Episode
Episode 269: Marianne Bellotti & Greg Wilson on 10 quick tips for making your software outlive your job
- Podcast
- Sustain
- Published
- May 16, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 2656
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://podcast.sustainoss.org/269
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Summary
Guests Marianne Bellotti | Greg Wilson Panelist Richard Littauer Show Notes In this episode of Sustain, host Richard Littauer talks with Marianne Bellotti, author of *Kill It with Fire, *and Greg Wilson, co-founder of the Carpentries, about what happens to your code when you leave your job and how to make sure it survives. They discuss their new paper, " 10 quick tips for making your software outlive your job ," and share practical strategies for protecting, documenting, and sustaining code in open source, research, and civil service environments. Whether you're preparing for a job change or want to future-proof your work, this conversation offers real-world advice for developers and researchers alike. Hit the download button now! [00:03:04] Greg and Marianne talk about challenges in code sustainability. [00:05:46] Greg speaks about how scientists often prototype rather than build production quality code. [00:09:48] We start with Step 1 in the paper: “Consider your threat mode.” Greg explains the different plans needed for individual vs. systematic departures, Marianne speaks about the importance of understanding code lifecycle-some code has a “fruit fly” lifespan others a “tortoise” one, and Richard adds to think about reframe threat modeling around future usefulness. [00:15:53] There’s a discussion on Step 2: “Get sign-off on releasing it publicly.” [00:21:30] Greg discusses Step 3: “Choose an open license” and emphasizes to stick to well-known licenses (MIT, BSD), don’t write your own, and he shares a funny story. [00:25:29] Richard talks about Step 4: “Put your code somewhere safe” and shares to upload code to GitHub, Codeberg, OSF, Zenodo, etc. Greg suggest peer-to-peer methods like torrents could help long-term preservation and Marianne emphasizes the importance…