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Open source interviews #31 - Matt R, maintainer of Gitea.com

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00:00 Hey everyone, welcome to the Open Source Founder Podcast.

00:04 Joining us today is Mati,

00:05 maintainer and project lead at GITI,

00:08 a privacy-first open source alternative to GitHub and GitLab

00:11 for organizations that want to self-host their code base

00:14 and maintain data sovereignty and privacy.

00:17 Now, Mati is also co-founder of CommitGo, Inc.,

00:20 a network corporation behind GITA

00:22 that helps organizations with training and support

00:25 when they're using Github. The team recently shipped Github Cloud, which lets organizations

00:31 to host their own instances and streamline their developer operations. And then the team has been

00:37 that work shipping a lot of new features and getting up to parity with GitHub. That would be

00:42 Github Actions and CICD, backwards compatible with GitHub Actions, and then there's GIT Packages,

00:49 so you can store your artifacts in your code base, like your Helm charts,

00:52 your Docker images, your Rast crates.

00:55 And so, Mati, I'm very excited to hear about the journey so far

00:58 and then discuss about GIT's traction and community,

01:03 the plans for sustainability and monetization of

01:05 the project, the decision to start the company behind the project, and then any advice you have

01:11 to share to other maintainers and close with a demo of Github. Thank you for joining.

01:17 Yeah, definitely. Thank you for having me.

01:20 So how's the experience been so far? I think Github is going into its eighth year now.

01:26 Yeah, so it was started in November of 2016.

01:31 And so we just celebrated a birthday just this past November.

01:34 And it's very exciting.

01:39 40,000 GitHub stars, over a thousand contributors, over a few hundred million Docker Hub

01:47 polls. Yeah. And so it's been a very exciting journey and excited to see where it takes us.

01:58 Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing these metrics with us. Who are the people

02:03 mostly using GITI today?

02:05 And I'm sure there's tons of people self-hosting

02:07 that maybe you don't know about,

02:09 but maybe what are the big organizations

02:11 that you're in touch with today?

02:13 Yeah, so there's a ton of different use cases for GITI.

02:18 And so it's not just like one size fits all,

02:22 like you think of just like developers using it, but there are data scientists using it to store like their Jupyter notebooks. open source 3d modeling software uh google two sigma media tech mastercard open stack

02:47 uh just to name a few uh i think uh like being able to start uh the company has been able to like

02:56 signal to uh like everyone that uh there's backing behind the project that it won't suddenly disappear. And ensuring that your software supply chain doesn't go poof

03:08 just because somebody isn't being supported

03:14 for their open source contributions.

03:17 How did the decision to start CommitGo

03:20 well went through your mind and team sort of deliberations when you

03:26 were deciding to start the company behind the project uh i was an owner uh project lead for

03:32 four years at the time and just seeing maintainers come and go and having to leave for like being able

03:38 to like uh take care of sick family members needing to like worry about their job and just starting a family.

03:47 Just a ton of different reasons that they weren't able to volunteer.

03:51 And so by being able to start this organization, we're able to support maintainers

03:56 so they don't have to decide between something that they're passionate about,

04:00 something that they enjoy, or other commitments that they may have

04:04 that are more important than contributing to open source.

04:08 And so by being able to start Comico, we have that strong foundation to be able to support the project

04:17 and be able to make big contributions to the project of Githy Actions. The pull request was entirely done by

04:29 Blender. It was contributed by the company

04:32 Open Source. Everything's able to be contributed back and

04:35 we try to do that as much as possible. There's also been any

04:40 funding behind to support more on the short term. How has this played out

04:44 so far?

04:45 And what are sort of like the plans you have for 2024

04:48 as it relates to monetization

04:51 and to the sustainability of the project?

04:54 Definitely.

04:54 I think with 2023, a lot of our focus was building out

05:00 the Github cloud hosted service

05:02 so that people who wanted to use Githy, but they didn't want to

05:08 manage an operating system, update software,

05:12 all of that.

05:15 Because even though Githy is single binary, extremely lightweight,

05:19 make it as easy as possible to run,

05:22 there's just general operations around it

05:24 that people don't

05:25 necessarily want to handle with. So by being able to start GITI Cloud, offering those dedicated

05:32 instances, ensuring the security and integrity around it so that organizations can trust

05:39 it with their intellectual property, and we're going through a SOC 2 audit right now

05:47 to be able to assist people in their compliance journey

05:52 to make sure that they're feeling trustworthy

05:57 and whatnot of being able to put their code.

06:02 Exactly. Excellent.

06:04 And now you've been doing this for a little while now,

06:07 you and the rest of the team.

06:08 So what are the challenges you faced throughout?

06:12 And then maybe any advice that you could share with other maintainers?

06:16 Yeah, no, definitely.

06:17 I think some challenges are that because it's a fairly unique experience, not many people have gone through this.

