A new path to full-time open source

The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

After years of working for Google on the Go Team, Filippo Valsorda quit last year to experiment with more sustainable paths for open source maintainers. Good news, it worked! Filippo is now a full-time open source maintainer and he joins Jerod on this episode to tell everyone exactly how he’s making the equivalent to his total compensation package at Google in open source.

Leave us a comment

Changelog++ members get a bonus 7 minutes at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Postman – Build APIs together — More than 20 million developers use Postman for building and using APIs. Postman simplifies each step of the API lifecycle and streamlines collaboration so you can create better APIs—faster.
• Sentry – Session Replay! Rewind and replay every step of the user’s journey before and after they encountered an issue. Eliminate the guesswork and get to the root cause of an issue, faster. Use the code CHANGELOG and get the team plan free for three months.
• Typesense – Lightning fast, globally distributed Search-as-a-Service that runs in memory. You iterlly can’t get any faster!

Featuring:

• Filippo Valsorda – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, Website
• Jerod Santo – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn

Show Notes:

• Filippo on Go Time talking fuzzing
• Filippo on Go Time talking security
• I’m now a full-time professional open source maintainer
• age file encryption
• mkcert
• yubikey-agent
• Lemonade Stand

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Timestamps:

(00:00) - This week on The Changelog
(00:52) - Sponsor: Postman
(03:41) - Welcoming Filippo to the show
(06:45) - Filippo's open source projects
(16:30) - Corporate sponsorship doesn't scale
(19:36) - Experimenting with a new model
(23:28) - Benefiting both parties
(33:30) - Detailing the agreement terms
(37:23) - A success path that grows
(40:19) - Refining the sales pitch
(44:18) - Sponsor: Sentry
(46:24) - The most common objection
(53:16) - Proving the model over time
(54:49) - A place for punditry perhaps?
(57:29) - The best way to connect with Filippo
(59:33) - Name it to tame it
(1:01:37) - Wrapping up
(1:02:11) - Outro (join Changelog++!)