The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - Gittip and Open Companies (Interview)

Episode Date: May 29, 2014

Adam and Jerod talk with Chad Whitacre the Founder of Gittip to talk about what's new this year for Gittip and the directions they are taking things.

Welcome back everyone. This is the changelog where a member supported blog podcast and weekly email cover what's fresh and what's new in open source. Check out the blog at the changelog.com. Our past shows at five by five on TV slash changelog. And you're listening to episode 123 jared and i we caught up with chad whittaker the founder of gidip and we talked to him about what's new this year with gidip and the directions they're taking today's show is sponsored by our friends at rackspace codeship and toptow we'll tell you a bit more about codeship and

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Go to developer.rackspace.com slash devtrial. And now, on to the show. We're joined today by an awesome friend, previous person that's been on the show before, Chad Whitaker, founder of Gidip. I'm Adam Stachowiak, and we also have the managing editor, Jared Santo, on the show. So we've got three people on the call today, a fun show lineup. It's kind of like a—it's definitely like a reconvening, right, Chad? Because you were on the show almost to the day this time last year. Absolutely. Our annual May call, our check-in.

Yes. And you got a birthday coming up soon. Not personally, but Gidip. All right. Yep. Gidip is going to be two years old on June 1st. June 1st. Wow. Couple weeks here. Scary, right? You know, this has been a really big milestone in my mind since I started. I've kind of thought two years is the amount of time I've given myself to work on this and see if this is going to go anywhere. So we're coming up on that milestone.

So it is scary, maybe. Yeah, kind of definitely a chance to reflect on what's happened the past couple of years and where we are. So when you say that, does that mean there may be no future in GitHub? Or are you thinking about quitting it? I mean, what's... Well, that was the question, right? Okay, right. The question was... So what's the answer?

Yeah, the answer is full steam ahead. That's the good news. Yeah, I mean, I kind of said, all right, I'm going to be heads down and I'm going to just go for it, right? And I'm not going to pay attention to, you know, how fast we're growing or, you know, how well we're doing or what's going on with it. I'm not, I'm going to kind of like stay heads down and just work and plow ahead on it. And then at that two-year mark, that's when I'll come up for air and say, all right, where are we? You know, is this thing, you we? Is this thing going to work?

Is this going anywhere? Do I still love working on it? Do I not love working on it and make a decision? And the bottom line is I still love working on it, and we're growing. For how deep we've set the plow, I'm pretty encouraged by our growth. When I compare myself to others, I get discouraged. But when I look at Gidip itself and realize that it's something I still

believe in and love doing, you know, then I'm encouraged. So, you know, the short answer is, yes, we're moving ahead, full steam ahead on Gidip. So Chad, for those of us who weren't around last May, I think that was episode 87, if anyone wants to go back and listen. Can you just give us briefly the Gidip elevator pitch? Yes. Gidip is a way to give money every week to people and teams you believe in. So the mission of Gidip is actually to enable an economy of gratitude and generosity. And practically what that means, the way we're instantiating that is giving money every week to people you believe in. So you're using somebody's open source libraries, and you really appreciate the work that they're doing, and you want to show your appreciation and gratitude,

and you want to support them. Gidip is a way to do that by setting up a weekly recurring donation to them as small as a penny up to $100 a week, and it's a no- attached gift. That's, that's one of the that that's where get it is on the scale of crowdfunding from like, investment through, you know, Kickstarter, I'm getting a sticker, I'm getting a product, you know, get it was on the far end where this is really, this is really a gift. So you don't tell them I'm funding you towards this goal and as long as you're working on that goal yeah exactly it's really like a patronage model it's like I believe in the work you do and

I want you to do more of it you know I trust that you're going to take this money and you're going to do awesome stuff with it you know so it's really trying to yeah trying to dial in on that like I believe in you keep doing awesome stuff right yeah so that's what that's what that's what we're doing and we've been um so i guess to uh to recap where we're at we've got we're coming up on 3 000 active users and i guess we could check so it was a year ago was it yeah let's check our charts real quick most of the day yeah okay so we've got uh let's check the charts real quick so right now we've got 28,887.

So we're coming up on 3,000 weekly users. That's people who either give or receive or both on the site. And we moved $13,400. What was it, yesterday? So we're up over $13,000. Let's go back. Let's dial it back a year. So that would be week 50.

I'm looking at the github.com slash about slash charts html and two years or a year ago we were at 1 000 users and what about three thousand dollars yes so we've grown we've grown it looks like 1800 users so you know almost 200 and then uh and it looks like, 1,800 users, so almost 200%. And it looks like $10,000. We've grown $10,000, which would be what, quickly, 4x, 5x over a year ago. So that's not nothing. That's huge, man. It's not quite a hockey stick, but like I said, for as deep as we set the plow,

I'm pretty encouraged for where we're at. So I'm looking at these charts here on your slash about slash charts. You have withdrawal. It looks like the weekly gifts, like you said, is $13,444, and your withdrawals is at $78.60. So is that differential just what's being traded inside of GitHub? Or not traded, but given? Escrowed.

Yeah, we would say escrowed inside of GitHub. So, yeah, GitHub is like this bubble within or this loop or this circle within the larger economy, right? So you move money into Gidip, you shuffle it around inside of Gidip, and then you pull it out the other side. Right. So there is an amount of money, which is actually, if you click on the stats link that's at the top of that page, I think we're at like 100k escrowed within Gidip right now. Something like that. Yeah, a little over 100k is escrowed within Gidip right now. Something like that. Yeah, a little over $100K is escrowed in Gidip. Yeah.

So, you know, we doubled three times last year every four or five months. And then looking at these charts, we've kind of slowed the past month or two. But I don't know. It's hard to read these things sometimes. But yeah, the past month or two, it's started to flatten a little bit

and kind of scratching our head a little bit about that. I mean, the way I'm seeing it is that last year, okay, so for the first year, 2012, started in the middle of the year, and the name of the game was, you know, we came out of the gate pretty fast and it was encouraging, and then it was all about transitioning from working on GitHub as a side project to me personally working on it full time. That was 2012.

So by the end of 2012, I was working on GitHub full time. So when I talked to you guys last year in May. There's no transition. Yeah, well, I pretty much transitioned into GitHub full time. But then the challenge in 2013 was, let's go from just Chad working on it to a team working on it, right? Because, you know, Zuckerberg isn't the only one

working on Facebook, right? You know, it takes a team to build a product, right? And that's no different for an open product than for anything else or any other company. You know, so that was really the name of the game in 2013 was, let's go from just Chad, you know, I'm not building Gidip, I'm building a team that's building Gidip, is something that I think. I think Kenneth, wasn't Kenneth on the call last year? I believe so, yeah, he was.

He brought up that quote I put out there that, yeah, this year we're, you know, I'm not building Gidip, I'm building a team that's building Gidip. And so that's what 2013 was about. And it worked. In January of this year, so January 2014, we had our first annual Gidip company retreat, which I hosted here at my house in Pittsburgh, outside of Pittsburgh, during the polar vortex. Nice timing.

