Chad Whitacre ⇌
@chadwhitacre_
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Head of Open Source, @getsentry ❧ Working on developer sustainability through @ThePledge and @fairsrc ❧ dry-stack stone waller (of necessity) 💃
The Greater Pittsburgh Area
Joined April 2009
A'ight, beat that. 😤😁💃
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Announcing the Open Source Pledge. Today is our official launch! Thank you to the dozens of companies and ecosystem partners that are putting their weight behind this . and to the thousands of Open Source maintainers out there. We see you and we're here for you! 🙌 💃
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Getting closer! 😅
Aiming for 97% in this org and likely similar in the other two (codecov, syntaxfm).
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Soooooo yesterday was my one-year at @getsentry, and as of recently I have (yikes!) been promoted to Head of Open Source. 🙈😱🙇♂️. ∴ Anyone wanna help me build an OSPO? 💃 I'm hiring an Open Source Program Manager, DMs are open or chadwhitacre@sentry.io. Link soon ….
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Rounding up a few "Open-source alternative to _________" SaaS companies:. @glimesh — Twitch.@PlausibleHQ — Google Analytics.@chatwootapp — Intercom.@typesense — Algolia.@liberapay — Patreon. What others are out there these days?.
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New post, prompted by the Redis news but applicable beyond it:. Relicensing and Rug Pulls. If a viable fork materializes, relicensing was a rug pull. If not, it wasn't . and that's kinda sad.
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Love this guy’s attitude.
daily reminder that being polite, good humored & having a relevant essay handy is the best response to htmx skepticism. we have no enemies, just friends who haven't had a moment to talk about the uniform interface of REST yet.
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Kicked off this year's FOSS Fund Fest with a budget meeting yesterday. Internal survey starts August 1, final blog post in late October if all goes well. Here we go!. 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯 . $𝟱𝟬𝟬,𝟬𝟬𝟬.𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟮 . $𝟮𝟲𝟬,𝟬𝟮𝟴.𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟭 . $𝟭𝟱𝟰,𝟵𝟵𝟵.
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Four months in at @getsentry, still waiting for the feeling of "work" to kick in. World-class product, stellar team, bright future—hardly believe I get to be here. 🙏 And we just raised Series D! 🦄 Hiring spree in full swing, lmk if you want a referral:
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Aiming for 97% in this org and likely similar in the other two (codecov, syntaxfm).
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Yesterday @getsentry reached a significant milestone in our Open Source story: our first BSL change date. Sentry @ ca8674c5 is now available under Apache 2.0, an @OpenSourceOrg-approved license. 💃.
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Okay @ashtom @satyanadella, ball is in your court. It’s your own platform! You should be blowing us out of the water! Let’s get this party started for maintainers! 😁💃.
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Why yes, we do have a one-pager about for convenient circulation via email. Download it at
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Sentry Fund Fest 2024 let's go! Once money clears to platforms we will distribute to maintainers, projects, and foundations. Heads up we're going to prefer one-time payments to monthly dole-out this year.
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Keygen is our 10th member company to join the Open Source Pledge since we soft-launched week before last. As part of our major media campaign launching on October 8th, we aim to put ~15 logos on the Nasdaq Tower. Join by September 24 to be considered.
We're super excited to announce that we're joining the Open Source Pledge alongside some other really cool companies: Come join us.
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“The OpenJS Foundation Cross Project Council (CPC) is the technical governing body of the OpenJS Foundation.”. Welcome to @getsentry, @yagiznizipli! Glad to deepen our relationship with @openjsf. 🙌😁💃
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Started a README for @fossfunders. The goal is “to make it weird for companies 𝘯𝘰𝘵 to support FOSS.” Let's go! 💃
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@cra Early notes on In general we aim for both breadth (this, 10%) and depth. We're just one company, though, and ~small. True impact will be in industry-wide culture change (e.g., @fossfunders), and tax-based programs (e.g., @sovtechfund). Let's do this!.
