For our two-year anniversary, Tabatha DiDomenico turns the mic around and puts GROSS Out Podcast founder Jay Faulkner in the hot seat.

Jay is a self-taught technologist who never wanted computers as a career — and ended up shaping infrastructure that runs the world as Ironic's project lead and a decade-long OpenStack contributor. In this conversation, he's honest about how that happened, what it actually looks like from the inside, and what he'd tell anyone trying to find their footing in open source.
In this episode:

• Why people skills matter more than code in open source communities
• How to give feedback people can actually trust — and why toxic positivity damages projects
• What maintainership really looks like versus open source leadership
• The moment he walked away from a job over an ethical line he wasn't willing to cross
• Why Gentoo might be the best learning environment for a young Linux developer right now
• The one piece of career advice almost nobody in tech actually follows

Links and references:

• Ironic Project: https://ironicbaremetal.org
• OpenStack: https://www.openstack.org
• Gentoo Linux: https://www.gentoo.org
• G-Research Open Source: https://www.gresearch.com/open-source

G-Research is hiring in Dallas, TX and London, UK! Apply at https://gresearch.com/vacancies.

For a video version of this podcast, check out https://youtu.be/H6OXeKyHJ-g.

The GR-OSS OUT Podcast is produced by Ben Wiley.

Special Guest: Jay Faulkner.

Nick Vidal, Community Manager at the Open Source Initiative (OSI), joins host Tabitha to discuss one of the hardest questions in open source right now: what does Open Source AI actually mean, and who gets to decide?

At the center of it all is the OSI's effort to build community consensus around a definition that satisfies both developers and data scientists — two groups who don't always see eye to eye. Nick also shares what more than 50 maintainer stories revealed about the state of open source health, including the rise of AI-generated noise flooding maintainer workflows, the pressure of legislation like the EU Cyber Resilience Act, and why one prominent maintainer published a piece titled "We Don't Owe You Anything."

Nick reflects on his journey from organizing Drupal communities across Latin America to working at the heart of open source policy, and why bringing diverse cultural perspectives into open source development is how the best ideas actually get discovered.

Topics include the Open Source AI Definition, maintainer burnout, the Maintainers book at maintainers.rs, the EU Cyber Resilience Act, software freedom, and the human side of open source sustainability.

G-Research is hiring in Dallas, TX and London, UK! Apply at https://gresearch.com/vacancies.

For a video version of this podcast, check out https://youtu.be/7irm9Wt7aEM.

The GR-OSS OUT Podcast is produced by Ben Wiley.

Special Guest: Nick Vidal.

Tabitha sits down with Andrew Block, Distinguished Architect at Red Hat
and maintainer of Helm — the package manager powering Kubernetes
deployments worldwide — to talk about what it really took to ship
Helm 4.

They cover the 12-month journey to a major release, what got left on
the cutting room floor, how the team nearly broke a huge chunk of the
community with one dependency change, and why Andy thinks open source
is one of the most powerful forces for bringing people together —
regardless of what's happening in the world.

They also get into the bigger questions: maintainer burnout, the role
AI is starting to play in open source workflows, and what it means to
build software that outlasts the hype cycle.

If you use Helm — or you care about the humans behind the tools you
depend on — this one's worth your time.

Find Helm on GitHub, or join the community on Kubernetes Slack in

12:30 ET.

G-Research is hiring in Dallas, TX and London, UK! Apply at https://gresearch.com/vacancies.

For a video version of this podcast, check out https://youtu.be/mVKrrWOpMYM.

The GR-OSS OUT Podcast is produced by Ben Wiley.

Special Guest: Andrew Block.

Jay Faulkner sits down with Kevin Hannon (GitHub: kannon92), Kubernetes Contributor Award winner and maintainer of the JobSet project, to discuss the growing challenge of running AI and batch workloads on Kubernetes — a platform originally designed for web services and long-running applications.
Kevin shares his journey from G Research and the Armada project through to his current work improving Kubernetes upstream, including the multi-year effort to bring swap memory support to GA, the push to deprecate CGroups v1, and the emerging Workload Aware Scheduling initiative aimed at bringing gang scheduling into Kubernetes core.

The conversation covers the technical realities of running GPU workloads at scale, the human side of open source maintenance, and the often overlooked work of keeping CI infrastructure healthy across a massive distributed project.

