FLOSS Weekly 729 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Doc Searls (00:00:00):
This is FLOSS Weekly. I'm Doc Searls. This week, Shawn Powers and I talked with Stormy Peters, who's the VP of communities at GitHub. She has a gigantic job, and we cover so many topics here, ai, running communities, education, how open source coding is changing over, over time, how families operate with it, all kinds of things. And that is coming up next,

Announcer (00:00:27):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Doc Searls (00:00:35):
This is FLOSS Weekly, episode 729, recorded Wednesday, April 26th, 2023. Commitment issues. This episode of FLOSS Weekly is brought to you by Bitwarden. Get the password manager that offers a robust and cost effective solution that drastically increases your chances of staying safe online. Get started with a free trial of a teams or enterprise plan, or get started for free across all devices as an individual user at bid warden.com/TWiT. Greetings again, everyone everywhere. I am Doc Searles, and this is FLOSS Weekly. I am joined this week by Shawn Powers himself with a green theme throughout his home studio.

Shawn Powers (00:01:26):
It's true, but it's going away. The green is, is gonna bake.

Doc Searls (00:01:28):
It is growing outta your head. Does it wear off or do you cut it off?

Shawn Powers (00:01:31):
So it, it wears off and I've, I've redded a couple times, but my daughter is getting married and when I walk her down the aisle, the focus needs to be on her, not on the freaky guy with the green hair. So it has been made clear that my hair will not be green for a while, but after the wedding, it's going back to full green baby.

Doc Searls (00:01:51):
Yeah, well it's, it's, it's, it's now, it's now your thing. Yeah. And you should dye it that way until it all falls out, which trust me, it will. I

Shawn Powers (00:01:59):
Should die it. Oh, die It gotcha.

Doc Searls (00:02:02):
Yeah. Yeah. Not, not, not kill it. Your cat has appeared in the screen.

Shawn Powers (00:02:05):
Yeah. Said Yeah. Nigel's right here. He's a little on

Doc Searls (00:02:07):
There. He is <laugh> Nigel. He dye him green. That'll be

Shawn Powers (00:02:11):
Cool. I he would, no, I don't think I would survive that. 

Doc Searls (00:02:14):
Yes, because she get one of those green collars or something like that. So so I guess today is, is Stormy Peters, have you done homework on, on on Stormy?

Shawn Powers (00:02:23):
Yes. And so normally when we're like prepping for one of these, I will like, look at information and come up with like, oh, I wanna ask about this and this and this. More than anything today, I'm just curious to hear about all the things that she's involved with. I didn't have any direct questions, so I'm hoping that conversation kind of leads itself to

Doc Searls (00:02:41):
Just it will come up. Yeah. So, so let, let's get into it as let's how often we get off to a little bit of a late start. So, Stormy is the VP of Communities at GitHub. She leads the teams responsible for enabling online creators and open source communities there including their product efforts, relations, education, and strategic programs. She's a passionate op open source advocate. She was the director of open source programs, the open source programs office at Microsoft, working with 30,000 plus developers to consume and contribute to open source effectively initiated programs such as Microsoft Foss Fund and Azure Credits and open source projects, and and much more. She's got a very long resume, so I'm gonna not read the rest of it and go <laugh> and, and, and jump in. Welcome to Army to the show.

Stormy Peters (00:03:34):
Thanks. Thanks for having me. I always, I always kinda worry when someone says they've done a lot of research. I'm like, what did they find? Maybe I should do another Google search. <Laugh>.

Doc Searls (00:03:42):
<Laugh>. Yeah. They'll be, and if you'd ask an ai, it'll be different every time. <Laugh> and half of it'll be made up and, you know, but that's the new sport. 

Stormy Peters (00:03:52):
I haven't done that. I'm gonna ask for my, my bio <laugh>. Oh,

Shawn Powers (00:03:55):
It's, it's fascinating. Yeah. You would be amazed at the books I've written that I've never heard of <laugh>.

Doc Searls (00:04:01):
Yeah, I know. And mine I, I was doing the, the one on my, on, not Microsoft's, but Bard, which is Google's and it, it gave me, it said like, I lived in Washington state, it had a whole bunch of wrong information. And I said, well, I am Doc Searls, and here is what I've act actually done. And it, and it said, oh, thank you so much for letting us know. I now know that. And then I went at it with another browser to gave me even different wrong answer. So there you go. That's, it's <laugh> it, it's very artificial and not very intelligent in the, in the human sense. So, so Stormy. So, so tell us about what, I mean, to me it's, it's interesting what you're doing at GitHub considering that GitHub is now owned by Microsoft and at the same time Microsoft is relatively new still to the open source world. And so you've been in both those places. How's that journey been?

Stormy Peters (00:04:59):
Both Microsoft and Geber are very committed to the world of open source. So it's just why it's been a great home for me. I've spent the last 20 years I last 20 years helping people use open source software. Cause I really think collaborating on things is gonna change the world. So, so GitHub and this I was gonna launch into my team, GI GitHub's, the home for all developers we're, we're committed to making a place for open source software development. And my team is really focused on onboarding new people to the world of open source. We have like the education team that works with students and educators. We have the dev and docs team that helps people find info information and get started. And so we help them get started and then we also help existing maintainers and community members grow their communities and kind of evolve to the next level and help them be successful. So we've, we're all committed to, to making this collaborative model working and to providing the resources and tools that open source software developers and maintainers need to successful.

Doc Searls (00:05:59):
So, so when did Microsoft get the clues about open source? I mean, it was, Shawn and I were both spent much of our life with Linux Journal. I started in 1996 and for the first, oh, for a long time actually into the two thousands. I think Microsoft is kind of a post open source, but suddenly it got the clues. Were you there when that happened? I'm not knocking Microsoft. Anyway. I'm welcome that all the work they're doing. I'm just wondering when, when the crossover happened and why it happened, because I'm familiar with the one at I B M which is where and friends I had there and sources I had there said, well, they basically went in compliance with their engineers cuz they couldn't really fight it and they didn't wanna fight it actually, so they kind of jumped on the bandwagon. So I'm wondering what, what, how the transition worked at Microsoft?

Stormy Peters (00:06:52):
Yeah, I, I actually like to joke that Microsoft's first contribution to open source software was being the common enemy. When I was at, when I was at the GNOME foundation, we collaborated, collaborated with k e, which we would've thought was our enemy in the desktop space, but they were our ally because Microsoft was the enemy. So I actually think being a, a polarizing opposite helped bring the open source software community together and gave them purpose. But luckily that is not the biggest contribution Microsoft has made to open source. I actually, when I went back to, to Microsoft, when I went to Microsoft, not back to Microsoft, when I went to Microsoft I was in a board meeting and I had to disclose that my, my affiliation was changing. And I was a little worried to like, tell everybody that I was going to Microsoft.

(00:07:34):
I'm like, what are they gonna think? I'm gonna go run open source at Microsoft? And the reaction was overwhelming. Everyone like applauded and they said, if, if Microsoft hired you, then they're definitely all in on open source. So that transition happened before I got there. I think Microsoft is all in on developers and open source software is definitely the way of the future for collaborating and working together in the open. And 90% of all software is built on open source software, or 90% of all new software written is open source. So I I think it's, it, it is very much a part of how Microsoft does business these days.

Shawn Powers (00:08:11):
So I I I don't know how how big the, the separation or whatever between Microsoft and, and GitHub, but you specifically work in a bunch of GitHub things the community in general. But I, the thing that we talked about, you know, at the very beginning was as I was looking at the different things you do, I'm really more just interested to hear about them. I don't have any question, any leading questions even, I'm just, you know, things like get Hub accelerator, GitHub fund. How, how are these things funded? Do you think that they're gonna be continually funded? You know, our what does that mean for open source developers who are gonna be relying on, on this sort of funding? Is it something that you see continuing long term? You know, just those kinds of questions. I'm curious what, what it actually means, or if it's too new to know the answer.

Stormy Peters (00:09:04):
Yeah, I, I, when we were doing our introductions to each other, I said like, the world is changing. Like we're living in sci-fi and I really feel like that we're working on like a number of things that I think are really changing the world. So you could look at like, AI and education is one space that they get to work in that's really exciting. On the other one, a lot of the programs that you mentioned are in the funding for open source software. And I think they're really, we're really at a, a, a crux right now where we can, with the right momentum and the right programs, we can really help make a difference. So I would say, like when I got started in open source software like 20 years ago, everyone's dream job was to get a job working in open source software.

(00:09:37):
Like you, you had like made it, if you got a company to pay you to work on open source software. Luckily I think like there's a lot of other models that we could be using and, and that would make more sense given some of the open source projects that are really small and don't have a lot of development around them. And I think what we are trying to do is, is help out with those. So we have GitHub sponsors. Github sponsors been around for a while. Anyone can donate money to any, anyone signed up, any open source maintainer that signed up that they can just go ahead and give money. We just released, we just general ga made generally accessible sponsors for companies. And it's, it's really been phenomenal because the, the amount of money that companies give is at a different scale than the amount that individuals can give.

(00:10:22):
 And while we were in beta, we saw $33 million flow through the program. Well over a thousand companies participate, even though it wasn't like generally available yet. So that's, that's one potential model. Yeah, so, so, so we have the, the three programs that we're experimenting with now to see if we can create new funding models for developers. So I talked about sponsors where an individual or company can give money to a developer. I think that's really powerful, especially for like those small projects that a lot of people depend on, but need very few developers working on them cuz they're kind of done. So if any, everybody, you know, if everybody that used, you know, open SSL or gave it a dollar, like that would be a ton of money. And would've helped fund someone paying attention to it full-time. But the other experiments that we're running one is on accelerator so there's, we're watching for projects that are kind of ready to take their project to the next level.

(00:11:17):
 And they applied for program, it's a 10 week program. We give them $20,000 for the project and we put them through this like, I don't wanna say it's a clasp, like they get to meet with experts every week try, try to help them in any areas that they want to take the project to the next level to try to take those open source software projects from something that they created cuz they saw a need to something that might be able to benefit more people and therefore get more funding and more attention from other projects. And then the third one that we're trying is, is GitHub fund. It turns out it's really hard to get venture capital money if your idea is to develop your software and open source and venture. Yeah, venture capitalists think that they're funding the secret sauce and they think if you open source it, there's no secret sauce to fund.

(00:12:03):
 So we partnered with M 12, which is the Microsoft Venture Capital Fund, and we are funding companies that are developing in open source. So it's, it's been, it's been really fun to try to like dig up which companies those are and to get to meet them and, and to, you know, be able to invest in them. So those are the three models that we're trying right now. We're also trying 'em out as GitHub. So we, through GitHub sponsors and other ways, we've given a million dollars to our community last year. 500,000 we gave to dependencies through sponsors. I guess it's another thing if you look at projects that get funding, it's typically the ones you've heard of, the ones you know that you're using. But all of those projects have like hundreds or thousands of dependencies that don't get a lot of limelight. So we're also working on ways to say, you know, fund this project end all of its dependencies with this thousand dollars to try to get flow some of that funding upstream to projects that might not get it.

Doc Searls (00:13:01):
So I, my bunch more questions are coming up, but first I have to let everybody know that this episode of FLOSS Weekly is brought to you by Bitwarden. Bitwarden is the only open source cross-platform password manager that could be used at home, at work, or on the go and is trusted by millions, even our very own Steve Gibson has switched over with Bitwarden. All the data in your vault is end to end encrypted, not just your passwords. Protect your data and privacy with bid warden by adding security to your passwords with strong randomly generated passwords for each account. Go further with the username generator. Create unique usernames for each account, or even use any of the five integrated email alias services. Bitwarden has new features to announce in their latest release, including there will now be an alert when Bit warden's autofill detects a different U R I than the save vault item, such as when an iframe is used for the login process.

(00:14:04):
New users who create their accounts on mobile apps, browser extensions and desktop apps can now check known data breaches for their perspective master password via H I P B. That's, have I been POed Logging in with a device is now available for additional clients. Login requests can also be initiated for browser extensions, mobile apps, and desktop apps starting later this month. The bit word and application will begin alerting users if their K D F iterations are lower than the recommended default of 600,000 for pbk DF two Argon two ideas also an optional alternative. K D F for users seeking specialized, a stronger master password has a higher impact on security than K D F iterations. So you should have a long, strong and unique master password for the best protection share private data security with coworkers across departments or the entire company with fully customizable and adaptive plans.

(00:15:11):
Bit warden's teams organization option is $3 a month per user while their enterprise organization plan is just $5 a month per user. Individuals can always use the basic free account for an unlimited number of passwords, upgrade any time to a premium account for less than $1 a month, or bring the whole family with their family organization option to give up to six users premium features for only $3 and 33 cents a month. At Twitch, we are fans of password managers. Bitwarden is the only open source cross platform password manager that can be used at home on the go or at work and is trusted by millions of individuals, teams, and organizations worldwide. Get started with a free trial of a teams or enterprise plan or get started for free across all devices as an individual user at bit warden.com/TWiT. That's bit warden.com/TWiT. Again, i, I I have this long background with opensource, including before opensource here.

(00:16:22):
We got his name in the late nineties specifically in early 1998. And a bunch of geeks decided we're gonna talk open source now and not just free software to this moment now where you are involved with GitHub, which has z I mean there were dozens of software of, of open source programs when, you know, not even programs or probably hundreds, but on the front burner there were maybe a dozen name brand open source projects that they had varieties. The the three bsds, the many distributions for Linux and so forth. Now there are millions and growing and, and I'm wondering how, you know, what is the difference be, you know, how is that ecosystem changing? Like if you could look back across the history of it, what are the sort of crossover points that happened between, hey, suddenly everybody's talking about open source to now where 90% of all code written is open source. There's an understanding about it. And yet try and maybe find whether or not what you just wrote has been written already by somebody else. Or, you know, it used to be you could scratch your own itch and that would work for millions of of users and now could be, there's so many different applications. I'm just wondering what, what, what is the, what's the whole historic framework there? And then where we are now?

Stormy Peters (00:17:45):
It's, it's, it's really phenomenal, isn't it? Like when you, when you look at it like that from like, there was a, a handful of open source applications you could use. So like now there's millions literally millions that you could choose from. It's been super successful. Other times I flip flop back to like, wow, I've been, I've been helping people with OPOs open source programs, offices for 20 years and I'm still helping them, like have, you know, where, where are we getting to? But nursing, lots of companies use open source software. So that, that's been the evolution. Like 90% of all the software being developed is open source. I think we've seen a number of evolutions along the way. And I I think you're right that the, the problem now is, is figuring out what's already been written and what tools and resources you should pull in and like where you should add, you know, where you might start something new.

(00:18:33):
 I do think, while that sounds tricky, I do think we've made other, other progress that makes it easier. Like when I first started developing, getting your development environment set up was like a huge pain. I mean, it could take, it could take a day or two to get everything to work well together and often you needed to pull in somebody else from the project to help you, you know, cause you couldn't get it to build and then you couldn't get that test environment to work. And now with like Code Spaces code Spaces is a, a, a tool and GitHub where the project can just provide you the development environment and it's just all right there and you can start coding on it without spending all of that time setting it up, which has been phenomenal in the education space. So it means that we can reach students around the world that might not have a university or professor nearby to help them. So it's, while at the same time it's harder to figure out what hasn't been written already and what you should work on. I always think that's one of the main challenges. It's easier to get started. Yeah, I guess I didn't give you a whole history, but that was kind of my thoughts. Yeah. When you were talking <laugh>.

Shawn Powers (00:19:32):
So I, I have a question. This is not actually my question. It's from the, the back channel, but it's about Microsoft. So has, has GitHub sort of taken the the lead at from a community standpoint because it's it seems like GitHub is kind of what everybody sees now, no longer like Microsoft Open Source. Is, is GitHub sort of the head of, or the face of Microsoft's open source initiatives now? Is that, is that a fair assessment or we're just not looking in the right places for finding Microsoft open source stuff.

Stormy Peters (00:20:12):
So Microsoft still does a lot of open source and still has a lot out there. I can't, I don't as officially speak for Microsoft. It's been two years since I left, a year and a half since I left. I, I know GitHub and Microsoft are related, but they are separate. And I'm at GitHub now. But they still have projects like yes, code and net and they're stu still super successful. 

Shawn Powers (00:20:33):
Okay, so I guess maybe that was a question. Maybe the, the relationship there isn't even isn't clear either. You know, I, everybody's like I mean from a, from a layman's standpoint, it's like GitHub, oh, they're, they're Microsoft and that's about as far as, you know, anybody ever says so separate but still connected, but not necessarily. Github isn't Microsoft with a with a, they haven't taken over the, the open source stuff of Microsoft. It's still separate in, in each doing their own thing. Is that fair? Yep.

Stormy Peters (00:21:05):
Microsoft still has its own open source programs office, its own developer tools division. It's, it's still it's entity and have still it it's entity. And I can, I can attest that the, the cultures are cultures are quite different. We, we do partner in different ways. Like I mentioned the, the partnership of the GI have fund with M 12 venture capital of arm. So we do have opportunities to partner like that, but we are separate entities.

Shawn Powers (00:21:30):
Okay. Oh yeah, you mentioned, sorry, this brought up another question and I was thinking of during the ad read. I know this is kind of back backstepping a little bit, but we're talking about all the sponsors. When you talk about GitHub sponsors and you were talking about like corporate sponsorship, is this related to or different from like the, when you sponsor a project on GitHub or a developer on GitHub, you know, with a Patreon sort of idea where you, you know, you donate so much of your own money to a developer every month. Is that, is that the same GitHub sponsor that you're talking about when you were talking about that? It,

Stormy Peters (00:22:07):
It, it is the same GitHub sponsors that I was talking about. The the new thing this month is that we made it generally accessible for companies. Cuz it turns out if companies wanna give a hundred thousand or 500,000 this year to all the open source software that they've used they really don't wanna put it on a credit card. It's very hard for an individual employee to, to like get approval for a hundred thousand other credit card. So

Shawn Powers (00:22:29):
We added about the airline miles, come on. Yes.

Stormy Peters (00:22:31):
<Laugh>, Tahiti, here I come <laugh>. So we, we added things like invoicing for them. We added like being able to pick a whole list of projects and say, you know, split my money among them. So we added features that made it more corporate friendly.

Shawn Powers (00:22:45):
Okay. And, but from the developer's standpoint, they see it lumped in with all of their individual sponsorships. And so it's the same program, just Okay. Okay. Cool. Yeah, I thank you for clearing that up. I wasn't sure, I wasn't sure if we were talking about two completely different things because I mean, obviously this is new, so traditionally it was just people sponsoring, so I appreciate that clarification.

Stormy Peters (00:23:05):
Yeah. And, and some companies who had put some on their credit card, but, but not the a hundred thousand.

Shawn Powers (00:23:09):
Yeah. Okay.

Doc Searls (00:23:13):
So, so Stormy there's a and some of the prep that I got from, from your people that there's this line, the big focus right now is in getting corporations to invest in their dependencies and how the barriers there might be interesting to unpack live. I'm not sure what that means. I what I hear dependencies. I think aversion dependencies when you're, when you've got a new, you know when you're installing Linux or something like that, that was like the big thing back in the last millennium. You know, what are, check your dependencies, but that's like what a developer is, but not sure what what it is in a corporate sense.

Stormy Peters (00:23:48):
Yeah. So, so I was on a, on a panel at Azure Open Source Day with, with some other companies. And what they're really trying to do is they're, they're trying to be good citizens and they're trying to both be good citizens and make sure that the things that they rely on are getting funding so that they can continue to be successful so that they can continue to use them. One of the analogies I I like to use is like, companies are, are not people. So like a person sees, oh, I used the software and it's really awesome and I know someone spent hundreds or thousands of hours working on it. Let me buy them a beer and send them $10. Just as a thank you a, a company. And, and, and like if you look at like neighbors, like if I go outta town and I ask my neighbor to like check my mail and she does. And so I thank her with a pie. And then she's like, wow, that was way too big. So let me make her some cookies every room, some apples for my apple tree. And we end up having this like, friendship that also includes a lot of rep, rep, I can't say the word no, reciprocity. Somebody help me out. Yeah.

Shawn Powers (00:24:48):
Yes, yes.

Stormy Peters (00:24:49):
That's good.

Shawn Powers (00:24:50):
That's dang good job. <Laugh>. Yeah.

Stormy Peters (00:24:53):
And, and, and people at companies want to do that, but it's much harder within the framework of the company and companies not a person. And so how does it give back when it uses something? And so we're trying to set different frameworks and processes by which a company could give back and help support the things that they depend on. And it, it's a little bit, it's just a little, just has to be a little different than it happens between people. So one of the things we do is show them in an OPO dashboard, like the software they're using and all the dependencies it has, and enable them to like give money to that whole dependency tree at once. How

Shawn Powers (00:25:28):
Is that, oh, go ahead.

Stormy Peters (00:25:30):
Yeah, go ahead.

Shawn Powers (00:25:31):
How is that broken up? I mean, if, you know, if, if I have a dependency that I barely utilize it all versus something that my entire project is built upon. I mean, is there, are there percentages or is it like anytime you, you pull in a dependency or is that on a per project basis that that sort of thing is determined? I mean, how, how do dependencies fairly get represented in a project?

Stormy Peters (00:25:56):
So we'll take all feedback. So if you, if you have ideas or ways you'd wanna see that, that represented a lot of companies know how many time, how many teams are using something or how many times things have been downloaded and they do wanna like, support the ones that are used more often. There isn't really a way I know of except manually to say like, this project is really important to me. I mean, you just kind of have to know that there's no way to like flag it.

Shawn Powers (00:26:21):
Yeah, I I just wondered if you, if you had solved the problem that I Yeah, because I I, I didn't, I dunno how to do that quickly. So No, I don't have any suggestions. I was wondering if there was a secret sauce that was already in place. So, okay.

Stormy Peters (00:26:33):
So we, we are happy to talk about our plans with anyone and like get feedback cuz the goal is really to, to help make this ecosystem work to, to help continue to make open source software successful and to help companies feel secure using it.

Doc Searls (00:26:47):
So I I I'm wondering if, if you have some sort of almost a template or a workshop for companies that are embracing open source in a formal way. I, I ask in part, because again, this is my, my old knowledge at work, but I'm remembering how IBM said one guy at IBM anyway told me it took them this back almost 20 years ago. It wouldn't be 18 years ago, maybe that it took them six years or something like that before they realized that they couldn't tell their Linux kernel maintainers what to do. That basically those developers told them what to do because they couldn't, they couldn't get the the maintainers to bias the kernel in their direction. Now obviously companies, you know, some products that, I mean some things companies develop are just for them and some are for the world as well as them. And there must be some, there must be some kind of default roadmap for here is the way once you're embracing open source to, to move forward and trust your people even as the people as employees get replaced. Because it seems like the, the flow of employees is not the same as the flow of developers inside a given open source project. And, and I'm wondering if there's, if you provide some sort of guidance around that

Stormy Peters (00:28:11):
Yeah. To, to, to, so we, we do spend a lot of time talking to our customers that are using like internally and wanna be more involved in open source. We spend a lot of time talking to them. And I also really recommend that they joined the to-do group as well from the Linux Foundation. But that, that brings up an interesting thing with your, your history of open source question. So I think when open source first got started, people were hired from the open source community to go work at a company and help them. So like, you know, IBM or HP would hire a Linux kernel developer that would go work for them. And I, I remember Jeremy Allison telling me that before he would accept a maintainer, he would make sure that they had an allegiance to samba over an allegiance to their company.

(00:28:52):
 Just he would test it just to make sure that, you know, he's emitting good people to his projects. I think that's changed over the, the last decade or two. And that now companies there aren't enough open source software developers. And so companies are putting developers who haven't worked on open source onto open source software projects. And so we're getting new developers in open source that start out. And they, it's really tricky. Like, do you give 'em a maintainer status right away because the company owns the project and they just assign this developer to work to it full-time? Do they have to pass some amount of tests that everybody else had to pass? You know, how, how does that work? And then I've heard from projects that it's, it's really confusing when people will change or they get a bunch of flybys like, so all of a sudden 10 people descend and they find out they all work at the same company and they're like, oh, what is this company doing with my project now?

(00:29:43):
Or, or maybe someone who's worked on the project for a long time but was getting a paycheck to do it suddenly leaves because they left that company and a new person just randomly shows up to replace them. So I think that's, that's changed of our time and I think we need to help make that as, as smooth as possible. So we've, we haven't implemented them, but we've gotten requests that like people could say, I'm submitting this on behalf of GitHub, or I'm submitting this on behalf of this employer to try to clarify those situations. We, we don't know the right solution yet.

Shawn Powers (00:30:14):
Yeah. This is another one of those situations where you describing like, yeah, maybe man, because like my day job I have well one, I guess right now it used to be two, but like I don't, I don't know the terminology for the, the GitHub like paid company ability to do things mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but, you know, I have private business repositories that I commit to and stuff. And how that interacts with my, with my account is, is pretty easy. I mean, you know, I just have permission to, you know, commit to those things. But yeah, when it comes to going in, in between companies or making things public and private, it, it can get complicated quickly. And especially if you come and go or people come and go who were maintaining code. Yeah. That's, that's kind of a mess.

(00:30:57):
So I, I, I guess I understand that and just while, while you guys were talking, I'm thinking more and more I understand why you have a job because there's so many things that are like, I don't know the answer to that yet. <Laugh> like funding de dependencies is awesome, but I mean, what does that mean for contributors too? Because that's almost like the next layer of you know, like a project has dependencies and every one of those dependencies has like the, you know, the maintainer, but also lots and lots of contributors and, and how does that work into the, into the situation? And yeah, there's a lot of questions that are gonna be interesting to, to answer I guess as, as time goes on. So it's, it's exciting that you're actually thinking of those things instead of you know, just letting the, I don't know, the Wild West kind of not fund anything <laugh>, which is I think, how the default goes. At least that's been my experience in decades of open source stuff.

Stormy Peters (00:31:55):
Yeah, I, I remember I was on the, I I remember a while ago, like it was projects, it was actually tricky for them to get money, right? Because they didn't get enough money for it to make a huge difference of everybody's lives. So they would just get, like, if, if you had 10 people working on it and you got a thousand dollars a year, what are you supposed to do with that money? Like go out for a huge party. Yeah. so, so part of the key is making it scalable enough, which is what we're trying to do, so that the money coming in is significant enough that it can make a difference because we do have data that says that if people get more funding, they can spend more time on the project. And so that's, that's valuable both for the project and for everybody that depends on it.

Shawn Powers (00:32:33):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. I'm glad. More questions, but that's a good thing, right? That just means there's lots more to do,

Doc Searls (00:32:42):
<Laugh>. So I, I have a a question about the education space. Again, you know, I, I remember back when we used to have gatherings at Lennox Journal, we actually went on these amazing deep crews boat trips and stuff. And I would, that was

Shawn Powers (00:33:00):
Before me to be clear, it was

Doc Searls (00:33:02):
<Laugh>, it was before Shawn was born <laugh> <laugh>. But I remember, you know, asking, asking these guys, there were always guys, I hate to say that, that's another question we can have. You know did, did you learn to write this or to write and see, for example, in school? And all of 'em said they were all self-taught that they taught, they taught themselves that they were taught by each other. And that is a completely different model for the way education works. And more and more education these days is getting to be vocational as it as, as it were, you know, when I was growing up, vocational schools meant you learn to trade like wood shop or auto mechanics, but now it means that you have, you're gonna make six figures to start as a programmer in a, in a, in a meaningful company.

(00:33:56):
And how, I mean, given that you've got the largest code repository there, and by far I think the most committed you know, person I've seen, you know, to making this thing work in, in with you, how, how do you deal with the education world that is so challenged to change right now? Kids need to learn to code. I've been trying to get my kid grandkids to code and they're not, and I want them to, you know? And but how do you get kids excited about that and how do, how do you work with educational systems who are, whose gears are stripped right now just by, oh, the kids wanna learn at home, they don't want to come in, you know, you've got helicopter parents. It's a much more, it's a much more contentious environment than it ever was before, but nothing could be more important than learning to code open source stuff. It would seem to be at this point in time.

Stormy Peters (00:34:47):
Yeah. So, so first off, I think it takes all of us, like you, me, Shawn, everybody on the call to like, make this open source thing work. Like that's, that's why I'm in it because of the community. Because we're changing the world together. As far as teaching kids to learn how to code, I, i first, I think there's like some amazing tools, like I said, code spaces before, like this means you don't have to be in a class with a teacher to get your development environment set up. So it was super useful during covid during the pandemic with all the remote learning, you can just launch at code spaces and you can launch it on a tablet. You don't have to have a powerful computer. So I think that levels the playing field a whole lot. And then I think AI also really helps with learning and we're still exploring the space.

(00:35:29):
We're pulling together a group of professors to try to like understand how we can best help with AI in learning development, in learning environment. Cause when we first released co-pilot there was a lot of reaction among educators of, oh no kids are gonna use this to like cheat and to write their homework. And we've really seen the transition just like in the last year of, of educators being like, wow, this is really useful for learning how to code and how do we incorporate it appropriately? Because now I can be on my own and explore how to write things. Like I can write a comment that says, you know, it, it, it can help me get unstuck. It can help me show how things can be in a way that's pretty amazing. I actually took my son's comp sci homework from high school.

(00:36:11):
He was supposed to write a game and I, I typed into chat G B T write me write hangman in Python. And, and it did, it wrote a fully functional hangman game in Python and like, like that super fast. And I thought it was a little complicated cuz it used a graphics library. So I said, write hangman in Python without a graphics library. And it wrote me at an naski version of Hangman. So it could be used to cheat, but it could also be used to see how to do something and how to, you know, help you learn.

Shawn Powers (00:36:41):
Yeah, Mo I think a lot of us, at least myself, learn from seeing code and then adapting it. I mean that's, you know, that's just, I mean that's the whole idea of open source in general anyway, so maybe that's ideal. I, it's interesting that you brought up AI because that was gonna be one of my next questions. In your, in your bio talks a little bit about artificial intelligence when it comes to education, humanitarian work and stuff like that. I think that like the company named OpenAI a little frustrating cuz that's not open, right? <Laugh>, it's not open source. So I'm curious how, how does AI and the open source concept and world, I mean, what is the overlap? What is the how does that work? I mean, I know that it's like chat, JP p t you know, you you brought up is based on, you know, huge language bottles of I'm sure information that's, that's freely available on the internet, but the actual AI parts are generally not, or, or am I mistaken there? I mean, where does, where does open source and AI kinda find their home together?

Stormy Peters (00:37:45):
So I think AI is, is greatly enabling open source development. So I got, I got to talk to oh, I'm forgetting Ben's last name, sorry. Ben Ben from the Norwegian Refugee Council. And they had done some like amazing work at the beginning of the, the Ukraine crisis where they were, they took a different model and instead of trying to ship supplies or whatever to Ukraine, they told people on the ground, tell us what you need and we'll send you money and you can buy it. So they took donations and they sent, got applications and they just sent money. And so he had to write a whole new, he was a software guy behind making this work and he had to write like a whole new like framework for taking applications and sending money. And he said having, having co-pilot was like having a partner developer next to him just helping him code.

(00:38:32):
And he said it was to the point where he got on the airplane, like he missed his, he missed his co-developer cuz he didn't have internet. So I, I see, I see AI about making all of us, making all of our jobs easier, whether it's learning or whether it's actually turning out code. But kind of helping with that, that problem that the Doc said, like, how do you know it's been written? What, what problems have been solved? Not the actual, it doesn't spit back the, the code that it finds, but like the problems that have already been solved a million times, how do you just, how, how do you use, you know, leverage that knowledge as opposed to having to reinvent the wheel as you're writing code.

