The FOSS Pod

Latest Episodes:

Pine64 With Lukasz Erecinski Jun 18, 2023

Show notes

Pine64 is one of the most ambitious open hardware projects around, delivering a wide range of low-cost and modifiable products including smart phones and watches, laptops, earbuds, soldering irons, and plenty more, all based on ARM and RISC-V. Senior advisor Lukasz Erecinski joins us on this episode to talk about the company's origins, letting your userbase weigh in on the hardware design process, running Linux on a phone, the promise of RISC-V, and a lot more.

The FOSS Pod is brought to you by Google Open Source. Find out more at https://opensource.google

Raspberry Pi With Eben Upton Apr 09, 2023

Show notes

With tens of millions of units sold, it's no surprise the Raspberry Pi has become synonymous with the phenomenon of single-board computers, and it's also a great gateway into the world of open source. For this ep, we spoke to none other than co-founder and CEO Eben Upton about every Pi-related topic we could think of, including the Pi's origins in academia, early challenges designing the first board, adapting to pandemic supply constraints, selling such a successful device at low margins, and a lot more.

The FOSS Pod is brought to you by Google Open Source. Find out more at https://opensource.google

Debian Linux With Jonathan Carter Feb 03, 2023

Show notes

We couldn't do a podcast about open source without exploring a major Linux distribution, and there's hardly a more influential or enduring distro out there than Debian. So we're delighted to be joined on this episode by the current Debian Project Leader, Jonathan Carter, who spoke with us about a wide range of topics including progress on his goals since taking over the leadership role, why so many other distros are built on Debian, the revolutionary nature of dpkg and apt in the '90s, whether the testing release is appropriate for end users, our shared love of BeOS, what's going to happen when there are no more Toy Story characters, and more.

Download or find out more about Debian: https://www.debian.org/

The FOSS Pod is brought to you by Google Open Source. Find out more at https://opensource.google

Inkscape With Martin Owens Dec 10, 2022

Show notes

Martin Owens joins us on this episode to talk about the popular open source vector graphics package Inkscape, where he serves as both a developer and a member of the project's leadership committee. Martin shares his perspective on everything from the position of Inkscape in the digital creative market to its exceptionally distributed, consensus-based leadership model, implementing PDF support from scratch, the elusive CMYK support, and a lot more.

Learn more about and download Inkscape: https://inkscape.org/

Martin's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/MartinOwens

Martin's page on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/doctormo

The FOSS Pod is brought to you by Google Open Source. Find out more at https://opensource.google

MiSTer FPGA With José Tejada Gómez Nov 04, 2022

Show notes

The MiSTer project is the most exciting thing going in classic video game emulation, and José Tejada Gómez--better known as jotego--is one of the developers at the forefront of this open-source effort to revive dozens of old game consoles and computers. José joins us for a fascinating chat about the ups and downs of programming FPGA chips, balancing his day job as an analog circuit designer, intellectual property in decades-old arcade hardware, using crowd funding to support open source work, the endless debate about emulation versus replication, and plenty more.

Find out more about the MiSTer project: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki

Keep up with José's work: https://www.patreon.com/jotego

The FOSS Pod is brought to you by Google Open Source. Find out more at https://opensource.google

Audacity With Martin Keary Oct 14, 2022

Show notes

The classic open source audio editor Audacity has been around for over two decades, but the Muse Group and product head Martin Keary only came onto the project within the last two years. In this ep we talked to Martin about his extensive background in UX and how he's bringing that expertise to a project as old as Audacity, its recent rapid growth and future roadmap, the bumpy public relations issues that occurred around the Muse Group taking ownership of the project, and more.

Download or learn more about Audacity: https://www.audacityteam.org/

Martin's YouTube channel, with a lot of discussion about Audacity history and development: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl_dlV_7ofr4qeP1drJQ-qg

The FOSS Pod is brought to you by Google Open Source. Find out more at https://opensource.google

Samba With Jeremy Allison Sep 23, 2022

Show notes

Jeremy Allison has been working in open source almost as long as "open source" has existed, largely on the Samba project that facilitates filesharing between Windows and the Unix world. In this ep we chatted with Jeremy not just about where Samba has been and where it's going, but also a wide range of other topics like the Silicon Valley Unix Wars, why it's getting harder to find good C coders, when SMBDirect is coming to the project, aging out of relevance in software development, and more.

SHOW NOTES

Find out more about Samba: https://www.samba.org/

The HD streaming box Jeremy mentioned: https://osmc.tv/vero/

Jeremy's column about startup life: https://www.samba.org/samba/news/articles/low_point/column07.html

The FOSS Pod is brought to you by Google Open Source. Find out more at https://opensource.google

OctoPrint With Gina Häußge Sep 08, 2022

Show notes

3D printing has come a long way in a short time, and the open-source web interface OctoPrint has been easing and extending the 3D printing experience for a decade now. On this ep we had a fascinating chat with creator and maintainer Gina Häußge about the project, covering topics like the work that goes into supporting endless printer models, transitioning from being the sole contributor on a project to managing contributors, doing open source work in Europe, why you shouldn't run your Raspberry Pi on an iPhone charger, and lots more.

SHOW NOTES

Find out more about OctoPrint: https://octoprint.org/

One of Will's oldest 3D prints at Tested.com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOrr_HpxBhY

The FOSS Pod is brought to you by Google Open Source. Find out more at https://opensource.google

Blender With Dalai Felinto and Pablo Vazquez Jul 29, 2022

Show notes

We briefly covered Blender in our sixth episode, and now it's time to delve deep into the past, present and future of this sprawling 3D animation package with team members Pablo Vazquez and Dalai Felinto, who walk us through Blender's closed-source origins and early crowdfunding efforts, the increasing importance of Blender both in developing markets and in game development and film visual effects, managing the parallel workflows of Blender's many sizable components, the importance of diversity in software development and interface design, and a whole lot more.

Find out more about Blender at blender.org.

The FOSS Pod is brought to you by Google Open Source. Find out more at https://opensource.google

VLC With Jean-Baptiste Kempf Jul 08, 2022

Show notes

If you're reading this, odds are good you've used VLC before. The most capable video player out there got its start in surprising ways, and on this ep we're joined by project founder Jean-Baptiste Kempf to talk about both VLC's origins and everything else, from '90s MPEG2 decoder hardware to the French Minitel system, the state of modern DRM and upcoming video codecs, VideoLAN's business model, friction with Apple on the App Store, and plenty more.

The FOSS Pod is brought to you by Google Open Source. Find out more at https://opensource.google