In this RedMonk conversation, Erin Schnabel, distinguished engineer at Red Hat and council chairperson at the Commonhaus Foundation, discusses with Kate Holterhoff, senior analyst at RedMonk, challenges faced by open source projects, the need for new foundations, and how Commonhaus aims to support developers. Erin emphasizes the importance of supporting open source maintainers, while also addressing the legal and funding challenges involved in running a foundation.
Red Hat is a RedMonk client, but this conversation is independent and unsponsored.
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Transcript
Kate Holterhoff (00:13)
Hello and welcome to this RedMonk Conversation. My name is Kate Holterhoff, Senior Analyst at RedMonk, and with me today is Erin Schnabel, Distinguished Engineer at Red Hat and Council Chairperson at the Commonhaus Foundation. Before that, she worked at IBM for 21 years and transitioned after the acquisition. Erin, thanks so much for joining me on the MonkCast.
Erin Schnabel (00:32)
Thank you for having me.
Kate Holterhoff (00:33)
OK, although I invited Erin onto the MonkCast to talk about Commonhaus and the state of open source foundations, I think it would benefit our listeners to hear a little bit about your background, particularly as it intersects with the challenges of open source, a subject I know you have lots of thoughts on. So can you just survey for us a little bit about your career, your educational highlights, whatever you think is relevant, so that we have a better understanding of first, what bodies you have helped bury over the years. And second, to really mix memes, some of the dumpster fires you either helped light or have been trying to extinguish.
Erin Schnabel (01:08)
Wow, some loaded questions. So I started right out of college into IBM. It’s 20 million years ago, dinosaur era, right? So I started, so in the pile there that you didn’t mention, which is neither here nor there, is I’m a Java champion. They nominated me at some point, which is awesome. But I literally started coding Java as a wee college student with the first versions. So I’ve been doing Java stuff the whole way.
And I started at IBM working on the mainframe actually for the iteration of WebSphere before it was WebSphere. But then some of my first like mainline code path modifications were working on WebSphere application server as it brought Java in on top of all the C stuff. And it started kind of swapping things out. I first ran into James Governor.
working on Liberty. So he was, used to do a lot when we announced WebSphere Liberty, which was my baby per se, right? It’s not like I worked on it by myself, but I literally got to work on the prototype that before the prototype, like it was the coolest experience ever. I got to work on the idea all the way until it was WebSphere Liberty, like as an adjunct to the application server product. And it’s now an open source project and all of those things. So.
The only reason I mention all of that is just to say I have been in and with the Java ecosystem forever. It feels like I am very keenly aware of my age because it’s turning. mean, age is just a number, but it’s turning into numbers that don’t make any sense anymore. Like, I’m not that old. What are you talking about? What? And I know how old I am and I know that I was on I like to call it.
There’s like a generation of Java developers, and I think a lot of them are still active even in the Kube space now, who were like in the middle of the birth of the app server and how hard that was. That was like a lot. I mean, we have Kubernetes now and it still doesn’t do everything that the app servers did. like it has not gotten back to some of the capabilities that it had. That was hard work, super labor intensive. I was on the younger end of that.
cohort, you might say, like all the cohorts that was seriously involved with creating an application server, what that was supposed to do. I was on the younger end of that cohort, which means a lot of the libraries that we really like to use were all born then. And all of those people are going to be about ready to do something else sometime soonish. OK, now what? What do we do now?
when everybody wants to go do the next thing. And that’s what kind of, you know, being in in and around this ecosystem, that’s kind of what started me on the foundation question, right? We’re getting to the place where even some of the projects who were like a never foundation are going to be like, well, maybe foundation. OK, so if the answer is from no to maybe, the question is which one and why?
And I’ve been like, you know, have friends that work on different. When you start out, when you think you want to start a new thing, what do you do? The first thing you do, obviously, is you talk to all your friends. It’s like, why not? What do you look for? What does it work for you? Like you give them like the 20 million questions. And, you know, I started really thinking about the why not or which one or what doesn’t work or what works. And I started to feel like there’s room for something else now.
Because the other thing that’s happened in the literally 20 years since a lot of our current foundations were born is like the whole ecosystem for how we support each other has changed. And that leaves some room to create something with some new rules. That’s way more than you asked me for. I’m so sorry. Rambly, most rambly answer ever.
Kate Holterhoff (05:14)
Not a bit. No, that’s what we’re here for. OK. But yes, you’ve given me a lot for us to chip away at here, to dig into. So I’m super interested in what you said about the Java ecosystem. So I guess my first question has to do with that. And of course, Erin and I met at Devnexus, which is a Java conference. That’s where I learned about Commonhaus. And a number of the projects on Commonhaus are Java projects and so I guess I’m curious, what is it about Java that is creating this impetus for us to rethink the way that open source foundations function today?
