Episode 139: Manuel Riel on PikaPods, a container hosting service for open source apps
09/23/22 • 29 min
Manuel Riel
PanelistsRichard Littauer | Justin Dorfman
Show NotesHello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Today, we are super excited to have as our guest, Manuel Riel, joining us from Austria. Manu ran a web development agency and launched multiple open source related products, including an invoice processing tool, and a backup service. He’s also the Co-founder of PikaPods, which is a container hosting service for open source apps. Manu is with us to talk about PikaPods. We’ll find out what it does, why it’s needed, the benefits of having it, the most popular app, and plans he has in the future for PikaPods. Go ahead and download this episode to learn more!
[00:01:23] Manu tells us his background, what PikaPods is, and about the apps.
[00:03:32] What’s the difference between Heroku, Netlify, and PikaPods?
[00:04:29] Since you can’t run your own stuff and you can’t edit the apps, Manu explains how this is an open source marketplace. We hear about PikaPods user base, how long he’s been up and running, and how many people are using the platform.
[00:06:11] Manu explains the one source of revenue they provide to open source office.
[00:09:06] We hear Manu’s selling point he pitches to open source maintainers and open source projects.
[00:11:45] Why did Manu choose to work with open source projects to host when there are other things available to him? Why PikaPods?
[00:13:32] Justin brings up pricing on PikaPods site and comments a trend with the ones that paid the least had the most demands. He wonders how Manu deals with that.
[00:15:04] Justin wonders if the services are subsidized by using the BorgBase infrastructure, and Manu explains how they are totally separate, and he tells us about his team.
[00:16:31] We hear if there are any collabs with maintainers Manu is working with since there are a lot of projects he hosts.
[00:18:02] Find out PikaPods most popular app, if there’s a limit, and if bandwidth is an issue.
[00:21:17] Manu shares some things he would like to do in the future with PikaPods.
[00:23:35] How does Manu position himself in the ecosystem and are there other things that could be used in collaboration with PikaPods that makes it easier for maintainers?
[00:25:37] Find out where you can follow Manu and PikaPods online.
Quotes[00:10:08] “Hosting is not a good fit for part-time maintainers because it’s a big responsibility.”
[00:12:20] “The motivating event for me was the Log4j Vulnerability.”
Spotlight- [00:26:42] Justin’s spotlight is pydantic, data validation and settings management using Python type hints.
- [00:27:10] Richard’s spotlight is Amna Shamim.
- [00:27:36] Manu’s spotlight is Uptime Kuma, a fancy self-hosted monitoring tool.
- SustainOSS
- SustainOSS Twitter
- SustainOSS Discourse
- [email protected]
- Richard Littauer Twitter
- Justin Dorfman Twitter
- PikaPods
- PikaPods Twitter
- Apache Log4j Vulnerability
- pydantic
- Amna Shamim
- Uptime Kuma
- Produced by Richard Littauer
- Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
- Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound
Special Guest: Manuel Riel.
Manuel Riel
PanelistsRichard Littauer | Justin Dorfman
Show NotesHello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Today, we are super excited to have as our guest, Manuel Riel, joining us from Austria. Manu ran a web development agency and launched multiple open source related products, including an invoice processing tool, and a backup service. He’s also the Co-founder of PikaPods, which is a container hosting service for open source apps. Manu is with us to talk about PikaPods. We’ll find out what it does, why it’s needed, the benefits of having it, the most popular app, and plans he has in the future for PikaPods. Go ahead and download this episode to learn more!
[00:01:23] Manu tells us his background, what PikaPods is, and about the apps.
[00:03:32] What’s the difference between Heroku, Netlify, and PikaPods?
[00:04:29] Since you can’t run your own stuff and you can’t edit the apps, Manu explains how this is an open source marketplace. We hear about PikaPods user base, how long he’s been up and running, and how many people are using the platform.
[00:06:11] Manu explains the one source of revenue they provide to open source office.
[00:09:06] We hear Manu’s selling point he pitches to open source maintainers and open source projects.
[00:11:45] Why did Manu choose to work with open source projects to host when there are other things available to him? Why PikaPods?
