Open Source Feature Management with Ivar Østhus

The Business of Open Source

תוכן מסופק על ידי Emily Omier. כל תוכן הפודקאסטים כולל פרקים, גרפיקה ותיאורי פודקאסטים מועלים ומסופקים ישירות על ידי Emily Omier או שותף פלטפורמת הפודקאסט שלהם. אם אתה מאמין שמישהו משתמש ביצירה שלך המוגנת בזכויות יוצרים ללא רשותך, אתה יכול לעקוב אחר התהליך המתואר כאן https://he.player.fm/legal.

Fixable

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How to get your confidence back 41:05

לפני 21 weeks41:05

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41:05

When negative feedback shakes your confidence, it can be difficult to get back to feeling like yourself at work. In this episode, Anne and Frances help a struggling listener who has spent years toning herself down in the workplace after being told that she was too assertive — now, she feels that her modest approach is holding her back. Together, they use Anne and Frances’s “trust triangle” framework to explore how empathy, authenticity, and logic can help you rebuild confidence and trust with your colleagues, and share helpful confidence hacks for getting comfy with discomfort. What problems are you dealing with at work? Text or call 234-FIXABLE or email fixable@ted.com to be featured on the show. For the full text transcript, visit ted.com/podcasts/fixable-transcripts Want to help shape TED’s shows going forward? Fill out our survey ! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.…

לפני שנתיים 28:06

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Ivar Østhus, The CTO and creator of Unleashed, is a revolutionary in shipping feature management tools and rollouts for companies worldwide. Through hardships, Østhus came into his own in the open source world by relieving the pressure on developers bringing new creations to light in their projects.

On this episode of The Business of Open Source, Hear how Østhus discusses the inception of Unleashed and the struggles he overcame in the early stages. He also talks about being a European company in the tech industry and why he prefers to be called a "Creator" rather than a Founder.

Highlights:

Creator but not a Founder(1:48)
Why Unleash? (2:33)
Why open source (6:20)
Taking the plunge with unleash (9:38)
Being a European company(15:25)
Early mistakes in Unleash (17:40)
Long-term support open source user(19:40)
The biggest challenge (25:20)

Links:

Ivar

262 פרקים

#Tech #Entrepreneur #Business #Emily Omier #End User Stories #Real World #Open Source #Open Source Startup #Founder Stories

Open Source Feature Management with Ivar Østhus

The Business of Open Source

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published לפני שנתיים

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MP3•בית הפרקים

Highlights:

Creator but not a Founder(1:48)
Why Unleash? (2:33)
Why open source (6:20)
Taking the plunge with unleash (9:38)
Being a European company(15:25)
Early mistakes in Unleash (17:40)
Long-term support open source user(19:40)
The biggest challenge (25:20)

Links:

Ivar

262 פרקים

#Tech #Entrepreneur #Business #Emily Omier #End User Stories #Real World #Open Source #Open Source Startup #Founder Stories

כל הפרקים

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This week on The Business of Open Source I talked with Alya Abbott , COO of Zulip , about managing community contributors. This is a hot topic for open source companies — and for that matter, open source projects in general, including those that aren’t being monetized in any way. It’s a bit of a third rail in the open source ecosystem to suggest that there’s a downside to community contributions, but there undoubtably is. At Zulip, they think about the contribution process as a product. They think about the contributor experience and making it as easy as possible for new contributors to get started. They even did user experience testing on the developer experience for contributors — and made changes as a result. And why does this even matter? Because when it’s done right, community contributors can end up increasing your development velocity. Especially on things like integrations, the community contributors can really push things forward. There’s much more to this episode, so check it out! And if you’d like more content about open source companies, or if you’re the leader of an open source company, join the mailing list for Open Source Founders Summit.…