Erin Schnabel (05:49)
So, Java is, it’s so funny, Java is a hugely capable language. And as we know, holistically, like if we look at the computing industry as a whole, once some platforms get to a certain amount of like steady state functionality, they never die, ever. Which is why when,
COVID happened and everybody was at home and then all the COBOL stuff stopped working and then there was like a freak out meltdown because COBOL still runs everybody’s payroll way down in the, right? Like it never dies ever, never, never, ever, never. And like I mentioned in passing with that whole big rambly answer, we have a lot of very essential business that is run on Java stuff. The Java stuff is not going anywhere. And…
as it has evolved, like it’s a very capable, performant, enterprise-grade, super awesome language. So it’s not going anywhere even for new workloads, right? So it’s like we’ve got old workloads that are gonna be on Java forever, and we’ve got new workloads that are still really greatly, like really well suited for Java. So it’s it’s one of…
Java has it because of Maven Central, because of how it does its package management and that kind of stuff. Like it really does have an ecosystem. These libraries live forever. And it’s that long-term evolution that starts to create this conversation about what should happen and how should things be maintained because forks with Java projects can be pretty extensive and extensive and expensive. Like the ripple effects are wide. You know, they just go.
because of the way everybody has dependencies, depending on what you change, it just really can ripple out beyond what you may have expected. And that’s what brings to mind, OK, so how can we improve longevity or preserve longevity for some of these libraries to avoid forks or something as these things age? Because we know they will. And because it’s Java, it will never die. It will just keep going forever.
Kate Holterhoff (07:45)
And so there’s something about the sort of longevity, the staying power of Java, the ecosystem, and the fact that your personal Rolodex involves a lot of Java developers. All of this is leading, the Commonhaus Foundation and the folks that have joined you on this journey to rally them first to say, maybe we need a foundation for these projects. Okay. So.
Erin Schnabel (08:03)
Yes.
Kate Holterhoff (08:08)
You mentioned James in passing who is my colleague at RedMonk James Governor He’s written a few things recently about the importance of foundations right now And so I’m thinking of his piece open source foundations considered helpful in particular but also, know This is something that he tweets about often and is obviously been thinking about for a long time and Everyone at RedMonk has been talking a lot about license rug pulls in the era of Valkey and OpenTofu. So
We are keenly aware of the need for foundations right now as a solution to ensuring that developers don’t end up with a project that is suddenly under a different license than they anticipated. Or a whole community is suddenly looking for an alternative to ensure that there are projects that are built with them, either.
are we going to fork this or are we going to like find a way to make this work with everything, right? So this is a huge problem. I don’t even need to mention the XKCD about maintainers and the sort of burdens that are put upon them right now. It’s almost a cliche at this point, but so that is what I’m hearing from you.
Erin Schnabel (09:12)
The random guy in Nebraska is totally yes. It’s the random guy in Nebraska. We all sympathize with the random guy in Nebraska.
Kate Holterhoff (09:15)
It is absolutely, I know he’s doing good work. I am sorry though that that is on anyone’s shoulders alone. And so foundations, sounds like can help with that. excellent. it’s on our mind. It’s uniquely important to the Java community.
Can you talk about, this move recently? So of course, there are many foundations that have Java projects beneath them. I’m thinking of the Apache Foundation, of course, the Linux Foundation, are the sort of giants in that space. Talk to me about the need for a new foundation, though. How is Commonhaus different?
Erin Schnabel (09:52)
So this is the question I get all the time. Apache and Eclipse are wonderful organizations and have served many projects very well. So I do want to be clear at the top. This throws no shade on those two organizations at all because they’ve done epic and heroic work. But when I talk to some, I’m sorry, if you hear clicking noises, everybody in the ethernet, it’s because I need a fidget toy and I am clicking my pen. So that is what that is. I don’t, I just realized I’m like, I have a clicky fidget toy. should probably clarify what this sound is. so,
Kate Holterhoff (10:19)
Fair enough.
Erin Schnabel (10:29)
We have a lot like different maintainers.
have really spent their time and effort building up their projects in different ways. One of the good things about Apache that they talk about is the Apache incubator, right, and doing things in the Apache way. And so if you start a project with Apache and you don’t know what you’re doing, they have the incubator, they have an established process, you know, they can help you get from like, from an idea to a functioning open source project, right, using their way, it’s all spelled out. And that’s how you, you know, that’s how you go and grow.
