Episode 339: The Open Source Community With Courtney Robertson  ## Metadata - Author: [[The SDM Show]] - Full Title: Episode 339: The Open Source Community With Courtney Robertson - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/96f6d366-13fb-4a49-bcc9-2dde95de3192 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Courtney's Open Source Summit Experience** - Courtney Robertson attended the Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit in Vancouver, which had multiple tracks and extensive networking opportunities. - She experienced diverse topics from cloud computing to JavaScript and corporate open source governance. Transcript: Speaker 2 Wanted to talk about today was You were just at an open source summit in Vancouver, Canada You had to come all the way to Canada for that, which is absolutely amazing And I thought we talked About that first of all, how was your experience with Vancouver? Speaker 1 It was amazing. So to be clear, I was inches from Canada Maybe I was in Canadian waters even right before this coming from work camp Buffalo And then I took off to get to Vancouver I never made it to Canada Before that So perhaps while I was doing the boat tour of the Niagara Falls I might have been in Canadian waters, but I didn't get off the boat So I didn't have to show my passport I finally Got to Canada by going the way of Vancouver and had such an amazing time at this event When I landed, the first thing I did was get my body adjusted to the three hour time difference by staying Up late And the next day I took a WordPress friend Jenny out to lunch and did some sightseeing in Vancouver Which was also amazing The weather was just gorgeous. Speaker 2 It was jeans and t-shirt weather Vancouver is one of my favorite cities in the country I've been there a couple times for those who don't know I'm in Toronto So that's you know, it's a city I just love in the door The weather's a little different than here They have two seasons in Vancouver Nice season and rainy season and it seems you got around all the rainy stuff, which Is awesome So tell us a little bit about the summit you were at in the open source community Yeah, so this was put on by the Linux Foundation And the Linux Foundation is a parent foundation Speaker 1 To many different open source projects So if an open source project is needing some form of governance or something like that Often they will turn to the Linux Foundation and this spans Widely It was open source summit north america There is a version that is happening in Europe and one happening in Japan in the near future The one that I attended had many different tracks Going on So think about something that is at least double triple the size of word camp europe us in terms of quantity of things happening They did have an online stream going on as well And so First for the information we were at the vancouver Expo area so the convention center which overlooks the english bay So the views From the convention center you're right beside The olympic torch, which looks like giant crystals growing out of the ground Uh, they didn't have it lit at all while I was there But it looks like this giant crystal sculpture from when The last time the winter games were in canada and uh You have views of the sea plains with their Pontoon like feet landing into the english bay behind you and And uh helicopters taking Off and all of these things and all these gorgeous restaurants with these views and i'm supposed to be inside the convention center Well, it's good that they had lots of glass windows So that I could Go out mahal and take a good look at the english bay and and see around at this Um, so venno amazing the way that it was organized was just unbelievable So they did name tags And below the name tags they had ribbons That were your areas of interest while you were at this thing and so Um, there were I want to count. Oh my goodness over a dozen different tracks running at this thing Um, some examples are cloud open container con emerging os forum The diversity empowerment summit. I went to some of their sessions Um meta was there for open metaverse summit Uh, there was an open AI track There was open js world, which is the javascript foundation Go daddy is part of The javascript foundation So I was joined by three of my co-workers one of them is the board member for the javascript foundation daniel And so I got to spend some time with co-workers There that I had not spent in person time with before They're in a very different part of my company. So that was pretty cool Um ospo con which is another one that I spent some time in tracks on and ospo is the open source program office So inside of large companies you need a department That has eyes on what's going on with open source and accompanying not just What are we giving to our customers? But what are we using and not just the software? But potentially also down to little packages of bits of code Right to be aware of that And also what do we have that is open source that the community can come and use as a company And so go Daddy does have some of that that is completely not related to WordPress things And I know this audience might skew a little more towards WordPress So keep in mind that there's there Was a lot going on for that. So I was excited about ospo con Um they have things about supply chain and sustainability and open source leadership summit I did a lot of those the one that's going on in japan no shocker Has a lot going on in the automotive industry And people might think wow that's fascinating. ([Time 0:02:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6998d154-a94e-4953-80b0-67c882c82a43)) - **Power of Strategic Relationships** - Strategic relationships and networking are invaluable outcomes from open source events. - These connections can influence career growth and benefit the broader WordPress and open source communities. Transcript: Speaker 1 Goodness. Yes, uh If I were to do a takeaway that was for me personally and maybe where I am in my career um, it's the value of knowing Others I was coming with a very specific slant. I want to think about my WordPress hat and my godaddy employee hat So I was attending sessions Around that and I met a lot Funny a lot of great women in tech at