Envoy Proxy with Matt Klein by Contributor

Postgres for Everything: Tembo with Ry Walker

Ry Walker (@rywalker) is the founder and CEO of Tembo, the Postgres developer platform for building any and every data service. To Ry, the full capabilities of Postgres appear underappreciated and underused for most users. Tembo is an attempt to harness the large ecosystem of Postgres extensions, and ultimately collapse the database sprawl of the modern data stack.

Contributor is looking for a community manager! If you want to know more, shoot us an email at eric@scalevp.com.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications!

In this episode we discuss:

Taking the “red pill” of using Postgres for everything
Providing universal support for Postgres extensions
Why Ry dislikes the current state of the modern data stack
How databases across the board have mostly changed into application platforms
What makes Tembo “Startup Mt. Everest”

Links:

People mentioned:

Erik Bernhardsson (@bernhardsson)

Other episodes:

Clickhouse with Alexey Milovidov and Ivan Blinkov

Automation for Technical People: n8n with Jan Oberhauser

Jan Oberhauser (@JanOberhauser) is the founder and CEO of n8n, the free and source-available workflow automation tool for technical users. n8n's flexible architecture allows users to avoid the limitations of other automation tools, while also opening doors for complex automation scenarios. The project has garnered over 30,000 GitHub stars and a thriving community of 55,000+ members.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

How Jan’s background in film effects laid the groundwork for n8n
Why n8n uses a forum over Discord or Slack for a community platform
Use cases from scheduling fitness classes to upgrading financial mainframes
How n8n might stack up against the well-thought out Python script
Why n8n uses a fair-code license rather than open-source

Links:

Other episodes:

The Big Fork: libSQL with Glauber Costa

Glauber Costa (@glcst) is the founder of Turso and the co-creator of libSQL, an open source, open contribution fork of the database engine library, SQLite. Most people believe that SQLite is open-source software, but it actually exists in the public domain and doesn’t accept external contributions. With their big fork, Glauber and his team have set out to evolve SQLite into a modern database with support for distributed data, an asynchronous interface, compatibility with WASM and Linux, and more.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

Community reactions to forking SQLite
How Glauber was spoiled by starting his career developing for Linux
The controversial decision to launch libSQL without writing a single line of code
The plan for incorporating upstream changes from SQLite
Examples of how application developers need to move code “to the edge”

Links:

People mentioned:

Avi Kivity (@AviKivity)
Dor Laor (@DorLaor)
Ben Johnson (@benbjohnson)
Phillip O’Toole (@general_order24)
Matt Tantaman (@tantaman)

Other episodes:

Rethinking the Workflow Problem: Windmill with Ruben Fiszel

Ruben Fiszel (@rubenfiszel) is the creator of Windmill, the open-source developer platform that lets users easily turn scripts into workflows and internal apps with auto-generated UIs. Windmill doesn’t force engineers to change their coding style or adopt a convoluted API, and its low-code design makes it accessible to non-technical users. Tune in to find out how Windmill offers speed, performance and flexibility, while avoiding the limitations of rigid tools.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

Why many engineers try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to workflow engines
When Ruben first saw the need for a platform like Windmill while working at Palantir
“Today is the nicest period to build open-source…”
Ruben’s incredible presence with support and bug fixes
Windmill’s generous open-source offerings and the future of the business

Links:

Other episodes:

Vector Search for Humans: Marqo with Jesse Clark

Jesse Clark (@jn2clark) is a co-founder of Marqo, the end-to-end, multimodal vector search engine. Vector search has exploded along with the rise of generative AI models, so Marqo’s arrival has had excellent timing. The project has quickly grown to almost 3000 GitHub stars, despite being less than a year old. Jesse and his team weren’t exactly expecting this level of immediate success, but they are well-positioned to continue developing Marqo as a fixture in the worlds of information retrieval and machine learning.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

Jesse’s journey from physics research, to Stitch Fix, Amazon, and finally starting Marqo
Industry vs academia in the cutting edge of machine learning
Why “almost any organization in the world would benefit from Marqo”
Talking about machine learning language - tensors, vectors, embeddings
How Jesse deals with the stress of knowing how fast the AI space is innovating

Links:

Marqo

People mentioned:

Katrina Lake (@kmlake)
Eric Colson (@ericcolson)

From Orchestration to Building Applications: Conductor with Jeu George

Jeu George (@jeugeorge) is the co-creator of Conductor, the open-source application building platform. Conductor began as a workflow orchestrator and was originally developed at Netflix. Jeu also co-founded Orkes, a company which offers a cloud product based on Conductor. Tune in to find out how Conductor has evolved into an open-source, battle-tested distributed application platform.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

The core tenets of building Conductor - reliability, language and cloud agnosticism
How Conductor enables teams to share and manage their custom modules
The role of Conductor in Netflix’s switch from licensed to original content
Jeu’s journey from Netflix, to Uber, and finally to Orkes
How Orkes is focusing on integrations and AI orchestration moving forward