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This week on The Business of Open Source I spoke with Marco Möller , CEO and co-founder of Pionix . This was a fabulous conversation about a company that’s in a very different market from the usual open source company: They make firmware for EV charging stations, and are behind the EVerest project, which is part of LF Energy. So who is part of the community open source projects that are so connected to hardware? Here’s what we talked about. There aren’t many hobbyists in the community — but there are a lot of people who have professional interests in the electric vehicle industry. EVerest doesn’t focus on what Marco considers “personal” or “hobbiest” features. This was a great discussion about how understanding the target market, including for the project, leads to different feature decisions. How does Pionix money? It doesn’t yet :), but we talked about various plans the company has for monetization in the future. How being involved with the LF Energy has helped build trust, which is very important for a company that is only going to be selling to large companies and governments. Why Marco thinks that the huge vision he has for creating firmware for EV charging stations is only possible with open source, and how he makes sure that he’s able to fund the large mission without hurting the community. The balancing act with getting investors who specialize in the energy market but who don’t have experience with open source Struggling with positioning your project or figuring out how to best monetize? You might want to work with me.…

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Products, consulting, and open source with Andrew Martin 36:40

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This week on The Business of Open Source I spoke with Andrew Martin , CEO and founder of Control Plane. Control Plane is ultimately a consulting company, as Andrew introduced it. But the company also created and maintains KubeSec , and also has an enterprise version of Flux CD that it licenses. That gives this conversation a slightly different flavor from the usual. Here’s some of the things we talked about: The business ROI that Andrew expected to get from releasing KubeSec, and whether or not he as actually seen those expected results play out The difference between bootstrapping a company by offering services and by offering consulting — specifically what the difference between services and consulting is. The problem with “drive-by” feature development in open source projects — when people contribute features but don’t commit to the ongoing maintenance of the project Why Control Plane decided to release an enterprise version of FluxCD, and how the enterprise version of Flux is differentiated from the pure open source project. Why underinvesting in marketing, especially in marketing for the open source projects, was a mistake Join us at Open Source Founders Summit if you want more conversations about how companies are built around open source projects, from consultancies to large corporations.…

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This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Misha Bragin, co-founder and CEO of NetBird. This was also the first episode I recorded in 2025, which gives you an idea of how far in advance I’m recording episodes. NetBird has an interesting origin story — it came out of an original idea to make a hardware product, but as Misha and his co-founder were starting to work out the realities of manufacturing, they realized that they would be better off building a software company. Here were some of the take aways from the conversation: Sometimes your users want to pay you! Misha explained that before there was a commercial offering, some open source users proactively reached out asking for one — because they understood that in order for the company to be viable, it needed to have revenue. Just because you get crickets at first doesn’t mean your project sucks. When NetBird’s open source project was first released, it made zero splash. The reality of working in a proprietary piece of software, you can do things quick and dirty. *Obviously you shouldn’t, but let’s face it a lot of people do. But when your code is open, it is also a part of your communication strategy! If you push out code that’s not tested or that’s not well done, you risk reputation damage even if the software works exactly as it should. Misha talked about how choosing Auth0 as an authentication service was a mistake — not because it is a bad service, but because it was not appropriate for their target audience, who are self-hosting. This is a very good reminder of how sometimes choosing the best technology for the job can backfire; you also have to take into account who the target user is and if they are going to be repelled by the choice you’re making. Struggling to figure out how to balance your project development with your product development? Need to supercharge your funnel? You might want to work with me. Want to share your knowledge and learn from your peers who are open source entrepreneurs? You should join us at Open Source Founders Summit May 19th and 20th in Paris.…

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Open Source and AI Coding Assistants with Ty Dunn 40:56

