My Open Source Experience Podcast

Hosted by Ildiko Vancsa

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Aug 2026

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About the show

The global open source ecosystem has millions of projects and observing and participating individuals, who are trying to find their ways to collaborate on activities and finding solutions to fulfill a shared mission. An ecosystem that large inevitably has challenges to remain a balanced, sustainable and welcoming environment. The My Open Source Experience Podcast collects and shares stories that describe people's experiences from their point of view. All experiences matter, the good, the bad, lessons that you've learned and challenges you still have. Your host, Ildiko Vancsa, is talking to open source, veterans, newbies, their managers, and just really, anybody who is either already involved in the open source ecosystem, or would like to. This podcast is all about the individuals, their voices and their experiences and what they've been through ever since they started to think about or getting involved in open source. The podcast is under the CC BY 4.0 license. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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60 recent

August 18, 20267 min

MOSE Shorts 38 - Law Is More Collaborative than You Would Think

Copyright is complex, and geographies get factored into that a little bit. In this segment of the My Open Source Experience podcast Rick Sanders talks about how copyright works on the global scale, including the Berne Convention and timelines. Leanr more about: - The Berne Convention - The government-driven nature of copyright - Copyright is government-driven but governments don't have much to do with copyright - The statue in copyright and in trademark, and the difference between the two - The concept of case law - Similarities between how departments in a law firm and large tech companies work together #opensource #community #collaboration #experience #podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

August 11, 202612 min

MOSE Shorts 37 - How to Trick People into Doing Reviews

Doing reviews is a task that is often percieved as a maintainer responsibility, or something that only the more established people in the community can do. This is a misconception, which deprives newcomers from the opportunity to learn, and makes it harder to grow the maintainer team. In this segment of the My Open Source Experience podcast Daniel Stenberg talks about his approach to - What maintainers need to do to support newcomers and hope for them to stick around - What percentage of Curl contirbutors are one-time contributors - Why doing reviews is a higher barrier - Communication practices that incentivize people to get involved, including doing reviews - When a change is submitted to change an area of the project, have you tried asking the people who worked on it before for their opinion on the patch? - As opposed to telling people to do reviews, try to ask for their opinion on incoming changes - Do tell people to go work out, ask them to come play a game with you #opensource #community #collaboration #experience #podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

August 4, 20265 min

MOSE Shorts 36 - Go Slow So You Can Go Fast

Working in a community where there are people who volunteer their free time gives people experience that can later on be beneficial in corporate environments as well. In this segment of the My Open Source Experience podcast Stormy Peters talks about her experience at the Mozilla Corporation, where she worked with a large community of many volunteers. Lear more about: - Why speed isn't always the most important - Investing time in your community and enabling people to join and participate always pays off later when the community starts to grow and become more sustainable - What is the maximum amount of time a volunteer would spend on trying to get involved in your project? - Offering mentorship to people is a strong incentive for people to contribute to projects #opensource #community #collaboration #experience #podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

July 28, 20265 min

MOSE Short 35 - A Cool Feature to You, a Life-changing Functionality for Someone Else

You need to make sure that you treat improvements in your project the right way. Some improvements are features as they bring new functionality. However, when the new functionality makes existing functionality available for people with disabilities, then it's not a feature that got implemented, it's a critical bug that got fixed. In this segment of the My Open Source Experience podcast Mike Gifford talks about the mindset shift in the Drupal community to start treating accessibility gaps as bugs and in cases as critical bugs. Learn more about: - GitHub's Readme newsletter - Marking something as a bug doesn't give it a priority automatically - You need like-minded people and leadership buy-in to move things forward in a focus area - Dark mode, a sad story - A fun feature, like adding motion on screens can make someone sick and should be easy to turn off - The potential in new tech to improve accessibility #opensource #community #collaboration #experience #podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

July 21, 20266 min

MOSE Shorts 34 - How to Address Telco-specific Needs in Open Source

Open source engagement is a journey, and it doesn't start with contributing large amounts of code, even if you're a large company. In this segment of the My Open Source Experience podcast Ashan Senevirathne talks about Swisscom's approach to explore and leverage projects from the CNCF ecosystem to build and operate their networks. Learn more about: - OSS projects that are easy to adopt in the telecom ecosystem - OSS projects that are addressing needs that are specific to the telecom segment, such as Nephio - How the telecom industry matured and started to flourish in how they are engaging with open source projects like openStack and Kubernetes - How standards bodies fit in between telecom operators, vendors and the open source ecosystem - The need for standards bodies to evolve faster #opensource #community #collaboration #experience #podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

July 14, 202616 min

MOSE Shorts 33 - What to Do When Someone Discredits You at Work

Both in personal and in professional life, it can happen that people discredit you and undermine you behind your back. There are multiple ways to handle this situation without letting the other person to make a damage to you. In this segment of the My Open Source Experience podcast Shuah Khan shares an experience from her corporate career when someone was discrediting her behind her back. Lear more about: - How to handle when someone talks behind your back - While talking about people behind their backs is never the way to go, there might still be constructive feedback in what they are saying - How to distance yourself from what is happening and avoid it to get to you - You don't have to be reactive to handle the situation - When leaving the company is the right thing to do #opensource #community #collaboration #experience #podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

July 7, 20267 min

MOSE Shorts 32 - The Secrets to the Linux Kernel's Versatility

Industry segments, like automotive, often rely on specialized hardware and software stacks. As that is very expensive to keep up, most segments have a shift towards COTS HW and that is an opportunity to look into open source as well. In this segment of the My Open Source Experience podcast Philipp Ahmann talks about his experience with this generation change, that also involved using Linux. This shift opened up more opportunities than what you would expect, and allowed Philipp to work at any location without confidentiality or IP breaches. Learn more about: - Open source gives flexibility to both individuals and companies - Experiencing different cultures through communities - Software, especially open source, often gets used in ways that the original creators did not think of #opensource #community #collaboration #experience #podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

June 23, 202654 min

Season 3 Finale - OSPOs and Communication Skills

The open source ecosystem has many layers, components and actors and all these need to work together in harmony to keep the ecosystem thriving. The Season 3 finale episode reflects on some of these peices and explores how companies can improve their practices internally, while also touches on communication practices and building your skills in open source communities. Learn more from: - Ashan Senevirathne on building skills and resumes through open source - Daniel Stenberg on how to encourage collaboration through communication - Mike Gifford on how to create a focus area in an OSS project - Stormy Peters on open source challenges - Wolfgang Gehring on why your company needs an OSPO #opensource #community #collaboration #experience #podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

June 9, 202653 min

How to Shift the Internet

Accessibility sometimes comes with a stigma, since it becomes a discussion topic when someone has a disability that prevents them to do something that they would like to, like accessing an admin interface because they're blind. In this episode of the My Open Source Experience podcast Mike Gifford talks about how he put accessibility on the map in the Drupal community, and through that for the internet. Learn more about Mike's journey here: Learn more about: - Joining a global community - Moving faster in your business with OSS - What is accessibility - Types of disabilities - Accessibility focus area in Drupal - How to increase accessibility in your web resources #opensource #community #collaboration #experience #podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

May 26, 202650 min

From Fear to Appreciation - The GPL Journey

We often have well-baked ideas about how we would like things to tunr out, which gets combined with beliefs that are being shaped by the environment we're in. Despite of human nature, we need to follow our intuition and revisit whether or not what we had learned in the past has reached the point where we would benefit from re-evaluating it. In this episode of the My Open Source Experience podcast Rick Sanders talks about how his law career has evolved over time, along with his perception of open source and the GNU General Public License (GPL). GPL is a very controversial open source license, which created some fear and confusion that the tech industry and lawyers in this space have had to overcome. Learn more about: - How your social network affects your career - GNU GPL license - Using copyright against copyright #opensource #community #collaboration #experience #podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.