Links:

People mentioned:

Viren Baraiya (@virenbaraiya)
Boney Sekh (@boneyorkes)
Dilip Lukose (@diliplukose)

Opening Up Authentication: SuperTokens with Advait Ruia

Advait Ruia (@Advait_Ruia) is the co-founder of SuperTokens, the open-source user authentication and authorization framework. SuperTokens integrates natively into both your front-end client and your backend endpoint. This approach gives developers more control over the user experience and allows for custom workflows. Tune in to find out why SuperTokens aims to be the best of both the build and the buy argument for authentication solutions.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

How SuperTokens evolved from a blog post on session management into a full-fledged infrastructure company
Why there is increasing demand for authentication providers
Do founders need to be in the Bay Area?
Advait’s advice for building community and providing support
Areas where SuperTokens could use outside contributions

Links:

People mentioned:

Rishabh Poddar (@rishpoddar)

Other episodes:

Hasura with Tanmai Gopal

Open-Source Runtime Security: Falco with Loris Degioanni

Loris Degioanni (@lorisdegio) joins Eric Anderson (@ericmander) to chat about Falco, the open-source runtime security tool for modern cloud infrastructures. Loris is the founder and CTO of Sysdig, and co-creator of Wireshark, the legendary open-source packet analysis tool. Today, Loris talks about all these projects and more - tune in to learn about some deep history and Loris’ predictions for the future.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

How Loris began working with Gerald Combs as a student in Italy
Why Loris’ teams name their products after animals
The new non-profit Wireshark Foundation
Parallel development of cloud technology and containers during Loris’ career
The little things that make open-source projects go viral

Links:

People mentioned:

Solomon Hykes (@solomonhykes)

Decoupling Authorization: Cerbos with Emre Baran

Emre Baran (@emre) is the CEO and co-founder of Cerbos, the open-source authorization layer for implementing roles and permissions. Cerbos allows developers to decouple authorization logic from core code into its own centrally distributed component. Easier said than done, perhaps - but Cerbos is secure, intentionally simple to implement, and developer-focused.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

The difference between authentication and authorization
Why Cerbos is language-agnostic
Authorization patterns in a single application versus a larger network
The reason most devs start out trying to do authorization themselves, and sometimes give up
How the upcoming Cerbos Cloud will empower less technical users to deploy and manage policies and logs

Links:

People mentioned:

Charith Ellawala (Github: @charithe)

Other episodes:

Open Policy Agent with Torin Sandall

Cosmonic and WebAssembly with Liam Randall and Bailey Hayes

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) has a conversation with Liam Randall (@Hectaman) and Bailey Hayes (@baihay) of Cosmonic, the platform-as-a-service environment for building cloud-native applications using WebAssembly. Bailey is also on the steering committee for the Bytecode Alliance, which stewards WebAssembly. In 2021, Cosmonic donated their WebAssembly runtime, wasmCloud, to the CNCF as an open-source project. Today, Liam and Bailey trace the history of WebAssembly, and their personal paths alongside it.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

How WebAssembly came together over the last decade to become the fourth standardized language of the web
The moments when Bailey and Liam both realized they might be changing the future of computing
Modding Microsoft Flight Simulator with Wasm modules
Liam’s thoughts on how WebAssembly will affect business models going forward

Links:

People mentioned:

Kevin Hoffman (@KevinHoffman)
Kelsey Hightower (@kelseyhightower)
Guy Bedford (@guybedford)
Peter Huene (@peterhuene)
Chris Aniszczyk (@cra)

Other episodes:

Haystack and Intelligent Search with Milos Rusic

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) is joined by Milos Rusic (@rusic_milos) to discuss Haystack, the open-source NLP framework for leveraging Transformer models and building intelligent search systems. Milos and his colleagues at deepset were early contributors to Hugging Face’s Transformer models, and began building pipelines for searching large document stores. Today, Haystack is wildly popular, with an active Discord community and over 6,000 GitHub stars.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

A deep dive into how Haystack works and its many use cases
How a customer demo with one-minute long queries helped inspire Haystack
Marketing open-source projects vs word of mouth
NLP applications working with structured data and translating between types of data
Imagining a world where every person has their own personal ChatGPT

Links:

Other episodes:

Milvus with Frank Liu

Cube and the Semantic Layer with Artyom Keydunov

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) talks with Artyom Keydunov (@keydunov) about Cube, the semantic layer for building data applications. Cube helps engineers bridge data warehouses and data experiences, and provides access control, security, caching, and more helpful features. The project began in open-source and has evolved quite a lot over the last few years with a ton of community support.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

What is a semantic layer?
Coming up with the idea to open-source during a game of ping pong
Setting a ten-company-deployment goal
Using Cube to track COVID stats in lockdown
How one contributor built a GraphQL API

Links:

People mentioned:

Pavel Tiunov (@paveltiunov87)

Remembering Jeff Meyerson with Erika Hokanson

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Erika Hokanson (@erikawh0) remember the life of Jeff Meyerson, creator of the influential podcast Software Engineering Daily. He passed during the summer of 2022. Still, his work lives on - thousands of episodes, talks, music, a book, and a community of dedicated listeners and engineers whose lives were touched by Jeff’s dreams.

Software Engineering Daily is still running, and you can listen to new episodes right here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

Links:

People mentioned:

Pranay Mohan (@pranaymohan)

Testcontainers and Confidence with Sergei Egorov and Eli Aleyner

We’re kicking off the new year with a conversation between Eric Anderson (@ericmander), Sergei Egorov (@bsideup) and Eli Aleyner (@ealeyner). Sergei and Eli founded AtomicJar to maintain Testcontainers, the family of open-source libraries that allow developers to write and run integration tests locally, and treat them as unit tests. Testcontainers is wildly popular, with over six thousand GitHub stars (and climbing!). Tune in to find out how Sergei and Eli are helping people test their software quicker, easier, and more efficiently.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

How Testcontainers solves the problem of confidence
The value of Github’s networking effect
Inspiration from Amazon’s S3 “test bunny”
Consequences of Docker’s over- and under-adoption
Replicating success in other languages besides Java

Links:

People mentioned:

Richard North (@whichrich)
Kevin Wittek (@Kiview)
Martin Fowler (@martinfowler)

Mito and Smarter Spreadsheets with Nate Rush and Aaron Diamond-Reivich

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) is joined by Nate Rush (@naterush1997) and Aaron Diamond-Reivich (@_aaronDR) to talk about Mito, the open-source spreadsheet that generates Python code for data analysts. Mito is a Python library and acts as an extension to a Jupyter Notebook. Tune in to find out how the Mito team is bridging the gap in data science between spreadsheets and programming.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

How Nate, Aaron and Aaron’s fraternal twin brother Jake have been friends since middle school
Programming tools for spreadsheet users vs spreadsheet tools for people who are trying to become programmers
Advantages to integrating into other open-source projects
Reflecting on the hype around Python data science
Python needs for Mito’s enterprise customers

Links:

People mentioned:

Jacob Diamond-Reivich (@Jake_Stack808)

Featureform and the Future of MLOps with Simba Khadder

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Simba Khadder (@simba_khadder) explore Featureform, the “virtual” feature store platform that aims to standardize data pipelines for machine learning. Contributor is no stranger to feature stores, but Simba has a broader definition than most. Join us to learn how Featureform enables data scientists and machine learning practitioners to solve a common, but rarely addressed organizational problem.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

How there is no standard or north star for MLOps
Why enterprise is where Featureform’s value shines
MLPlatform problems vs MLOps problems
Why copy/paste and Git don’t cut it
Deploying MLOps solutions that make data scientists and everyone else happy

Links:

Other episodes:

Tensorflow with Rajat Monga

Directus with Ben Haynes

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) hosts Ben Haynes (@benhaynes), CEO and co-founder of Directus. Directus is an open-source data platform that layers on SQL databases to provide an instant API, and includes a no-code data studio interface. Listen in to find out how Directus is aiming to democratize the modern data stack for everyone.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

The inspiration to create an “admin interface on steroids”
Reflecting on Directus’ unusual linear growth trend
How Directus powers digital experiences, applications, and internal dev tools
Ben’s thoughts on maintaining a sustainable, premium open-source experience
Automated data processing with Directus Flows

Links:

Other episodes:

Chef with Adam Jacob

Prowler with Toni de la Fuente

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) chats with Toni de la Fuente (@ToniBlyx) about how he created Prowler, an open source security tool for AWS. Toni talks about taking Prowler from a nights-and-weekends project to his current full-time job, managing a team of four. They discuss transitioning from primarily coding to primarily managing tickets and users, as well as being “client zero” and bringing the project to big companies.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

The roadmap from open source Prowler to Prowler Pro
Prowler’s diverse set of users
What Toni learned from quitting an earlier open source project
The differences between Prowler and other security services for AWS

Links:

People mentioned:

tea with Max Howell

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) meets legendary open-source developer Max Howell (@mxcl) to talk about tea, a decentralized protocol for remunerating the open-source ecosystem. Max is the creator of Homebrew, and he chats about his exit from the project. The conversation turns to his newest project, tea, which is an evolution of Brew, and takes inspiration from blockchain technology. They also discuss Max’s famous interview at Google and his time working for Apple.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

Max’s experience creating Homebrew, one of the largest open-source projects ever
The utility of Web3 beyond decentralized finance
Writing a white paper for tea, “just like everyone else”
Why Max wants a global team, with people in every time zone
How tea ensures a sustainable future for open-source

Links:

People mentioned:

Timothy Lewis

Suborbital with Connor Hicks

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Connor Hicks (@cohix) launch into detail on Suborbital, an open-source project that allows developers to create WebAssembly projects embedded in other applications. Connor conceived of Suborbital while frustrated with the cold start problem that can impact Function-as-a-Service platforms. Today, Suborbital collaborates with companies like Microsoft on a community called Wasm Builders, dedicated to sharing and developing innovations in WebAssembly applications.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

The three tentpoles of WebAssembly that make it a useful foundation for Suborbital
Surprising niche use cases for WebAssembly like IoT and data modeling
Open-source tools in the Suborbital ecosystem
Putting focus on building a larger Wasm Builders community
Connor’s thoughts on how WebAssembly can improve edge computing

Links:

Milvus with Frank Liu

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Frank Liu (@frankzliu) talk about Milvus, the open-source vector database built for scalable similarity search. Vector databases are built to search, index and store embeddings, a requirement for powerful AI applications. Frank is Director of Operations at Zilliz, the company that stewards the project. Tune in to find out how Milvus is the database for the AI era.

Subscribe to Contributor on Substack for email notifications, and join our Slack community!

In this episode we discuss:

A crash course on embeddings and vector databases
Using Milvus for logo search, crypto predictions, drug discovery, and more
Other open-source projects at Zilliz that complement Milvus
“Embedding Everything”
How Milvus incorporates tunable consistency to its search process

Links:

Other episodes:

Clickhouse with Alexey Milovidov and Ivan Blinkov

Correction:

Milvus is based on a “shared storage” architecture, not “shared nothing.”

Apache Beam with Kenn Knowles and Pablo Estrada

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) reunites with old colleagues Kenn Knowles (@KennKnowles) and Pablo Estrada (@polecitoem) for a conversation on Apache Beam, the open-source programming model for data processing. The trio once worked together at Google, and Beam was a turning point in the history of open-source there. Today, both Kenn and Pablo are members of the Beam PMC, and join the show with the inside scoop on Beam’s past, present and future.

In this episode we discuss:

Transitioning Beam to the Apache Way
How “inner source” works at Google
Thoughts on the relationship between batch processing and streaming
Some ways that community “power users” have contributed to Beam
Information on Beam Summit 2022, the first onsite summit since COVID began
- The first few people to register can use code BEAM_POD_INV for a discount on tickets!

Links:

Other episodes:

TensorFlow with Rajat Monga

Temporal (Part 2) with Maxim Fateev and Dominik Tornow

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) returns to Temporal with co-founder Maxim Fateev (@mfateev) and principal engineer Dominik Tornow (@DominikTornow). When Maxim joined us in September of 2020, the company called their project a “workflow orchestrator.” Today, Temporal has grown in popularity and usability, but the terminology around that abstraction has changed. Tune in to track the evolution of what Maxim calls a genuinely “new category of software.”

In this episode we discuss:

New features and developments in the last 2 years
The proper way to pronounce “Temporal”
How Temporal guarantees that workflow execution actually runs to execution
Describing Temporal as a new pair of glasses
Replay, Temporal’s first developer conference on August 25-26, in Seattle

Links:

People mentioned:

Samar Abbas (@samarabbas77)

Other episodes:

Scarf with Avi Press

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) interviews Avi Press (@avi_press) about Scarf, the distribution platform for open-source software that facilitates analytics and commercialization. Scarf offers a set of tools that allows founders and maintainers to understand adoption of their products, including Scarf Gateway, which provides a central access point to containers and packages. From there, open-source developers can connect with the people that rely on their work.

In this episode we discuss:

Why you can’t rely on Github as a source of comprehensive data about open-source software
Tracing a user’s journey interacting with a project across multiple platforms
How better observability allows maintainers to make better software
Inspiring indie maintainers to commercialize their projects
The privilege of being able to work in open-source, and how Scarf can enable a more inclusive developer community

Links:

Rasgo with Patrick Dougherty

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Patrick Dougherty (@cpdough) talk about Rasgo, the data transformation platform for MLOps that makes generating SQL easy. The team at Rasgo recently open-sourced a package called RasgoQL, that allows users to execute SQL queries against a data warehouse using Python syntax. Tune in to find out how Rasgo aims to bridge an important gap in the Modern Data Stack.

In this episode we discuss:

The advantages of offering both a low-code/no-code UI and a Python interface
"How can a data scientist, without needing full-time resources from data engineering, be somewhat self-sufficient in data prep and able to deliver those insights without a massive human capital investment needed?"
Where Rasgo fits into the world of feature stores
Why one Rasgo user took a trip to a wind farm in Texas
Eric’s predictions for the future of data prep and transformation

Links:

People mentioned:

Jared Parker (@jaredtparker_)

Feast with Willem Pienaar

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Willem Pienaar (@willpienaar) talk about Feast, the open-source feature store for machine learning. Feature stores act as a bridge between models and data, and allow data scientists to ship features into production without the need for engineers. Willem co-created Feast at Gojek, and later teamed up with the folks at Tecton to back the project.

In this episode we discuss:

The value of feature stores in MLOps
What happens when you open-source too early
Why most open-source code has nothing to hide
Bringing an open-source project to an existing company
Good and bad use cases for a feature store

Links:

People mentioned:

Mike Del Balso
Kevin Stumpf (@kevinmstumpf)
Ajey Gore (@AjeyGore)
Demetrios Brinkmann (@Dpbrinkm)
Wes McKinney (@wesmckinn)

Other episodes:

Flyte with Ketan Umare

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Ketan Umare (@ketanumare) discuss Flyte, the open-source workflow automation platform for large-scale machine learning and data use cases. Ketan is a former engineer at Lyft, where he created Flyte to help models in Pricing, Locations, ETA, and more. Today, the project allows machine learning developers everywhere to bring their ideas from conception to production.

In this episode we discuss:

How Flyte combines compute with parts of a workflow engine in a way that is best for the user
The importance of reliable fares and ETA predictions at a ride-sharing app
A progenitor to Flyte called “Better Airflow”
Ketan’s innovative approach to bringing typing to machine learning workloads
Why Flyte landed at the Linux Foundation

Links:

Other episodes:

Activeloop with Davit Buniatyan

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) meets with Davit Buniatyan (@DBuniatyan) of Activeloop, the database for AI. Davit was inspired to found Activeloop while working on large datasets in a neuroscience research lab at Princeton. Powering the technology at Activeloop is Hub, the open-source dataset format for AI applications. Join us to learn how Hub promises to enhance and expand various verticals in deep learning.

In this episode we discuss:

Reconfiguring traditional ML tooling for the cloud
Connectomics - working with thin slices of a mouse brain with neuroscientist Sebastian Seung
Choosing between university, a start-up, and open-source
Davit’s original product, that ran computation on crypto mining GPUs on a distributed scale
Focusing on different data modalities for computer vision

Links:

People mentioned:

Sebastian Seung (@SebastianSeung)

Other episodes:

TensorFlow with Rajat Monga

Unikraft with Alexander Jung and Simon Kuenzer

Eric Anderson (@ericmander), Alexander Jung (@nderjung) and Simon Kuenzer (Github: @skuenzer) get technical on Unikraft, the open-source unikernel development kit. Unikernels are specialized, high performing OS images that have the potential to revolutionize virtualization. Unikraft makes unikernels easy to use by prioritizing modularity, security, and POSIX-compatibility.

In this episode we discuss:

How Unikraft seeks wider adoption of unikernels in real-world applications
Unikraft’s background in research and academia
Bottom-up as well as top-down specialization
Building a community with a large proportion of students

Links:

EdgeDB with Yury Selivanov

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) has a conversation with Yury Selivanov (@1st1), the co-founder of EdgeDB. EdgeDB is the world’s first “graph-relational database.” It’s a term coined specifically for this new type of database, designed to ease the pain of dealing with the usual relational and NoSQL models. And no, EdgeDB is NOT a graph database!

In this episode we discuss:

A glitch at EdgeDB’s Matrix-inspired launch event
Origin of the term and design philosophy, “graph-relational”
What to know about becoming a Python core developer
How EdgeDB’s next-gen query language compares to GraphQL and SQL

Links:

People mentioned:

Elvis Pranskevichus (@elprans)
Colin McDonnell (@colinhacks)
Victor Petrovykh (Github: @vpetrovykh)
Dan Abramov (@dan_abramov)
Brett Cannon (@brettsky)
Daniel Levine (@daniel_levine)

Other episodes:

Deephaven with Pete Goddard

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) sits down with Pete Goddard (@pete_paco) to talk about Deephaven, the open-core query engine built for real-time streams and batch data. Pete is the CEO of Deephaven Data Labs, and comes to the data world from a background in capital markets trading. Deephaven originally addressed a need for real-time data infrastructure in the finance world, but the team realized how useful their technology could be in a wider variety of verticals. Join us for Pete’s unique perspective on reaching out into alternate industries and use cases through community development.

In this episode we discuss:

How Pete transitioned from Wall Street to open-source software
Selling investors on open-source
Two questions people always ask Pete
The luxury of Deephaven’s incremental update model
Barrage, Deephaven’s API for streaming tables that extends Apache Arrow Flight

Links:

Other episodes:

TensorFlow with Rajat Monga

Meltano with Douwe Maan

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Douwe Maan (@DouweM) chat about Meltano, the open-source DataOps operating system. Meltano provides the connective tissue that allows teams to treat their data stack as a single software development project. Tune in to learn how Meltano is trying to bring software development best practices into the data world.

In this episode we discuss:

Meltano’s origins as a side project at GitLab
How Meltano glues together open-source technologies like Singer, dbt and Airflow
Douwe’s experience wearing many different hats in the early days of Meltano
Meltano’s shift from an ELT solution to an operating system
The Love-Tap Fest community event, starting right after this episode’s release!

