Podcast Episode 151: Episode 124: Open Source

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Have you thought about how open source software is all around you? This week on Rock Cast, the team has a discussion about how open source has affected our lives and our economy.

Transcribed Content

This episode of Rockcast is brought to you by Rock partner Triumph Tech, a full service specialist partner. Rock partners provide crucial support for Spark Development Network and important services for the Rock community. Connect with Triumph Tech today at rockrms.com/partners. Welcome to this special edition of Rockcast. We are going to be talking about the state of open source and our thoughts on that. So we're happy you could join us. I'm Emily Forman. We have Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo. And we're just excited to have this little topic of conversation, and let's kick it off. Yes. So open source is pretty important to us and and hopefully to the Rock community because we are an open source project. And a lot of the value that, , Rock provides is because of its roots in open source. And I think it's a really interesting time right now in the open source community because there's a lot of projects that have had some interesting stumbling blocks and some success, but there's this it's renewed a lot of conversation around open source. We thought, well, , let's talk about it from our perspective and our and give some of our thoughts about open source. Because I think it's easy to read some of these comments or look at what some of these projects, , have stumbled on and and try to link it back to all open source. And and sometimes, , that there's lessons to be learned there, but there's also a lot of differences because open source is not just one thing. But the first thing I think that's interesting, if you think about open sources, it's really not an option. Before, it wasn't that long ago. It it really was. , you had to decide, are you gonna do open source or closed source? That was a very big decision to make. And I remember when we made that decision to to go open source, even back with the previous system before Rock, that was a heavy thing, and we we had to really think hard about that. And it was really hard to do do things when we said we wanted to open source because it it that all of a sudden put big limitations on you. , you couldn't just go put pull any component you want. And back then, you did pay for a lot of components. It was hard to do things open source, much easier now. In fact, it's so much easier now that it's really not a decision. , every product that you own has open source in it. Your car, your refrigerator. I mean, every single product that you buy is is linked to open source. System. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't matter which operating system it a lot of it is open source. , a lot of people would think, well, I'm not running Linux, so, , it's not it's closed source. No. It's not maybe the internal kernel isn't is closed source, but every other thing hanging off it is based off of open source. Even your car, , everything in your car is a computer, and that is probably running some form of open source. The whole thing may not be open source, but it's relying on open source Don't do its work. No no one's going down and writing down to the bottom of the stack Mhmm. All up to the top of the stack on their own closed source. There may be a couple little areas, but Probably a SpaceX control system. But even then, I bet they're pulling from open source. Mean Could be. I mean, the TCPIP stack, probably writing that. Not writing that themselves. , it would be kinda crazy. So the first thing is, , it's not really a choice anymore. The other thing is it has directly changed our economy. , there's there's just it's the economy has completely changed because of open source, and and you can't go back. So it'd be kinda saying, well, , I don't really this Internet thing. Let's go back to AOL. Because in the open oh, Internet's kinda the open source of what AOL was. And it's , you can't go back to AOL, not not only because no one wants it No one does. Because it doesn't work. , it doesn't work the same. And so, , to open source and not to open source is kind of a crazy question because it's already decided and done, and and there's no going back. And it's it's just amazing to see what open source has done to our lives and to our economy, and and great things great things. Now everything does have a little bit of an edge. , there's there are some issues that come up. Recently, there's an open source project where the founder got a little mad that no one was helping and contributing, and people were making , the economy as a whole is making millions and million hundreds of millions of dollars off his, , little library, and no one wanted to pay back. And he he got mad and and said, well, heck with this. I'm pulling it. And he pulled it out of, , repositories that would break tens of thousands of other programs. ? So there there's things that. But overall, the the massive amount of benefits and and we'll learn from that, and and we'll we'll find ways around that. And already, it's it was patched and fixed, , super quick. Other things have happened where, , open sources, they found, , security issues with the with the open source, and and that kinda got out and, , made the news. But, I mean, if you haven't realized that the news is all slanted in one way or another, and they and they're just trying find headlines and trying to make things sound exciting. You're gonna have that either way. Closed source, open source. , I say it's better to have it open at least there's more eyes on it. But, of course, that needs to be fixed. But I do think that that you just can't label everything open source without understanding the differences about the the foundations that it's built on. And quickly, just coming up with three different categories, I would say that there's first that there's open source that's a project, that's a a foundational piece that's funded by a company organization that has a monetized product. So for instance, , maybe if you look at 37 as an organization has a product called Basecamp, and they've created open source components to build their product with. So, , Ruby on Rails is, an open source that that they helped or not helped, but created and and then helped to fund. The key with that is, though, if you listen, they're very vocal about, , how open source should be done, and and they have a lot of good and interesting ideas. , I'm not knocking their ideas, but they also come from the ability to to fund things. Right? So it's not that Basecamp is open source. It's not. It's they would never do that. But this foundational piece that they write on top of so they're giving away a little piece of what they do, a a the foundational cornerstone of what they do, but not the actual thing. So a lot of times they'll talk about, , how, , open source should be sponsored and how money is a bad thing within open source. And it's , well, that's all well and good, but you're you're making hundreds of millions of dollars. So that's It's not an issue they experience. Yeah. It's helpful to say those things when you have the money. , I'm a big fan of theirs. I I think they have a lot of good things that they say. , they have a lot of good books out there. But their books kinda suffer from the same thing, in my opinion, that, , it's easy to talk about all these ways to structure your business when you have a revenue stream that's, , ginormous. For some people who are trying to do things in a different way, in a more accessible way, in a way that's not trying to get as much money out of it as you can, which I'm not slamming them for that. That's fine. But when you're not trying to do that, you have to think a little different. Mhmm. So so that would be the first category. People who are writing, , these foundational components, but they have a revenue model of a product that's not it. The second one would be more what we're in is, , when the product is the open source Mhmm. You have much different, , things you have to think about because the value is in the thing that you're giving away. So the value for Basecamp is Basecamp. And there is some value to Ruby on Rails, but it's not the most valuable thing. So you you're holding that piece back. Right? Whereas we're saying, here it is all on public GitHub. You could literally pull it down right now, compile it, and run it, and never talk to us. And and that was intentional. That was not a mistake. It's not , oh, we didn't think of that. ? That was a part that that was a protection piece for churches. , hey, if we go rogue, if you don't what we do, you, the church, a religious nonprofit, can take that and do what you want as long as it's noncommercial. So that was another level of of protection for the church. But it's harder for to revenue that. , it's harder to to to get the money that you need to actually write it, , because that takes money to to pay people to do this work. And to support it. Right. So yeah. And so the the the philosophies of the guys at Basecamp don't apply. , we literally wouldn't even started it. Right? We would go write maybe lava. The the analogy was we would write lava open source to that, but but then all of Rock, the rest of Rock would be closed source and you have to pay. Here's your here's your bill. Thank you. But we'll open source this concept of lava. That would be the exact analogy. And it's , well, okay. That's that's cool, but lava doesn't really help me, man. I need someone that manages my whole church. And so the funding for that is more much more difficult. Right? Definitely. Yeah. It's I'm glad you put that in what it would look in Rock terms because I think people kind of forget about that comparison. Yeah. And then it's not that we can't learn something from from the other side. I mean, there's certainly a lot of things we can learn from. And I said, 37 signals says a lot of smart things that that apply, but there's some things that they say that don't apply. And so sometimes, , we'll read articles including myself and we'll get caught up in the idea and , hey, we'll just we should do it this way. It's , oh, wait. No. Our our open source is the product. Mhmm. And that's harder. And so typically, what organizations do us when when they give away the whole product is that they get into a SaaS model of hosting that product, and they make the revenue off that. And so the value comes from the hosting and then the simplified