Eclipse has an excellent environment for a lot of multi-vendor projects. They have very detailed contribution guidelines and also hugely well-defined processes that you could follow. And both of them will say they’re trying to be more flexible. But the projects that I’m specifically building this new thing for are projects like Jackson.
Jackson has existed forever. Right. It’s 15 plus years, minimum 18 years, probably like it’s old. Right. It’s old library, which does not mean it’s not evolving. It just means it’s been around for a while. So everybody knows what Jackson is. Everybody knows how Jackson’s built. It’s he’s got tattoo has a few people working with him. So it’s not just him by himself, but he has a name.
For like his project is has its own name. It has its own identity. It’s been around forever. He has his own processes for doing things. So for him to like one of the things that I want to do is help him bridge into a foundation or an organization that can guarantee the license, help him do leadership transitions. Most importantly, like for me, leadership transition should be normal.
Right. Like it should be easier to transition maintainers rather than somebody getting stuck with the thing forever. Right. It’s there’s no magic. It was like, well, you’re not going to magically find the next maintainer, Erin. It’s like, no, that doesn’t make magic. It doesn’t make maintainers randomly come from the sky. But we have like difference in the landscape wise. Right. We have Tidelift who will pay maintainers, for example. So if we have.
maintainers that are supported by other companies, it should be easier for me as a foundation to help transition between maintainers, right? To keep a project going, even if it remains a very, very small team. So like what I want to do for projects like Jackson is bring this continuity help for projects without having to say, thou shalt do everything my way.
because I don’t feel like I need to. Like you already understand how to use GitHub and issues and PRs and all that stuff. I don’t need to do that. You already have a very good build process. why do I need you to redo that? I don’t. Like everything that I want to do is like, how much can I streamline, optimize? Do I ever need to do it at all? Like what’s actually legally required? Actually, not all that much.
I mean, there’s some things that are. being a nonprofit, a 501c6 does bring some boxes. Like there are some actual constraints that do come with that status. But one of the things I want to avoid is like paperwork for paperwork’s sake. like if there’s not a legal reason why I have to do it, I don’t want to do it.
You know, if I don’t need you to change all of your build processes, I don’t need you. Like there’s incentive to improve some things. And to the extent that I can get my project maintainers working together to offset some of the cost, like the secure supply chain stuff is going to bring a lot of changes to how we do things because we need to have signed, like we need to have manifests, need to have all the things. And I’m not going to remember all that because I was traveling for the last three weeks. So there are things.
with lots of hand gestures that no one on the podcast can see. Many hand gestures. But…
Kate Holterhoff (14:23)
We can keep it vague.
Erin Schnabel (14:29)
So like I want to bring the benefits of continuity help, like long term help. And we still have that guarantee, like to join the foundation after this bootstrapping period, by the way, we can talk. There’s a little asterisk there for right at this minute. But once we do official transfer, like the foundation will own the IP, which is usually, you know, your domain names or trademarks, even if it’s trademark and use that kind of thing.
And that will include some stuff about yeah, okay now project can’t easily change the license anymore like the maintainer can’t just go off and do that Which is what you want? but I want to do that with as few strings attached or Obligations imposed is maybe the better word right that as I can and that gets to Interesting differences of opinion. It’s fascinating when you talk to people about open source because some people have very Like, it’s not open source if there’s only one vendor.
Kate Holterhoff (15:29)
Huh, right.
Erin Schnabel (15:29)
Right? And so it’s like, okay, if I have a primary, if there’s one company that’s primarily pushing a project forward and it’s making progress and it’s moving forward, I don’t care. Honestly, if it keeps the project healthy and it keeps it moving forward, fantastic. Right? If they’re going to partner with me and we’re going to make sure everything keeps building and then, you know, it’s, that’s great. If there’s a primary interested party that’s focused on moving the project forward and keeping it healthy, yes.
That’s all I care about. I’m a little less about the must have three vendors for it to be real. I don’t care about that so much.
Kate Holterhoff (16:05)
All right, yeah, so a lot there to unpack, I think. so maybe let’s begin with the the way that Commonhaus is ensuring that these organizations are able to do just that. So I thought it was interesting on your home page, you do talk about nurturing and ensuring that these organizations have what they need to get going, which kind of makes it sound like it’s for open source projects that are at the early stages of development.
But what you’re talking about with was a Jackson, that that has been around for a while, and it has this sort of new need for governance, which I think you’re also addressing in terms of license.
Erin Schnabel (16:40)
Sort of. it’s actually funny because we’re not looking for young early stage projects. We’re looking for the late stage or middle stage, things that are established, right? Which still at this point do need things to move forward. Most of the time it’s we’re looking for alternate ways to raise funds. Not always, but sometimes.
And it’s interesting because traditionally foundations have been we are not funding, we’re not fundraising, we’re not doing anything with money. But we’re now in an era where there’s buy me a coffee, Ko-fi, Patreon, Kickstarter. Like there’s 80 million ways to make money, right? Including Open Source Collective under Open Collective, right? So.
We want to make sure that if you don’t have any one of those other ways, right, we can help you route money directly so that you can have fun. So like the best example of that is SDKMan, which is one of our projects. He’s he actually uses Open Source Collective to collect funds, but he basically has enough people supporting him to offset all of his infrastructure costs. So he’s flat, right? So he’s got enough.
funds coming in to match his spend for all of the platforms that he tests, which is aces. Like that’s exactly what you want, right? And to the extent that I like, I don’t want to get in the place where I’m on the hook as the foundation necessarily to to provide infrastructure, but I do want to help you know, projects raise enough funds to cover their
Kate Holterhoff (17:55)
Yes.
Erin Schnabel (18:13)
whatever their infrastructure needs are, because every project has a different footprint for what they need. And I think that’s like a difference. Right. But it’s like we’re still going through some of that. Yeah. But it’s like helping each project get to a break even place so that they’re stable and they can keep running. That’s what I want to be able to do. There are some other things I want to be able to do. there is a give the foundation money versus given individual project money. You can do either way.
Kate Holterhoff (18:19)
Yeah, I mean that seems reasonable. Break even, yeah.
Erin Schnabel (18:40)
Right. If you give the foundation money, 501 C6, I can’t myself like I can’t just spend money just on any one project. I feel like with that money, I have to be able to do it for everybody. But there are things I would like to do. Like I would like to if I have enough piles of money beyond legal, like paying for lawyers who are expensive, paying for lawyers and accountants is where most money goes just instantly. But after that, like I actually would love to
contract tech writers, hire tech writers and have them go through different projects because all open source projects are always short on having docs that are written well. We know we have writers who are actually hurting for funds because of AI ate their jobs. So if I can like help fix, know, everybody wins, like let’s do this and, you know, get everybody into a better place that I would love to do that.
And then I do that for all the projects, right? Like I would I would be working on hiring writers to work across all the projects. And it’s similar. If I have enough money, I’d like to get designers for any project that feels like they want a new logo or new website design or stuff like that, which sounds so dumb, but gets people so excited. He just wants a cooler logo. Like, seriously, they want good stickers. So. It’s that kind of stuff.
Kate Holterhoff (20:04)
I love this, this is so necessary and it’s the sort of labor that I think it’s kind of pushed off. It’s like glue work, it’s the sort of thing that isn’t maybe flashy. Yeah, that’s amazing. Okay, so this explains a lot of what you have been up to at Commonhaus. So do you also work on some of the fundraising as well then? I mean, that’s not a small task, right?
Erin Schnabel (20:10)
Yeah, but that’s what I want to do. Yeah.
It is not a small task at the moment like Commonhaus is super young. It’s baby, baby, baby. It’s super baby. So I haven’t done a full fundraising push. I’m rolling out advisory board now, which is advisory board tiers. We do have individual contributors, which is just the average humans. One thing I would like to get to, I haven’t had a full membership drive yet either, although I intend to.
for Americans, like I kind of want this to be like the National Public Radio of foundations. So rather than being supported by companies, I would rather be supported by the eight dollars a year from developers, like just normal people all pitching in to help. Rather than having it because and this is again, it’s throwing no shade, but.
Kate Holterhoff (21:10)
I love that idea.
Erin Schnabel (21:19)
Some of the other foundations really are driven by corporate donations. Like it is very much corporate money that makes the foundations go and their budgets are big. They’re big, big. Right. And that’s because, you know, they’re they’re just reliant on very deep pockets. And sometimes, depending on who you talk to and what the level of cynicism is, people are feeling the corporate politics a little more than they want. And so there is a there is a very
It’s a very rebellious kind of feel for this, too. This Commonhaus thing. It’s about developers helping each other. Smaller like some of these projects, they’re small. Some of them are big, but some of them are small. But it’s all it’s all very dedicated developers supporting each other. Really is what it’s about. And to the extent that I can change, I beg, borrowed and stealed, stole, whatever.
Kate Holterhoff (22:09)
Steal.
Erin Schnabel (22:10)
Words. Steal just way better. I just stole stuff from everywhere. So like the advisory board structure I’m going for is something more like what GNOME does. Right. So the GNOME Foundation has an advisory board where corporate sponsors can give money to help support GNOME, but they don’t get a vote. They’re not on the board because they’re not members. Right. But like to that like, but any vendor who gives money
Kate Holterhoff (22:13)
That’s good.
Erin Schnabel (22:39)
who wants to tell me how to do stuff, I will absolutely take that advice for a hundred. Like, yes, tell like, bring me all your advice. I would love all of it because I don’t know all the things. So they get advisory roles. They just don’t get a vote. The developers, it’s a completely developer run organization.
Kate Holterhoff (22:57)
Talk to me about the idea of security and maintainership because I think everyone has the XZ exploit on their mind, right? And this is precisely what happened there, know, weaponizing not only sort of bad behavior towards maintainers, right? Sort of abusing them, telling them, you know, pay attention to my PR. I’m not going to give you any money, but you know, this is somehow the onus is on you or I’m going to give you, you know, bad reviews.
Erin Schnabel (23:21)
This is like the weirdest, it really is the weirdest ecosystem right now. I maintain a couple random projects. I’m actually weirdly not a library maintainer. I just maintain other random crap because I like it. it’s interesting because there is this mix. You do still have people who want to help, but you have a lot more people who just want it now and are very entitled about it. And it’s like…
Wow, is that how you were raised? Really? That’s something. Hmm. It’s just wild. It’s wild. And I have. There are things we’re to have to sort out over time. For this maintainer piece to make sense, the XZ situation called out a lot of stuff, but one part is that the developer was isolated.
Right. So one thing I’d like to make sure is all of my maintainers know each other and they can talk to each other and they’re not alone. And they, you know, they have they have like the Rolodex of who they can call, which is not like they won’t have other people also. Right. But it’s like I can at least make sure they have one avenue where they can be like, can you look at this result, the response I have, because this doesn’t make any sense to me. Right. And to the extent I can work with companies like Tidelift.
To help make sure that that maintainers have support and they’re not by themselves like yes Let’s partner in that way, please 100 % because I don’t think anybody should feel that alone In terms of finding the next maintainer that starts to get interesting Because we know you can’t just it’s like the typical meritocracy was like well You know, they have some PRs the PRs look legit. Well, guess what with XZ? Yeah, there were some PRs. They looked legit
until they weren’t. So it’s like, how are we going to do this now? Like, there’s a whole vetting thing that we’ve got to sort out. Like, are you a state actor? Is this thing on? We don’t know how that’s going to work. I don’t know that everybody has figured out how that’s worked. Like, right now I’m good because literally I know everybody. Everybody that’s, you know, on my little list of people who are the top, like the contacts for all of my projects. I actually know the humans in person.
Kate Holterhoff (25:07)
Hehehehe
Erin Schnabel (25:36)
And I would like to see if we can keep that right. We know the people in person or like keep it within You know X degrees where everybody actually knows the human that they’re talking about and if that means in a couple years when we’re transitioning maintainers if that means we have to Organize some meetups so you can meet the next people the next person that’s gonna take over whatever whatever great we can do that but I I do think like part of all this security stuff is gonna have to be, are you who you say you are? Your PRs are great, but are you really who you say you are? It’s a whole different.
environment. I don’t know. I don’t think there’s any easy way out of that one. But the Java community is particular like out of that particular ecosystem. Not that that’s the only one I want to look at, but people do know each other. And we have a couple forums where people to start interacting like we do then end up meeting up at various conferences. So so making sure that you know the next person is actually somewhat feasible with the Java ecosystem. because there’s enough conferences in enough places in the world we could orchestrate a people meeting kind of thing. So that you know, you know who’s who.
Kate Holterhoff (26:53)
Yeah, and I think you make that pretty clear on the Commonhaus website too, right? Talking about it being a collaborative environment, nurturing growth and sustainability. Yeah, so I didn’t quite know what that meant and I was certainly going to ask like what does collaborative mean in this case?
Erin Schnabel (27:06)
There’s other things I want to do too. But like, it’s like there’s like I’m trying not to. there’s so many things I want to do, but it’s like, Erin, calm the hell down. Get the thing real first, then do the next thing. You know, it’s like I don’t want to get ahead of myself. I need this whole bunch of legal crap that just has to be settled soon. And I need to focus on that right now. But I am starting to talk to some other people that I know I want to start trying to get.
some other people driving some of this content, too. But like, I want to start working on content pipelines where it’s not it’s not a new Commonhaus YouTube channel, because it’s like we’ve got so many channels already. I don’t necessarily need one that’s foundation specific, but I’d like to partner with one of the ones that exists and be like, all right, let’s do a deep dive of how Jackson works. Right. It’s like.
here’s all of the internals of Jackson’s. Like if you want to contribute to Jackson, here’s everything you should probably know about how Jackson works, why it works the way it does, why when you raise a PR it might not get accepted, you know, like all of that stuff, like to go really deep with each one of my projects to just get more background information out there so that people can contribute more constructively. Because one of the things that I have heard is for some libraries,
There’s so few people maintaining it, it’s almost more work to review the PR than it is to just do the fix.
Kate Holterhoff (28:34)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Erin Schnabel (28:36)
right? It’s like it’s because the PR is too big or it’s too weird or they did something wonky or they only went for their specific use case and they didn’t understand that like if they bump this it like knocks over the whole rest of the store. You know it’s it’s
mix metaphors again and talk about, you know, stores like your bulls and china shops, I guess is what my brain was painting for me, which nobody else could see. But it’s that kind of thing. When I was young and we used to do the way WebSphere application server used to work on z/OS, we would have the level like you’d have the development team. And then when the product was released, we would fork off a whole new stream.
and the level three and service teams would take over. This is a whole different organization. And so at that time, usually after the dot one and dot two releases, right? After you finish all the stuff that wasn’t quite finished at GA time, we would officially hand everything over. And one of the things that was interesting about that was…
we did a service transfer education, like literally called service transfer education. And what your job was is if you were the person who delivered a line item feature pick, pick the what we called it that year. Your job was to write an entire, a, it was often still in a presentation format, which is like, why would you make a PowerPoint out of this? But it was literally, here’s all the error messages. Here’s what’s supposed to happen. Here’s what was supposed to be delivered. Here’s what the, like,
Here, person, I’m dumping on you. That’s going to have to support this later. Here’s all the stuff that you need to know about what changed or what. And it was super detailed because the level three people had to actually understand. If I see this error because of this new function, here’s where I have to go look to figure out what happened. And here’s the general flow of how this stuff’s supposed to work. And so what we don’t have for open source projects is we don’t have service transfer education, really. It’s not a thing. It’s all volunteer.
So I would like to coordinate for some of my projects, like, okay, let’s pick a channel, whichever one’s your favorite for how to deliver this content, and let’s go through like a deep dive of how this works. So somebody else could actually contribute meaningfully and make your life easier rather than just trying to have to guess, know, give them a guided tour. That is something I’d like to do in terms of like fostering, it’s fostering that collaborative spirit kind of thing, but you know. getting people armed with more information.
Kate Holterhoff (31:12)
I love this. You’re not only clarifying some of the questions that I had, but you’re anticipating my question about the roadmap at Commonhaus, which is precisely where I wanted to go with this. And so it sounds like you have a whole sort of list of exciting things that you’re hoping to implement. I think the danger is, how do we scale personal Rolodexes or things that we’ve seen, or just the labor that you are clearly putting into this? mean, this is not.
These are not small initiatives, especially like trying, yeah.
Erin Schnabel (31:43)
No, they’re not small. But I’m very much the hamster in the wheel right now, which is OK. I have I do have help. I’m not by myself. But I do realize that I get the I have the it’s my job right now to make this real, right? So it’s like, I’m the one with the most cycles to spend to make this actually happen. So therefore I will focus on make this actually happen. The target, like there’s just, we have to get through the actual binding legal agreements between now and April. So making sure all of that actual text makes sense and says what we want and doesn’t say what we don’t want it to say, that’s actually harder than you think.
or then it should sound like and it’s interesting because there are certain bases you always have to have covered with these legal agreements, right? But I think the way we also traditionally write these legal agreements is exactly why some foundations and organizations feel really heavy and very foreign and very you’re taking everything away from me, right? And it just it all has to do with how this with words.
And lawyers are very expensive and I’m bleeding money right now arguing with them because because it’s you know, language is just very picky. Legal language is very picky and, you know, trying to come out with a compromise where it’s like, I know you want to use this legal word, but if you use this legal word, most of the people that I’m dealing with aren’t going to understand what that word means. Do we have to use it? They’re like, well, it’s more efficient. I’m like, I don’t care.
Why does it, which is more important that it’s efficient or that people understand the words? Because if it’s only lawyers that understand it, then as far as I’m concerned, it serves no purpose.
Which, right? I understand lawyers eventually are gonna have to read, but it’s like, no, I want to be able to understand what I’m signing. And if I can’t, then I’m not gonna sign it, which is, right? Come on, this is stupid. But so getting through that is like, like step one. So like I have nine, 10, 10 or nine, nine or 10 projects right now that I’m trying to get through this bootstrapping phase.