Links:

People mentioned:

Taylor Murphy (@tayloramurphy)
AJ Steers (@aaronsteers)

Other episodes:

Penpot & Taiga with Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz (@diacritica) examine the intersection of open-source, agile development, and UI/UX design at the heart of two applications, Penpot and Taiga. Penpot is a design and prototyping platform intended for cross-domain teams, while Taiga is a popular agile project management software. These products comprise the heart of Pablo’s innovative company, Kaleidos Open Source, which was founded in Spain more than a decade ago. Listen to today’s episode for one of the industry’s most unique perspectives on open-source code and design.

In this episode we discuss:

An internal crisis and a major pivot for Kaleidos
How Penpot was born from Kaleidos’ signature personal innovation week
Designing a design tool that can be used to design itself
Bringing design, code and people closer together
Why Pablo asserts that designers care about open-source

Links:

Other episodes:

Blender with Dalai Felinto

DockerSlim with Kyle Quest

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Kyle Quest (@kcqon) discuss DockerSlim, the open-source optimization and security tool for Docker container images. Kyle initially created DockerSlim as a humble hackathon project, and now supports it with his company, Slim.AI. Tune in to learn how DockerSlim is redefining DevOps with application intelligence and a backwards compatible vision of the future.

In this episode we discuss:

Bridging the gap between application and infrastructure
Emerging from the cloud native stone age
Application intelligence rather than artificial intelligence in Slim.AI
DockerSlim integrated into CI/CD pipelines, embedded systems, and robots
How Slim.AI aims to become ‘Google for containers’

Links:

Unleash with Egil and Ivar Østhus

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) is joined by Egil (@EgilCo) and Ivar Østhus (@ivarconr), brothers and co-creators of the open-source feature management platform, Unleash. It’s a real family business, with Egil acting as CEO and Ivar the CTO of the company. Over beers and burgers, the two decided to bring their strengths together for a feature toggle tool that transforms DevOps and continuous deployment pipelines.

In this episode we discuss:

Ivar as a pioneer in the trunk-based development space
Word of mouth and old colleagues bringing Unleash to new companies
Assessing a contributor’s personality and mindset
Resolving a deadlock scenario on a feature launch day without impacting customers
Why feature flagging is fundamental to true DevOps

Links:

Unleash

Kubescape with Shauli Rozen

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) invites Shauli Rozen (@shaulir) to share about his work on Kubescape, the first open-source Kubernetes security testing tool that is compliant with NSA & CISA hardening guidelines. Despite the project’s recency, Kubescape has seen explosive growth on Github and recognition from the Kubernetes community. Tune in to learn how the team at ARMO built a successful open-source security tool for DevOps.

In this episode we discuss:

Why Kubescape uses guidance from the NSA & CISA
Correcting the misconception that developers don’t care about security
Providing value in the first five minutes of using the tool
ARMO’s detailed approach to community feedback
Shauli’s thoughts on security roles of the future

Links:

Blender with Dalai Felinto

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) connects with Dalai Felinto (@dfelinto), development coordinator at Blender. Blender is a free and open-source 3D graphics toolset with a unique story spanning nearly 30 years. The project is used professionally for animation, video games, scientific visualization, and much more. Join us for a very special episode of Contributor as we take a deep dive into one of the most dedicated, robust communities in open-source history.

In this episode we discuss:

When the dotcom crash landed Blender in the hands of community members
Taking open-source beyond the toolset with open movie projects
Dalai’s transition from burgeoning architect to Blender developer
How you can use Blender’s new Geometry Nodes for AI training
Solving organizational challenges with full-time staff and contributors

Links:

People mentioned:

Ton Roosendaal (@tonroosendaal)

Great Expectations with Abe Gong and Kyle Eaton

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) interviews Abe Gong (@AbeGong) and Kyle Eaton (@SuperCoKyle) about Great Expectations, the open-source framework that aims to create a shared standard for data quality. Abe is a core contributor to the project, and the CEO and co-founder of Superconductive, the team backing Great Expectations. Kyle is Growth Lead at Superconductive, and Community Manager of Great Expectations. The team at Superconductive have just launched the new Expectation Gallery to connect contributors and carve out vertical spaces in this ecosystem. Tune in to find out why Great Expectations is the leading open-source project for eliminating pipeline debt.

In this episode we discuss:

How the Expectation Gallery enables new modes of community engagement
Superconductive’s pivot from healthcare data consulting to open-source data validation
Collaborative conversations with other data companies
Abe’s advice to future open-source founders on segmenting value
The vision of Great Expectations as a protocol-level open standard

Links:

People mentioned:

James Campbell (@jpcampbell42)

Other episodes:

Dagster with Nick Schrock

Bolster with Abhishek Dubey

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) sits down with Abhishek Dubey (@abhishekdubey), co-creator of Bolster, the fraud prevention platform powered by deep-learning. Bolster is used by clients like LinkedIn, Uber and Dropbox for its cutting-edge detection and takedown technology. Abhishek and his co-founder built Bolster around the real-time URL-scanning tool CheckPhish, which analyzes phishing sites for free. On today’s episode, learn how Abhishek and the team at Bolster have found success by focusing on building their business out of passion, and giving back to the community.

