with our next guest, Uriel Ofir, who’s the Founder and Manager of Ma’akaf, an open source Israel community. Uriel tells us all about Ma’akaf, the importance of members being serious and proactive in contributing to the community, and how they encourage participants to contribute and improve their skills through an “open source party.” Hit download to hear much more! Russell: [00:01:40] Russell explains his role at Anaconda and being the Founder of the BeeWare Project. [00:03:43] The role of Anaconda in the Python ecosystem and the company’s open source offerings is discussed. [00:04:15] Russell discusses the process of starting the BeeWare project. [00:08:03] We hear about the funding problem in open source and how development is something that needs to be looked at. [00:10:15] He tells us the challenges of transitioning from an author to maintainer. [00:11:51] What’s hard for Russell as a maintainer? He mentions struggling when you don’t see progress and the difficulties of finding maintainers with the necessary skillset. [00:14:35] There’s been a lot of effort trying to document the onboarding process and making it smoother for new contributors. [00:15:21] Russell’s excited about the prospect of iOS and Android becoming officially supported platforms in C Python and the progress