Open Source Ready

On episode 43 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride speak with Madelyn Olson. The Valkey maintainer and AWS principal engineer explains how AI is changing open source contributions, code review, and the work of keeping shared infrastructure reliable. They also explore Valkey’s origins, semantic caching, and why community governance still matters when anyone can customize the code.

On episode 42 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride sit down with Will Cory, creator of Smithers. Will explains how workflows can simplify agent orchestration and why AI-assisted development could make specialized open source forks more practical. They also explore his planned TypeScript redesign, the trade-offs behind agent tooling, and what maintainers can learn from users who bui...

On episode 41 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride sit down with Phil Estes. They explore why the definition of a container remains surprisingly fuzzy, how microVM-backed sandboxes could support the next generation of AI agents, and what AI-generated contributions mean for projects like containerd. Phil also explains why the future of open source depends as much on trusted maintain...

On episode 40 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride sit down with Orhun Parmaksiz to explore Ratty, his experimental GPU-rendered terminal emulator that combines traditional command-line workflows with interactive 3D graphics. They discuss the future of terminal user interfaces, how AI is accelerating developer tooling, and what recent supply chain attacks on Arch Linux reveal about...

On episode 39 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride speak with Zach Smith, creator of Kplane, about rethinking Kubernetes for an AI-driven future. Zach explains how virtualized control planes could enable isolated cluster experiences at massive scale, while the conversation explores developer experience, AI tooling, and the possibility that future AI agents may each require their ow...

On episode 38 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride speak with Graham Christensen, CEO of Determinate Systems, about the evolution of the Nix ecosystem and why more organizations are embracing reproducible infrastructure. They discuss secure package management, enterprise adoption challenges, open source business models, and how AI tooling is rapidly reshaping software engineering w...

On episode 37 of Open Source Ready, Brian and John speak with Stormy Peters about the evolving relationship between AI and open source software. Together, they unpack the growing challenges maintainers face, why traditional “good first issues” may be disappearing, and how AI tools are changing the way developers contribute to projects. They also discuss open-weight models, inference costs, and why...

On episode 36 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride sit down with Jesse Vincent. They explore how Jesse’s Superpowers project turns AI coding tools into structured, reliable development systems. The conversation dives into agent orchestration, prompt engineering, and what it takes to make AI behave like a capable software engineer.

On episode 35 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride sit down with Den Delimarsky. They explore the rapid evolution of the Model Context Protocol (MCP), from its early RFC days to a structured, industry-backed ecosystem. The conversation dives into governance, authorization, and how MCP is shaping the future of AI-driven developer workflows.

On episode 34 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride sit down with Sunil Dhaliwal to explore how AI is reshaping open source and startup building. They discuss why technical founders still have an edge, how taste is becoming a critical differentiator, and what it takes to find product-market fit in a world of abundant software. The conversation also dives into monetization challenges...

On episode 33 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride sit down with James Strong and Marco Ebert. They discuss the retirement of Ingress NGINX, one of the most widely used Kubernetes ingress controllers, and the factors that led to its deprecation. The conversation explores maintainer burnout, major security vulnerabilities like IngressNightmare, and the ecosystem’s shift toward Gatew...

On episode 32 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride sit down with Glauber Costa to explore Turso, a Rust-based rewrite of SQLite built for the AI era. They discuss database reliability, open source licensing, and why embedded databases are becoming critical infrastructure for modern agents and applications. The conversation also dives into AI-assisted development and the future of s...

In episode 31 of Open Source Ready, Brian and John sit down with Matthaus Krzykowski, Thierry Jean, and Elvis Kahoro to explore how dlt and dltHub are changing the way developers build data pipelines. The conversation dives into DuckDB, LLM-driven workflows, and the growing shift toward developer-first data engineering. They also discuss open source adoption, AI orchestration, and what it means to...

On episode 30 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride sit down with Felipe Huici to explore Unikraft and the growing role of unikernels in modern cloud infrastructure. They discuss how unikernels differ from containers and traditional virtual machines, why millisecond startup times matter, and how Unikraft enables secure, scale-to-zero workloads. The conversation also touches on Kuber...

On episode 29 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride sit down with Cameron Foxly to talk about ASCII Motion, an open source tool for creating animated ASCII art. Cameron shares how a brand design challenge at GitHub led to his first open source project and how AI tools helped him move from idea to production quickly. The conversation explores developer delight, terminal design, and w...

On episode 28 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride reflect on the biggest themes that shaped open source and AI in 2025. From sustainability and security to MCPs, agents, and infrastructure, they revisit key conversations with guests and unpack how the industry evolved over the year. The episode closes with bold predictions for what 2026 may bring for developers, maintainers, and o...

On episode 27 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride speak with Adam Hevenor, creator of Vibecheck. Together they explore the fundamentals of evals, how teams can run structured experiments across model variations, and why cost-efficient design matters more than ever. Adam also offers grounded perspectives on MCP adoption, Claude Skills, and the economics shaping today’s AI tooling e...

In episode 26 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride sit down with Quinn Slack. They explore how Sourcegraph built Amp, why unconstrained coding agents represent a major shift, and why AI economics make traditional SaaS pricing impossible. Quinn also breaks down the rise of open source models, the future of developer tooling, and why ads might be the key to making AI accessible to ev...

In episode 25 of Open Source Ready, Brian and John sit down with Rachel-Lee Nabors. They explore how AI agents are reshaping the web, from the decline of traditional browsers to the rise of agentic experiences powered by small language models and MCPs. Rachel-Lee explains why advertising models are collapsing and why the next web may depend on direct payments and open source innovation.

In episode 24 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride sit down with Ivan Burazin, CEO of Daytona, to explore how his company is building runtime infrastructure for AI agents. Ivan shares how Daytona pivoted from developer environments to powering the next wave of autonomous AI systems, and what it takes to make agents fast, secure, and scalable. They also discuss open source licensing...

In episode 23 of Open Source Ready, Brian Douglas and John McBride sit down with Davanum “Dims” Srinivas to discuss the health and future of the Kubernetes community. They explore how corporate changes impact open source contributions, the importance of onboarding programs, and the challenge of sustaining long-term contributors. Dims also shares insights into Kubernetes’ evolving role in AI and GP...

In episode 22 of Open Source Ready, Brian and John sit down with Benji Kalman, co-founder of Root, to explore the intersection of AI, software development, and security. They unpack "vibe coding," its impact on API proliferation, and the hidden costs of increased technical debt. Learn why a security vulnerability is just a bug with a purpose, and discover how AI agents can be used not ju...

In episode 21 of Open Source Ready, Brian and John sit down with Chad Metcalf, CEO of Continue, to explore the rise of continuous AI. Chad shares his journey from early embedded systems and platform engineering to leading an open-source-focused company building coding agents. They discuss automation, developer trust, open source attribution, and how AI is reshaping workflows across the entire soft...

In episode 20 of Open Source Ready, Brian and John sit down with data engineering and cognitive science expert Vasilije Markovic to explore AI memory and how we can build more intelligent systems. From the challenges of "context rot" to the practical applications of AI memory in construction, education, and finance, this conversation covers how to give your AI the context it truly needs.

In episode 19 of Open Source Ready, Brian and John speak with Josh Rosso, Principal Engineer at Reddit and author of Production Kubernetes . From his early days at CoreOS and Heptio to running Reddit’s massive compute platform, Josh shares insights into managing Kubernetes at internet scale, the business realities of open source, and the risks smaller OSS projects face. Lastly, they dive into AI’s...