Sustainable Source

Talk at Bath Camp July '17

Transcript

1. Sustainable Source Bath Camp July’17 Creating a sustainable future for Digital Infrastructure
2. Benjamin Nickolls OHAI! The other guy @librariesio
4. WTF is Digital Infrastructure?
7. Two problems
8. Prioritisation Problems
9. Sustainability Problems
10. Why do we need it? Sustainability We can fork the project? Why do we care?
11. Cost of transfer Sustainability Small cost for you individually, 
 huge implications for ecosystem.
12. Why does this problem exist? Sustainability
13. Free rider problem Sustainability
14. Public goods Economics sucks Non-excludable, non-rivalrous.
15. Open Source !public goods Economics sucks A community is not an infinite resource
16. A seed bank for open source Solution
17. NOPE
18. Lehman’s Laws of Software Evolution Computer science sucks too
19. S-Type Lehman Written according to an exact specification of what that program can do.
20. P-Type Lehman Implement certain procedures that completely determine what the program can do.
21. E-Type Lehman written to perform some real-world activity, such a program needs to adapt to varying requirements and circumstances in that environment.
22. E-Type Lehman All projects with non-trivial transitive dependency networks
23. Resources What do projects need? Compute, storage, messaging, time.
24. Time is currency Resources How do we manufacture it?
25. Is time money? We can save time with guidance
26. Okay maybe time is money Money will have to be a part of the solution
27. Money Warning Influence and incentives await.
28. Trade offs Warning The benefit of the individual versus the benefits to the whole.
29. Public Goods Non-excludable, non-rivalrous
30. Exclude Public goods Re-licensing, Dual-licensing, embargoing new features or segmenting code entirely
31. Rival Public goods Consulting and support
32. Exclusion and Rivalry Public goods Products and services.
33. Not really open source Warning
34. Influence and Incentives Warning
35. Diversity Sustainable project must have
36. Governance Sustainable project must have
37. Succession plans Sustainable project must have
38. Roles Who are the actors here? What should they provide?
39. Maintainers Remove themselves from their projects.
40. Foundations Provide commodity services, warehouse assets, support establishment of governance
41. Grantors Support foundations to establish these commodities, support projects to establish their own sustainability.
42. What’s missing? Solved problems Can we get these things without trade offs?
43. Something for nothing Donations There is such a thing as a free lunch
44. Can it solve our problems? Capitalism How do large enterprises think about open source?