In this episode we discuss:

A second mortgage and a startup garage
Discovering 100 Fortune 500 companies were using CheckPhish
How Bolster snagged LinkedIn without a proof of concept
Bolster’s secret sauce, that sets them apart from other security companies
Comparing the community focus of Bolster to a traditional open-source model

Links:

People mentioned:

Shashi Prakash (@skiddzo)

Sanity with Magnus Hillestad and Even Westvang

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) sits down with Magnus Hillestad (@MHillestad) and Even Westvang (@even), co-founders of the unified content platform Sanity. The team at Sanity helps businesses organize their structured content as data, allowing distribution from a single source of truth. Tune in today’s episode to learn how Sanity aims to change the way people think about content.

In this episode we discuss:

The open-source editing environment and CMS, Sanity Studio
From content as data, to coffee table books
How Sanity differs from a traditional CMS
Why the Sanity team turned down a contract with the United Nations
Building a team that can scale to a vision of ubiquity

Links:

People mentioned:

Simen Svale Skogsrud (@svale)
Øyvind Rostad (@rostad)

Teleport with Ev Kontsevoy

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Ev Kontsevoy (@kontsevoy) talk about Teleport, the open-source tool for instant access to cloud resources. These include SSH servers, Kubernetes clusters, databases and more. Teleport was inspired by the growing complexity of cloud environments, and aims to make engineers feel like all their cloud applications are in the same room together.

In this episode we discuss:

How Teleport grew from a side project to Gravity, the open-source toolkit for packaging and running applications autonomously
Unifying and consolidating modern access methods and industry best practices
Bringing identity to a protocol-level
An early community use case for Teleport in the cattle industry
Engaging with outside contributions while balancing security constraints

Links:

Rook with Travis Nielsen

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Travis Nielsen (@STravisNielsen) talk about Rook, the open-source storage orchestrator for Kubernetes. Travis is a Senior Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat, and maintainer of Rook. Join us to dive deep into the story of Rook, from Microsoft, to Quantum, to Red Hat.

In this episode we discuss:

Ceph + Kubernetes = Rook
The difficulty and importance of a stable storage solution for stateless applications
How Rook leverages Kubernetes CRDs
Why the Rook team decided to work with the CNCF
Red Hat’s philosophy and approach to open-source

Links:

People mentioned:

Bassam Tabbara (@bassamtabbara)
Jared Watts (@jbw976)

Apache Cassandra with Patrick McFadin

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Patrick McFadin (@PatrickMcFadin) delve into the history of Apache Cassandra, the open-source NoSQL database born and bred around cloud over a decade ago. Patrick is the VP of Developer Relations at DataStax, and a member of the Cassandra Project Management Committee. On today’s episode, Patrick shares his philosophy on developer advocacy and experience in open-source.

In this episode we discuss:

Behind the NoSQL explosion that made Cassandra the darling of the valley
Comparing different eras of commercializing open-source, then and now
How Patrick became a pioneer in evangelizing and community-building
The two kinds of people to recruit for developer relations
Why Patrick says open-source is going to “start eating clouds”

Links:

People mentioned:

Avinash Lakshman (@HedvigEng)
Prashant Malik (@pmalik)
Adrian Cawcroft (@adrianco)
Kelsey Hightower (@kelseyhightower)

Other episodes:

Chef with Adam Jacob

Dagster with Nick Schrock

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) interviews Nick Schrock (@schrockn) about Dagster, the open-source data orchestrator for machine learning, analytics, and ETL. Nick is the founder and CEO of Elementl, and is well-known for creating the Project Infrastructure group at Facebook, which spawned GraphQL and React. On today’s episode of Contributor, Nick explains how he set out to fix an inefficiency he identified amongst the complexity of the data infrastructure domain.

In this episode we discuss:

Dagster’s place in the industry shift towards thinking of data as a software engineering discipline
Why Nick believes it’s time for the term “data cleaning” to be retired
The empowerment of Dagster’s instantaneous spin-up process and local development experience
How a partner integrated Dagster into workflow for ops workers on the warehouse floor
One user’s testimony that, “what dbt did for our SQL, Dagster did for our Python”

Links:

People mentioned:

Lee Byron (@leeb)
Dan Schafer (@dlschafer)
Abe Gong (@AbeGong)

Hasura with Tanmai Gopal

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Tanmai Gopal (@tanmaigo) dive into the open-source Hasura GraphQL Engine and the wider Hasura community. Hasura provides real-time GraphQL APIs for databases, so developers can focus on building applications without worrying about infrastructure. Tune in to hear the full story about how Tanmai and his team are helping engineers unlock the dream of self-serve data access.