Kate Holterhoff (33:32)
Yeah, that seems reasonable to me. Yeah.
Erin Schnabel (33:51)
We’re finalizing all the bylaws. We’ve got to do all the binding agreements and get all that stuff signed. And then I’ll really start chasing more, fundraising and membership drives and all that stuff in earnest. It’s hard to keep to really feel like I can go push for everybody to join tomorrow. Although I would really be glad if everybody joined tomorrow. I’d love to have elections, which means I need more members. I kind of also feel like I want things a little more baked too. So.
Kate Holterhoff (34:21)
Yes. And we haven’t even stated this in the podcast yet. When was Commonhaus Foundation founded?
Erin Schnabel (34:27)
Well, interestingly, it was an idea one year ago. And then we got the foundation turned around, rebranded and launched last April. And it’s in a bootstrapping phase basically until next April. So it’ll officially be like done, know, signed, sealed, delivered, done in a few months.
Kate Holterhoff (34:49)
Amazing. And if folks are interested in joining the foundation in the capacity of maybe maintainers of a project, how do they go about applying to be under your auspices?
Erin Schnabel (35:03)
Well, I have written, my gosh, so this whole thing I talked about earlier with avoiding paperwork at all costs basically means that everything is automated to death. And so from the website, like if you go and look at the community guidelines, right, it says here’s how you submit a project. And it’s basically you open a discussion on GitHub because that triggers a whole bunch of actions and we go and do all of these things and everything is. you know, automated because nobody wants to do paperwork.
Kate Holterhoff (35:34)
All right. Okay. So we will provide a link to the website in the show notes then to make sure that folks can do that. All right. And is there also a link on there for folks who want to contribute to some of the projects? It’s all there. One stop shop. Amazing. Okay.
Erin Schnabel (35:41)
Mm-hmm. Yes, please, please.
Yes, it’s all there. It’s all the community page. One-stop shop. I did try to make sure like, so, here, me as a developer, not marketing person, not person usually. Yeah, I made sure that I wrote there was a call to action on all of my pages. I even figured out what that word means. I’m kidding. But you know, yeah. That’s so dumb.
Kate Holterhoff (36:09)
Well done, everybody clap.
Erin Schnabel (36:16)
But I’m sure every other person who only writes back end code is going to be like, right. I know exactly what she means there. Like, yeah, right. I had to go make sure there are buttons and clear things to do. that was also like coming up with it’s a dumb thing, Think talking about logos. But like writing all of the automation for how we do votes and stuff, like how we make decisions transparently and everything. I.
Kate Holterhoff (36:23)
yeah.
It’s beautiful. Yeah.
Erin Schnabel (36:42)
hammered out all of that automation while having some of my founding interested parties vote on what the logo should be, what colors we should use, what font we should use, which is just silly. all the branding and everything is kind of community vetted, you might say.
Kate Holterhoff (37:02)
That’s a good way to do it. You you get the buy-in, you make sure that it’s working for everybody. can’t tell you how often, you know, things look good in my mind and then I, you know, put them out into the ether and suddenly I’m made aware that actually it resembles something that I did not intend or maybe the kerning’s no good. So yes, it’s very good to workshop, especially visuals.
Erin Schnabel (37:19)
Yeah. People get so passionate about kerning. It’s ridiculous.
Kate Holterhoff (37:26)
The kerning situation is out of control, yeah. And we kind of alluded to some of the bodies that you’ve buried over the years to keep on my morbid metaphors here. And you working at Red Hat and IBM, of course, very committed open source organizations there.
Erin Schnabel (37:29)
Ha ha!
Kate Holterhoff (37:45)
and you are a maintainer yourself. you had some distinctions about the type of maintaining that you’ve done, but you have seen things in that way. Have you been involved in any foundations before Commonhaus though?
Erin Schnabel (37:56)
Myself, no, right? Like as an individual person involved, no. But have I had colleagues who are on the Eclipse board or Apache contributors? Yes. So I would say foundation adjacent. I know what they have to do. I’ve talked to members of all of those foundations about what their experiences are and the kinds of things they have to do. But again, from a Java perspective, like I haven’t had to maintain
I haven’t maintained Java libraries per se. I have some other maintainer roles that are… I write stupid stuff. If you go look at my projects, I just write ridiculous things because it’s fun. And some of those things people actually like to use for no reason I can figure out. And so it’s interesting because I do see all the maintainer joy, the mixed bag that that is. And it is a mixed bag. Sometimes it’s awesome and sometimes it’s not.
Kate Holterhoff (38:47)
Yeah. Well, you were being overly humble. The contributions that you’ve made in your long tenure in the industry is worthwhile and noteworthy and worth celebrating, which we do celebrate here.