[00:13:32] Justin brings up pricing on PikaPods site and comments a trend with the ones that paid the least had the most demands. He wonders how Manu deals with that.
[00:15:04] Justin wonders if the services are subsidized by using the BorgBase infrastructure, and Manu explains how they are totally separate, and he tells us about his team.
[00:16:31] We hear if there are any collabs with maintainers Manu is working with since there are a lot of projects he hosts.
[00:18:02] Find out PikaPods most popular app, if there’s a limit, and if bandwidth is an issue.
[00:21:17] Manu shares some things he would like to do in the future with PikaPods.
[00:23:35] How does Manu position himself in the ecosystem and are there other things that could be used in collaboration with PikaPods that makes it easier for maintainers?
[00:25:37] Find out where you can follow Manu and PikaPods online.
Quotes[00:10:08] “Hosting is not a good fit for part-time maintainers because it’s a big responsibility.”
[00:12:20] “The motivating event for me was the Log4j Vulnerability.”
Spotlight- [00:26:42] Justin’s spotlight is pydantic, data validation and settings management using Python type hints.
- [00:27:10] Richard’s spotlight is Amna Shamim.
- [00:27:36] Manu’s spotlight is Uptime Kuma, a fancy self-hosted monitoring tool.
- SustainOSS
- SustainOSS Twitter
- SustainOSS Discourse
- [email protected]
- Richard Littauer Twitter
- Justin Dorfman Twitter
- PikaPods
- PikaPods Twitter
- Apache Log4j Vulnerability
- pydantic
- Amna Shamim
- Uptime Kuma
- Produced by Richard Littauer
- Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
- Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound
Special Guest: Manuel Riel.
Previous Episode
Episode 138: Ruth Cheesley, the Mautic Project Lead at Acquia, on Building and Growing Open Source Communities
Guest
Ruth Cheesley
PanelistsRichard Littauer | Ben Nickolls | Eriol Fox | Justin Dorfman
Show NotesHello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Today, we are excited to have as our guest, Ruth Cheesley, joining us from the UK. She is an open-source advocate and Project Lead for Mautic at Acquia. We invited Ruth on this podcast because we don’t seem to have enough talks from people who are part of an actual community of coders. Today, Ruth tells us all about Mautic and her job there as Project Lead, she fills us in on Drupal and Acquia, and a tool they used in managing community health called, Savannah. We’ll also hear Ruth’s strategy when she helped with governance, why Open Source Friday is so important, she explains how she diversifies the contributor base, and we hear her ten-year vision for Mautic she’s working on. Go ahead and download this episode now to learn more!
[00:02:38] Ruth explains what Mautic is, how she became the Project Lead and being on the Community Leadership Team at Joomla.
[00:04:48] Find out the difference between Joomla, Drupal, Acquia, and Mautic.
[00:06:17] From someone that organizes open source communities at his job, Justin asks Ruth what tools she uses, and she tells us about one called, Savannah.
[00:08:54] Ruth tells us about what her strategy was when she helped with governance.
[00:12:47] Richard wonders if the assessment also applies to Mautic and if Mautic is just the same as every other open source project on the web.
[00:16:03] Eriol asks Ruth to tell us some success stories or things that have been tricky between different kinds of functions within the open source.
[00:19:14] We learn how Ruth sees her role or the roles of other people who are being paid as being part of a sustainable path for Mautic itself, and how money has a play in the ecosystem as well as attribution.
[00:21:59] Ruth explains if Acquia pays for full-time engineers and for traditional coder roles for Mautic, and she tells us about Open Source Friday.
[00:24:20] Eriol wonders if there’s anything people can go read or listen to around how smaller organizations or individuals can make that kind of contribution sustainable and are there things we can implement.
[00:27:09] Ruth tells us about a partner’s program they created in Mautic.
[00:29:27] How does Ruth manage to diversify the contributor base, given that not everyone has the access or time to do that sort of work?
[00:32:01] Ruth shares a ten-year vision with a three-year strategy for Mautic.
[00:34:10] Find out where you can follow Ruth online.
Quotes[00:09:14] “There wasn’t really a community empowerment process to set up workflows and training for people to take on the releases, so the project just sort of slowed down.”