hosting. And they'd still let you run it yourself, but you don't want to because it's harder and actually sometimes more expensive because of economies of scale to do it yourself. And so that's how they make the money. And, , we've chosen in the very beginning not to do that. Some of that was because a lot of the churches, especially in the beginning that were wanting to use it, wanted to host it themselves. And they they actually saw that as , no. We want to hold that data ourselves. We want to host it ourselves. We have the server. We have the knowledge. And that's changing. And so, , we there are ways that you can do a SaaS model with Rock. Those those are still not very popular. A lot of people still wanna do it themselves, but I think that'll change over time. And but that'll never be a requirement. Again, open and freedom is a core value to Spark, and we're never gonna force you to to do it otherwise. I also think it's great that, , a lot of people ask, , why didn't you just make it multi tenant database? Well, first of all, multi tenancy is is is harder, especially if you want to have extensibility. So it's not so hard if you don't want people to change the the configuration and the structure and and let them add and tack on things. But if you want them to be very extensible, then multi tenancy doesn't work super well. But also, the privacy of it is so much better when you can control your date is all inside of one silo and and then no one else is touching it and getting access to it, including Spark. Right? We don't have access to that data. We shouldn't have access to that data. That's your data. That's the person's data. More so the person now. But I think I think that's a good thing. And so it's easy to think at at the surface level that maybe multi tenancy would have been better, but I still hold true that I I love the fact that we're not. Mhmm. And also too, if you even if we did a hosted solution that was optional, you you want your data. Okay. Here it is. Here's a container of your data. You can go, Mhmm. Move it into your container or someone else's container, and you have control. We have no say in in nor should we. Okay. So we talked about having three different buckets. So we we talked about, hey, I have a revenue model. I'm gonna give off a piece of what I do. We have the know my product is the open source. And I think the third one is projects where there are more utilities again, but there really is no monetization. There there it's just a person's passion. It's a hobby. It's a side gig. They just love to build things, and they wanna build and give. And those are some of ones that are getting some attention right now because the the people who write these things are getting very frustrated. And I truly, honestly, I understand that frustration. I understand the frustration of wanting to build something and do something for, , good reasons, but then feeling sometimes it's being taken advantage of or or monetize in ways that you're , woah. Woah. Woah. , I don't mind if someone uses it to benefit a church, but I got my the intention was never to give my life for you to to build your kingdom. Right. Right? And I know what those feelings are. And some of it's , well, that's what you said. That's I mean, for that for that number three camp, , if the license says you can do it commercially, well, that's what you said. , ours is , no. You can't do it commercially. So our license was we we kinda thought about that ahead of time. That's a little different. But but number three is , well, that's what you said. So in my mind, I I have sympathy for them, but I don't think what they're in some cases, what some of them do is, , take take your toys and go home. You can stop doing it, but you can't you don't have the right to break people because they're just doing what you said. Yeah. Unless your license, , dictated that. Right. Right. Yeah. But I think a lot a lot of people start us too. , we're , hey. Well, give it away for free. Everything's free. And then then you realize the realities of life was , well, yeah. But, , we gotta we gotta feed Right. Feed families to do this. Altruism doesn't feed families. And you still have the same values and the same goals, but when you provide value, it's just complicated. Yeah. And we had to protect early on, we had to change our license because we realized we had to protect the future of Yes. The product. Well, , we didn't want it to go astray. So I think that was version four. Yeah. And at the time, , things were a little bit different too, and and we wanted to protect the investment churches were giving that someone wouldn't walk in and think and say, well, thanks for this, and I'm gonna go make because they already maybe had a commercial business, and they well, I'm gonna go commercialize this, and thank you very much for all this work. And that's really what it was, is the protection of the community's investment to make sure that someone else didn't go, , steal this thing that we as a community had built and go monetize it. Mhmm. And then fracture that community and cause a real mess at that point. Yeah. There'd be many variants. It it was another layer of protection. The open source route, one layer of protection. The religious nonprofit licensing, limiting to that sector was the other layer. if the protections in the middle, those are the two sandwich outside layers that keep that geared toward churches protectively. Yeah. And, , Spark could go out and license it to secular world for lots of uses. We've never really had time to even think or consider that. And we did get asked once, I know of, one case, but we haven't yeah. There's no time. Yeah. Just never fit either. Every time someone comes up with that, it's , yeah. Okay. Well, , we don't really have time to think about this too much. So, , we because we really our passion is to help churches, and that's what we wanna do. But maybe someday that becomes a stream of revenue if, , we have to get to that. Just sitting here, I'm having a hard time imagining when that time when the when the time is available. Well, it's time and passion too. Yeah. Yeah. You can sometimes you can change your things and make different time, but it we don't have passion for that. It Right. It doesn't excite us. And then it kinda breaks the connection we have with dependency on God. , I remember the day I wrote up on this board, , the number we needed to make this happen, And it happened. We didn't make it happen. We didn't change the , we didn't it just happened. So if we introduce an avenue for God to not be the provider, I think that would not be good, potentially. For sure. Yeah. Well, no, he's the one in control. Yeah, definitely. And throughout, I know at least my life, I can see points where I've been , well, this is gonna have to be a God thing to go from A to where we need to be at B. And every time that, and then it happens, there's just such a faith strengthening. And you can look back on those moments in your life, and that's where you see your tapestry weave together. So but, , a lot of these people are stuck in this situation where they just feel taken advantage of. And honestly, they are. They are being taken advantage of. They put themselves in this situation to be taken advantage of, but that doesn't say that they deserve to be taken advantage of. And that's something, , that maybe trans transfer into the second topic is, , I I think these people should be supported. And, , Spark has taken, , a change. , , we're still scrappy and we're still, , , we definitely don't have the revenue in the in the in the income that many people in our space do, but we don't think that it's kinda , , if you have a friend who says, well, I'll be generous to the church as soon as I'm rich. Right. ? Well, that's never gonna happen. And we all know that's not how God's economy works, , within the church. , you should be the widow's mite. And so we wanna show that generosity, and so we've started sponsoring some of the packages that make Rock Rock. So for instance, there's a package, if you've followed the podcast where we talked about how we have a new lava engine. And so that one of these engines is called Fluid, and it's an open source engine. And someone, the maintainer of that engine is very, very smart, very, very good, and puts a lot of time and effort into this thing. And so we've decided what we wanna sponsor. Now we're not sponsoring with, , lavish gifts. Right? It doesn't take much. But it's a pretty well used library. It's definitely we're not the only ones. , there's a lot of big companies using it. And, I think we're the second sponsor. In fact, I know we're the second sponsor. Wow. And, we gave our little sponsorship. , it's a recurring monthly gift of, I don't know, I think it's, , $20. It's by no means a giant gift. Right? But that signaled him to get interested. , he he actually kinda came to our, , repository and checked us out. Who is this person sponsoring us? And he sent us a a little message through an issue. He didn't really have our contact information. So he he opened an issue, which was pretty cool. He he looked at how we were using his library and he was , wow. That's that's amazing. Yeah. So it really kinda made his day, , which you would hope that as a sponsorship of that small amount wouldn't know of, And that made our day. Yeah. Making his day made our day. So we went around to a couple of the libraries that are doing that and, , just doing what we should be doing. Right? Just we're not being good. We're just being normal. , should yeah. Right? Average. We we're trying Yeah. It's not we're being really good goody two shoes. We're just being average. God's kingdom should work here. Right. And so our thought is, well, gosh, that's shouldn't the church be known for generosity? And what if all churches would just, in their own name, go out there and just sponsor these people even at $5 a month. Yeah. You can imagine going to all the open source repos, repositories on on GitHub Wow. And seeing the sponsor logos and realize that they're all churches. That'd be so awesome. Crazy awesome. And how much money would it really net be? It'd be it'd be trivial. , literally, , stop expense expensing one thing on your on your budget line item, and you could literally pay for that whole thing. And, , part of me thinks, well, maybe my original thought was, well, maybe we could have a special fund at Spark that people could donate to, and then Spark could go pass the money on. But I actually think it's better if if everybody does it themselves because all those