So I know that the enthusiasm is there and it seems like you really are addressing a need that many folks in this space are seeing. And really, mean, now is such an important time in open source, not only because of these exploits.
which are top of mind and certainly got a lot of press, but also among developers. mean, Ashley Williams actually attended Monktoberfest this year and gave a really moving talk, I thought, where she actually talks about the idea that sustainability, which is part of the lexicon around open source, I think, is almost toothless at this stage in open source and how broken it is. And she instead argues that we are in the midst of open source market failure.
Wow, you know, those are fighting words, but I think they are really necessary.
Erin Schnabel (39:52)
Well, we really are like because because we’re in. I mean, you have governments and everybody who say, well, you have to use open source. The problem is, is that open source often means just somebody else maintains it and we can just see it. Right. So it doesn’t always mean we are going to chip in. Right. So there there are some like, you know, there are some gaps here. I haven’t figured out how.
There’s a friend of mine who is a long time Apache committer, and he would like to see some riders to licenses. And it would be interesting. I haven’t tried to do it yet because I’m like one thing at a time, one thing at a time. But in his mind, the interesting rider to the license would be if you use this software in a product that you ship, you must allow your employees to contribute back.
Because there are a lot of employees, they’re not allowed. They’re not allowed to contribute back. Like the company will forbid their employees from contributing to open source. They’re not allowed. Right? And that just, that compounds the problem. So like, what if, what if the rider is, is not about permission? Like, you know, it’s not like you have to release all your source code or anything like that. It’s like, no, if you use this, your employees must be okay to… contribute back if that’s all it is.
Kate Holterhoff (41:22)
Yeah, I mean, that just seems like the least that could happen, right? It’s like, it’s not that you must contribute, it’s that you’re permitted to.
Erin Schnabel (41:27)
Right? is that you can. Yeah, because right, like, they’re, go look, you should, as you talk, no, as you interview companies, like as you talk to your companies, like you should just ask them, are your employees allowed to contribute to open source? Some of them will say no. you use open source? If the answer is yes, do you allow your employees to contribute back? That should be the follow on. And if the answer is not yes, we should all be asking why.
Kate Holterhoff (41:51)
Does any company not use open source? Are you kidding me? They might not even know. Yeah, but obviously.
Erin Schnabel (41:58)
Uh-huh. I’m exactly, right? It’s always that follow on question and I think you’ll get the answer will be no more often than you expect.
Kate Holterhoff (42:06)
Wow, okay. Well, Erin, you’re giving me a lot to chew on. I’m newly radicalized. Doesn’t take much. Okay, well, we are about out of time. But before we go, how can folks hear more from you and what are your preferred social channels? We’re already gonna link to the website for the Commonhaus Foundation. But, you know, where are you at online, Erin?
Erin Schnabel (42:33)
Most of the time these days I’m hiding out on Discord in actually I’m in the Commonhaus channel, but I’m in or the Commonhaus Discord server, but I’m in a bunch of others also. I have lately just had a very low profile on social. Actually, the best place to find me is outside of Discord is LinkedIn. I will actually find but send me a message. Don’t just like, you know, try to connect when I don’t know who you are. Message is fine but you can find me on Discord too.
Kate Holterhoff (43:04)
All right, fair enough. So we’ll provide a link to the Discord channel. Although I assume, like everything else, it’s probably linked on the Commonhaus website. Beautiful, I know, I love this. I love this, everything’s so easy. Okay. And are you speaking at all in 2024? Are you gonna be back at Devnexus? Or that’s 2025, but yeah. Okay.
Erin Schnabel (43:14)
It is.
Yes, that’s 2025. I hope to be back to Devnexus. We’re only at the CFP stage for Devnexus. I might be at Java 1. doing… I actually haven’t submitted my CFP for that or my proposal for that, but I’m on the review committee. So I should be at that one. I was just at Jconf last, no, two weeks ago.
Kate Holterhoff (43:30)
exciting.
Okay.
Erin Schnabel (43:50)
I am not the most frequent traveler. You will more likely see Andres out and about Almiray. And he is, you will see him anywhere in Europe, more or less. Mm-hmm, yeah.
Kate Holterhoff (44:01)
Spread the good word. Absolutely. Okay. Well, that works for me. I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you, Erin. Again, my name is Kate Holterhoff, senior analyst at RedMonk. If you enjoyed this conversation, please like, subscribe, and review the MonkCast on your podcast platform of choice. If you are watching us on YouTube, please like, subscribe, and engage with us in the comments.
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