Personal Mission & Values
27 clips
Motivations and beliefs driving open source involvement
What got you into open source specifically? What personal beliefs, values, or experiences have shaped who you are?
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Introduction to FOSSDA
Cat Allman
Eric Allman
Kirk McKusick
Karen Sandler
Joshua Gay
Tony Wasserman
Jon "Maddog" Hall
Lawrence (Larry) Rosen
Tristan Nitot
Deb Goodkin
Heather Meeker
Bruce Perens
Larry Augustin
Roger Dannenberg
Bart Decrem
Early Exposure
Education & Mentorship
Challenges & Growth
Open Source Projects
Community & Collaboration
Evolution of Open Source
Showing 27 clips
2:57
Discovering the Free Software Movement
From: Bart Decrem • Leading the Firefox Launch
Andy was like, I've seen the light. Software should be free, at least the operating system...Software that should be part of the commons in the way that the phone system is, is a utility.
1:22
From Free Software to Open Source
From: Bruce Perens • The Genesis of Open Source Involvement
Heather Meeker: How'd you decide to get involved in/create this movement of open source? Bruce Perens: Well, obviously, I'm standing on the shoulders of giants because the work of Richard Stallman preceeded mine, and the basic concepts of open source are those created by Richard for free software. What we did with open source was create a marketing program for the free software concept which would reach different people. So, Richard's approach was very well suited for programmers, but it depended on the apriori understanding of the usefulness of software freedom. And our approach was more based on just having a big collection of software that you could build, whether it was a business or any project that you wanted to, you could build these upon, you could share the development of the software and my feeling personally was that the philosophy would come later for a lot of the people who participated.
2:24
First Engagement with Free and Open Source Software
From: Cat Allman • Early Career and Entry into Free Software
Cat Allman: Fast forward a little bit and my first job with free and open source software was at Mount Zainu. Mount Zainu is Unix trademark backwards. Our logo was a little mountain range. I was a contractor, not an employee, but so I was working on coordinating the company's involvement with DECUS, which was the DEC User Group Conference. And found myself really kind of engaged with the political idea of software that had been created at a publicly funded institution as being free and available to the rest of us to use. Really the academic method of, you know, you come up with an idea and other people build on it and civilization rolls along...
1:47
Introduction to the FreeBSD Foundation
From: Deb Goodkin • Finding Purpose in Open Source
Karen Herman: How did you first, um, you know, hear about the FreeBSD foundation and how did, how were you connected? Deb Goodkin: So, um, the FreeBSD foundation, I didn't know anything about. And, um, so, uh, my friend had contacted me and she said, so she was working at this, um, aerospace company here in Boulder. And, um, so I'm here in Boulder, Colorado. Um, and she said, I, there's a guy at my company. So she worked at an HR and she said, there's this guy in my company. He's running a nonprofit and he's looking for someone to run it. And I told him that I had a friend who is an engineer and looking for some work. And so anyway, so she connected us and that was the first time I had heard of FreeBSD and the FreeBSD foundation. And so, um, so the guy she was talking about was Justin Gibbs, who's the founder of the FreeBSD foundation. He's here in Boulder and he had started the foundation, I think it was about four or five years before that. And I bet he was working full time. And so it was growing to the point where he really couldn't run it. He, and he saw so much potential for growth that he wanted to find someone to run the company.
2:54
Relationship Between FreeBSD Foundation and FreeBSD Project
From: Deb Goodkin • Understanding the Foundation's Role
Karen Herman: Talk about, so, so the, the FreeBSD foundation and then there's the FreeBSD, how, how does that work, um, in terms of, you know, how you work together or, or don't? Deb Goodkin: Yeah, we're two totally different organizations. And so the FreeBSD project is, uh, made up of volunteers and, uh, from around the world and it's not a legal entity. And we have the FreeBSD foundation and, uh, which is a legal entity. It's, uh, um, here in the US we, it's, um, based, uh, when the IRS, um, uh, not certification, but, um, a definition, um, is this that we're a 501 C three. And so there's different types of nonprofits here. And so we're for the public good. And so our whole purpose is to support the project. So if FreeBSD went away, then we would most likely go away because we wouldn't have a purpose anymore.
