Episode 64: Travis Oliphant and Russell Pekrul on NumPy, Anaconda, and giving back with FairOSS

Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Alyssa Wright | Richard Littauer Guest Travis Oliphant | Russell Pekrul Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! Today, we have two guests from OpenTeams in Austin, Travis Oliphant and Russell Pekrul. Travis is the CEO and Russell is the Program Manager and the Founder and Director of FairOSS. We learn all about what OpenTeams and FairOSS are and how they work. Also, Travis tells us about the non-profit he started called NumFOCUS. Other topics discussed are dependencies and how their values are assigned, NumPy and SciPy, and building relationships with companies, which Russell mentions there is a bit of a “chicken and egg” problem here. There is some incredible advice and fascinating stories shared today so go ahead and download this episode now! [00:01:10] We find out what OpenTeams is and how it works. Travis also tells us when he wrote NumPy and SciPy and when he started OpenTeams. [00:07:18] Travis tells us about a non-profit he started with a bunch of people called NumFOCUS so there could be a home for the fiscal sponsor for open source projects. [00:09:24] Russell tells us what FairOSS is and how it works. [00:11:32] Alyssa asks Russell how does he first see the dependencies and then how does he assign that value? He mentions BackYourStack as a starting point. [00:13:00] Eric brings up one of the problems he’s found with trying to fund up open source is that it’s very difficult to solve the problem on more a grand scale. He wonders how Travis and Russell make the impact they want with the magnitude of problems they see. A key piece Travis brings up that they recognize is there’s a data gap and projects have to be participating. Alyssa wonders if projects are aware of their dependencies. [00:17:22] Richard asks about the dependency graph that they are making. He wonders how do you go down the stack and look all the way at the base and how do you judge the usefulness of what dependencies really matter for what code matters for the business proposition? Richard also