Episode 40: How Open Source Maintainers Don't Get Rich with Bogdan Vasilescu

<center> <small>Sponsored By:</small> <a href="https://promo.linode.com/sustain/" target="_blank"><img src="https://files.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads/images/2/27729c65-f4a6-4496-8c86-820e7f13b285/DAsVtWUA.png" width="150px" heigh="58px"></a> </center> Panelists Justin Dorfman | Eric Berry | Richard Littauer Guest Bogdan Vasilescu Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! Today, we have Bogdan Vasilescu, who is an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science. We start out by learning what Bogdan builds at the STRUDEL Lab. Then we discuss, “The GHTorrent project.” We also learn about the research that he and his group at CMU have been doing on open source sustainability. There are a few papers on topics related to sustainability that we will also discuss. One of his papers really inspired Justin, and after listening to this podcast you will probably agree that this is one of our best guests! [00:02:18] Bogdan tells us more about what he builds at the STRUDEL Lab. He gives a shout-out to his students and collaborators who are doing all the work. [00:03:50] Bogdan talks about one of his papers titled, “How To Not Get Rich.” He also explains The GHTorrent project which is like a mirror of GitHub. [00:08:43] Justin asks Bogdan about a website he built and how 46% of packages show a badge. He asks how long did it take to get to that number? He describes the process and how they compute that number. [00:11:31] Eric goes back to the scraping of GitHub’s readme’s and these npm module badges, and asks Bogdan what is he looking for with those and how does that translate to the topic of how not to get rich with open source? [00:15:27] Eric asks Bogdan since he says that badges add almost validity and gives developers a sense of trust that this project appears to have an ecosystem around it, but how does that tie in with donations and how does it tie in with your report? [00:18:14] Eric explains why he’s so interested in the donation side. He talks about corporations donating m