1:55
Sendmail Inc. and Open Source Philosophy
From: Eric Allman • Running and Growing Sendmail Inc.
Eric Allman:...We made the front page of the New York Times when we announced the company... Sendmail had a reputation for being difficult to configure so our first thing was we'll make it easy to configure and using a graphic user interface... I really love it when people use the stuff I've written. And the easiest way to do that is to give it away.
4:40
Points of Pride
From: Eric Allman • What He's Most Proud Of
Eric Allman:...coming out of the closet because it made my life a lot better and frankly the lives of other people around me a lot better... I lost some friends. You know, when I came out of the closet, I didn't just like open the door, I used dynamite to blow it open... And it gave me a path to being an easier to get along with person.
1:32
Why Open Source Matters
From: Heather Meeker • Open Source as a Transformative Force
Zack Ellis: When did you start to see open source as something transformative? Heather Meeker: I really saw it as transformative almost from the beginning. I did not realize and I'm not sure very many people would have realized at that time how huge it would get. But it was just so different from everything else that you learned as a technology lawyer. Like if you do a regular software license, you know, it has a particular form and some terms that you would expect. Open source is like bizarro world licensing. It's like exactly the opposite. It's like giving away rights and forcing people to give away rights instead of just like normal licensing.
0:43
The Purpose of FOSSDA
From: Introduction to FOSSDA • Introduction to FOSSDA and Open Source
Heather Meeker: Welcome to the open source stories, digital archive, or FOSSDA. Open source has changed the world. And it's changed the world greatly for the better. It's a movement that's been going on for quite a while now, and it didn't start because of a government, or a company, or a politician. It started really from people who wanted to change the way people had access to software because software is so important to our lives now. Whether you know it or not, you are using open-source software right now, and you're probably using it every moment of your life.
0:47
Capturing Open Source Stories
From: Introduction to FOSSDA • Capturing Personal Stories of Open Source Pioneers
Heather Meeker: Because this is such an important change in our world, and because it happened in the way it did. I thought it was important to capture the personal stories of people involved in this movement. What made them so dedicated? What made them understand that this was so important?
1:20
The Journey Towards Open Source Advocacy
From: Jon "Maddog" Hall • Caninos Loucos: Open Hardware in Brazil
Maddog: ...So this is how I got interested in Linux. And I could see because by this time I'd been in the computer industry a long time. And I could see the rate at which Linux was growing...
1:40
Empowering Education through FOSS Initiatives
From: Jon "Maddog" Hall • Memories of Grace Hopper and Maurice Wilkes
Maddog: ...Malaysia, the Malaysian government was creating a five year program to use open source software. And Malaysia is particularly interesting because... 70% of the IT workforce were women...
1:20
Linux Professional Institute and Inclusivity Efforts
From: Jon "Maddog" Hall • Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Maddog: ...as an example, one of the things we did recently was a diversity and inclusion policy for for our organization because we have two hundred fifteen thousand certified people in one hundred eighty countries around the world...
1:11
Fostering Open Source in Latin America through Education
From: Jon "Maddog" Hall • Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Maddog: ...40% of the students who qualify for a free university education [in Latin America] cannot accept it... Project Calwan teaches these young students how to set up their own business...
1:49
Discovery of Free and Open Source Software
From: Joshua Gay • First Industry Experience
It was around that time. I think I had heard people talk about things like Red Hat Linux and free software. But it wasn't until I really started to look into it for the job I was working at Super Wings...
3:36
Working with Software Freedom Conservancy
From: Karen Sandler • Outreachy and Transition to Software Freedom Conservancy
Karen Sandler: Software Freedom Conservancy is my absolute dream job...
2:10
On Living the Life You Want
From: Kirk McKusick • Career Advice and Reflections
Elisabetta Mori:Is there anything you would do differently if you had your time again?