The middle is, yeah, exactly. It's a horrible winter. We convinced we had a dozen people fly in. Is that your team, 12 people? That's the folks that traveled to Pittsburgh, right? So we had a wider team. I mean, it's like any open source project. You've got a core of people that are really committed,

and then you've got this much wider cloud of people that are interested, but it's a long tail. So I think at that point we probably had 60 or 70 people quote unquote on the team, which specifically means that they're listed on the team on Gidip. Gidip is funded on Gidip. And we have this teams feature where when you give money to Gidip, the question is, how do we split that? So we split that 70 ways. And so those 70 people are

kind of our wider, our wider base. And then out of that 70 people, a dozen of them came to Pittsburgh for our meetup in January. Yeah, so you know, that was that was kind of a, that was a milestone for us. That was a success, right? Like, yes, we've got a team. This is real. My wife's like, wait, there's people besides you that are working on Gidip, right? Because I do it all on the internet. She wouldn't see it in real life, right?

It's like, here's all these people in my house all of a sudden. They're real. She's not kidding around. People believe in this besides Chad. Yeah, people believe in this besides Chad. Yes, chat. Yeah. They're real. He's not kidding around. People believe in this besides Chad. Yeah. People believe in this besides Chad. Yes, exactly. I've always wondered at what your wife thinks of it because you're really public. So last year we kind of made fun of you in some degree for sharing your address and your phone number and, you know, the security issues that may come up from that, especially as you get more and more infamous with,

I mean, and to some degree, you're pretty open about your very opinionated ways and some don't agree with you, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, there haven't been any disasters as far as that goes this past year. Knock on wood, I guess. I mean, look, there's risks in life, you know, and you can be, I always think of the

nickel mine. Wasn't that the Amish shooting? Wasn't that nickel mine, Pennsylvania or whatever, right? It's like, you can be Amish, you can be living on the countryside, you know, totally disconnected, like not sharing, you know, like the least connected in public person, right? And still some nut job is going to bring a gun into your school and shoot all your kids, you know? So it's not like, I don't know, I'm not a statistician by training, but I don't know. I don't think my gut says it's not safer, uh, than not. Right. It's like the, what are the chances of, of having, you know, having somebody do you harm? You know, what, what, what causes that? What makes you more likely to, to be hurt than not?

And, you know, this is, this is a point at which I need to pause in the light of a conversation I've especially been having last night. I mean, there, you know, I'm a rich white male. I enjoy lots of privilege. And that's, that's my experience of being open on the internet is absolutely, what's the word, shaped by, by that, right? You know, if there's this, man, we're getting in deep right off the bat. So one of the things that's happened, one of the unexpected turn of events over the past year is that Gidip is for activists, right? Like we came out of the gate and we're like, Gidip is for open source, and we're going to fund open source on Gidip. And we're doing some of that. But the largest receivers on GitHub and everybody, you know, everybody, but, you know, the top receivers board on GitHub is activists, gender activists and feminist activists. Right.

So that was a left turn from, you know, from my point of view. It's kind of a head scratcher for me. It's like, you know, all right, cool. This is one of those cases where it's like, you know, you don't know how your product's going to be used. It's like your users drive your product, right? Right. And there's always those surprises in building a product. It's like, oh my gosh, I never anticipated it would be used this way,

but here it is being used this way. And I have anticipated that. I've always wanted for GitHub to grow beyond just open source, right? And it's done that. so that's definitely a success. But what it means is that I'm learning a lot, right? I'm getting lots of feedback because now, and actually last night was kind of where it started coming to a head. Like there's been this mounting tension a little bit, you know,

because there's all these activists using Gidip and being funded on it. There's been a little bit of a disconnect, you know, because I'm not a feminist. I'm not an activist. You know what I mean? It's like that hasn't been my, you know, driving concern on Gidip. And so, yeah, so I feel like we're just starting to, not just starting, but I'm, I'm, I'm looking for how to

establish a relationship with those users, right? Those people, those users of mine on GitHub, it's like, all right, um, let, let's talk, let's get to know one each other. Let's get to know one another. Let's get to know each other. Um, you know, let me understand where you're coming from and how you're using the platform, what your needs are on it and whatnot. And you can get to know me a little bit because as you said, I am, you know, leading a fairly opinionated online life in this way of doing open things, right? Open companies and open calls. You know, I love that we're live streaming this here and, and I'm very comfortable with that. You know, but I'm, I'm hearing a lot of different feedback. I'm trying to take that on board, and that's part of the adventure right now.

Yeah, it was interesting. I saw some, I think there was some retweeting going of some GitHub. I think even the GitHub account perhaps retweeted some criticism coming your way, and then I was surprised to find that the criticism was coming from one of the top receivers on your homepage. I love it, right? Yeah, and I was kind of like, oh, well, that's interesting. I think it's great.

You know, I mean, Shanley was the one I was talking to last night, and, yeah, she is one of the top receivers. And she's a very opinionated person in her own right and has a fairly brusque approach to online conversation. And I don't know. I don't know. It felt – yeah. It's – I don't know.

Well, you get into a situation where you can really – like you had said, you start to get up and even – let's maybe rewind a tiny bit to kind of give some foundation to some of the conversation we're having right now. To my understanding, you've started this to fund open source to some degree, so that's also a reason why it's called Gidip. Some people call it GitTip. It stems from Git, GitHub, open source movement. Definitely to an extent.

It started when I first bought the domain. I was like, oh my gosh, we need a tip jar for GitHub. I was thinking, I was sitting in my nice, cushy corporate job, totally bored out of my mind, and it was like, oh, I would love to just work on my web framework all day long, this Aspen web framework that I've got. What would I need to do? What if there were a tip jar on GitHub,

and then I would be freed up to work on open source stuff all day long? So that was the beginning of it and how I named it, Gitip, Git tip exactly, was how it started. Really quickly, I mean, I think I invented it right around this time, May 11th, and then launched it three weeks later, was the zero-width payday. And, you know, within those three weeks later was the zero with payday and you know within those three weeks even uh it it changed from being just uh just a tip jar for github to you know what this is a lot bigger

this could be a lot bigger i actually almost named it logs town yeah so logs town is the name of the indian village that i that is now present day Ambridge where I live. Right. Uh, you know, so it's just a, a local thing here. And so I bought the domains a few years ago, Logstown, ComNet, Norg, and you know, had those domains sitting around. So I was like, well, maybe I'll use this. I'll use Logstown. Then my brother-in-law's, I don't know, funny side story. My brother, my brother-in-law was like, no man, that, that makes me think I'm going to the washroom. He always calls it the washroom. So he makes me think I'm going to the washroom. He always calls it the washroom. So he makes me think I'm going to the washroom.

He's like, just stick with GitTip. GitTip is nice because it has like the I-T-T-I. It's like very parallel and everything. It's a nice name. He's not a geek at all. He's a scientist and a musician, but he's not a programmer necessarily, not an open source guy. Yeah, so he was like, just call it GitTip. It's okay.

I was like, all right. Well, he, you know, he didn't know anything about GitHub or anything, right? He just thought the name was, you know, cool and memorable or whatever. Yeah, and didn't like Logstown. So, right, but my point is that even by the time we launched, you know, I was already thinking that this is going to be bigger than open source,

you know, but that's, you're right, that's where it started. So now I like to say that github is related to github in the same way that wiki leaks is related to wikipedia yeah you know in other words they're not really connected at all but through this historical accident uh you know there's some a little bit of brand confusion going on there but i think there's some you have some signal signaling signaling towards that end on the homepage where it's who inspires you and there's a form and it's enter a Twitter username. Yeah.

