11: Open Source Work Is Work

If you look at any of our open source projects, you’re bound to see the phrase “Made with 💚 at Spotify.” That’s because many open source projects start off as passion projects. But is passion enough? Now that open source code is so essential to how we all build, it’s important for us to treat that code more seriously. To be sustainable, open source can’t rely on passion alone. It needs a little tough love, too. For that, we got an OSPO — an open source program office — to help our developers (and Spotify) get the most out of their open source experience.

Host Dave Zolotusky talks with Per Ploug, our open source tech lead and head of Spotify’s OSPO. You’ll hear about what developers can learn from open sourcing their projects, why we shouldn’t treat open source like a side gig, how to measure the success of an open source project (by the number of stars on GitHub, of course), what open source at Spotify looked like in the past (the good, the bad, the so-so), and what we hope it looks like tomorrow.

Read more about open source at Spotify on the Spotify Engineering blog:

• Open Source Work Is Work
• The Open Future

Listen to more episodes about open source at Spotify:

• 10: Basic Pitch: Our audio-to-MIDI converter uses a neural network to transcribe the recordings of almost any musical instrument🎺🎸🎻🎤🪗
• 06: Bits of Math at Scale: Pedalboard is a Python library for applying studio-quality audio effects at scale🎶
• 04: Backstage in the Wild: Why Netflix and American Airlines both adopted our platform for developer portals for their own engineering teams📺✈️
• 03: Community Builders: What’s it like when you suddenly find yourself with a popular open source project and a fast-growing, global community of contributors😬
• 02: Open Issues: How to go from Hack Week project to public repo in two weeks instead of six months😅
• 01: What Is Backstage?: Why we open sourced our homegrown developer portal and how it improves the everyday experience of developers🧑🏻‍💻

Read what else we’re nerding out about on the Spotify Engineering Blog: engineering.atspotify.com

You should follow us on Twitter @SpotifyEng and on LinkedIn!