What project or projects do you maintain and what was your motivation for creating those projects and releasing them as open source software?

I maintain more than 200 open source modules on NPM, plus I am a collaborator on Node.js itself in the streams working group. My OSS modules range from highly downloaded utilities like split2 and cloneable-readable to protocol libraries like mqtt or mosca. I recently developed upring.
At the beginning of this year, my colleague David Mark Clements and myself wrote Pino, the fastest logger for Node.js (pino). You can see the full list at ~matteo.collina.

I create some of those because either myself, a colleague or a client (I am with nearForm, a consulting firm in the OSS space) needed them.

If you created any of those projects, were they meant to solve a specific problem you faced, or were they born out of a larger opportunity you saw?

Both. I did my Ph.D. in the Internet of Things (IoT) space, and I developed Mosca as part of my thesis. In the process, I become the lead maintainer of MQTT.js because Adam did not want to be involved. I develop a lot of “small modules”, little things I can reuse across modules.

We developed Pino because during a consultancy engagement (http://www.nearform.com/nodecrunch/client-case-study-net-a-porter/) we were asked what logger we should recommend that had very little overhead. We tend to scratch our own itch.

How has the project evolved since you first got involved or first released it?

Since 2013, when my first OSS project got some attention (LevelGraph, part of the Level community, together with Julian), the download and adoption of my OSS modules have grown significantly, up to 15 million downloads in 2016. My IoT projects, MQTT.js and Mosca, have grown in usage, and MQTT.js is now used in the SDK of AWS IoT, IBM Bluemix, and Azure IoT.

The first version of the Pino logger was in February, and its ecosystem has been growing steadily since then. We have a third committer, James, who help us developing the project.

Node.js itself has been growing, both in adoption and as an organization. There are more than 60 collaborators, and in fact I have been to the collaborator summit right after Node.js Interactive in Asutin.

How do you spend your time on those projects? (i.e. Developing, managing the community, triaging issues, etc.)

I do several things for my OSS projects, and I classify them in mainly three categories: experimental, actively developed, and done. A project is “done” when I consider it finished, and it serves the purpose for which I built it: for these projects, I usually do not develop new features, but I rather review and manage contributions. I code new ideas into experimental projects, and they might see usage or not, depending if someone find them useful. Experimental projects have most of my attention.

In general, I tend to divide my time equally into pursuing new ideas and maintaining things that are being actively used. I tend to defer to the community for bug fixing, and I review and accept PRs frequently. I also speak at conferences very often about my OSS projects.

How would you describe the community around projects you participate in? What are your favorite and least favorite aspects?

The community is why you get into OSS, and it is both invigorating and saddening at the same time. In some ways, it’s like the startup life: a rollercoaster. One day, someone tells me: “you changed my life, I am so much happier now”. Then, some days after you receive an email “help me or I will lose my job”. People e xpect you to be available, because you do OSS: I must choose if I can help that guy, or stay with family.

What keeps you involved in those projects? Do you have long-term plans for maintaining your involvement?

I am currently paid (by nearForm) for maintaining most of my OSS projects, MQTT.js and Mosca excluded. I keep contributing for all the people whom life I can improve. The long term plan involves finding new lead maintainers for most of my successful projects, do you want to help?

What is the most important thing someone submitting an issue or patch should know?

There is a major difference between issues and patches. When opening an issue, you should know that the author is making you a gift by responding. Do not expect a quick response, and appreciate when there is one. Stop complaining. I recently got some emails “please help me or I will lose my job”.

Submitting a patch is different, and it requires some grit: the authors are going to reject it, mainly because it will cause added maintenance for them. Keep going, and address all the objections the authors will report.

What’s your development environment right now?

I develop on a 2014 MacBook Pro 13’’ with i7, 16GB of RAM and 1TB SSD. I code mostly using VIM and Tmux in the terminal. I use Docker for spinning up the occasional database or infrastructure that I needed. I have an 24’’ external LCD that I plug on when I am not traveling.

What was your first development environment? Do you miss anything from it?

My first development environment was an Amiga 600. I miss playing good games on it. Joking aside, the Vim+Tmux combo suits my needs completely.

Where do you see the open source software community headed?

Companies like nearForm helps maintaining a lot of the OSS ecosystem. I see more and more companies contributing back to the ecosystem and move things forward, independently from tech giants.