Sustain

Episode 166: Thomas Steenbergen & Josep Prat at FOSS Backstage 2023

Apr 11 '23

Guests

Thomas Steenbergen | Josep Prat

Panelist

Richard Littauer

Show Notes

Hello and welcome to Sustain! Richard is at the FOSS Backstage 2023 that’s held in Berlin every year. On this episode, Richard has two guests joining him. His first guest is Thomas Steenbergen, co-founder and organizer for Linux Foundation Europe and Head of the Open Source Program Office at EPAM Systems. Thomas talks about his current workshop, OSS Review Toolkit, his background as a software developer, and the three important aspects of open-source software: consuming, compliance, and contributing back. Richard’s next guest is Josep Prat, who’s the Open Source Engineering Director at Aiven. Aiven provides software as a service including Kafka and Cassandra with around 500 employees, and despite its size, it has an open-source program office that focuses on employing people to work full-time on open-source projects. Josep talks about the importance of hiring people with the right mentality, and they look for people who care deeply about open source and communities and are not just in it for the fame and glory of open source. Also, he talks about the importance of diversity in open-source projects, as well at the Plankton program at Aiven for people who want to do contributions in their free time. Download this episode to hear much more!