And GitHub is in the select box, but it's not the first thing. Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, so it's awesome that, you know, that Shanley and Ash and everybody else, you know, not that they're not all programmers, but, you know but more folks start activism

that's great, that's perfect, that's what we want I want it to expand beyond open source and it's done that so that's a win in my view from the past year but yeah we are having some interesting conversations around the whole open company idea and what that means how you balance. Okay, so my goal with open companies, Gidip, we call it an open company,

meaning we share as much as possible, we charge as little as possible, and then we're funded on a pay-what-you-want basis on Gidip itself. And my driving motivation, open company is not an end in itself for me open company is part of this vision of living a life of gratitude and generosity you know i don't i don't want to hide my stuff i don't i don't want to i don't want to work on proprietary things i want to share the stuff i work on i want to give this stuff away for free that i work on you know just as a matter of principle and how i want to live my life i want to i want to give this stuff away for free that I work on, you know, just as a matter of principle and how I want to live my life. I want to share what I have as much as possible.

And, you know, so that's where I'm coming from with open companies. But then, you know, what Shanley was feeding back last night and I've heard from others is, you know, it's really threatening if you experience a lot of harassment online to think about. I have to sneeze. One sec. The first super loud sneeze on the changelog. That was an epic sneeze, wasn't it? I did manage to get my microphone away from my face. That's awesome.

Like a Looney Tunes cartoon. Sorry. There you go. Right. Um, right. So, uh, so what I'm hearing is, you know, there's, there's people for whom, uh, you know, the internet is a very much more threatening place than it is for me. Right. And you're getting lots of death threats and rape threats and whatnot. And that's really, you know, uh, terrible, right. That's horrible. Like, you know, goodness, sorry. And so, you know, for someone like that, the idea of putting even more online and, you know, exposing yourself even more, you know, obviously comes across as like a WTF, right? Yeah, you know, but that's the conversation we're having, I think.

So we're dancing around this idea of radical transparency. I think that's really what the phrase that was being used, and we even said you're infamous to some degree because not only have you had maybe some abrasions here, but also with journalists that don't really appease to the way you want to operate of being open. So you've kind of had some angst and some abrasions with other people too. So it's not just your user base, it's others too, because you want to be radically transparent about who you are and what you do with your company,

what you're doing for the community. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't, okay. So I don't experience it as abrasions, right? I mean, it's an opportunity cost. i um turned down tech crunch that was kind of kicked a lot of this off you know i got an interview uh opportunity with tech crunch and i had just been starting to experiment with uh i think i'd started using the phrase open company at that point but you know hadn't started really pushing open calls and and whatnot and you know decided to heard from tech crunch and you know said all right i'm gonna go it. Let's do this as an open call. And it's an opportunity cost, right? Because like, I know that there's a pretty good chance you're gonna say no, right? And it's my decision to live with the consequences. They say no, and I don't get an interview in tech crunch.

And so like, I'm fine with that, right? Like, I'm fine not getting interviewed in tech crunch. So I don't, you know, I'm not, I don't know. And then more recently, Jason Calacanis reached out to me on email, the angel investor, reached out to me on email, and podcaster in his own right, et cetera, entrepreneur. He reached out to me on email and said, you know, would you like to have a, you know, I'm interested in having a conversation with you.

And I said, all right, great, let's do it as a hangout, right? And, you know, I was working with another person setting it up and kind of got the ball rolling. And then Jason was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, not cool. It's like, all right, crap. I just shot myself in the foot again. It's an opportunity cost. And it's an opportunity cost that I do feel.

But at the end of the day, it's a decision that I'm making, you know, in full knowledge that it's, you know, this is the path I've kind of chosen for myself, kind of painted myself in this corner. You know, but, you know, Gidip is still growing well enough and we're still doing well enough that, you know, I haven't felt fundamentally that it's the wrong decision yet. I think it's still the way I'm going, but I am trying to hear these other voices like Shanley's especially in that side of things. Because it's not an absolute. It's not an end in itself. The purpose, in my mind, what I'm trying to do with open companies is bust open governments and corporations. I look at government and I look at corporations. I look at Snowden, right? That's something that happened in the past year, you know, since we talked last.

I look at Snowden, I look at the NSA, and, you know, and WikiLeaks, you know, in their own time. And, you know, that's crappy. I don't like that, right? So what am I going to do about it? You know, my activism in this regard, you know, I see that. And my answer is, um, I'm going to try and live my own life in a way that's, you know, that that's not closed in secret. Right. I'm going to try and live, I'm going to try and create the system in that, I don't know, in, in, in which Snowden is a moot point, right. You know, in which there's nothing to leak in the first place, pretty much, you know what I mean? So, you know, which isn't for everybody, and that's fine.

But like, that's, that's where I'm coming from with this, right? It's not transparency for its own sake. And it, you know, it can come across kind of cartoonish on the internet, because that's the internet, right? Like, that's, you know, that's memes, it's like boiling stuff down to their, you know, caricatured essentials. But, you know, obviously it's more sophisticated than that, right? Like I've got people on my team that don't do video calls for one reason or another, you know? Well, we have a daily stand up every day at noon, you know, that we use Google Hangouts for and we live stream, right? So I've got this, you know, quite apart from kind of the high level, abstract level discussion I was having with Shanley last night. Like there's real concrete realities in my life and running my business that are already, you know, that have already called into question the absoluteness of this open ideal.

And, you know, have been forcing, not forcing, because I want it, right? It's like we're trying to nuance this. I don't want, you know, open company isn't a cartoon. It I want it, right? It's like we're trying to nuance this. I don't want, you know, Open Company isn't a cartoon. It's a reality, right? I want it to be real. And that means taking into account, you know, the sophistication of it and the nuance of it. And we're already dealing with that. So in the case of the stand-ups and people not wanting to be on video for various reasons, that's fine.

So we just take their stand-up report in IRC and we read it on the video and they watch the video from wherever, right? And so then it's not violating their own terms of privacy that they've negotiated with the internet. Because we each have to negotiate our own relationship with the internet. And that looks different for different people. And GitHub and open companies are not about railroading people

into one single right way, dogmatic way to do it. I'm saying, look, I am privileged. And as much as possible, I'm going to share my privilege with as many people as possible. You know, that's what I'm trying to do here. And, you know, if you're coming out from a different point of view, I'm going to respect you. I'm not going to violate your confidentiality, your privacy. We do have private channels. Support at github.com is a confidential channel. You know, my phone number, that's a confidential channel. Well, except for the NSA, right?

You know, but... They listen to their users. You got to give them credit. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, but, you know, I don't violate confidentiality, you know. And when I do, that's a bug, and I try to apologize for it. Let's pause the show for just a minute and give a shout out to our sponsor, CodeShip. CodeShip is a hosted continuous deployment service that just works. You can easily set up continuous integration for your application today in just a few steps and

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So, you know, I have to admit on that front there, because there was at least two times, probably like you, I'm an idea guy. I try and think, and Jeremy, you can back me up on this. I try to think outside the box. I try to be a dreamer to some degree. And my wife is probably, if she's listening to this, which she's not live, but maybe she listens to it later. I don't know why.

