Episode 149: Naytri Sramek on the GitHub Accelerator and M12 GitHub Fund

Guest Naytri Sramek Panelists Richard Littauer | Justin Dorfman Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. Today, we’re super excited to have joining us as our guest, Naytri Sramek, who’s the Senior Director of Strategy at GitHub. Have you heard of the GitHub Accelerator and M12 GitHub Fund? Well, this is a great day to be joining us because Naytri is here to talk about these programs that they’ve been launching to help support and sustain OSS over the long haul. Naytri shares GitHub’s journey which began with the GitHub Sponsors launch in 2019, bringing on enterprise sponsors, and how it led into launching the GitHub Accelerator program and the M12 GitHub Fund. Go ahead and download this episode now to learn more. [00:01:23] Naytri reveals the two things they’ve been launching which are the GitHub Accelerator and the M12 GitHub Fund. She also tells us about bringing on enterprise sponsors since they’ve benefited from open source. [00:06:25] Peter Thomas, who worked at Intuit and is creator of Karate Labs, is brought up and Justin wonders if he’s involved in this venture or if there are others. [00:09:37] A question comes up regarding if the growth of the projects has been tracked with the money that GitHub has given to developers, if they’ve been able to quit their jobs since the money was given to them, and if those projects have improved. [00:15:35] We hear the focus of the GitHub sponsors, the Accelerator, and the M12 Fund. [00:19:57] Justin brings up the difficult issue of how to deal with developers that build these critical pieces of software, but they don’t want to deal with the responsibility and wonders how Naytri and her team deal with this issue. [00:23:18] There’s a 10-week course for the accelerator program and we hear how it works, and if it will be available to everyone in the future on GitHub. [00:29:28] Naytri explains how the communities are being funded. [00:32:47] A point is brought up about how long can these strategies and programs live on so maintainers and open source developers can make a good living, and Naytri goes in depth about the need for more sources of funding and funding models. [00:36:34] Find out where you can learn more about the GitHub Accelerator and the M12 Fund. Quotes [00:17:40] “The M12 GitHub Fund is all about how we do invest in the tools that are built on GitHub’s platform.” [00:24:33] “I want 20 people making $200,000 a year.” [00:24:58] “The GitHub Accelerator course itself will be open source.” [00:28:08] “As we’ve expanded the program into more countries, we’ve doubled the number of countries that sponsors cover right now.” [00:30:10] “Commits aren’t universal. You shouldn’t just be rewarded for the code.” [00:33:07] “The way we’re thinking about the accelerator and the fund is we need so many more sources of funding and funding models to be able to support open source creators as well as communities.” Spotlight [00:37:44] Justin’s spotlight is Jessica Lord, who’s the GitHub Sponsors Product Lead. [00:38:14] Richard’s spotlight is Bill Watterson, author of Calvin and Hobbes. [00:38:23] Naytri’s spotlight is Mike Perham and a 10 year anniversary post he wrote to Sidekiq. Links SustainOSS SustainOSS Twitter SustainOSS Discourse [email protected] Richard Littauer Twitter Justin Dorfman Twitter Naytri Sramek LinkedIn [email protected] [email protected] GitHub Accelerator GitHub Blog- An open source economy-built by developers, for developers by Naytri Sramek Sustain Podcast-Episode 56: Dominic Tarr on Coding What You Want, Living on A Boat, and the Early Days of Node.js Karate Labs Hopscotch Justin Dorfman Tweet: The hard decisions popular open source project maintainers need to make…daily. Jessica Lord-GitHub Bill Watterson-Wikipedia Happy 10th Birthday, Sidekiq! -by Mike Perham Credits Produced by Richard Littauer Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound Special Guest: Naytri Sramek.