In this episode we discuss:

How the early Hasura team created their own version of GraphQL in parallel
Developing community with ease of onboarding and radical transparency
Transitioning community events into the COVID world, and looking to a future beyond travel
Hasura’s secret sauce: the authorization framework

Links:

People mentioned:

Rajoshi Ghosh (@rajoshighosh)

MindsDB with Jorge Torres and Adam Carrigan

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) is joined by the co-founders of MindsDB, Jorge Torres (@JorgeTorresAI) and Adam Carrigan (@AdamMCarrigan). MindsDB is an open-source AI layer that integrates with existing databases, from MySQL to Clickhouse. Tune in to learn how these two former college roommates are working to bring machine learning into the mainstream.

In this episode we discuss:

Why it makes sense to run machine learning models in the database
Partnering with Kafka, Looker, and more
MindsDB’s initial adoption by students at Berkeley
Different applications for MindsDB and machine learning in ecommerce, finance, and more
The moment Jorge knew he had to get into business with Adam

Links:

Other episodes

ClickHouse with Alexey Milovidov and Ivan Blinkov

Anaconda with Peter Wang

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) welcomes Peter Wang (@pwang) for a conversation about the Python ecosystem and the open-source communities that have built it. Peter is the creator of Anaconda, the near-essential Python distribution for scientific computing that makes managing packages a lot more manageable. In today’s episode, Peter offers a unique and powerful perspective on how to make the economics of open-source work for everyone.

In this episode we discuss:

The paradox of the PVM and Python’s packaging difficulties
How Guido van Rossum implied permission for Anaconda and the open-source Python movement
Python as the lingua franca of a new professional class
Looking to Roblox for inspiration for a scientific computing creator community
Giving back to open-source communities through the NumFOCUS Foundation

Links:

People mentioned:

Travis Oliphant (@teoliphant)
Fernando Pérez (@fperez_org)
Brian Granger (@ellisonbg)
Min Ragan-Kelley (@minrk)
Guido van Rossum (@gvanrossum)
James Currier (@JamesCurrier)

Other episodes:

Redpanda with Alexander Gallego

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) is joined by Alexander Gallego (@emaxerrno) for an examination of Redpanda, the source available event streaming platform designed as a drop-in replacement for Kafka. Redpanda’s storage engine is attractive to developers for its performance and simplicity, removing the complexity of running Kafka to scale and deploying with a single binary. Listen to today’s episode to learn more about how Alexander and the team at Vectorized are looking to advance the conversation around streaming into the future.

In this episode we discuss:

What Alexander means when he says that hardware is the platform for data streaming
The 3 things that turn a data stream into a data product
Comparing Redpanda to Kafka and Pulsar
A difference in product philosophy between selling to data teams vs app developers
How Alexander approached the challenge of monetizing data infrastructure

Links:

Other episodes:

Storybook with Zoltan Olah

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Zoltan Olah (@zqzoltan) discuss Storybook, the open-source UI component development tool. Storybook supports all the most popular frontend frameworks and libraries such as React, Vue and Angular, but allows users to test and develop components in isolation. In today’s episode, learn more about the early days of the component-driven development methodology and how Storybook was saved by a passionate community of engineers.

In this episode we discuss:

Storybook as an integral part of UI design workflow
How Zoltan and his team inherited Storybook and saved it from being “left out to dry”
Solving a pain point for front-end engineers with Chromatic’s UI regression testing, built on top of Storybook
Why Zoltan compares components to APIs, and Storybook to a service mesh
What’s happening today in the world of open-source design systems

Links:

People mentioned:

Dominic Nguyen (@domyen)
Tom Coleman (@tmeasday)
Arunoda Susiripala (@arunoda)
Norbert de Langen (@NorbertdeLangen)
Michael Shilman (@mshilman)

SkyWalking with Sheng Wu

Eric Anderson (@ericmander) and Sheng Wu (@wusheng1108) discuss Apache SkyWalking, an open-source APM tool focusing on cloud-native and distributed systems. SkyWalking was originally developed in 2012 as a training tool for developers new to distributed systems architecture, but it became Sheng’s pet project for several years until he brought it to the Apache Incubator program. Listen to today’s episode for the inside scoop of how this “hidden gem” fits into the Apache network of open-source software projects.

In this episode we discuss:

Why open-source APMs are not very common
SkyWalking’s focus on attracting more contributors rather than users
How a conflict of interest at Huawei led to a “bake-off” between Apache and CNCF
The impact of Elastic changing their license on the open-source community
The name “Skywalking,” its sources of inspiration, and an easter egg

Links:

Other episodes:

Envoy Proxy with Matt Klein

Contributor

By Eric Anderson

Available on