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Welcome aboard @ValDotTown @scalar @gitbutler! Let's go Pledge! 🙌 Major promo campaign kicks off on October 8. You have a month to get your company in on the ground floor. New site design should land later this week .
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Alright, soooooo . it looks like we're going with “Fair Source” as our answer to this. We have and @fairsrc in hand. @faircode_io is in the loop. Want to follow along or get involved?. We aim to launch in late July. 🙌💃.
I think the way forward here is to make what I suspect is a loose confederation of folks using non-compete licenses to actually get together and draft their own set of values. To then brand that. And stand behind it proudly.
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New post up, to define terms:. The Open Source Sustainability Crisis. “[S]ustainability is when people are getting paid without jumping through hoops, and we’re in a crisis because people aren’t and they’re burning out.”.
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New post up for @getsentry about how it might be time for Open Source to, as it were, move out of our Free Software parents' basement(!):. Long post, bold claim. I want to share a story here that didn't make the cut, about RMS and the Heart Coin. 🧵….
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"Why Atom Can’t Replace Vim" tl;dr because Atom is Emacs-ish.
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Cheers @BaileyPumfleet! Great to meet up in person! 😁. Interesting to learn about @calcom’s particular flavor of open core business model. 👍
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We are live with the new website! Learn all about our new approach to software sharing that we are calling Fair Source. 💃.
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Kinda amazed how many people can apply for a senior software engineering role on an open source team and not submit even one pull request with their application. I mean, that's pretty obviously the way to stand out, isn't it? Do you want the job?.
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Well, this seems like as a good a time as any to announce 😁💃🤖 @HeyRobbOat . Robb Oat is a robot software engineer. It reads issues and opens PRs (using @OpenAI Davinci model).
Pretty sure that some time around the year 2025 @github will have a system where you input what kind of changes you want, and it'll automatically produce a pull request for you that embodies what you described. Not far fetched from current GitHub Copilot.
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"Kindness and Kyriarchy," a follow-up to yesterday's open letter to Shanley:
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Okay, I guess this is gonna be an intramural contest. 🥇 @syntaxfm wins with 99% of deps funded!.🥈 @codecov is the runner up at 97%. 🥉 @getsentry takes the bronze with 95%. Well played, everyone! 👏
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Welcome aboard, @stackblitz! 🙌 At 18 developers, the second-largest company after Sentry to join the Pledge. If they can do it, why can't you? Join before Oct 8 to be an Open Source Pledge Innovator. 👍.
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What's this I see? Two companies already onboarded as members of the Open Source Pledge? 👀 😮
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So great to catch up with @adamstac and @jerodsanto at @AllThingsOpen #ATO2022 #AllThingsOpen. Love yinz guys! Keep up the great work telling stories and growing the community! 🙏
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Done. We grew 2.5x on @github from 58 to 148 “sponsorables,” and we grew our dollar volume nearly 3x from ~40k to ~120k for the year!. Full report in a few weeks.
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If you hear from @thanks_dev about Sentry's funding program this year, it's legit, we are working with them to help us distribute funds rationally and scalably. Lmk if you have questions.
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Thank you to all of the good folks at @github @opencollect @thanks_dev @stackaid for making it easy for companies like @getsentry to support open source at scale. 🙏.
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I love seeing @FrontendMasters join us on 😍. Let's make 2024 the year we look back on as the turning of the tide on the Open Source sustainability crisis! Tech industry unite! 🙌😤💃
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@cassidoo Heart coin hand-punched by Linus Torvalds. He was like, “Oooh, it's a little off-center.”. “Hrm, you're right, better punch another one.” 😏
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We're launching a major media campaign for Open Source Pledge ( on October 7. Pledge is for companies. To make the most of the opportunity, we need open communication with other stakeholders: maintainers, foundations, platforms, et al.
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@driaug_ Yes! That’s a start. I would love to see them really go for it with GitHub Sponsors. Gotta use your own product if you expect other people to. ;-).
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I just sent emails to founders at six companies inviting them to join the Open Source Pledge ahead of our Oct 8 marketing launch. One already responded and said yes! We have 15 companies on board with 10 days before the billboards go up. It's gonna be a great campaign. 👍.
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We just reached Issue/PR/Discussion № 40,000 on @getsentry! Congrats to @billyvg for the win. 🤘. Kinda funny that a lot of people still donʼt know weʼre an open source company. 🙃.
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HN modded us in record time this year. 😭. Really irritating, ngl.
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We shifted from design to build for today. We're also exploring some illustration elements for the hero images. 👀 On track for August 6.
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When one of the top security researchers on the Internet compliments your tiny payments startup for having "great security, congrats." O.O
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You have less than a week to become an Open Source Pledge Innovator like @astral_sh. 👀. After October 7, the rank of “Innovator” will be sealed forever!
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Whoa. @wycats has id 4 on GitHub:. That's far from the only thing he was in on early. It'll be interesting to see what the conventional wisdom is on Heroku (and Ember) a year or two from now. Good luck with the redemption arc! 🙌.
I joined @heroku about a month ago. I'm going to be helping support the work Sara Cope talked about in her EmberConf talk ( to help standardize and modernize Heroku's front-end stack (across quite a few different front-end apps).
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Good work @benjam et al. 👏 Looking forward to seeing how many are employed in 6 months, a year, five years.
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Gittip has deposited $42,800 in people's bank accounts over the past year. That's not nothing.
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I'm proud to see @getsentry in good company here as a major financial contributor to @ThePHPF. 🙏💃
The PHP Foundation: Impact and Transparency Report 2023 .
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Remember the origin/pr/* hack? @gnarf has a streamlined version: $ git pr 537.[. ].Switched to branch 'pr/537'.
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Lots of interest for @simonw guest presenting on AI at @getsentry. “Turns out you 𝘤𝘢𝘯 trick it to run binaries.” 😂
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“open source projects should fund their own dependencies”. Yaaassssssssss! 👏 When I buy a cup of coffee I give my money to the coffee shop, not to their suppliers. Same principle. Projects should pass it on vs. end-users (companies) funding the whole transitive dependency graph.
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I wrote the first draft of this post two months ago, on August 18. Feels great to finally publish it … and to work for a company that asks me to do this kind of thing in the first place. 😁💸💃. $155k to open source … $2k/eng … thanks to everyone who helped make it happen! 🙏.
To all the open source maintainers out there: we appreciate you. Thank you for all your work. #hacktoberfest
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“My dream would be that your kid could say, ‘When I grow up, I want to be an Open Source maintainer,’ and you wouldn't tell your kid, ‘That's a bad idea.’”. ☝️ @feross with @bdougieYO at Let's make it happen! 🙌💃
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First up: @ag_dubs! Ashley and I have been working different angles on Open Source sustainability for . gosh, do we say decades yet? We might say decades. 😳 Looking forward to digging into the history and the future next week and bringing it to you all down the line. 👍.
After two months building out a studio(!), I'm ready to start doing video. This is my opening salvo. Where will it go from here? Let's find out! 💃. Who should I talk to about Open Source sustainability?.
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I've dreaded this day since joining @getsentry. What day? The day I am immortalized with a bespoke ¾-view avatar in purple, pink, and gold. The thanks I get for authoring my first blog post. 🐭.
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@fux0r @alexellisuk @getsentry I'm not sure exactly what projects of yours we use, I will have to track it down. Right now I'm in the process of funding 𝘢𝘭𝘭 of our deps, as close to 100% on GHS as I can get. You're in there somewhere! Thanks for your work! 😁.
Aiming for 97% in this org and likely similar in the other two (codecov, syntaxfm).
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If you're a @getsentry power user you should subscribe to notifications on our @github Discussions. Our PMs have started using it to drive new feature development and beta launches.