this event and a few of them really Stood out to me um The value of networking in those spaces both for a what my job is my career trajectory, but also the benefit of bringing that back that learning back into You were press Itself. ([Time 0:11:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/06a9e565-11ec-4e45-8d65-a5cb9681e3d8)) - **Health of Open Source Projects** - Assessing the health of open source projects requires both code and community evaluation. - Businesses must identify vulnerabilities and strengthen critical open source components for sustainability. Transcript: Speaker 1 Absolutely. Um related other amazing relationships that I had Um, I so on day Day one the day before day one there is also events going on so uh javascript foundation had an events All day that day and I attended that in the morning half because in the afternoon There was a group and i'm going to hold up for those that might be on the youtube Um a poker chip that says chaos on it Uh, one of Those again strategic relationships chaos con chaos in this case doesn't mean Chaotic it means community health and analytics of open source software chaos. Awesome. So Uh at that event I was Learning so much from some folks that were really skilled in assessing the health of an open source project both from a code perspective as well as from a a contributor Perspective where are the human vulnerabilities such as we know in the WordPress space that the plug-in repo has been woefully backed up backlogged because We've relied on one person Was done a fantastic job But as due to retire from that role not from working but from that particular role and in the meantime that means onboarding more people and Trying to build out Some tooling to automate some stuff. Well, that's a human vulnerability area of the project Um a lot resides in the WordPress industry on our plug-in ecosystem and so learning from others about community health of various Open source projects and then thinking about how businesses can if they are Assessing whether or not to use a particular open source product within their organization Um, they might Say we need to firm up some of these areas There was a comic from xkcd when the log for j news broke like a year ago or something about there's this one little person Not little person, but One person that's this little cog in this big machine and without that person things are going to fall And so if you want to continue using this you can You don't automatically say no because You find a weakness you look at how to we firm that up And so chaos con was great from that perspective for me and it again strategic relationships. It's understanding Um, how to look at well, where do we even begin assessing health and metrics? ([Time 0:13:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0ebc107f-c0fb-4b58-ae77-7ea6696dbd1a)) - **NASA's Use of Open Source** - NASA uses open source software extensively for their Mars and moon missions, making their GitHub repos publicly available. - This highlights open source's crucial role even in space exploration. Transcript: Speaker 1 NASA uses it we saw a presentation from NASA about open source on Mars From the Mars river the software that's running on the rivers But also the moon a lot of the endeavors that's studying The moon a lot of the satellite technology is all open source And they encourage folks to find their github repo And take a dive through what's in their nasa's github repo about the software Speaker 2 That they're using to power the things in space Yeah, was um, is there any other real interesting uses of open source software you saw while you were at conference? Speaker 1 Vehicles nasa You know, it's hard to beat space It's hard to beat space Interesting. ([Time 0:17:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/81bdd1e8-e904-4e46-8a30-4c727d53114e)) - **CMS Open Source Contributor Gap** - Open source in the CMS space lacks broad contributor representation compared to other sectors. - Greater community engagement could enhance insights and solutions across open source projects like WordPress. Transcript: Speaker 1 So I get that But I wonder in the content management space um It wasn't it wasn't exciting it was Curious border relying concerning how does the content management system? Learn about open source really broadly. How do we take some some insights and how do we get back insights? To other open source communities that have figured out some really big issues like if nasa is willing to run open source to get us to mars Then might have figured a couple things out that Maybe we can figure out for How web hosts handle opens for software. ([Time 0:18:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/070e6497-6e29-4426-8b5d-2745e322726d)) - **Call for Working Sessions** - Open source summits would benefit from interactive working sessions guiding attendees on starting open source program offices step-by-step. - Practical exercises complement networking and deepen participants' understanding and skills. Transcript: Speaker 1 Because there's a lot that I wish that they covered that they that that they didn't um um Wow, you know, I hung out mostly in the open source leadership and the ospo areas so ospo open source Program office um I mean I sat down at a table with One of the directors at amazon web hosting at their web hosting division in open source and I got to meet Christobona from formerly of Google and Some of the top folks at google that are handling open source. I loved those table experiences They were asked the expert questions and um networking type of events. I would have loved to have um, maybe more of a A working session, I guess I would say um, there were a lot of great Networking opportunities. There were a lot of great session opportunities, but the idea of The WordPress equivalent of the happiness bar we roll in we're like I got a problem who can help me with my problem Um some Folks to to maybe for those that are utterly new to making an open source program office Take us through an exercise perhaps of let's outline what we need to do to get started step by step And I think some of that might have been really helpful for me topic wise though um You know, I feel like we might need some open source web dev things