But she's probably thinking like, absolutely, he's a dreamer. I want to align what we're doing with the change log and open source and support and just in general encouragement to the community and the beautiful things that are coming from it. There's been several times I want to chat with you and I'm like, yeah, I don't, I don't mind making it open. It's just, it's so early. The idea is so fresh. It, you know, I'm just not quite, you know, cool with being so open like you are. And I hesitated to reach out cause I thought, you know, you'd be'd be like yeah we can't have that conversation because i have to do it on google hangouts oh this just got real adam it's just got real stack this is great because you're right yeah

you and i we've interacted a bit i i don't remember the email i'm like hey we talk and i never responded because i was like we got to do it open i'm like i just i just couldn't get past it and i got busy again so you know there's that span of time there. So I can appreciate someone extreme like Shanley in her case where she's getting threats. And obviously there's certain, like you said, negotiated privacy terms you have with the internet for someone like her and her position

and someone even like my position still having reservations, you know? Yeah, yeah. And what I want to say is, dude, I love reservations, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And what I want to say is, dude, I love you, you know? And like, I'm, I'm not out to force you to do anything that you're not comfortable doing. Right. And you know, it, it seems like where that leaves us is a bit of an opportunity cost on, on both of our sides. Right. It's like, um, and there's, so there's some, you know, there's some sadness on my end for that. It's like, well, you know, yeah, it would be nice to work together. Right.

But I've, I don't know. We have similar interests, I would say, don't you think? Yeah, absolutely. Right. So there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of overlap. And so, you know, but look, it's a tricky thing all around, right? Like, and, you know, we've each got our life outside the internet too, right? Like there's plenty of stuff that you're not finding out about me on the internet. You know, like, like I'm, I'm bigger than wit 537 and, you know, you're bigger than Adam Stack. Like we've all got these fuller, richer lives. And, you know, part of where I'm coming from is like, uh know, I want to I want to privilege that a little bit, too.

You know, it's like, look, like it's it's maybe OK if you know, if if we don't get to pursue this together, because we've each you know, our lives are abundantly rich. Right. It's like we've all got plenty of relationships and plenty of things to work on, plenty of projects on the internet and fun stuff to do. And then, you know, families and, and, and kids and, you know, and dogs and cats and, you know, just like stuff we love doing. Right. And I don't know, life, life is abundantly rich and, uh, I don't know, I can only feel so bad for so long for like, for losing an opportunity over that because it's, you know know because life is so rich and because it's i don't know those are those are kind of the terms i've negotiated for myself is like part of it is that it is a limiting factor right i think i actually say this i posted a a blog post about my interview policy or a web page i put it up on my website right

it's like here's my interview policy and in there, you know, maybe I'm being narcissistic. Like we all have to manage our time somehow. And this, you know, this turns out to be one way to do it. Right. It's like it's I don't know, man. If there was if there's something if there's like a real if there's a real safety concern or a security concern, of course, I'm going to take any phone call and keep it private and confidential. Right. So, you know, if you, if you really, you know, if anybody, I don't want to, I don't want anyone to get the impression that's a baseline, right? I'm talking out loud. I'm blabbing. Don't worry about it. Good. It's okay. Am I going in the right direction? No, yeah. You know, there's like, so, so it has to be, there have to be these tiers to it, right? It's like, so fundamental foundational, if there's a security concern or a safety concern or a personnel issue in the case of people actually working on GitHub, like a sensitive personnel issue, I'm handling that privately. Like no questions asked, give me a call, you know, private message me, you know, show up my house. I mean, I've had, you know, yes. Yeah. Get up collaborators, show up my house. Right. And like, you don't hear about that on the internet until

just now. Right. Like, and that's like in a bad way or in a good way. Good way. Like, hey, can we hack? Sure. Okay. Come on in. Well, yeah. Like, so I don't want to get into too much detail. Right. But like the point is that there is this baseline. I am willing to do private conversations for that kind of stuff, that kind of really sensitive stuff. Then, you know, then there's this middle ground, which is like the kind of stuff that, you know, you and I are talking about, right? Like, you know, projects that would be fun to do together, you know, your, uh, you know, your own relationships with privacy on the internet that you negotiate for yourself is, is different than mine. Like you've got the setting, you know, you've got the dial tuned to a different place than I do. Um, you know, but it's, it's not like you're in danger. It's not like you're like, Chad, somebody is coming after me on get up and I need your help. Right. Um, you know, so in that

case, yeah, man, I'm, I'm a little sad about it, but it's, you know, it's an opportunity. I'm sorry, man. So like release early, release often. He's not going to budge. I know. Right. But that like, that's the hard thing is like, I love you. Right. Like I want to work together with you and with everyone else. And you know, this is, this is what I'm bringing to the table. You know, it's like, uh, it, you know, the reason I'm doing it this way, like, you know, I've got my reasons for doing it this way. Just like you have your reasons for doing it that way. So it, I don't know, I guess, I guess at the end of the day, there's an agree to disagree. You know, and I, and I can respect that. That's, that's where I was like, you know what? I don't

want to, I could have responded and said, no, you're a jerk. Come on, let's just talk offline. But I didn't want to force you. because I know what you're trying to do. I know your mission with GitHub and I know where your heart's at. So I didn't want to question why you were doing it. I figured we can delay the conversation potentially. And no harm, no foul. I'm not upset with you. I just wanted to point that out that if you've got direct users of GitHub that have an issue with, to some degree, from a security standpoint,

like you mentioned, then you have someone, to some degree, from a security standpoint, like you mentioned. Then you have someone like me who's maybe from a business standpoint or maybe from just a community standpoint, how can we work together? And I don't want to air out the laundry right away. I wouldn't mind, obviously, making everything open. We're about open source, and this show goes on air once a week, and this one in particular is live. So we have no problem with what we say going out to the Internet

and being documented forever. right right yeah and so one of the things we've discovered is that the real world is kind of a pain in the ass for open companies you know because it's like unless everybody's wearing google glass you know how are you going to record your your meeting that's face to face right um it's i don't know so but at the same time that, that, that scopes it, or there's, you know, there's only so much real life interaction that you can do. And that provides, I don't know, like if you and I run into each other at a conference or something, we end up going out for drinks or, you know, going out and talking like, that's great. That's perfect. Right. I'm, I'm i'm not you know i don't not

go to conferences because they're not broadcast live on the internet you know the whole time i'm there right your preference is reality tv and if not if it's not available then no problem well i i've sort of i like the balance right i, you know, kind of what I've come to is like, I'm not going to be able to make any decisions about stuff, you know, in a, in an offline face-to-face conversation, right? You know, that, that's part of what it comes down to is like anything that's actually going to move the needle on Gidip, anything that's actually going to be a decision that we make, like I might have a conversation with you about it privately, but if it's actually going to be a decision that we make, like I might have a conversation with you about it privately, but if it's actually going to manifest as something real on the internet,

on Gidip, then it's going to have to go through the public vetting process in a GitHub issue or whatever. You know what I mean? So it's kind of, yeah, I don't know. I see a distinction there between the interpersonal level where it's like I can only interact with so many people in a day because i'm like a you know a bony gut bag that like walks around in meat space right and like that that puts its own limits on what you can accomplish in gut bag space and that's uh that's appropriate right you know because phenomenologically like i am a person i want to

interact with other people um you know and And the Internet's this sort of weird ether where you can interact with a billion people very tenuously. And kind of both of those together are part of, I don't know, or they're both part of the equation for me. I don't know. This is where it gets more nuanced, right? It's like it's not a simple open companies, everything has to be open transparency, radical transparency.