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Day 0 at @GitHub Universe. Ran into @ljharb @simonw @mhashemi and others. Spread the word about @fossfunders during an OSPO open space. Visited @FeyNudibranch’s Community sesh for Arnold Palmers. 😊🙌
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Just made a small contribution to @psycopg. Hopefully we can set up a data-driven approach to giving back to _all_ our dependencies later this year.
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This weekend is the 10-year anniversary of my first commit to @getsentry: A few years ago I designed and had this made as a reminder to beware of BS deadlines (painful backstory). I'm glad to have finally realized it has a positive meaning as well! 😁
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The Fund Fest rolls on . I just completed @getsentry's annual payouts on @opencollect—$32,052 to 36 projects. 💃. Aiming for a full run-down on the Sentry blog on Thursday. 👍.
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I'm not building Gittip. I'm building a community that's building Gittip.
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If youʼll be at @AllThingsOpen come to my talk on Tuesday at noon for all the details on @getsentryʼs open source funding program. Followed by bougie 🥐🥐🥐 at our booth. 💃.
To all the open source maintainers out there: we appreciate you. Thank you for all your work. #Hacktoberfest .
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Worlds colliding. ☺️ PyCon is in Pittsburgh! Sentry has a booth! I'm planning to be at the conference all day tomorrow (Friday), staffing the booth from noon to 4pm. I'll probably be around the edges in the evening tonight and tomorrow. Hmu.
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I'm happy to see @opencollect reach the point where they are ready to start working on an “exit to community” (and it's good to see some familiar faces behind @exittocommunity ;-). Best of luck, folks! 👏.
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Thank you @TejasKumar_ for the kind words and wonderful conversation! 🙌 I appreciate your insightful questions and careful attention to the structure and flow of our talk. P.S. @RiversidedotFM asked us to share this image of me concerned about a spider on the ceiling(?). 😏
Over the past ~2 hours, I had one of the best conversations about open source I've ever had. @chadwhitacre_ is a solid, passionate expert on the subject with incredible insights. Thankful I got to experience that. If you don't already follow him, I'd recommend doing so.
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“@ThePHPF is a collective of 9 volunteer board members, 1 full-time operations manager sponsored by JetBrains, and 10 developers paid part-time/full-time who make more than half of the contributions to the PHP language and its extensions.”. More foundations like this, please! 😍.
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"Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure" ← @nayafia's 143 pp. report on FLOSS funding.
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Give this a watch if you want to understand what we're aiming for with the Open Source Pledge, and workshop some concerns and questions. 👍. Thank you @evilpingwin for the conversation! 🙏
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To: @garrytan @snowmaker @mwseibel @ycombinator.Subject: HN modding Sentry's OSS funding post. Our Open Source funding announcement is getting modded again this year. This seems counterproductive to driving needed change to benefit Open Source maintainers. Can you help unmod? 🙏.
HN modded us in record time this year. 😭. Really irritating, ngl.
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“Pay one time, own forever.” Has @37signals (@dhh @jasonfried) said how this relates to versioning? Are they promising pay once, get all future upgrades? I suspect it's more like pay once, get one version, or maybe one major + minors.
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We just onboarded @buttondown, @pixeebot, and @PrefectIO as well. Sitting uncomfortably (non-prime) at 20. 😬 Need three more by October 8!.
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gettin' goin'. Who's next? 😁 💃. What does your company do to financially support Open Source software? 🤔 Send me a link and we'll get you added. 👍
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We just calved off from the main marketing site, gonna rebuild it from scratch as our open-source portal. What do you want to see there?.
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Looking over the programs on I see four that derive the total dollar amount systematically:. • @BitwiseInvest—10% of profits. • @FoxleyTalent—5% of profits. • @Tarsnap—100% of December profits(!). • @getsentry—$3,700 per developer. Hmmm . 🤔.
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