Building An Open Source Maintenance Company

06/02/25 • 78 min

We all use open source software on a daily basis. Even though the software is free to consume doesn't mean it's free to produce. Over the years, there have been many attempts to support open source development financially, from companies that sell support to foundations and many things in between. On this week's episode, Angelica and Matt are joined by Filippo Valsorda and Daniel McCarney to discuss Geomys, an open source maintenance company. The goal of Geomys is to provide open source maintainers with stable income to support themselves financially while doing the very important work of keeping open source projects well maintained. The group discusses the why and how of Geomys, what the day to day is like, and open source maintenance as a whole.

For our supporters, this episode contains extra chapters of discussion. Get access by signing up at https://fallthrough.fm/subscribe.

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Notes:

Geomys

Table of Contents:

Prologue (01:11)
Chapter 1: Geomys, An Open Source Maintainership Company (04:27)
Chapter 2: Day To Day At Geomys [Supporter Only] (12:29)
Chapter 3: How Are Things Going? (12:29)
Chapter 4: The Geomys Team [Supporter Only] (19:34)
Chapter 5: Expansion Possibilities (19:34)
Chapter 6: Interacting With The Community (30:42)
Chapter 7: Building A Geomys Of Your Own [Supporter Only] (40:09)
Chapter 8: Preventing Burnout (40:09)
Chapter 9: Prioritizing Work (52:18)
Appendix UNPOP: Unpopular Opinions (58:06)

Hosts

Matthew Sanabria - Host
Angelica Hill - Producer
Kris Brandow - Producer
Filippo Valsorda - Guest
Daniel McCarney - Guest

Socials:

Website
Bluesky
Threads
X/Twitter
LinkedIn
Instagram
(01:11) - Prologue
(04:27) - Chapter 1: Geomys, An Open Source Maintainership Company
(12:29) - Chapter 2: Day To Day At Geomys [Supporter Only]
(12:29) - Chapter 3: How Are Things Going?
(19:34) - Chapter 4: The Geomys Team [Supporter Only]
(19:34) - Chapter 5: Expansion Possibilities
(30:42) - Chapter 6: Interacting With The Community
(40:09) - Chapter 7: Building A Geomys Of Your Own [Supporter Only]
(40:09) - Chapter 8: Preventing Burnout
(52:18) - Chapter 9: Prioritizing Work
(58:06) - Appendix UNPOP: Unpopular Opinions

For our supporters, this episode contains extra chapters of discussion. Get access by signing up at https://fallthrough.fm/subscribe.

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Notes:

Geomys

Table of Contents:

Prologue (01:11)
Chapter 1: Geomys, An Open Source Maintainership Company (04:27)
Chapter 2: Day To Day At Geomys [Supporter Only] (12:29)
Chapter 3: How Are Things Going? (12:29)
Chapter 4: The Geomys Team [Supporter Only] (19:34)
Chapter 5: Expansion Possibilities (19:34)
Chapter 6: Interacting With The Community (30:42)
Chapter 7: Building A Geomys Of Your Own [Supporter Only] (40:09)
Chapter 8: Preventing Burnout (40:09)
Chapter 9: Prioritizing Work (52:18)
Appendix UNPOP: Unpopular Opinions (58:06)

Hosts

Matthew Sanabria - Host
Angelica Hill - Producer
Kris Brandow - Producer
Filippo Valsorda - Guest
Daniel McCarney - Guest

Socials:

Website
Bluesky
Threads
X/Twitter
LinkedIn
Instagram
(01:11) - Prologue
(04:27) - Chapter 1: Geomys, An Open Source Maintainership Company
(12:29) - Chapter 2: Day To Day At Geomys [Supporter Only]
(12:29) - Chapter 3: How Are Things Going?
(19:34) - Chapter 4: The Geomys Team [Supporter Only]
(19:34) - Chapter 5: Expansion Possibilities
(30:42) - Chapter 6: Interacting With The Community
(40:09) - Chapter 7: Building A Geomys Of Your Own [Supporter Only]
(40:09) - Chapter 8: Preventing Burnout
(52:18) - Chapter 9: Prioritizing Work
(58:06) - Appendix UNPOP: Unpopular Opinions

Previous Episode

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When it comes to building distributed systems, RPC and REST style interfaces aren't the only options. Events provide an alternative way to build a distributed system that can result in more robust systems that are easier to extend and deploy, while reducing the chances of a single bottlenecked service taking down the entire system. In this episode, your host Angelica is joined by Indu Alagarsamy, Ignacio Castillejos, and Chris Richardson to discuss what event-driven architecture is, what technologies can be used with it, and how to model and evolve events.

This episode's extended content includes two chapters: one about domain drive design and another about AI/ML. Get access by signing up at https://fallthrough.fm/subscribe.

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Notes:

Table of Contents: