Oxide and Friends

Latest Episodes:

Framework Computer with Nirav Patel Dec 04, 2023

Show notes

Nirav Patel, CEO and founder of Framework Computer, join Bryan and Adam to talk about building a new computer company (yes! another new computer company!) focused on making laptops repairable and open. It turns out, there are a bunch of shared lessons between building a 3lb laptop and a 2,500lb cloud computer!

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest Nirav Patel, founder and CEO of Framework Computer.

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

Framework
r/spicypillows
Framework expansion cards
Framework-based gaming console from the community
Optima Braille laptop
Oxide and Friends: A brief history of talking computers
Acer Ferrari 3400 c. 2004 -- 6.6lb favorite of Solaris Kernel engineers

If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

OpenAI's Boardroom Brawl Nov 27, 2023

Show notes

So… OpenAI happened… and Bryan and Adam try it break it down with help from Steve Tuck and even more special guest Chuck McManis.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by variously special guests Steve Tuck and Chuck McManis.

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

Hacker News: OpenAPI's board has fired Sam Altman
Employee Letter to OpenAI's Board
Who Controls OpenAI? by Matt Levine, the G.O.A.T.
Axios: Who is Larry Summers, the controversial pick to join OpenAI's board
Mike Olsen: What is a Board of Directors For?
Fermat's Last Theorem (an + bn = cn only possible for n = 1 or n = 2)
> I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain. - Fermat
Homer vs. Fermat
IBM and the Holocaust

Hiring Processes with Gergely Orosz Nov 06, 2023

Show notes

Bryan and Adam were joined by Gergely Orosz, the Pragmatic Engineer, to talk about Oxide's hiring process, the experiences that led to that process, and hiring generally. There's a lot there for anyone interested in hiring or being hired... and especially for anyone who's considered applying to Oxide!

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest Gergely Orosz.
The "Litter Box" is what we call the recording studio... thus named for reasons best left to the imagination

Oxide Hiring Process
The Pragmatic Engineer
Oxide and Friends: Tech Layoffs (Nov. 8, 2022)
The Oxide RFD process
The Psychopath Test
Oxide Principles and Values
Adam's detente with the American Hockey League
Leventhal's conundrum - there is a performance pathology, find the butterfly that caused the hurricane.
Compensation as a Reflection of Values
Light's Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of GE
Gergely's new book The Software Engineer's Guidebook

Launching the Cloud Computer Oct 30, 2023

Show notes

Oxide Founder and CEO, Steve Tuck, joined Bryan, Adam, and Oxide Friend, Steve Klabnik, to talk about our recent announcements: general availability of the Oxide Cloud Computer, and raising $44m. The reception was (broadly) great! Bryan and Steve answered questions about the product, company, and launch.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Steve Tuck and Steve Klabnik.

Open Source and Capitalism with Ashley Williams and Adam Jacob Oct 23, 2023

Show notes

Ashley Williams and Adam Jacob joined Adam and Bryan to continue their panel discussion with Bryan following up his p99conf talk revisiting open source anti-patterns. Notably, open source has accelerated the distribution of value… without clarity on how contributors can capture that value. Has open source accelerated unequal distribution?

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by friends of the show Ashley Williams and Adam Jacob.

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

Bryan's Talk, Corporate Open Source Anti-Patterns: A Decade Later by Bryan Cantrill, Oxide
Subsequent panel with Adam J. and Ashley
Oxide and Friends: Open Source Anti-Patterns with Kelsey Hightower from August 28th, 2023
Oxide and Friends: Docker, Inc., an Early Epitaph from September 13th, 2021

Settling Beef Oct 16, 2023

Show notes

Recently, a clip from Oxide and Friends was played by another podcast as something of a punching bag. Adam was called "uneducated" and Bryan, it was observed accurately, "hadn't used C++ since the '90s". Well, Conor Hoekstra from the ADSP pod joined us to settle the beef.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by special guest Conor Hoekstra and Oxide colleague Cliff Biffle.

Mr. Nagle's Wild Ride Oct 02, 2023

Show notes

Adam and the Oxide Friends follow Bryan on Mr. Nagle's Wild Ride as he investigates performance anomalies. Bryan used all manner of tool from gnuplot to DTrace-inspired bpftrace! If you have ever or plan to ever care about the latency of network-borne protocols, you won't want to miss this!

We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from October 2nd, 2023.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers included Tom Lyon, James Tucker, Eliza Weisman, and Dan Ports.

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

DTrace at 20 Sep 11, 2023

Show notes

Bryan and Adam reminisce about the DTrace journey 20 years after first integrating the code into Solaris back in September 2003.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Josh Clulow.

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:

Hungry Jack's
Bryan's other online dating profile
The Sun E10000 (E10k), the world's worst router
Leventhal's Conundrum
DTrace as Half-Life 3, eternal vaporware
More on SPARC, its TLB, the %npc, and dtrace_fish from OxF May 2021
Solaris 9 was the completion of the Solaris 2.0 vision
DTrace Kernel Technical Discussion (2002)
Mr. Sparkle
Firefox? Mozilla? Firebird!
Dynamic Instrumentation of Production Systems, Usenix 2004
Graydon on DTrace in Rust
Rust USDT crate
DTrace on Windows
Adam's blog: DTrace on macOS
Adam's blog: DTrace for OEL
PSARC cases from 2003

Open Source Anti-Patterns with Kelsey Hightower Aug 28, 2023

Show notes

Kelsey Hightower joined Bryan and Adam to revisit a topic Bryan had spoken about a decade ago: corporate open source anti-patterns. Kelsey brought his typical sagacity to a complex and fraught topic.