0:37
Problem-Solving Mindset on the Farm
From: Larry Augustin • Background and Early Life
I spent the summers working on the family farm in New Hampshire, baling hay, doing everything around the place. And I developed this tendency to just fix things. When you're out in the field and the tractor breaks, there's nobody to call. You had to just fix things yourself. And so my whole life, that's how I kind of approach things, which is just learn to do whatever needs to be done and be hands-on and fix things.
1:08
Bootstrapping and Persistence in Entrepreneurship
From: Larry Augustin • Entrepreneurial Lessons and Growth
This is just an amazing way of bootstrapping. And to me, I always look for today, I love the entrepreneurial part of the world and people launching and building things. We got people to send us checks for the computers they wanted, because we were selling a physical device. And to me, these things were hugely expensive. I mean, somewhere between $1,000 and $3,000. And I couldn't afford to buy the parts to send someone. People sent us a check ahead of time. We would cash the check, go buy the parts, have an assembly party in the living room of my apartment and ship them out. And that was what the business was initially.
0:46
The Vision Behind VA Linux
From: Larry Augustin • Building VA Linux
Dell had been very inspirational to me. If you look at the start of Dell Computers with Michael Dell and his dorm room at, I think it was UT Austin, assembling PCs. I was doing the same, except I was doing it in the Unix world.
0:37
The Cathedral and the Bazaar Impact
From: Larry Augustin • Business Challenges in Open Source
If you look at the concept of I am selling you something that's free, it's kind of an odd concept. It takes people a moment to get their heads around this concept.
1:03
Coining 'Open Source'
From: Larry Augustin • The Genesis of Open Source
We got Linus on the phone, and ultimately, the idea was we're going to brand this open source, because the openness of the source code was what was important. Bruce Perens, at the time, the head of the Debian project, had created a set of definitions for software that could be part of Debian. And we realized the world here needed to separate the notion of software in which the source code is available from free software, and we coined the term open source to do that. And we all agreed to promote and develop this, and that became the genesis for the term open source. And this was in 1998.
1:54
Learning by Doing
From: Larry Augustin • Entrepreneurial Lessons and Growth
I always encourage learning. You know, as I look back now, I realize how naive I was at every stage, but that's how we learn. So I'm not big on the would have, should have, could have done it differently. I think everyone has to go through the learning phases, and there's a ton of things that I got wrong all the time. But I listened a lot, and I hope I learned from those. This is a little of my philosophy when I advise entrepreneurs and companies - I give them advice, but I also think they have to learn themselves. People make mistakes, that's part of the learning process. It's one of the things I think is great about the Silicon Valley culture - it's a culture in which people learn from making mistakes, and you can make a mistake, and get better, and learn, and come back, and that's okay.
1:30
Discovering Open Source Through Personal Connections
From: Lawrence (Larry) Rosen • Transition to Law and Open Source
One of the friends that I met...worked for Xerox and, uh, developed Small talk...he said, you know, I'm, I'm working with this organization on the East Coast called the Open Source Initiative...
0:41
Learning from Open Source
From: Roger Dannenberg • Learning from Open Source
Roger Dannenberg: Well, I think maybe open sources is really an outgrowth and maybe I just see it this way, but maybe it really is an outgrowth of the academic world. Where in academia we do research and you know, we get the rewards are not so much money, but recognition. That people want to want to be recognized for being, for making contributions to whatever field, they do research or public or writing in.
3:20
Exposure to UNIX and Introduction to Open Source Philosophy
From: Tony Wasserman • Early Encounters with Open Source Concepts
Tony Wasserman: ...But then when UNIX came in the 1970s, I was on the faculty at UC San Francisco, and then I was also a lecturer at Berkeley... And Berkeley received a grant that involved enhancing AT&T UNIX. So Berkeley got the source code to AT&T UNIX and they made a bunch of changes, virtual memory being the one that is perhaps the most significant...
1:00
Personal Reflections on Open Source
From: Tristan Nitot • The Power of Open Source: A Key Demo
Tristan Nitot:...Now, there is software everywhere. And if I want to be free as a citizen, then I need free software...the guy who controls the software, kind of more or less controls my life decides...And if I want to have control over that...I need free software.