Shawn Powers (00:39:07):
Okay. So you're, so you're talking more about using the ai to do open source as opposed to open source AI models or, or software kind of stuff, just as using AI as a tool? 

Stormy Peters (00:39:23):
That's what I was talking about. Yeah.

Shawn Powers (00:39:24):
Okay. Okay. I was hoping you had like some cool insight on like, no, no, this is all open source. Here's where we can, you know. Okay. That's cool. <Laugh>, I I

Stormy Peters (00:39:32):
Do think there, there are open AI models and, and one of the things that I think is really tricky is, is data. Like some data sets really lend themselves to be open. Like, you know, all the language on the internet is, is accessible to you. I also, when I was at Microsoft, we worked to open source sounds for teams like they, they test the background sounds for teams and they had a whole library of, of sounds. Turns out the most annoying one is like food packages, when people are eating, people hate hearing food packages crackle in the background. So they had all these sounds and they ended up open sourcing somebody actually, oh, someone. So I ended up open sourcing the sounds, but a lot of data doesn't lend itself to being open to that easily. And I think that's what's gonna, that's gonna be the hardest part, I think.

Shawn Powers (00:40:20):
Okay.

Doc Searls (00:40:22):
All right. I wanna jump in and and say, I, I have more questions about ai more to explore there, but first I want to tell everybody about Club Twit. Club Twit is their own club. Joining Club Twit is another great way to support the TWIT network. As a member, you get access to ad free versions of all the shows on TWiT as well as other great benefits. For example, there's a bonus TWIT plus feed, which includes footage and discussions that didn't make the final show edit, as well as bonus shows who started, such as hands-on Mac, hands-on Windows, ask me anythings and fireside chess to some of your TWiT guests and co-hosts. And as Floss weekly listeners, you may be interested in checking out another Club TWIT exclusive show, the Untitled Linux Show, hosted by our own Jonathan Bennett. So sign up to join Club Twit for just $7 a month.

(00:41:16):
Head over to TWiT tv slash club TWiT and join today. And we thank you for your support. So Stormy last week all week we have, we've done 36 so far. I host a or co-host rather, a a conference is a, it's an UN-conference. Basically, there are no keynotes, no speakers, it's all workshop and you call the internet identity workshop. And there's always a big focus every time. A lot of breakouts. It's all breakouts. A huge number of them were on self-sovereign identity, which is basically where you're in charge of your own identity and there's lots of development going on around that. We've had some guests on the show, and the other of course was ai. AI could not be escaped or something. And one of the themes that came up, there were two themes that I want to sort of explore.

(00:42:05):
One was with open source. The whole idea, or a big part of the idea is you can see the code, you can go back and look at it. We just talked about that. You, you can't really do that with ai. You've got this impossibly large corpus of data that has been ingested by something that is beyond understanding even in some cases by the people who designed it. And on the other hand, we have this urge that all developers have always had to scratch their own itch, write their own stuff, be in charge of their own lives. And on top of that, a big one for us, there was, I want my own ai, I want one of my own. Like I have my own laptop here, I've got my own phone. I, I use Vim. He uses emax. You know, I, I want my own way of doing things, but I especially want to control my own life with ai. Can that be done? And I didn't hear an answer to that. It's like, are we always gonna depend on large, opaque models that can only be operated by giant companies? Or are we gonna get some of our own? So there are a bunch of things that are sort of wrapped in there that we can unpack, but I'm wondering if you would look at it any of the same things.

Stormy Peters (00:43:23):
Yeah, I, I had a, I had a couple thoughts as as you were talking, there were kind of separate ones I can share, but I, I totally want my own ai. As soon as I saw what AI could do, I was like, I would like one, I would like to train it on my email, my writing, and I would like to say prepared draft responses to all the emails I get and have them sitting in my inbox in the morning so I could just hit send. But I would have to know all the things that I know and be willing to like copy my style. So yes, I do think we'll get to a world where we all have our own, could have our own ai if we might not all have our own ai. I, I, I don't think anyone can actually say what the future's gonna look like.

(00:43:59):
Will we have a whole bunch of like specialized eyes embedded in all of our tools? One that will help you make glamor shots for your, your, your Twitter profile and one that will help you respond to your emails embedded in your favorite email tool. I, I don't know, but I, I do think you could have your own personal ai quite easily in, in the near future. And I'm, I personally really want that. But that's just, that's just me predicting and me thinking. It's, I think you also asked another question in there like about, I don't remember the question, but the, the answer that I wanted to give is Go, go for that. That's better <laugh>. Yeah. When, when, when, like co-pilot is suggesting code solutions for you. And we actually have a feature where you can turn off code suggestions over, over a certain size, over 150 characters.

(00:44:47):
So you're not copying code from anywhere you're getting, things are used, it's usually used in like thousands of places. So when, like you ask for, for a function to like search through an array and return the longest string to you or what whatever you want it, it, it's not, it's not like it found something similar in two or three places. It actually learned from like thousands and tens of thousands of examples of that and is suggesting a pattern to you that it saw and all of those, I, I'm not, I'm not the technical person that wrote the code, so it might might not be exactly the way, the way that they would describe it, but I guess that the thing that really struck me was like, it's, it's not something that's unique that one person solved, like had a search, an array. It's like something that we find over the place and it's pattern matched. I'm not, that's what the word I'm not sure I'm using right, but it's pattern matched on, on all of those. And, and to me that answers your question earlier of like, how do you avoid reinventing the wheel, right? Like there's so much code out there. How do you find the piece that, that might work for you? 

Shawn Powers (00:45:49):
That, that actually leads into a question that I have on the, the notion of AI as like helping to learn code. There's a lot of bad code as well <laugh> I've written tons myself and a lot of it is publicly available and, and probably the AI and bottles have been trained seeing a lot of bad code mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So is there is it a valid concern that, you know, the, the code that it's gonna be writing or pulling from and, and extrapolating and, and remixing is going to have less than ideal fundamentals or security aspects at the core? Because I mean, at least now, you know, like chat G p T, it's a, it's a large language model. It's goal is to seem human and to communicate well accuracy and usefulness is far from the, the top priority. So if we're, if we're learning, I guess how, how do we know that we're, we're learning good stuff if we rely on AI to be the, the one that is teaching us? And I, I don't expect that you have an answer to that. It's just a, a concern. And I'm not being like paranoid about AI taking over like, and teaching us all to, you know, code back doors into things. But it's just in general, AI isn't reliable. So

Stormy Peters (00:47:16):
Yes and no, and that, that goes back to doc's question. Like I think you'll haveis for different cases. So like co-pilot is helping you code. And so we are trying to make it return good code through different models every AI use. I think you'll have to evaluate like what it was trained on and who, who's in charge of it and what are they trying to accomplish. And so that kind of gets back to education. Like how do we, how do we teach our, our, our young people and ourselves how you evaluate the answer. Like if, if chat G B T tells you that Eiffel Tower was built in, you know, 1981, like how, how are you gonna like verify whether that's that's right or not? 

Shawn Powers (00:47:57):
If only there was a licensing model where you could see what was happening inside the black AI box, so you knew if you could <laugh> rely on it. And that's obviously sarcasm. It's, there's the, the lack of openness in the underlying AI is, is a frustration.

Stormy Peters (00:48:12):
And I think first of all, it's, it's not as clear as we expect it to be cuz it's not copying that code. So it, it can't say it came from the source necessar. I, so there's, it doesn't work. Like our human brains think it works. That's not, sorry, that's not, but like some of them I think we're taking feedback and some of 'em do. So like if you use the, the Bing AI from Microsoft, it ha it will tell you like where it got its answers from chat G B T doesn't, doesn't do that. It's, it's, it's, it's a, but chat GB team, it sounds much more conversational. So it's learned in a different way.

Shawn Powers (00:48:49):
Yeah. And you know, des again designed to be conversational, but even, I mean, and this is just me being pedantic at this point, so I, it, I, sorry if I, I don't mean to be adversarial, that's not the point at all. But I mean, you know, being Bing's, I will tell you where it got the information from. Well, I mean, I could tell you where I got my information from too, if I'm a third grader, but I could be lying. And in my experience with ai, it lies like crazy <laugh>. So I don't know that it's trustworthy because it told me so, cuz again, it, it's not open in the, in the open source sense. So you, there's no inherent trust, I think built into interacting with an ai.

Stormy Peters (00:49:33):
So I, I think we're, we're still evolving the, the models and so feedback like that is, is super, super valuable to all of us working Onis. 

(00:49:44):
And I'm, I'm curious, like, I've always been kind of like, so in the open source model, like I trust the thousands of eyes on it to help make it better, but I personally don't go into the code and make sure that like my, my program is doing what it says unless maybe if i's building software, I would but like when I use, when I use a lot of open source software, I don't ever go look at the code to verify it. I trust all of those developers that have worked on it and all the people that have checked it out. I'm curious how we develop that model with, with AI moving forward. Like, do we end up trusting some AI more than others? Do we trust them for specific purposes? It's, it's gonna be an interesting evolution

Shawn Powers (00:50:23):
And yeah. And what, what garners that trust, because again, I, I, you know, I keep saying open source model, but that isn't gonna be helpful when uhis are doing things as far as, you know, making connections. It's not just like looking over code, right? I mean, it's a matter of like, how are these connections made or, I mean, that's kind of the point with ai, it does it in a way that humans can't quickly decipher what, what exactly is going on. So yeah, I don't know. I, and that's a, I mean, <laugh>, I just look at your job and I'm like, boy, I'm glad you're, I'm glad, I'm glad you exist because there's so many questions that still need to be asked and then hopefully, eventually answered too, because AI's extremely powerful. It's not like it's going away, but to know how we can best integrate the abilities into our lives in a way that we're not shooting ourselves in the foot is it's pretty important.

Stormy Peters (00:51:14):
Yeah. And I, I think it will take all of us. So like I said, like education, we're pulling together, you know, educators to talk about how AI is changing the way students learn and what they need to do. So I, we're gonna submit a talk for, for Grace Hopper later today that that's about how AI works at industry for students. And I'm, I'm really hoping a lot of people join us in that conversation so we can figure out what to say there.

Doc Searls (00:51:38):
I'm wondering about if you've followed what's happened in Europe with Italy issuing an emergency temporary decision, demanding opening, I stop using personal information from people that personal information, can you include code? And some people see that as a bit of a putting the brakes on use of open source in some ways. It also strikes me that, of course, I, I assume that that open eye or Che G B T or other systems have, have gleaned lots of stuff from, from GitHub under many different licenses, and then it gets reused. And the G P L, for example, has certain restrictions on the way things are reused. And I'm wondering if all of that as a kind of bundle is, does this just fall under the heading of, man, we just gotta figure this out? Or do you have a kind of position on any of it at this point?

Stormy Peters (00:52:32):
Yeah, I think it's super complicated as, as I'm sure you've all thought being more technology savvy than like the average person is that we're all sharing a lot of information these days. We watch it with our kids, we watch it with our coworkers, like the, the, the stuff that we share on social media or that we, we share as we sign up for services. It's, it's just a lot of information we're giving out. And maybe like, it doesn't matter in that one instance, but you aggregate it and suddenly it, it matters a lot. You know, it, it mean it paints a whole story when you put it together. And I think as technology becomes more powerful, it becomes much easier to put it together. And that's why I think companies have privacy policies, have privacy teams, and it's not just about what's available, but it's about what intent did the person have when they shared that information. And so I, I do think you often see com you do see companies being very ethical and like, you know, they shared this, but they didn't mean for it to be put together with their IP address and their gender and where they live and be aggregated together like that. So I, I think we need to continue to, to educate our friends and family and our users and customers. And we also need to make sure that we as the humans behind companies are, are making ethical wise decisions about how we use people's data.

Doc Searls (00:53:54):
Yeah. We're, we're kind of at, at the end of the show here, close to the end of the show. And just a, a quick one about about people you know there and what's personal information. I I, I actually, part of the question I asked earlier was actually more about for personal ai, I want my own AI is that I wanted to look at stuff that's really, I mean, when we talk about personal data today, it's almost always about the stuff that's public, that's going out on the internet. I want ais to know everything I've ever written that's public and is a, a monstrous amount of it. I don't want it to know any of my health data. I don't want it to know any of my financial data. I don't want it to know any of that stuff. But I have a keen interest in that.

(00:54:38):
I mean, I, my contact in my calendar is like extremely interesting to me. You know, when was I at this restaurant last, when did I go on this vacation where, you know what did I buy? What is my property? What, what do I own? Where is it? And, and that's all interesting information to me, <laugh> and maybe to my insurance company and to my healthcare provider, my financial people or, I mean, but this is, and I I, my own feeling about this, I'm wondering if, if you're in agreement or close to it, is that we'll get a much sharper idea about what's really public and what's really private that this, that AI will help us kind of get there. Just the whole issue of AI is gonna help us decide as a society what's okay to look at and to train on and what is not, and then what tools do we have for that.