We've been hosting a live show weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour, and recording them all; here is the recording from August 28th, 2023.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Kelsey Hightower.

Here is the (lightly edited) live chat from the show:

xxxxbubbler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm8P4oCIY3g here is Bryan's talk from 1 decade ago, for reference
rolipo.li: web3 is going great
rolipo.li: https://web3isgoinggreat.com/
ahl0003: Last time Kelsey joined us for predictions
blainehansen: "Governance orgies" happen when the governance mechanisms aren't well-designed ha. If they are well-designed then governance is good!
jbk: opsware maybe? or tivoli?
uptill3: hp openview was one as well
sevanj: "they've got us working for trinkets"
sevanj: this was mentioned on the bugzilla anouncement regarding funded staff being pulled from working on project in the last 3 years.
blainehansen: All open source problems are secretly public goods problems haha
carpetbomberz.com: Hashicorp DID do a "thing"
blacksmithforlife: Just like taxes fund roads, we should have a internet usage tax that then funds these open source projects that everyone finds value in. The person taxed should get to decide which open source project gets the money
kaliszad: The problem is, you can help other people, but first you have to sustain yourself. 🙂
aarondgoldman: Too boring to be evil
rolipo.li: too busy to be evil?
aarondgoldman: Angular never got budget even when Inbox used it and had millions of users
blainehansen: Most open source projects are probably not best led/governed by a for-profit company ha
aarondgoldman: HP had a huge repair service business when their hardware got much more reliable it almost killed the company
geekgonecrazy: Never actually considered using CNCF membership as a qualification for using a tool
ahl0003: it's the nintendo seal of quality!
geekgonecrazy: It’s an interesting thought now that I’ve heard it 🙈 especially for any sort of core utility like this
saone: On the topic of patterns that seem to be working, Docker Desktop's license requiring subscriptions for larger organizations for use of their product and focusing on providing a really good developer experience seems to be a really good spot for them to be
goodjanet: The term freeloading comes up only when there's a "problem" (usually fiscal in a company/group), the rest of the time the exact same actions are fine or often encouraged
mrdanack: I disagree, there are freeloaders. Multi-billion companies like IBM and Oracle have benefited from the PHP project for multiple decades and really haven't contributed even a modest amount back.
geekgonecrazy: Anytime hitting CLA I always use that as clue to take hesitation and think about contributing. 🙈
quasarken: I love that bit about community Adam
blacksmithforlife: https://www.linux.com/news/us-government-opens-access-federal-source-code-codegov/
blainehansen: Sometimes a community of passionate contributors is more a burden than a gift. Every project is different, not every project can be supported by many well-paid engineers at vc-funded incentive-aligned companies. I don't think the BUSL is smart or good, but there's a funding/support problem here that legitimately needs to be solved, and the existing open source social contract hasn't solved it. https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2022/burden-open-source-maintainer
blacksmithforlife: Disclaimer: I'm a federal employee who tried to get more software open source while I was working at various agencies. For the most part it was soundly ignored and the agencies just claimed it was too hard and they didn't have enough funding to do it, which in my opinion is just false
blacksmithforlife: But, if you want it, just do a FOIA, then they have to give it to you
saone: There's a great deal of fear at my company that software being open sourced must be carefully vetted to avoid potential embarassment so the hurdles to open source anything are very high
girgias: The French government has released code which was pure garbage, and I don't think one can do worse than the APB code
geekgonecrazy: That sucks. 😬I can totally see individual developers being afraid. I’ve faced that with my team. Weird to think org would be especially if trusting engineers
northrup: Adam to your point though - I don't see how that's any different than other open source projects that aren't corporate backed. No open source projected is obligated to honor your issue to drive a project in a direction, or accept your PR to add a feature or function...
ahl0003: Great point!
blainehansen: The open source cooperative idea is the best I can come up with to solve the problem
blacksmithforlife: What is dev rail?
bcantrill: Developer relations
ahl0003: developer relations
jbk: dev rel(ations)?
bcantrill: JYNX
blacksmithforlife: Never heard that term before
geekgonecrazy: Curious at what scale you think devrel is needed vs the engineers in company directly involved
geekgonecrazy: I’ve often wondered if doesn’t create unnecessary barrier between engineers and community. Especially at certain size
quasarken: Dev Rel seems a lot like community solutions engineering
geekgonecrazy: I’ve personally seen some companies use devrel as sole tie to open source and “community” in place of more of company getting involved
rolipo.li: devrel as a service. now it's a consulting firm?
northrup: When I worked at GitLab in the early days, some of my most favorite experiences were going to conferences and hanging out in the GitLab booth to answer questions and talk with / help users. SOO much great feedback, clear "oh wow!" edge cases brought forward, and amazing feedback of "yeah, you made this feature, but that wasn't what we needed"
ahl0003: I remember liking this book on devrel:

Fork in the road for Terraform? Aug 21, 2023

Show notes

On August 10th, HashiCorp made the controversial decision to re-license some of the popular, formerly-open source project under the Business Source License (BUSL). Bryan and Adam spoke with founders of the OpenTF project, an effort to keep Terraform operating in the open.

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on August 21st included Josh Padnick, Malcolm Matalka, and Cory O'Daniel.

Our condolences to the friends, family, and loved ones of Kris Nóva

Ominous figure squeezing a fish that is vomiting gold coins

Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them: