From open source to acquired (Changelog Interviews #625)

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Ashley Jeffs shares his journey with Benthos, an open source stream processor that was acquired by Redpanda. We talk about the evolution of data streaming technologies, the challenges he faced while growing the project, the decision to bootstrap versus seek venture capital, and what ultimately led to the acquisition. We discuss reactions to licensing changes, what it’s like to have your thing acquired, the challenging yet fulfilling nature of open source work, what’s next for Benthos, and what it takes to enjoy the journey.

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• Augment Code – Developer AI that uses deep understanding of your large codebase and how you build software to deliver personalized code suggestions and insights. Augment provides relevant, contextualized code right in your IDE or Slack. It transforms scattered knowledge into code or answers, eliminating time spent searching docs or interrupting teammates.
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Featuring:

• Ashley Jeffs – Website, GitHub, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• Data streaming and Benthos with Mihai Todor & Ashley Jeffs (Go Time #192)
• Announcing Bento, the open source fork of the project formerly known as Benthos - WarpStream - Stream More, Manage Less
• warpstreamlabs/bento: Fancy stream processing made operationally mundane. This repository is a fork of the original project before the license was changed.
• Benthos | Benthos
• Redpanda Acquires Benthos to Deliver a Complete, End-to-End Streaming Data Platform
• redpanda-data/connect: Fancy stream processing made operationally mundane

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Chương

1. This week on The Changelog (00:00:00)

2. Sponsor: Augment Code (00:01:13)

https://www.augmentcode.com

3. Start the show! (00:04:43)

4. Let's go way back (00:09:57)

5. Getting people to use your open source (00:17:29)

6. Mundane and boring (00:26:02)

7. Landing large org users (00:27:07)

8. Not serious business here (00:32:19)

9. If it fits on a credit card (00:35:10)

10. How did the acquisition go down? (00:46:04)

11. Sponsor: Fly.io (00:48:25)

https://fly.io/

12. Going off the rails (00:51:31)

13. Call me "Daddy pig" (00:54:08)

14. Benthos just went away (00:57:01)

15. Now it's open core (01:00:13)

16. Was this a rug pull? (01:05:52)

17. What's the alternate universe? (01:16:38)

18. Did Synadia miss out? (01:22:57)

19. Overlapping user bases (01:25:05)

20. I'm just gonna play video games now (01:29:07)

21. Healthy open source habits (01:42:18)

22. Thanks Hector Rios! (01:42:57)

23. Closing thoughts and stuff (01:45:05)

24. BONUS teaser (01:47:33)