Last time we sent out an update we were rolling out comment threads on Octobox.io. Today we’re adding support for reviews and reviews comments, and making this the default experience for users of Octobox: But that’s not the subject of this post. No, today we are making good on a…

TLDR: We’re adding issue:write and pull_request:write access to Octobox so that you can comment on issues and pull requests from Octobox.io (or your own instance). We’re also helping onboard new users and adding auto-scaling to get you moving quicker. To get you up to speed: back in October Andrew and…

TLDR: If you currently use Octobox.io to manage notifications on private repositories then — from Monday — you will need to pay $10/month for each user or $100/month for each organisation to continue to do so. Let’s start from the top: Andrew Nesbitt and I have been working together on…

This article first appeared on Open Collective, it has been re-published here with the permission of Pia and the Open Collective team: Ben & Andrew have been working in open source sustainability since 2015. Their first project together, Libraries.io, tracked the most popular packages in open source software. …

On October 6th 2017 Andrew Nesbitt and myself joined Tidelift, a new company that was formed in May that year. Twelve months later we’re set to leave Tidelift and begin a new company with some similar goals. There’s not much we need to say about our time at Tidelift other…

I’ve been developing digital products for my entire adult life. I didn’t even know I was doing it to begin with. It took alpha-gov and later the Government Digital Service to really give teeth to the concept of the ‘product manager’, at least here in the UK. …

In my last two posts I rejected the notion that open source projects are a public good. I then identified some of the challenges that open source projects have to navigate and charted some of the courses projects have taken to become sustainable. I signed off with the simple question: …

In my last post, I rebutted the dangerous thought that in economic terms an open source project is a ‘public good’. History has already shown us this is an expensive mistake to make. We must consider both the community and the code as one. That — in turn — forces…

Last month Andrew and I visited both coasts of the US to talk about the sustainability of open source software. It was great to see such a wide and diverse group of people willing to bring their thoughts and experience to bear upon this problem. …