logos are gonna show up, and and it's gonna be making a huge statement. I mean, if we did even a decent job of this, people would be writing about it in all the tech magazines. , if every open source repo had, , six church logos next to it, it would make news. And in some way, we're all benefiting from this in great ways. Even if you're not even using Rock, you're benefiting from open source, period. , if you're running WordPress, whatever your site's running on, it's running on it's running on open source. And so I have the site to challenge us to say, let's go find some of those repos, and let's help those who need help finding those repos. So, , speak into the community. We we at Spark will be publishing a page here soon where we're gonna link out to the repos that, , we use. Not not all the repos allow sponsorship. So, , fair enough. Those are typically backed by a big company that has the money. And so that they don't really even want to get the sponsorship because then it gives people the entitlement to say, , how it should be done. And they're , hey. We got enough money. We don't need that. We'll we'll handle that. Okay. Fair. But there's a lot of small, , literally moms and dads who do this at home at night who I think we can make a huge impact for. And, so we'll publish a list that you can go out there. It's a little bit of work. You gotta go out to GitHub. You gotta create an account for your church, put a little logo on it, and then you have to, , set up your credit card payment. But it's really it'll take you fifteen, twenty minutes. And then the, , the benefits will, , it's first of all, we owe it to them. we're only doing what's right. But second of all, we can make a statement to the world that says the church should be known for being the cutting edge technology because what? It used to. , back in the day, the church is what Yep. Really was pushing the arts the Let's take it back. And it's cheap. it's cheap to take it back. And as we should be doing it even without being the church just because we're good people. But the church, let's just take a stand and look and we don't have to go do all of them, but we if we all do a little. And and let's encourage our other peers who maybe don't use Rock to say, hey. what? We have this idea in the Rock community that we should be churches should be generous towards open source. , I noticed you're running, , this technology. Here here's some libraries you could go support. Because it's not just a Rock thing. It's not a Rock community. We have to do this as the church Mhmm. If we're gonna make an impact Mhmm. In the world. And I really don't think it would take that much effort or money to make that impact, and is this the right thing to do? That is very hard to argue with, John. Well, hopefully, it'll be something, and and it'll only be something if if all of us hearing this take a step to a Right. A, do it, and then b, help others understand that they also should do it. Right. So it shouldn't be a spark thing or a Rock thing. It has to be a a a church technology thing. Mhmm. And it has to have action. It can't just have agreement. Right. Well, I think that is definitely something we should all consider as that's impacted our lives and where somebody provides value, if we can provide recognition, that's just an incredibly fair thing to do. But if that's coming overwhelmingly from churches, what does that say about churches? Better than what you're gonna find in the average news. Mhmm. Yeah. It's gonna hopefully show them who we are Right. And who we really are because we are generous and we are good and we do care for people and we do care about technology. And this is showing them who we actually are. Mhmm. So pray about it and ask God to stir your heart into action and take that next step. Yeah. And hopefully, I I don't think taking it to your leadership is gonna be a problem for that amount. And honestly, if it was, I would be if it was me, I'd be , okay, can I do it in your name and and use my credit card? Yeah. In me. It's not that much money. Yep. And you may already have a little spot forward in your budget because it just isn't that big. Right. Well, thanks so much for sharing some thoughts on that, John. I think that's given everyone a lot to kind of mull over and determine where they can make that commitment and and take those actions that really will help elevate the name of the big c church as standing for gratitude and generosity, which is why we're all doing what we're doing. So thanks for sharing those thoughts, and thanks to you for joining us today in our listening audience. We appreciate your support. We appreciate your, , subscription to our podcast and appreciate you as a community. So until next time, we will talk to you later. Do a church that loves the idea of using Rock but hasn't taken that leap yet? With managed hosting, churches of any size can get access to Rock's amazing technology, hassle free. With just one click, Rock's managed hosting removes the roadblocks that might stop a church from switching to Rock by making the process simple. Churches get the ease of a SaaS church management system without losing any of Rock's powerful features. Are you ready to take the next step or share with another local church? Visit rockrms.com/hosting today.