DEV Community: Josh Simmons

It's happening! 🤩 The Upstream agenda ✨

Josh Simmons — Thu, 05 May 2022 15:00:39 +0000

Upstream is just a month away, and we are so excited. Join us June 7 for our free virtual gathering to celebrate open source, the developers who use it, and the maintainers and contributors who create it. A theme we are exploring this year: When it comes to making open source work better for everyone, what do we owe each other?

We are delighted to announce the preliminary agenda today. We’ve already told you about our amazing keynote speakers: Aeva Black of the Azure Office at Microsoft, Deb Bryant, and John Mark Walker of Fannie Mae. But in addition to these awesome keynoters who will be anchoring the day, take a peek at this line-up:

Amanda Casari of the Google Open Source Programs Office will share how to build better contributor documentation ACROSS open source.
Nancy Gariché, a senior developer advocate for the GitHub Security Lab, will discuss a maintainer-first approach to open source security.
David Burns, of the open source program office at BrowserStack, will explain why you’re probably running your OSPO wrong—and how it’s not your fault.
Josh Simmons will host a panel discussion on what it means to be a good open source citizen, featuring Al Gillen of IDC, Alyssa Wright of Bloomberg, and Duane O’Brien of Indeed.
And loads more awesome talks!

You can check out the full agenda here, but keep in mind that we are still adding a few talks and the day will continue to get even more awesome. Register for the event for free here.

Join us June 7-12 for Maintainer Week

Josh Simmons — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 16:25:01 +0000

Open source, once radical, is now mainstream and it is everywhere–which is amazing. Even more amazing? The people, the open source maintainers, who write and manage the software that makes the modern world go ‘round. Yet their work is often poorly compensated and taken for granted.

Thankfully, this is changing.

Over the past few years, Tidelift has been leading the movement to ensure open source maintainers get paid for their work.

Now, along with our friends at GitHub, we have decided to declare this June 7-12 Maintainer Week.

During this week, and in the weeks leading up to it, we’ll be hosting a series of activities celebrating the important work of open source maintainers, and highlighting some of the everyday heroes in our midst.

On Monday, June 7, Tidelift will kick off Maintainer Week with a new one-day virtual event called Upstream.

Upstream will bring together developers, open source maintainers, and the extended network of people who care most about their work.

Then, on Tuesday and Wednesday, June 8-9, GitHub will be hosting its first Global Maintainer Summit. The Global Maintainer Summit is a virtual gathering connecting the maintainers who make open source possible with each other.

In the coming months as we get closer to Maintainer Week, Tidelift will also be featuring highlights of its first open source maintainer survey, which collected the thoughts, ideas, and experiences of almost 500 maintainers. You can sign up to be alerted when the results are ready here.

All are welcome to participate in Maintainer Week, and add their own events and celebrations to the schedule here.

We look forward to spending this week in June uplifting open source maintainers with you!

Better together: cultivating an open source ecosystem that works for everyone

Josh Simmons — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 16:33:16 +0000

Hello, world! My name is Josh, and I’m pleased to introduce myself as one of the newest members of the Tidelift team.

After eight years spent working in institutions, I’m getting back to my roots and helping to build a new one: one that empowers—and pays!—open source maintainers, cultivates healthy projects and communities, and makes navigating and managing the open source software supply chain a breeze.

Tidelift, founded in 2017, is already paying hundreds of maintainers and helping organizations better manage the open source components they use for application development. Paying the maintainers is central to how Tidelift works, it gives maintainers some much needed support for keeping their projects in good shape.

There’s so much potential here. Let me tell you a little about who I am and what I hope we can accomplish together.

These days I serve as volunteer President of the Open Source Initiative (OSI), currently rounding out the last of six years on its Board of Directors. I have most recently worked as a Senior Strategist, an Outreach Program Manager, and a Community Manager–all focused on open source.

But, well, I don’t know how else to put this: I built my career on open source without realizing it for the first 10 years! I was a fish in water, what can I say? I got my start in web development 20 years ago, variously working freelance, running a small agency, and making an attempt at building a SaaS business. All the while, I was doing one form of community organizing or another.

In those communities, in that work, the novelty of open source licensing never dawned on us, nor did the novelty of the development methodologies, nor the vast stores of free-to-use code. As someone who grew up alongside the advent of file sharing and user-generated content, all that I saw of open source felt like a natural extension of those things. Mostly, we concerned ourselves with the work, laboring in ‘blissful’ ignorance of the giants whose shoulders we were standing on. In a way, I think that’s a feature, a sign of success for open source, but still I wish the realization came earlier for me!

When I finally stumbled into open source as a knowing participant, I fell in love: it was at the intersection of community, technology, and philosophy–all things I’m passionate about. Through a combination of privilege, luck, character, hard work, and lots of help, I fell rapidly into the heart of open source.

Diving into open source has been the most rewarding journey of my career, if not my life. And the speed with which I’ve gone from outsider to insider, while always serving in an outreach capacity that exposes me to different views, has afforded some unique perspectives...

Today, open source is a wildly successful approach to collaboration and copyright, yet it’s plain to see there are deep systemic issues to be addressed.

Many issues, such as underrepresentation or toxic behavior, are artifacts of existing in this world with humans. We must take steps to address those issues in our communities, and continue to build a more perfect world more broadly.

But some issues are all ours! Maintainers that produce untold value, but can’t keep the lights on? Projects that still lack quality documentation and still sideline accessibility? Poorly defined and understood governance? Critical infrastructure, including projects and foundations, going severely underfunded while a few players grow ceaselessly? The breathless rediscovery of proprietary licensing parading as more open than open source?

Yeah, we’ve got a lot of work to do. And that’s why I’m joining Tidelift as the Ecosystem Strategy Lead: because I think they’ve got the right idea, and this is a role in which I can work with all of you to address these things. Because, to be frank, Tidelift can only ever be as healthy and successful as open source itself.

I look forward to the adventure ahead, and I can’t wait to find ways to partner with you to make open source, our spectacular commons, better for every last one of us.

If you’re itching to get started down this road with me, I’m easy to find: you can’t go wrong with Twitter (@joshsimmons) or IRC Freenode (bluesomewhere).

Before you go, I do have one request. I’m going to need help on this journey… Going further will require me to upgrade from anecdotes to data.

Tidelift, starting today, has launched its first-ever maintainer survey, an all-encompassing deep dive into the reality of life as a maintainer. It’s a longer than average survey, so there are rewards for those who take it. If you could take the survey, and share it with any maintainers you may know, that would be extremely helpful!

Ad astra per aspera 🚀