The real costs of Open Source Sustainability

<!--HTML--><p>In 2016 Nadia Eghbal released "Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure," which shines a light on how few people maintain the software&nbsp;that underpins a large amount of the internet and the services that run on it.<br /> <br /> The software world has rallied around Open Source Sustainability. Going with what they know, folks mostly focus on paying FOSS developers. Funding drives were&nbsp;funded. Foundations were founded. Startups started up. Venture capitalists ventured that capital.<br /> <br /> Money isn't the only part of sustainable FOSS projects. Sustainability is a multi-faceted concept that can't work if people focus on only one of its many elements.<br /> <br /> This talk will:</p> <ul> <li>Review literature around the concept of sustainability</li> <li>Propose a definition that more accurately details what "sustainable" means to FOSS</li> <li>Provide tips for starting with your FOSS sustainability efforts</li> </ul> <p><strong>About the speaker</strong></p> <p>VM (aka Vicky) spent most of her twenty-plus years in the tech industry leading software development departments and teams, providing&nbsp;technical management and leadership consulting for small and medium businesses, and helping companies understand, use, release, and&nbsp;contribute to free and open source software in a way that's good for both their bottom line and for the community. Now, as the Director of Open&nbsp;Source Strategy for Juniper Networks, she leverages her nearly 30 years of free and open source software experience and a strong business&nbsp;background to help Juniper be successful through free and open source software.<br /> <br /> She is the author of&nbsp;Forge Your Future with Open Source, the first and only book to detail how to contribute to free and open source software&nbsp;projects. The book is published by&nbsp;The Pragmatic Programmers&nbsp;and is now available at&nbsp;<a href="https://mmm.cern.ch/owa/redir.aspx?C=K1heJi2ZeKowd2cTNGHf4FN-x7kMNN0VU6RWO-9tLhSYuekX-FXXCA..&amp;URL=https%3a%2f%2ffossforge.com" target="_blank">https://fossforge.com</a>.<br /> <br /> Vicky has been a moderator and author for&nbsp;opensource.com, an author for&nbsp;Linux Journal, the Vice President of the&nbsp;Open Source Initiative, and is a&nbsp;frequent and popular&nbsp;speaker&nbsp;at free/open source conferences and events. She's the proud winner of the Perl White Camel Award (2014), the&nbsp;O’Reilly Open Source Award (2016), and two Opensource.com Moderator's Choice Awards (2018, 2019). She blogs about free/open source,&nbsp;business, and technical management at&nbsp;{anonymous =&gt; 'hash'};.</p>