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I am a 44 year-old American immigrant to Germany, where I have lived since my 22nd birthday (exactly). I enjoy playing piano badly, and singing Christmas Carols off-tune and out of season in English and German to my two daughters and our dog. I have served as Treasurer for The Apache Software Foundation where I drove major changes. I modernized The ASF's Accounts Payable systems. I introduced a Conflict of Interest policy. I introduced the policy framework necessary to establish an Endowment. And I introduced the financial tools that empower volunteers such as virtual credit cards. To learn more about my work in that context, please watch my talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayr5qSC9_Qw I also chaired ApacheCon Europe in 2019, where I enabled communities at The ASF to interact and share knowledge. As Event Chair, I invited Open Source Design to the conference to share their extensive design knowledge with ASF communities. In addition, I served on The ASF board from 2019 to 2020, where besides overseeing 200 Open Source projects, I helped to establish a Diversity and Inclusion initiative, and drafted The Foundation's response to the for-profit sale of the .org registry. I worked as a Software Engineer in industry for the first 20 years of my career. Then in 2020, I completed my EMBA with a Master's thesis in Vendor Neutrality in Open Source. If you would like the high-level summary of that work, check out this talk: https://www.sfscon.it/talks/the-economics-of-vendor-neutrality-and-vendor-domination/ I currently work as a Senior Engineering Manager for Grafana Labs, where I have the opportunity to see the work of a successful for-profit Open Source company, and participate in shaping its values and culture.
What does the OSI need? What do the employees of the OSI want to offer? What do volunteers for the OSI want to offer? What do sponsors for the OSI want to offer? I am still quite new to the OSI. I began my membership last year. As a board member for the OSI, my most important role will be to listen and to empower others.
Open Source replaces competition with cooperation. It creates win-win situations for everyone who participates fairly (and even a few who don't). I have extensive experience in both non-profit and for-profit Open Source, a passion for enabling others, and a proven track record of doing so.
Comments
Submitted by nwillis on Wed, 2022-03-16 11:31 Permalink
Candidate questions
Hello, I have a small set of questions ....
(1) About your stance on Individual seats. Do you see an Individual board seat as an obligation to represent the voice and priorities of the voters? Or, if elected, will you represent Grafana's interests?
(2) In your contributions section, you ask several open-ended questions, then say that you want to spend your term listening. Does listening require a board seat? I.e., how would being on the board permit you to do that more effectively than (for instance) joining the mailing lists, working groups, and other public operations of the OSI?
Submitted by myrle on Thu, 2022-03-17 06:35 Permalink
Representation
Thank you! Excellent questions.
1.) Should I be elected, I would see my election as an obligation to listen to and weigh what individual voters have to say, and share my thought processes with the voters. I am not running as an employee of Grafana Labs, and I do not represent Grafana Lab's interests. I do think that small and medium-sized enterprises like Grafana are an important powerhouse for good Open Source software; and that if we neglect them and serve only the interests of large enterprises, that we risk, in the long term, losing many of the freedoms that Open Source promises.
I also, despite leaning extensively on my experience at The ASF in describing my candidacy, am not running to represent the interests of The Apache Software Foundation. But I do think that non-profit Open Source Foundations which provide an umbrella for Open Source projects, are an even more important powerhouse for Open Source.
I have in the past dealt with situations in which the interests of a non-profit Open Source community, and the interests of my employer came into conflict. I chose the Open Source community (and a period of unemployment while I figured out what I wanted to do next).
That having been said, I do not anticipate a conflict of interest between the OSI's interests and Grafana Labs interests. I believe they are well-aligned. Grafana Labs is a good open source citizen.
That also doesn't mean that I would implement 1:1 exactly what the voters ask for in every case. I see the job of a board member to reason carefully about issues and seek strategic paths that promote Open Source and the OSI. This will be true for any candidate here: you're not just voting for a clone of yourself, you're voting for someone with experiences and values they will use to inform their decision making.
2.) I approached the contributions section this way because I have found in past contexts (both in and outside of software development) that what I thought was the problem was not actually the problem. For example, when I ran for the board of the ASF, in 2019, I was very focused on the conflicts of interest between paid and unpaid contributors to projects. After I was elected to the board, different problems and different opportunities came to light (specifically: an insufficient system for Accounts Payable and a volunteer interested in driving D&I work). Together with the other board members I worked on those problems and those opportunities.
I could have approached this question by pointing to my contributions to The ASF and saying: "I can do that for the OSI too". And while that's true, it's also not relevant: OSI has different problems and different opportunities from The ASF. I am a generalist who is willing to do the hard and unloved tasks, not specifically a Treasurer, or anything else.
Could I do that without being elected to the board? Yes I can, and should I not be elected, I suggest that the board members who *are* elected invite me to share the work.
Submitted by myrle on Thu, 2022-03-17 06:44 Permalink
Representation
Thank you! Excellent questions.
1.) Should I be elected, I would see my election as an obligation to listen to and weigh what individual voters have to say, and share my thought processes with the voters. I am not running as an employee of Grafana Labs, and I do not represent Grafana Lab's interests. I do think that small and medium-sized enterprises like Grafana are an important powerhouse for good Open Source software; and that if we neglect them and serve only the interests of large enterprises, that we risk, in the long term, losing many of the freedoms that Open Source promises.
I also, despite leaning extensively on my experience at The ASF in describing my candidacy, am not running to represent the interests of The Apache Software Foundation. But I do think that non-profit Open Source Foundations which provide an umbrella for Open Source projects, are an even more important powerhouse for Open Source.
I have in the past dealt with situations in which the interests of a non-profit Open Source community, and the interests of my employer came into conflict. I chose the Open Source community (and a period of unemployment while I figured out what I wanted to do next).
That having been said, I do not anticipate a conflict of interest between the OSI's interests and Grafana Labs interests. I believe they are well-aligned. Grafana Labs is a good open source citizen.
That also doesn't mean that I would implement 1:1 exactly what the voters ask for in every case. I see the job of a board member to reason carefully about issues and seek strategic paths that promote Open Source and the OSI. This will be true for any candidate here: you're not just voting for a clone of yourself, you're voting for someone with experiences and values they will use to inform their decision making.
2.) I approached the contributions section this way because I have found in past contexts (both in and outside of software development) that what I thought was the problem was not actually the problem. For example, when I ran for the board of the ASF, in 2019, I was very focused on the conflicts of interest between paid and unpaid contributors to projects. After I was elected to the board, different problems and different opportunities came to light (specifically: an insufficient system for Accounts Payable and a volunteer interested in driving D&I work). Together with the other board members I worked on those problems and those opportunities.
I could have approached this question by pointing to my contributions to The ASF and saying: "I can do that for the OSI too". And while that's true, it's also not relevant: OSI has different problems and different opportunities from The ASF. I am a generalist who is willing to do the hard and unloved tasks, not specifically a Treasurer, or anything else.
Could I do that without being elected to the board? Yes I can, and should I not be elected, I suggest that the board members who *are* elected invite me to share the work.