Represented that are a little more Upstream or down whichever from the programming languages Um, maybe I'd like to see that there, but you know everything I saw it was It was good. ([Time 0:22:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/70648959-9a7e-4c13-966a-d78c0cf2983b)) - **Discovering Software Bill of Materials** - Courtney learned about the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), a critical document detailing all software components in a stack. - SBOMs help organizations manage security risks, especially in life-critical environments like healthcare and automotive. Transcript: Speaker 1 It would be considered enterprise level So your experience was in hospitals Um, was that experience in hospitals related to software by chance? Speaker 2 It was related to servers So The work I did in hospitals was a combination couple of things I did A lot of back-end server work at the time. I was also part of the client services support team. So we were the first Realm recall after hours if there was any problems Uh, I was also part of major projects uh, for example in our Ears we were one of the first hospitals in the trinal area To put PCs on carts right in the operating room so good ocs to pull up Their results, um while they were doing surgery So you worked on systems that literally could be sustaining life is Speaker 1 What you're telling me. Speaker 2 Oh no no question. No question. Speaker 1 Absolutely So that was that is an entire area of open source Um, that is fascinating and not just open source, but also um There are the one of the there are a couple things that I learned That I did not know going into this event first I learned about These scorecards that will assess the health and metrics of open source software Some of the things that are used in medical Institutions and medical facilities can be open source and or open standards Standards would apply to hardware source is applying to the code Um, they're intertwined a lot of times, But um with that type of thing in mind I I heard a term that I almost didn't make it home with Uh s bomb and I heard this term s bomb and i'm like, hmm What's that? So I went to google and I looked and I spelled s bomb like I thought it would be spelled But no, that's not how they spell it. ([Time 0:27:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6b69d3ca-ce81-4ef5-a2bf-d307eb567335)) - **AI and Security at Summit** - The summit featured an AI track and discussions on related legal and ethical concerns. - Courtney received a security device gift, highlighting ongoing focus on strengthening open source security. Transcript: Speaker 2 Any discussion about Was there AI and open source at the conference. Speaker 1 I have to go there Yeah, yeah, yeah, so there was a whole track dedicated to ai um open ai and data forum was there and it looks like within that they had things that were about data data ops Legal concerns and ai ML ops machine and deep learning Natural language processing there is there's tracks within tracks at this event. And so yes, there is that um as far as A little bit about ai came up not a whole lot during one of the keynotes each morning. We had Basically three keynotes one was from somebody within the linux foundation. Another was a speaker and a third one often was somebody that was part of the sponsors of the event And whatever that sponsor company is doing with open source in their company And so I Vaguely remember quarry doctor's talk having a little bit about ai in it, but his slant was also more uh About social networks and about how we should own our content on our own voice um And syndicate to that effect and also that we need more open protocols in if you remember at the height of web 2.0 coming out which was all of these like social bookmarking tools social Networking platforms social video social social social everything used to talk to each other Then we started giving these wall gardens And then we kind of came back around and now we're Seeing ai writing the stuff for us and who's reading it Um, so quarry had some really really good points his talk was very engaging Uh, the room was packed that day a toy that I got the day That quarry gave his talk Um, I'm opening it now. Thank you google google gave us some some actual toys swag Not ai related not not specific to quarry stuff But security related which is one of the things rob is known for and it's kind Of like a yuva key It is instead of a yuva key. It is another device or protocol, but it's similar in purpose to it um Tightens security key and it is so I held it up for those that are listening Um, it is a usb c powered device that you Plug into your laptop And it has a little circle imprint on it where you put your finger And you set up your it's kind of like your two-factor authentication But instead it's going to ask For you to touch the device or squeeze the device Yuva keys are one form of that There are others out there like this one from google tightens security key and so um Yeah, there was that Going on. ([Time 0:34:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a8abbbf4-7654-4677-8f70-601310e1517d)) - **Security Advice on Biometric Locks** - Avoid using biometric locks like fingerprint for security if legal compulsion is a concern. - Use passcodes to maintain control over device access under legal scrutiny. Transcript: Speaker 2 It's kind of everywhere So I I really think that security key is kind of cool The only thing I would caution and I always say this with security is If you are afraid of being forced to open Your device Don't use face id or a fingerprint or something you have to squeeze Because you know legally you can be compelled to open that device Whereas if you use a passcode you don't Speaker 1 Necessarily have to turn it over So if that's a concern for you, don't do it But then when you're dealing with corporations corporations oftentimes require you to have the the key thing Speaker 2 For various devices I actually use an ubucay and I have for years because a whole issue like And it gets me out of the whole uh a password to backal authentication problem that is we're Running around forever. ([Time 0:37:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d9034ef5-5d42-4ab0-8cd9-551d11939696))