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This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Ty Dunn , founder of Continue.dev , which is an open source AI code assistant. We had a fabulous conversation that touched on both the AI hype wave and why open source. The first thing I’d like to touch on is why Continue.dev is open source, in other words, what business rationale Ty has for taking that route. Because he makes some great points about building an ecosystem. If building an ecosystem, and encouraging people in your community to build on top of your software, is something that is important to your for either strategic or philosophical reasons, the absolute best way to accomplish this goal is with an open source project. In the case of Continue, being open source, and allowing companies to retain control over their data, is also a differentiation in the market. There was also a phrase in the conversation that I wanted to pull out — Ty talked about monetizing “next to” the open source project. This is precisely how many of the most successful open source companies work. They have a successful open source project but monetize it in a way that is adjacent, rather than directly competing with the project. Check out the full episode for a discussion about the AI hype wave and how it intersects with open source business models. If you want more discussions about open source companies, you shouldn’t miss Open Source Founders Summit this May 19th and 20th — it’s the only event specifically designed for leadership in open source companies. And if you’re struggling with your open source strategy, you should consider working with me.…

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The CFO's View of Open Source Companies with Eileen Doody and Karen Walker 37:16

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37:16

This week on The Business of Open Source I had a slightly different conversation: I spoke with the CFOs of two open source companies, Sysdig and Percona, to better understand what is different (and what is not) about financial management in open source companies. Karen Walker is the CFO at Sysdig, and Eileen Doody is the CFO at Percona. They both joined me to talk about the CFO role in general and the CFO role in particular at an open source company. Why did I do this episode? Many founders I’ve spoken with are a bit unclear on the role of a CFO — whereas I’ve never spoken with a founder who had trouble understanding what their CTO does. Here’s some takeaways from our conversation: Part of the CFO’s role is about thinking about open source strategically, in terms of how the open source project is going to fit into the company’s overall strategy. Because open source is so ingrained in the company, it doesn’t fit into a single budget line item; it’s impossible to break out and say ‘we spend $X on open source’ because it’s so integrated into everything the company does How do you measure your ROI on investment in open source? At Sysdig, two out of three prospects come to the company because of Falco, their open source project. We also talked about the ecosystem effects of having a huge footprint with your open source project; it’s hard to measure the positive influence of having massive brand awareness, but both CFOs are convinced that it is very important to the company. Eileen says that many CIOs now have mandates to look for open source solutions when possible, which was not the case a decade ago. That’s changed the dynamic for a company like Percona that’s based around open source. Another reason I did this episode is because while I usually have founders on the podcast, there are some really important perspectives from other leadership team members. Part of the the role of a CEO is to understand all the other C-level leadership position’s roles and responsibilities, and in my experience the CFO is one of the less well understood roles. In fact, we wrapped up the conversation by talking about how a CFO can be a real strategic partner that’s forward-thinking rather than just the bean-counter that some people expect a CFO to be. A couple things to mention. First of all, if you want to learn more about my consulting work with open source companies, you can do so here. Second, if you want to chance to connect with other founders of open source companies, consider joining Open Source Founders Summit this May 19th and 20th in Paris.…

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Thinking Hard about your License Choice with Ivan Burazin 39:22

לפני 20 weeks39:22

39:22

This week on The Business of Open Source, I spoke with Ivan Burazin , the CEO and co-founder of Daytona . First of all, Daytona was one of the sponsors of the first edition of Open Source Founders Summit , and I had a chance to meet Ivan in person at the event. So a big thank you to him for taking a risk on the first year of the event! But let’s get down to business. We talked about: Why Daytona took an open source approach, even though they originally started out with a pure commercial licensed software. The thought that went into choosing the license — this was a great discussion, because it is a question a lot of people have. Ivan walked through his thought process in choosing a license and how he thinks about difference licenses. The theory about how open source will help Daytona build their business, and the dynamics of how open source adoption leads to commercial success. The importance of technical decisions in an open source project’s growth strategy. The different stakeholders in the community, as well as in the customer community. I really liked the piece when Ivan talked about the individual motivations that people might have for getting involved in a community — instead of thinking about how you get something from the community, think about how others can get something out of the community. For example, you can have someone who wants to get into technical writing who gets that experience by writing documentation for your project. Making it easier for that to happen is in everyone’s best interest. Like this episode? Struggling with your messaging or with your conversions from open source project to commercial customers? You might want to work with me. And if you want to join us at Open Source Founders Summit, apply to join us here.…

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