Stormy Peters (00:55:31):
Yeah. I, I think it's really interesting. I, I, I hope it accelerates the conversation faster than, than I, I hope it accelerates the conversation. I guess what I'm trying to say, I do think though that's gonna be really different for different cultures in different parts of the world. Like if you've been a hiring manager, you've seen the resumes from Europe always include like a, a photo and often include information that I would consider private information that they shouldn't, that, that I wouldn't share on a resume. So I think not only do we have to like come up with societal norms, but we have to make them customizable by, by country or culture and by person. And, you know, should be at some level an individual choice. Whether I want my gender shared or not, or you know, where I live. Your, your, your at home address and your property value are shared with the world. You know, how, how do you, is is that okay or not? So how do we, right

Doc Searls (00:56:28):
<Laugh>? Yeah, it, I mean it's, you know, the internet a wonderful Gracie internet is that it's completely international, it's non-national. It has no b it has no boundaries. It has no built-in vows at all. It's just a way that any two parties or more can share data and it's a giant copy machine. And that, that has an offload of challenges when you have local customs and, and the rest of it, you know, I was surprised they went to Germany. Hey, there's no street view here. <Laugh>, you know, they're, you know, on, on Google. It's because this sense of privacy is very different there. We always end a show by by asking two quick questions and we're kind of at the end right now. What are your favorite text editor and scripting language?

Stormy Peters (00:57:15):
My favorite text editor and scripting language. So my text editor like really changes these days by like who I'm working with and what I'm trying to accomplish. So like that, that kind of gets to the collaborative model. But I was, I definitely started out in life as an emax person, but I don't use EMAX very much anymore. And then my favorite scripting language, I actually say I, I haven't written scripts in, in a while, but I still have nightmares about Pearl, so nothing to do with Pearl

Doc Searls (00:57:49):
<Laugh>.

Stormy Peters (00:57:51):
Sorry. Sorry to all Pearl developers out there. Hell is other people. Pearl

Doc Searls (00:57:58):
<Laugh>. Yeah. The the first thing, the first argument I heard at Lennox Journal when we had a location was an argument about other people's pearl. And so it goes back a long way. Yeah. Anyhow, storm has been great having you on the show. You were in a moving, in a moving environment. So we'll have to have you back soon to talk more about all this.

Stormy Peters (00:58:24):
Thanks. I really enjoyed talking to both of you. It's been fun. And to the audience,

Doc Searls (00:58:28):
<Laugh>. Yeah, thanks a lot. Okay, so, so Shawn, how was that for you, man?

Shawn Powers (00:58:36):
It was, it was good. I, you know, I was, I, I went in not knowing exactly what I was going to ask, and it ended up being great and, and conversational. So I was, I was really happy with it. The AI stuff. Yeah. I was like, oh AI is both fascinating and, and I don't like to say that AI is like scary because it, it's not scary and like, oh no, I'm worried that it's gonna, you know, be iRobot up in here. It's just more of a how we integrate it in a, in a wise way. So yeah, I'm glad there are people smarter than me who are thinking about it more often than me.

Doc Searls (00:59:10):
Yeah. I, I I think that there's a a I mean, I, I think she's right in the middle of like, the biggest change going on in, in world history right now. And, and it's gigantic. I mean, and it's, you know, open source one in a gigantic way. Now what? Well, it's a constant now, and the what just gets wilder and wilder and wilder? I don't think you could go back to 1998 and project forward anything that's going on except for the people who said open source is gonna take over the world. And it happened, you know, <laugh> Linis talked about world domination and you know, and and it, and that happened, but, you know, is it, is it really domination? Is it, or is it just a ben another way of doing things? It's very different, you know, very different kind of thing.

Shawn Powers (01:00:02):
Yeah. I don't have an answer if you were looking for an answer for me. I don't.

Doc Searls (01:00:05):
Yeah, I know. I, I, I I don't either. I just have, you know, more questions and that's probably the best way to be. So I wanna let people know that next week Ben Meadows of Mesh Mesh is coming in Jonathan Bennett is gonna be our co-host on that. He's all over that subject. So you wanna prepare and look up Meshek and Ben Meadows that's coming up next week, and you, Shawn, have something cool to plug.

Shawn Powers (01:00:33):
Oh, yeah, I

Doc Searls (01:00:33):
Do. People with a, with a people looking at a screen can see it. People who don't will just have to buy it.

Shawn Powers (01:00:39):
Yeah. So this is my book is coming out, my comic. I finally am releasing a book on my comic. I did a daily comic for, gosh, like a couple years. And I'm pretty excited that it's available now. Today is actually gonna be the first day, and the reason I'm doing it today is because Barnes and Noble is doing a 25% off pre-order. And I can't even match that price myself selling it directly. So <laugh>, I dunno how they're doing it, but hey, more power to 'em. And yeah, I'm excited. It's it was it helped me get through the pandemic. I started doing it, the pandemic, and it was yeah, it, it ended up being pretty cool. So I'm a big fan of my own comic and I'm excited to see it in print.

Doc Searls (01:01:20):
I, I can testify it's a good comic. He's Shawn is a, a, a good comic writer. 

Shawn Powers (01:01:28):
Writer. The part, yeah, the drawing not so much, but that's all right. That's all right. It, but you, my whole comic started as a joke. I I couldn't draw arms on a little character, and so I, I tweeted She

Doc Searls (01:01:38):
Made shapes. You made

Shawn Powers (01:01:39):
Yeah, a little squares. And so, yeah, my very first comic was Shawn. Some creators shouldn't draw comics. You can't even draw Arms, man. And then <laugh>, and then I did it daily for like two years. So <laugh>

Doc Searls (01:01:50):
Yeah, it's, it's, it's a, it's a good show. I, I, I really suggest people take that. And again, next week mesh is gonna be the topic, and we will see you then.

Jonathan Bennett (01:02:03):
Hey, we should talk Linux. It's the operating system that runs the internet, but your game consoles, cell phones, and maybe even the machine on your desk, then you already knew all that. What you may not know is that Twit now is a show dedicated to it, the Untitled Lennox Show. Whether you're a Lennox Pro, a burgeoning Ciit man, or just curious what the big deal is, you should join us on the Club Twit Discord every Saturday afternoon for news analysis and tips to sharpen your Lennox skills. And then make sure you subscribe to the Club Twit exclusive Untitled Linux Show. Wait, you're not a Club Twit member yet? We'll go to TWiT.tv/club TWiT and sign up. Hope to see you there.