06:29 And so something that I can suggest to people is build out your network, being able to connect with people, like share your experiences and ask for what other people's experiences have gone through.

06:48 I found that like talking with other open source projects and other companies have gone

07:00 through something similar.

07:07 gone through something similar has uh it's nice to hear even if uh you're facing something that somebody else has gone through it as well or that they're going through it at the same time and so

07:13 you can go through that as well with other people just creating that community

07:20 yes community is number one absolutely and maybe And maybe to just bring, you know,

07:25 one of the, you know, countless examples, say, for example, that a contributor, you know,

07:31 prepares a pull request, but maybe wasn't something planned or aligned with sort of like the,

07:37 you know, the vision with the project or the technical decisions have made so far.

07:41 How do you go about communicating to that contributor that,

07:52 you know, hey, we might not be able to merge this pull request or, yeah, what do you do?

07:53 Yeah, no, that's definitely a good question.

07:57 Yeah, there's a lot of different reasons why that might happen.

08:07 Switching, like, hey, I switched Githitty to use subversion instead or something like um there's um like a mission statement and ethos around gitty of

08:13 being flexible and not necessarily prescriptive of how people use it and so um And so generally a lot of things go through,

08:25 but like if you're like changing something significant with a project,

08:32 it'll be discussed among maintainers and that feedback will be given.

08:37 But I think the most important thing is to be open about it.

08:40 And thank you for contributing it.

08:43 I don't,

08:44 we don't know if like,

08:45 this is the direction that we're feeling

08:46 because of reasons X, Y, or Z.

08:49 And also rather, and encourage people to like,

08:53 rather than contribute,

08:56 like just go off and like build this whole thing,

08:59 like discuss with the project first

09:03 to make sure that it does align with the ethos of the

09:08 project how's the theme shaping up today yeah it's uh going along it's uh it's still uh really small

09:18 um uh but uh we're being able we're uh able to uh like uh contract uh with people uh to're able to contract with people to be able to focus on specific projects, to be able to contribute to the projects.

09:36 That's great. And those people are from the existing contributor community?

09:41 community there. Exactly, yeah.

09:44 Because that's the reason behind

09:45 why we've done

09:48 what we've done is to be able to

09:49 support people who have come here

09:52 and even possibly

09:54 bring people who

09:55 were prevented from

09:58 contributing to open source

09:59 previously for whichever

10:04 life reason

10:05 and being able to support them through that process.

10:11 Exactly.

10:11 And those sustainability concerns that you discussed earlier

10:17 that applied to the internal team and the maintainers,

10:19 they also apply to the contributors.

10:21 So again, extending that financial opportunity

10:24 or ability

10:25 to um you know be able to work on it through that um it's it's it's definitely makes a makes a big

10:34 difference and then you know kudos to you for for doing this and having the ability to do it

10:38 what is your uh might be a big word vision but, but what is your vision for Githy as time progresses?

10:46 Or maybe what would be a milestone

10:48 that you're setting your eyes to?

10:53 Yeah, no, I think the target

10:56 that we were looking at most recently

10:58 was the launch of cloud to be able to bring Githy

11:04 more than just cell posters and

11:08 being able to run that and being able to

11:11 rely on the project run your own instance. I think

11:16 the next steps are expanding

11:18 resources around the project, improving documentation,

11:24 improving the codebase,

11:25 refactoring, switching to perhaps a more modern UI, removing technical debt, and

11:37 just generally supporting the project as it is right now.

11:41 as it is right now.

11:42 Yeah.

11:47 And I'm curious if you have experienced this so far and what is sort of like the MO

11:49 within the team for handling this

11:51 when, you know, enterprises, bigger organizations

11:53 might have some more custom development requests.

11:57 What's sort of like your approach

11:58 to servicing those requests?

12:02 Yeah.

12:03 Yeah, no, that's a good question.

12:05 Like we're open to...

12:07 We can build whichever integration you need

12:10 with the project,

12:11 but just because your client doesn't necessarily mean

12:16 it will make it into the open source project

12:19 because that's the project like we can um build and maintain that

12:28 functionality for you but um that just because like you're funding the company doesn't necessarily

12:37 mean you have say over the direction of the project and um like a really good example of this is, uh, with a blender, we integrated with

12:48 their identity management system. And, uh, one, it doesn't make sense to, uh, put that back in

12:55 the project because, um, no one else is using their identity system. Um, but wouldn't accept it anyway because, again,

13:09 the

13:11 case around it is very specific.

13:17 But yeah, Blender

13:20 is great. All the codes

13:24 that we did for them is MIT license

13:25 and they have their fork

13:28 available to clone and

13:29 use it.

13:31 That's a great example. Thanks

13:33 for sharing this. And

13:35 organizations that in the past have supported

13:38 Githy, for example, to

13:40 Sigma and others

13:41 where maybe that was done through

13:44 Open Collective or, you know,

13:46 sponsorships, other means.

13:48 Going forward, and I don't know if those in the past were tied to also some custom

13:53 development or not, but going onwards, do you have a specific approach on how to

13:59 handle such instances now that there is also the company behind?

14:03 I'm just curious how this will involve.

14:05 Yeah, no, definitely.

14:08 Like with

14:09 Open Collective, that's entirely

14:11 for the project itself.

14:14 I've

14:15 contributed my personal funds to it as well.

14:20 But

14:20 if you're

14:22 coming to the company asking,

14:27 hey, can we do X, Y, Z?

14:30 You can say, sure.

14:33 And hey, this makes sense to put into the project.

14:38 We'd like to do that as well.

14:40 And also encourage people to say, hey, there's an open collective.

14:44 You can support the project as well.

14:46 But then the company also supports the project too.

14:50 That's great.

14:51 And yes, there's a lot of options to support the project,

14:54 to crowdfund development or steer funds towards a specific direction

14:57 that can help companies today.

14:59 And then, of course, you can also involve contributors

15:01 along with a core team when it makes sense.

15:06 Have you,

15:07 have there been any mistakes or sort of like occasions where now looking back,

15:15 you know,

15:15 you could help advise other maintainers or founders to,

15:20 to avoid such situations or.

15:23 Definitely.

15:24 I think just being like upfront with, to avoid such situations? Definitely.

15:31 I think just being upfront with your contributors,

15:33 saying, hey, this is what's happening.

15:39 And when all our pull requests are out in the open,

15:43 you can see the decisions, what happened, where it went,

15:49 and just keeping that out in front there.

15:51 Yeah.

15:55 I think, yeah, just communicating with people.

15:57 Communication is key in any relationship.

16:00 That's well said.

16:02 Communication, transparency, absolutely.

16:05 Do you often go to conferences?

16:08 Is that something that the team has been active in?

16:10 If there's anything to discuss there for maybe people who haven't done it so far

16:12 but would like to participate more?

16:15 Yeah, definitely.

16:16 Yeah, so the company has sponsored a few conferences

16:24 as well as we've sponsored maintainers

16:27 and other community members to be able to attend.

16:32 So we sponsored maintainers going to DevOps Day Chicago.

16:39 We sponsored DevOps Day London,

16:42 as well as some maintainers going uh we were uh sponsors of the

16:48 open core summit and this past december where it was a gathering of uh open source company founders

16:59 and just being able to network that way was great and interesting to hear.

17:07 It's like, oh, yeah, you understand what we're going through, the process, the journey.

17:16 And I think in the coming year, we'd like to sponsor more events, more maintainers,

17:24 more events, more maintainers, as well as we're hoping to be able

17:28 to enter things like Google Summer of Code to be able to

17:31 mentor newcomers into the open source world

17:36 and hopefully

17:38 hook them and keep them in the open source

17:44 contributors.

17:47 And I guess

17:48 maybe this is a good time to also transition

17:52 to where people can

17:54 learn more about GITI,

17:56 check out the code base, the website,

17:58 and then maybe we can have a

17:59 short demo from you, if that's all right.

18:02 Yeah, definitely.

18:03 So,

18:04 giti.com,com get with a cup of

18:08 tea is the slogan so that's how you can remember uh getea.com uh that's the website that's all the

18:16 material there instructions on self-posting um and uh get up ory Actions, links to various social media,

18:28 Twitter, Blue Sky, LinkedIn, et cetera.

18:33 And obviously our code base as well is found there too.

18:38 Sweet.

18:39 And then if you'd like to maybe share your screen,

18:41 we can actually take a glimpse as well as check out the Github cloud.

18:45 Definitely. Let's pop open to.

18:50 So just launched in December is the Github cloud managed instance hosting provider.

19:01 hosting provider where

19:03 we take a little

19:06 twist on it where

19:07 some

19:09 projects where you host

19:12 you have

19:13 like selection of regions

19:16 what we've done is we've taken

19:18 that ethos of

19:20 flexibility in GITI and we've

19:22 applied it to GITI as cloud as

19:24 well because more than just like your standard of flexibility in GITI, and we've applied it to GITI Cloud as well.

19:31 Because more than just your standard software as a service,

19:35 you don't even get an insight into where in the world it's run.

19:39 We not only let you choose where in the world it's run,

19:43 but the underlying technology provider. So if you're in the Western US, you can host there.

19:50 If you're in Europe, you can host there.

19:53 If you have preference for one provider or the other,

19:57 you can select that way.

20:02 This is super neat. I like it.

20:04 And we allow customization, changing name, changing username,

20:09 and password, and maintenance.

20:14 So we'll have a window if we need to, like, patch our instance for security,

20:20 for just general upgrades or whatnot.