Like, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. This is where it gets more interesting. Right, right. And it's, so I think we've been on this particular topic for a bit and it's not in a bad way, but it's, so the reason I think it's really important is because it's at the heart of you and you're at the heart of GitHub. So it's at the heart of your story. So anyone who's listening to this knows that you're to some degree, radically transparent. You have a open company initiative. You're leading the charge in some way. And in some ways you're in uncharted territories. I mean, in many, many ways, right. This is brand new. I think you've had open

company.biz, which now redirects to some other domain that is the, I think, so the ideas evolved to opencompany.org. And I think you've even merged some relationships and whatnot. So. Yeah. So we launched this open company initiative with balance payments and a couple others and, and it's, it's small and we're just kind of, you know, seeing where it goes, but the idea is let's get together companies that are interested in these kinds of themes and you know, and just talk to one another and share experience and whatnot. So it's manifesting as an annual, looks like it's going to manifest as an annual event. We did it a couple months ago in San Francisco and we'll probably do it again next year.

Yeah, it's a pretty light touch there, but yeah. So it sounds like you have two kind of tenets of an open company. The second of which, which you said is charge as little as possible. And I guess that is the one that to me doesn't seem as much as open in a sense of transparency, but maybe it's open in a different way. Can you speak to why that's, you know, number two on the list of things that an open company should do? Yeah. So one of the things we've been saying in the open company conversations is transparency is sharing information and openness is sharing control.

Okay. So when I publish, you know, when Buffer publishes their salaries publicly, that's sharing information. That's transparency. Right. Right. that's sharing information. That's transparency. When I open up my issue tracker to your feedback and you can come and create issues on my issue tracker like Balance does with their dashboard, for example, that's sharing control.

That's letting users, in some ways, this is stuff that's done with user voice and get satisfaction, whatever, that kind of stuff too. But sharing control. And so for me, the charge as little as possible thing is part of sharing control. Because really, from that initial blog post a year and a half ago or two years ago or whatever, when I put out the initial blog post, GitHub is an open company, I said it was three things. Share as much as possible, charge as little as possible, and don't compensate employees.

So that's kind of, it's evolving, and we haven't come up with a really clear articulation of how it's evolved. But basically the idea around money is like, I'm even giving, I'm giving the users control over my money too, right? It's like not only can you determine which way the product is going but you're going to determine how much money you make from it worth to yeah exactly you're

going to determine how much it's worth you you're making your full living on get up right pretty much man yeah so that that was like that was part of this two-year window is like all right is get up going to reach the bottom rung of sustainability within two years, you know? So my runway is about done. Um, you know, the, the good news is we do have Ash Dryden who's, you know, up to like 800 bucks a week now and, you know, advertises on her profile that she's 95%, like 95% of her income comes from Gidip. So clear answer. Yes. You can make a living on get it no questions asked done ash is doing it um there's other people that are that are trying as well you know obviously not as successfully as ash um yeah i i pull what four or five hundred bucks a week from it between what's given to me

personally what i take from the get up team um which is almost enough it's not great i was gonna say you have four kids and a wife you have four kids and a wife. I have four kids and a wife and a mortgage. Yeah, so I've been burned down. So I've been living off of Gidip and savings and welfare for the past couple of years. And the savings are about done. And yeah, so we're still have a week or two to figure out. A week or two?

What happens next? Are you being serious with a week or two? Or is that a joke? Oh, no, no, no. Well, I was saying a week or two to that June 1st two-year deadline. But yeah, that's definitely a conversation I'm having with my wife right now. The one question is, do I still want to work on GitHub? And the answer is yes.

I believe in this. I think it's going well. And the second question is, all right, how do we make that work for the next few years? And so we're sorting that out. We listed our house on Airbnb. So I've got our first visitors showing up tonight. But then I'm like, all right, but I want to do pay what you want. I don't want to, you know, if I'm going to get some money from outside of Gidip, I don't want it to, you know, like I don't to get some money from outside of GitHub, I don't want it to, you know,

like, I don't want to charge people anymore for stuff that this is, I just wrote, uh, an exposition of our mission statement, which is on the building GitHub website. There's so many things to catch you guys up on. So these are topics we want to hit. So don't, don't, I mean, I want to, I wanted to pause this for one second before we go there, if you don't mind. Two years ago when july 12 2012 when you first launched get up you wrote a post i believe in get up and in there you said you know you said lots of stuff obviously but one of the key things i pulled out to earmark for the show is just to kind of just put some truth there and some fact and this is a good time to mention

that is your goal at the time was 2000 a week. You're at just under 500 a week. And we're obviously having this conversation. So everyone's kind of caught up, but you know, you know, that was a goal of yours and you're kind of, you're, you know, you're 25% there, but by this time next year. So when did I post this? July 12th, 2012. Yeah. So I didn't hit that July 12th, 2013. We're coming up on July 2014. Right. So one of the things we've learned is that Gidip is a market for caring. What I mean by that is, you know, I was making whatever at my old job, but I had to do my old job, you know? And so the question is, how much would the internet have to pay you to quit your job

and just not do anything? Like, do whatever you wanted, right? Like, is it 50% of what you were making before? Is it 80% of what you were making before? You know? Like, what's the difference between your salary now and what the rest of us would need to pay you to just quit your job and do whatever you wanted? Right? Be unfettered. So for me, that's turned out to be a fairly high percentage, you know, like, about 80%. You know, I'm making 20% of what I was making at my old job, roughly speaking,

and I love it. I wouldn't go back. So that $2,000 figure I put out two years ago, I was actually still employed. I think I finished up that job at the end of July. So I was still employed at that old job, and that was driving that number. But then the question has become, what's it worth to me?

You know, what's it worth to me to not, to have that no strings attached. I can wake up in the morning and work on stuff because I want to work on it and not because I'm chasing a paycheck. Cause there's, there's value in that too. I mean, let's pause there for a second. Cause you can make an income and be strapped to a job and be not fruitful for your family, not fruitful for the internet or the rest of the world, however you want to pitch that. But there's some extreme flexibility. There's some extreme freedom in the lifestyle you've chosen that is separated from money.

And I think from a first world country standpoint, there's many, many listeners to the changelog. Third world countries, first world countries with many different many many listeners to the changelog third world countries first world countries with many different hardships that I can't even imagine but I'm in a privileged lifestyle and this is how it is but they don't always pin back to just money our economy in this world

we all interact around money and that's what we sometimes derive value from, identity from and you've chosen a different lifestyle that has some freedom in it that maybe you don't make as much money, which is what the rest of the world thinks is value. And we need to make your lifestyle, but you've chosen a different path. Yeah, that's, that's true, man. And that's, that's, that's what I mean. That's what it's a market for, right? It's like, that's the question get it puts to you is like, what would we have to

pay you? What the rest of us have to pay you? Would we have to pay you the $200,000 you're making right now at your Silicon Valley job? Or could we pay you $50,000 and you'd be happy and productive? That's how that's evolved. I'm no longer expecting $2,000 a week from Get It. The reason I wanted to put up there is because you're a dreamer, right? And that was probably a goal, but it was a wish. And now we're in some reality and you're making some serious choices for your family as well as for Gidip.

So I just wanted to put that out there to see what your thoughts know, to reflect back on what your wishes and dreams were originally. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so, you know, so we're asking those questions right now. We're trying to figure out, you know, it's hard to lower expenses from where we're at right now. You know, so we're trying to figure out how to up the income. You know, so my wife's been working the past couple months, you know, just doing stuff for a friend, nothing long term, but maybe, you know, maybe she needs to get a job in the fall when the kids go back to school, you know,

our kids are starting to get older. I mean, this is all the personal stuff that I don't usually talk about on Twitter constantly, but, you know, I'm happy to discuss it. You know, like I said, we're renting out rooms on Airbnb. Okay, so the thing I wanted to say about that is that I have the rooms listed at the Airbnb minimum, and I'm saying pay what you want, right? So I'm still looking for ways. Another thing that Gidip has gotten into

or has evolved into is this idea of the pay-what-you-want model, right? Humble Bundle is really good at it. They've kind of proven that it can work. And there's definitely people studying it, right? Like this is a thing. Panera has tried opening a few pay-what-you-want stores, so they're experimenting with it.

So I think pay-what-you-w want is a real thing that's going to happen. You know, get it with individuals is very much patronage, right? So I kind of think of get it as being segmented into individuals and then companies, groups, you know, organizations, whatever, like that's two, two segments. So for individuals, it's patronage, you know, uh, I love you. I love what you're doing. Take this money and run with it. You don't need, you know, you don't need to know it's for me. It's anonymous go. Um, but then you've got like the Gidip team or, you know, these hacker spaces like pseudo room that are using it now or model, model view culture, Shanley's, uh, publication, you know, there, there's these teams, there's these aggregations

that are using Gidip. And there, I don't know, I think we're going to end up seeing that it evolves into something a little different than the patronage model is with individuals. Even the Open Company Org, the Open Company

Initiative, if we want to fund that on Gidip, well, it'd be nice to know who the people are that are giving money to the Open Company Initiative because then you can call them your members, right? So we might need to relax some of those constraints around who can see who's giving what to whom. But then also I think we want to find ways to use Gidip

to support a pay-what-you-want model. Shields, Shields.io, the little readme badges. I ended up acquiring... Did this happen last time? I acquired the Shields. Yeah, you acquired... I was wondering, was there... I didn't pay attention to the finer details,

but I know that you had some kind of... This goes back to what you said a little bit earlier in the show where you kind of had some, maybe some, to some degree, private conversations. And then you had an open call about the merge. And I think you even did like a fist bump virtually, right? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, Olivier and I, we met at Waza last year at Heroku's developer conference beginning in 2013.

And didn't really, you know, I found out that he was working on Shields, but we didn't really have any conversation about it. But then people wanted it for Gidip. You know, people wanted a little Gidip badge to put on their readmes. You know, and Shields at that point was just some Photoshop files and a design spec. There was nothing dynamic.

There was no server implementation, no server API, no web API for it or anything. And Git, for our implementation, we needed something dynamic because we don't have just three states of badges, you know, pass, fail, build, pass, fail kind of thing. We wanted it to be more complex. We wanted it to be dynamic.

So I ended up getting involved in writing an implementation of that and then finding out, I don't know. It was interesting because it was an exercise in cat herding you know what's what's an easier project what's an easier weekend project than hacking together an api server for readme badges you know i mean it's like you know it's something that you know any of us could do in an afternoon pretty much and so a lot of us did and so we ended up up with all these different implementations cropping up.

And the genius thing we found to do, and it was Nathan Youngman, I think his name is. He's up in Canada, and he's a Go hacker and whatnot. And somehow we had the org badges, the GitHub org named badges. Somebody had grabbed this. And Nathan talked to this fellow and this fellow agreed to let us use this badges organization. And we just started gathering all of the different repos. So I think we have like 10 or 12 in there now.

If you go to github.org slash badges, let's see what's on there now. You know, one, two, three, four. Yeah, so there's like over a dozen of these repos. A lot of them duplicated effort, you know. But the pattern was we brought somebody in and we didn't take control of their project because, of course, the permissions don't change on any of those.

It's just now it's under the badges repo, badges org instead of your personal GitHub account. But it's still yours and you're still in charge of it and you're still running it however you want, but it's shown to be part of this bigger effort. And that really was a key step in bringing everyone to the table, and then saying, all right, here's the range of possibilities, you know, who actually has the energy to do this, and which way, you know, and what's, you know, now that we've seen what all

the possibilities for implementing this are, like, what's going to be our way forward. And it's been a success as far as that goes. You know, there's a fella, Aspadreen is his GitHub handle. And he's running with it. So he's the day-to-day maintainer. You know, he wrote the current implementations and node implementation, and he runs and maintains that project. You know, but it had an input from the rest of the community and kind of, I don't know, it was interesting. I had never had an experience before like that. And, you know, I want to hear, I mean, I mean, do you have other examples of when that kind of thing has happened? Because I thought it was pretty remarkable, just the way that we brought together lots of different effort and kind of got it funneled in one direction. Do you know of other projects that have evolved like that?

Nothing that comes to mind for me. You know? I was just thinking, yeah. Me neither. You guys? I was just thinking, yeah. Me neither. You guys are the open source. You've got the lay of the land in front of you. I don't know. I thought it was really interesting.

We're keeping up just like everybody else. I mean, I was actually just talking to a listener yesterday, Daniel, while I was on, and he's from Ottawa, Canada, and he told me about Famo.us, this JavaScript front-end framework that's making interfaces easier. And I'm like, dude, I didn't even know about that. And he's like, oh, I thought you would have known about it because I'm like, we literally are just keeping up just like you.

We just happen to be a part of making sure everyone's kept up, for lack of better terms. Yeah, blogging about it all, podcasting. Let's pause the show for just a minute and give a shout-out to our sponsors, TopTow. We've been working with TopTow for quite a while and i'm thrilled about this relationship i think they have one of the most coolest most unique ways to basically connect businesses who need really awesome elite engineers and also connect really awesome elite engineers to companies who have awesome work to do. So, I mean, that's the biggest statement I can even give for them. But we thought it would make sense to take some time to circle back and talk to some

of our listeners who have applied to TopTile and have been accepted because only about two to three percent of the engineers who apply actually make it past their strict elite engineering process because they want the best, simply that. So Daniel Lauzon, a longtime fan and listener of the changelog, is now living the dream as an elite engineer at TopTal. And I say living the dream because he's now able to have 100% control of the types of projects and technology he's working on, as well as the rate he wants to charge. So Daniel earns 100% of his income as a TopTal engineer and wanted me to pass on his seal of approval, so to speak,

of the TopTal experience. And for those of you out there who are freelancing or would like to test out freelancing or try out a no-risk freelance-like project while you maintain your full-time position to kind of mitigate that risk. You've got to check out TopTal. T-O-P-T-A-L.com.

If you think you have what it takes, head to TopTal.com slash developers to get started and tell them the changelog sent you. Right. So Shields relates to Gidip in that the idea was, let's fund this on Gidip. You know, this is going to take some amount of effort going forward. So let's figure out a pay what you want model, right? So like everybody's got these GitHub, you know, these GitHub read me badges. They're all over the place. Every developer uses them. You know, what if everyone who used one of these chipped 10 cents a week in to the maintenance of the service that's behind it right as one uh user you know segment and then the other is the vendors such as travis and coveralls and etc etc the ones

that are actually uh you know providing the the badges the services the badges relate to you know maybe they chip in 100 bucks a week or something you know what i mean so it's like you've got the the companies coming together and giving you've got the users coming together and giving a lot, a little, and, and then, you know, we've got this funded. So now Aspadreen is freed up to work on this and make it even better. And maybe we can bring some other people in the mix and make it happen even faster. So that, that we haven't gotten over the hump on yet. I haven't, I haven't really put a lot of effort into that just because I've been traveling and doing other stuff and that hasn't been a priority for me, but it's kind of on the back of my mind.

So now that we've kind of settled the technology side of it, let's figure out the funding side of it. But that, I don't know, so that gets into a couple other things. Let me frame this by saying, and we're at 11.53. How long are we going today?

I'm going to think we're going to skip the final questions besides the call to arms. So we're going to skip the normal questions we do, which takes about 15 minutes. So let's say another 12 minutes. Is that cool for you, Jared? Okay. Yep.

Okay. Right. So what I've been learning, I think one of the themes is over the past two years, I come out of the open source world. I come at this with an open source mindset, and that's a very definite culture, right? Building a company and building a product means integrating and working with people coming from much different cultures, right? So, for example, visual designers, right?

Related to open source, related to development, but it's kind of its own thing, you know? So I've been on this effort this year to try and bring design into Gidip, right? To try and breathe with both lungs is how I've been thinking about it, you know? Like, so we can really deliver a world-class product. It's been challenging to interface with designers and to figure out how do designers fit in an open source culture. That's been a challenge, you know? Same thing with journalists, you know? um, same thing, same thing with journalists, you know, how, how does this open model, uh, relate to journalism? Uh, we actually on the

open company initiative, uh, uh, we, we did an experiment where we tried to bring in journalists. So we had, um, a woman named Bronwyn Kloon, who's a, uh, columnist for the guardian. And we were like, all right, let's try this experiment where you're writing content for us, but somehow, you know, it's funded through Gidip, and so, you know, it was this little experiment in open journalism or whatever, right? Didn't really go anywhere, and part of that was, you know,

I saw it as kind of a culture clash, right? Like the culture of journalism is was, you know, I saw it as kind of a culture clash, right? Like the culture of journalism is not, you know, is not the culture of open source necessarily. That's two. Number three is, you know, Shanley and, you know, everything we're hearing about last night, not necessarily a fit with the open source culture I come from. You know, perhaps corrective to it in some ways. And then a fourth one that I'll bring up is investors. This is tying together a few themes here. We started talking very early two years ago,

had a conversation with Andy Weissman, who's from Union Square Ventures. We had a long conversation pretty early after Gidip launched. Where do investors fit, right? If Gidip is funded on Gidip, we'd charge as little as possible. You know, we don't compensate our employees. Like, what's the role of the investor in this new, you know, this trail that we're blazing? Didn't have an answer for a couple years.

And then, actually, when I heard from Jason, whenever it was, last week, I guess, maybe it wasn't this week, last week, it occurred to me that now our Teams feature, which I forget, I don't know, we were maybe just launching it a year ago, but we've got this Teams feature now, which is a whole other thing,

and we'll have to talk about that next year because it's too big for now. But it's awesome. It's actually one of the most important things we're doing on Gidip because it's how we say it's not just about being a rock star with 20,000 Twitter followers that's not the only way to make money on Gidip, you can be somebody who just does really good work and is behind the scenes you can join a team and the team is pulling the money in on the pay what you want model, right? And then, you know, and you get a part of that. So, you know, because we've got

that teams feature, now, we may have a way to, you know, to bring investors into it. But then you're getting, you know, then it's then it's business. I don't know, then you're talking about marketing again, right? It's like, how do you bring marketing into this? How do you? How do you, I mean, that's where we're at with Shield. It's like, so now we need the marketer to come in and say, here's the website we're going to build, you know, and drive that end of it, the business side of it, which is, I don't know, so I feel like all of these roles that we're used to, you know, all these roles that we already have, have some future in this, you know, all these roles that we already have, have, have some future in this, you know, thing

that we're discovering together, right? And I don't know exactly what those look like yet, but we're having a lot of fun finding out as we go along. You seem to be every new hurdle you get past or every new, i guess roadblock blocker uh you find a new one you know from the like you know all these it just seemed like each new challenge gets uh you know has another challenge right behind it and i don't want to be discouraging what to say this but i i sometimes wonder in myself how much more steam you particularly have left in your engine because you were 80 of the fuel behind get up you know yeah i have a lot of steam man i have tons of steam what i need is a little more money you know if i had you know if we can figure out how to get an angel investor in here and you know give us a little breathing room yeah i don't know maybe like

one of our guys working on the team moved to Nicaragua. So he quit his job and moved to Nicaragua so he could lower his burn rate and, you know, work on get it full time. That's for sure. Yeah. Right. That's humbling. That's like, so it isn't just Chad. Yeah. Like that's the exciting thing. It's like we do have people. I'm not the only one working on full time. In fact, we're supposed to have a stand-up in a couple minutes here with the team. So it's not – the good news is it's not just Chad. We do have a team. I have people handling support, frontline support, and then they escalate to me if we need to.

So the pieces are coming together. It's just – it's chicken and egg, and we're boiling the ocean, and it just takes a little longer than usual. Let me ask you this. Sure. Give me a moment to set this up because it might be kind of just a long setup. But are you familiar with Patreon, which seems to be – Oh, my gosh. I was just about to bring Patreon into this, and I was like, I don't need to do that.

Okay. Yeah, let's go there. Let's go there. Okay, I'm going to go there briefly. Just because you're talking about the patronage model, and I just remember there was another website doing patronage, and I've been on their website kind of comparing, contrasting Patreon and Gidip. And they seem to have more steam. They have a few bigger names in the arts, especially in podcasting and kind of online media, people making $11,000 a month via the patronage model. And I'm trying to think to myself, what's the difference between where you're at?

And I don't know their whole backstory. Maybe they're older. I'm guessing they have funding. They have funding. So they're not setting the plows deep. They're not funded on their own platform. They skim off the top. So they're not setting the plows deep.

So they're, you know, it's not... Making it easier on themselves. Well, yeah. Another way to easier on themselves um well yeah another way to say that yeah it would be another way to say it you know so you know their background is um you know jack conti we did a call jack and i and uh and uh and len kendall from sent up and lenas from uh from flatter we did a call the four of us uh it was like two weeks after patreon launched or something right so it was maybe it of us, uh, it was like two weeks after Patreon launched or something. Right. So it was, it maybe hadn't even launched yet. It was like really early in their cycle and their life cycle. And, uh, I don't know. Right. And then, and ever since then I've been

watching, uh, Google trends, you know, I'll go to Google trends and look at, get up in Patreon. It's like, all right. So that's what a hockey stick looks like. God damn it. Right. And so I get so burned, man. It's like, why, why is that not us? And, and I get really discouraged when I look at it from that point of view. Right. This is, I think I mentioned this at the beginning of the call and this is what I had in mind. Right. Like I get really discouraged when I look at the Google trend search for Patreon and get it because Patreon is hockey sticked. Right. And people are coming to me and being like, Hey, do you know about Patreon? Like my non-tech friends are like, do you know about Patreon?

It's like, yes, I know. Yes, I know. Well, I didn't bring it up in order to do that to you. Well, it's still good. But let me ask you this. The other thing I noticed on their homepage is like featured in TechCrunch. And I started thinking about your situation with TechCrunch.

Yeah. And then I asked myself. They're playing that game, man. They're playing that game. I asked myself this. They've got $2 million of capital, right? They took investment. Like they have two founders.

The one guy is Jack, who's the front man that everybody sees because he's the YouTube star, right? Right. So he's already plugged into this scene. YouTube stars have fans. Open source programmers don't have fans. So it's like he's already plugged into a scene and tapped into a market and speaking the language of a culture of this crew that has fans and has reach beyond what I do. Right. So that's what Jack's bringing the table. And his friend, Sam, I think it is, I don't remember.

But his co-founder is the technical co-founder who's a serial co-founder who's, you know, already had, you know, two previous companies that he's done. They're in Silicon Valley. They're in San Francisco. You know, they're playing the game straight down the middle. You know what I mean? It's like, you know, and they're in Silicon Valley, they're in San Francisco, you know, they're playing the game straight down the middle. You know what I mean? It's like, you know, and they're, yes. And so featured in tech crunch and wired and blah, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Like, and this is what it looks like. So I don't know. So I kicked myself cause I'm like, do I really, I hit this a week or two ago. It was like, do I really believe in get up again? You know, like it's coming back. It's more, it's more, uh, I'm now hypothesizing that perhaps,

you know, you would have been in TechCrunch. Maybe you would have had an investment if it wasn't for the open strategy. And so my question framing all this is, is GitHub's success more important or is your open radical transparency more important to you, Chad? Good question. I mean I'm just – Boy, it's really hard. I'm hypothesizing that that's what's holding it back. It might not be what's holding it back, but it is.

So to me, they're the same, right? Like Gidip is open company. Like Gidip for me is this idea that I can wake up in the morning and I can give. I can give. I can live out of a place of gratitude and generosity, and I can give freely of my labor and my resources without asking anything in return. Right. And that is not what Patreon is building. And so we're not even competitors when you look at it that way. Like, so in my view, it's like, we're not even competitors, you know, like if, if Patreon wants to compete with me, then they need to be funded on their

own platform and it needs to be no strings attached gifts you know and then i'll just go you know work on their platform like i can't work on their platform they could come work on mine because i'm totally open i couldn't go work on their platform like i that's that's it's apples and oranges when i really get down to it you know so yeah i i don't separate there's the open company thing from from gidip yeah that's where we're going. I don't know. Who knows? Maybe a year from now I'll just be, well, so this is what we need to get. So what would I have done instead of, we'll do these quickly. What would I have done instead of Gidip?

What would I be doing if I wasn't doing Gidip? Oh, man. I was so ready to just give up on the internet and go move in with the Amish yesterday, but we worked through that. I would be Amish if I could. That's what I would do. Short answer there. My hero is still Guido van Rossum,

the creator of PyCon, Python, and PyCon, I guess, by extension. I got to, actually with Kenneth, I texted Kenneth. I hadn't seen him, hadn't really sat down with him for a couple of conferences. And I said, Kenneth, let's get together for supper. He said, okay, cool. Let me see if that works out with the other folks I'm with.

And it ended up being me and Kenneth and Mike and Madi from Ottawa and Guido. The five of us went out to dinner together. And so I ended up getting to have dinner with Guido. And it was like, hi, I'm Chad. I'm Guido. The five of us went out to dinner together. I ended up getting to have dinner with Guido and it was like, hi, I'm Chad, I'm Guido. So I got to actually meet him after a decade of doing Python stuff, which is pretty special. And he's still my hero. I like that guy. He's doing great.

Call to action. Go fund somebody on Patreon. Go work for the man, the crowd man. The crowd man. I don't know. Yeah. Go give your labor away, but only in response, only because other people give you money for it.

Don't give your stuff away for free. That's not the future. Hold on. Don't share. Am I being bitter? Are we ending on a bitter note? Yeah, I was going to say, don't end like that. Give an honest call to arms. I mean, think about it like this. You got a lot of listeners that are thinking, I want to support GitHub. I don't know how to do it. How can I do it? So this is where I'll bring in BuildingGitHub. We have a new site called building.gitHub.com. And that site is new this year.

And it's our documentation site for our team, for people working on Gidip, right? So you go there and it starts with a big picture. It says, here's what our mission is. Here's where we're going. And then it zooms in and says, here's the process we use. Here's our brand guidelines. Here's how we understand our audience and who we're working towards. It answers all those big questions.

And then it hopefully gets you plugged in to the issue tracker and understanding how we work and gets you into GitHub and into IRC. So that is the place to start if you want to help us hack on Gidip. And if you want to use Gidip, then use Gidip. Gidip.com for support. Think, here's the question, who inspires you? Who is the one person that you love what they're doing

and you want to give them a quarter week, go to gidip.com and set that up now, even though that funnel is pretty leaky, but go do it anyway. How about that? You can also support Gidip directly on there as well as WIT 537, which apparently would also support GitHub directly, I believe.

Yeah. If you like what we're doing, we're there. Awesome. But GitHub will work for me because it's working for everybody. So do that. I want to circle back with you maybe some other way. I feel like when we get to the end of these calls, sometimes we don't get all the things.

And there was some stuff with DHH and open source specific to listeners that are going to be close to their heart. They're thinking like, why don't you talk about this call with DHH and funding open source? So I think we'll have to – Dude, I love that. I love when you sit down and talk to somebody for 45 minutes. They're a real person. That was a cool conversation, honestly. I love that.

I think it's really powerful. I'd love to see more of that. I'll tell you what we'll do. If you don't mind, we'll put a post on the changelog with that video in it. And I'd like to just maybe even do something different, break our normal mode of like,

maybe do another follow-up call. I mean, who says you can't be on here twice in one year? It doesn't really matter to me. I just want to have, I think you're doing some pretty cool stuff and people need to know about it. It's a long story short. Appreciate it.

Really. And I don't want you – I mean, Amish is cool and all, but don't go do that. Keep doing the GitHub thing. And everybody who's listening, go to GitHub right now. Give to teams you love. Give to people you love, whether they're activists, whether they're open source. It doesn't matter. Figure out who's on there.

And if they're not on there, GitHub has a way to bring them on there easily for you. So go and figure out who inspires you and truly give, and maybe even become a receiver yourself. And if you're a company, go on there too and give. Yeah. Hopefully we'll make it easier. We'll improve the product. It'll be easier for everybody. We'll do it together.

Well, Chad, I'd love to keep you on the show for as long as we we we love to kidnap you and just talk to you for for years on end honestly but um you know as much as we can be we want to be an encouragement to you we want to be encouragement to the contributors of get up um whatever we can to support you in the future now and in the future let us know we'll be there for you we're we're brothers and sisters in arms so to speak so don't don't feel like you're an island you're not an island we're we're the tree on your island so um before we close i want to give a little shout out to um our sponsors we got rack space code ship and uh top towel who support this show so thank you for their support and as a matter of fact all three of those are not only sponsors of the changelog but they're also partners with the changelog so that's that's

really neat they they care about our long-term future so they've put roots in the changelog and they care so that's uh that's super awesome and if you haven't yet we shoot out a weekly email it's been a little on a small hiatus but uh tune in, you know, because we've got some fun stuff coming up. So thechangelog.com slash weekly to get updates on fresh and new open source in your email inbox every week. Chad, again, thank you so much for coming and talking to me and Jared. It's been an absolute pleasure. Listeners, thank you for listening, tuning in live if you're tuning in live. Next week, we're getting better at making sure our schedule is full.

So next week we have Felix Gleisendorfer coming on the show, talking about robotics, NodeCopter. If you're into drones of any sort, tune into this show. It's going to be a blast, but that's the topic for next week. But until then, let's say goodbye.

Very cool. Thanks for having me on the show, you guys. Yep. Thanks for coming. on the show, you guys. Yep. Thanks for coming. Bye. Bye, everyone. We'll see you next time.