Topics discussed include JobSets, CGroups v2, pressure stall information, topology aware scheduling, and the open source politics of shipping features in a large community-driven project.

G-Research is hiring in Dallas, TX and London, UK! Apply at https://gresearch.com/vacancies.

For a video version of this podcast, check out https://youtu.be/7EQW57BlroA.

The GR-OSS OUT Podcast is produced by Ben Wiley.

Special Guest: Kevin Hannon.

We sit down with Æva Black as she shares her journey from creating OpenStack Ironic to leading security policy at Microsoft and CISA. Discussion covers the economics of competing with hyperscalers, Europe's Cyber Resilience Act, managing software dependency complexity, AI's impact on security (including the rise of "vibe hackers"), and a powerful story about how a casual conference conversation led to influencing White House cybersecurity strategy.

OpenStack Ironic - https://ironicbaremetal.org/

Omnibor - https://omnibor.io

The cURL project - https://everything.curl.dev/project/index.html

G-Research is hiring in Dallas, TX and London, UK! Apply at https://gresearch.com/vacancies.

For a video version of this podcast, check out https://youtu.be/Z6h-Sfle83g.

The GR-OSS OUT Podcast is produced by Ben Wiley.

Special Guest: Æva Black.

In this episode of the G Research Open Source Software Outreach Podcast (GROSS OUT), host Jay Faulkner sits down with Dr. Dawn Foster, Director of Data Science at the CHAOSS Project and veteran open source consultant, to explore the hidden infrastructure that keeps open source communities thriving.

Dawn shares her 30-year journey through the open source world, from compiling dependencies as a sysadmin in the '90s to earning a PhD studying collaboration in the Linux kernel. The conversation dives deep into the metrics and governance structures that separate sustainable projects from those destined to fail—including the critical "lottery factor" (what happens when the most important person in your project disappears) and why you should build governance before you need it.

CHAOSS Project - https://chaoss.community/
Dawn Foster on the Linux Kernel - https://opensource.com/article/17/10/collaboration-linux-kernel

G-Research is hiring in London, UK! Apply at https://gresearch.com/vacancies.

For a video version of this podcast, check out https://youtu.be/Znk5e4DfR50.

The GR-OSS OUT Podcast is produced by Ben Wiley.

Special Guest: Dawn Foster.

Alex Gaynor, long-time open source contributor and core developer of Django, PyPy, and Python's cryptography library, joins us to discuss the challenging transition from C to Rust in the Python ecosystem. We explore memory safety vulnerabilities like buffer overflows, the technical and community challenges of introducing Rust to a major Python library, and how to navigate hostile feedback during controversial changes. Alex shares lessons from shipping the first Rust-based cryptography release, managing platform compatibility issues, and why sometimes breaking backwards compatibility is necessary to move an ecosystem forward.

A must-listen for anyone maintaining critical open source infrastructure or dealing with the "gross" realities of pushing technological boundaries.

https://cryptography.io/en/latest/

For a video version of this podcast, check out https://youtu.be/FQayBHWVsQA.

The GR-OSS OUT Podcast is produced by Ben Wiley.

Special Guest: Alex Gaynor.

Tabitha Diaminico from G Research sits down with Stacey Potter, Manager of Community at the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), to explore what makes open source communities thrive. Stacey shares her unique journey through open source—from working at a license compliance company to shepherding projects like Flux through CNCF graduation, and now building inclusive communities at OpenSSF. Discover the practical strategies for welcoming new contributors, the surprising parallels between marketing and community building, and why people are truly the heart of open source.

Whether you're a seasoned maintainer looking to grow your project, a developer considering your first contribution, or simply curious about the open source security landscape, you'll hear actionable insights on creating psychological safety in communities, the importance of good documentation, and exciting initiatives like OpenSSF's upcoming ambassador program. Plus, get the inside scoop on upcoming OpenSSF events and smaller projects that deserve more love.

G-Research is hiring in Dallas, TX and London, UK! Apply at https://gresearch.com/vacancies.

For a video version of this podcast, check out https://youtu.be/-nJHBWtcTug.

The GR-OSS OUT Podcast is produced by Ben Wiley.

Special Guest: Stacey Potter.