20:25 And you'd set that in like middle of the night, your time,

20:30 and you can have that.

20:32 And because we handle everything,

20:35 there's the configuration and CI CD.

20:38 Again, all that's managed by us.

20:41 And so all you need to do is decide on how many users you're going to go with. And based on

20:50 the number of users, you'll get a different quota, storage limits of storing your repositories or

20:57 package artifacts, such as like Docker images, issue attachments, release artifacts, and a number of minutes for being able to

21:07 run your code.

21:10 So you don't need to manage your CICD runner as well.

21:16 And based on the number of users you may have, you'll get a discount if you pay yearly,

21:23 you'll get a discount.

21:26 you may have. You'll get a discount if you pay yearly, you'll get a discount. And then I'm not going to check out now because I don't want to put in my information, but we do have

21:33 a demo public Githy instance where you can create new repositories, you can manage issues, set up branch protections to ensure that every pull

21:50 request is approved by a certain number of people and that it passes CI before it gets

21:55 merged.

21:56 Absolutely.

21:57 That's a complete Git server and client with a familiar UI.

22:01 And I really like this flow and onboarding flow.

22:05 The new instance, actually.

22:07 Very clean and helps the user throughout the steps.

22:11 This was super cool.

22:14 Thanks so much.

22:15 And then should we also show people the repository?

22:19 Yes.

22:20 Anything else you might like to show?

22:21 Yeah.

22:24 Yeah, so it's a fairly standard Git project.

22:31 You have your Go modules in the base repository,

22:36 a fairly detailed readme of what to do after you clone.

22:40 You can just git clone and build the binary yourself,

22:44 and you can just run it right away.

22:50 And some guides on how to contribute to the project were translated into over, I think,

22:57 20 different languages around the world, with quite a few of them like fully translated into that language suggestions on

23:10 where to go after you started running it of like asking questions being able to like join up with

23:19 the project and chat with the team, sponsors of the project,

23:27 people who, individual sponsors,

23:31 an FAQ on how to pronounce it,

23:34 but everyone pronounces it differently.

23:36 I say Gitti, some people say Gitti,

23:40 some say Gittia.

23:42 It's all acceptable.

23:44 I don't mind whatsoever. And the reason and an FAQ we get,

23:52 why we're hosting elsewhere, why aren't we hosting on our own? Well, we're hosting the majority of

23:58 our repositories on giti.com. We just have one remaining right here, but because of tens of thousands of pull requests,

24:06 issues, comments, just the migration of being able to export all that data into a new system

24:15 runs up against rate limits.

24:16 And so it's a fairly long process, but it's actively being worked on.

24:22 Being able to let people know that the project's MIT licensed, as well

24:26 as just an overview of what they might expect when they start the project of having some

24:34 screenshots.

24:35 I love it.

24:35 And as you said, it's for this kind of project and code base with all these contributions

24:39 throughout many years, you know, porting it, migrating everything to GIT, it takes a little bit of

24:45 time, but I reckon this is something people can expect this year to where the GIT code

24:52 base will be hosted on GIT Cloud and people can contribute there.

24:57 And already today, people who are using GitHub or GitLab or soon enough, they will be able

25:03 to just migrate everything and get started right

25:06 yeah uh githy has a built-in migration tool already so even if you're not using uh githy

25:12 cloud you can still migrate from other providers into your own instance wherever it's hosted

25:18 and we're also looking at ways of being able to support contributors, being able to contribute

25:25 to the project wherever they are.

25:27 They still want to send a pull request to

25:29 GitHub, they can do that, but

25:31 directing

25:33 most of the people to

25:35 the main source of truth

25:37 of where the project will

25:39 eventually live.

25:41 Sweet. This was excellent. Thank you

25:43 so much.

25:45 This was great. Any you so much. This was

25:46 great.

25:47 Any last

25:48 words that

25:49 you might

25:49 like to

25:50 leave people

25:51 with?

25:51 And of

25:51 course,

25:51 we already

25:51 saw people

25:52 can come,

25:53 check out

25:54 the repository,

25:55 take Kitty

25:55 for a spin,

25:56 contribute.

25:58 So any

25:58 last words

25:59 before we

26:00 wrap this

26:00 up?

26:01 Yeah,

26:01 definitely.

26:02 Just hop into chat if you have any questions. We're very happy to help if you want to start Contribute. We've mentored many people to be with zero-go development experience, to being able to work on it every day.

26:31 able to like work on it every day. And just even if it's not like it's you you're contributing to,

26:40 just look for an open source project they're using and check them out. And maybe eventually you'll be able to contribute to them as well and just share your knowledge and your experience.

26:47 Excellent. Thank you so much, Mati. This was wonderful. It was really great to have you.

26:53 Wishing you happy growth and best of luck in 2024 and beyond.

26:58 Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. Take care.