[00:32:28] “It’s quite tricky during longer term plans when you have lots of businesses that are depending on your software, because what one business thinks the product should do is maybe different to what another business thinks the product should do.”
Spotlight- [00:35:27] Justin’s spotlight is Tour de Source newsletter.
- [00:35:46] Eriol’s spotlight is Fantasy Map Generator.
- [00:36:20] Ben’s spotlight is Roden open source bike design.
- [00:37:02] Richard’s spotlight is Richard Matthews and his Oyster Yachts, and the Royal Naval Tot Club of Antigua & Barbuda.
- [00:37:46] Ruth’s spotlight is Ardour, a tool to compose music.
Next Episode
Episode 140: Courtney Miller and Hongbo Fang on Toxicity and Information Flow in Open Source Communities
Guest
Courtney Miller | Hongbo Fang
PanelistsRichard Littauer | Eriol Fox
Show NotesHello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. We are super excited to talk to our guests today on the topic of toxicity in open source. Today, we have joining us, Courtney Miller and Hungbo Fang, who are both PhD students at Carnegie Mellon University. We asked them to come on because we were curious about their work, and they came highly recommended by Bogdan Vasilescu. We’ll hear more about Courtney’s talk and her paper on her award-winning work exploring toxicity in open source communities, and we’ll find out the work Hongbo has done focusing on information flow and where people talk about open source. Download this episode now to learn more!
[00:02:49] Courtney tells us about the talk she gave at the Linux Open Source Summit on her work exploring toxicity in open source communities.
[00:03:55] We find out if there was a data set that was used to find the information.
[00:05:08] Hongbo focuses on information flow and where do people talk about open source, and he tells us what his involvement is with this work.
[00:06:57] Courtney tells us what she saw within the hundred issues and how she broke them down and tagged them to get to the conclusions she had.
[00:08:44] We hear how Courtney used the technical definition of toxicity introduced by Google’s Perspective API tool to inform the decisions of what toxicity means.
[00:12:01] Eriol wants to know whether Courtney’s had thoughts or intentions of looking into the content moderation space to see if there’s any similarities between what’s happening there.
[00:14:29] Richard wonders what we can do to improve the state of toxicity in open source and wonders if she has any future work that can make this better.
[00:16:08] Hongbo shares his thoughts about the future and what we can do to solve this from a quantitative angle.
[00:17:02] Based on Courtney’s work, we find out if she thinks AI has improved, if she has hope, and Hongbo shares his thoughts as well.
[00:19:20] Eriol wants to know how community members can help researchers by talking about things that are less referenced in the paper, and how Courtney thinks about tackling some of the harder to read parts of toxicity with new emerging spaces.
[00:24:54] We find out if there’s a place where open source could have a restorative justice around toxicity and what action is there for the open source community to move from talking about our experiences of toxicity to how we can heal.
[00:27:40] Hongbo explains what his work is mainly focused on, how he’s holding this space, and suggestions he has for the future on how we can improve information flow.
[00:34:31] Richard talks about a paper called, The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman, and wonders if Hongbo has any suggestions for how to help open source projects with information gap issues.
[00:39:33] Find out where you can follow Courtney, Hongbo, and their work online.
Quotes[00:12:11] "Open source toxicity is not new, it’s very old. The long-term effects of this toxicity, especially in open source, is why I was really moved to do this research.”
[00:14:56] “If you can identify toxic comments, and deal with them, instead of making the maintainers spend the emotional labor every time dealing with this stuff – [that] can be very helpful.”
[00:15:17] “Maintainers are often toxic in their own projects.”
[00:15:40] “We have issue templates – what about issue response templates?”
[00:25:47] “If a community has leadership that tolerates certain things, it’s going to happen. If the community has leadership that does not tolerate certain things, it’s not going to happen.”
Spotlight- [00:41:21] Eriol’s spotlight is Digital Safety Snacks by Pen America.
- [00:41:58] Richard’s spotlight is an article he read called, The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture by Nora Samaran.
- [00:42:40] Hongbo’s spotlight is the book, Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure by Nadia Eghbal.
- [00:43:32] Courtney’s spotlight is the book, Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software by Nadia Eghbal, and the tool, Betty.
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