Max Howell
Appearances
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
It's too late.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Oh, there's more, but those are the things that people care about.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Yeah, yeah. It was an important little pointer for me. I appreciate that. Okay. That's all I remember. Yeah, I was trying to do too much. That was what was T-Klee, which we now call Package X. Okay. And... Well, I was very much aware of the fact that homebrew is enormous. And here I was trying to do homebrew 2.0, something I said I'd never do.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
And I think Ryan Dahl with Dino is seeing the same kind of problems, right? Once you've had something that's a huge success, how do you make something that is... as big even as that. So you've got this enormous momentum behind the previous thing. So I was very much aware of that when I was building out Teakley.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
And so I put too much into it thinking, well, that's the only way I'm going to get people to come on board with it. Right. Right. And you point out quite sagely, I think it made me realize that, yeah, it was doing too many things and that was just confusing. So we whittled it down to just what it is now, which is like an executor for packages.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
So you don't think about installing them, you just run them. And that's enormously powerful, actually. I think over the next few years, people are going to start seeing that. Because it's so good for scripting, for example. You can write a package X shebang in your script and then add all the packages you want.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
And then you've got a portable script you can just pass around that you don't have to worry about if people have things installed or not. It opens up the entire open source ecosystem to it. So I've got a few things planned to use that. But we realized along the way, this is all part of T protocol, right?
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
That even though we thought initially we would be putting functionality for the protocol into TKli, actually no that doesn't make sense it's diffusing the messaging once again i think i was a little too influenced by our investors and that's why we went down that path but we course corrected so now we're completely focused on just the protocol which
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
You know, that was the original vision that I had to build something that could help people who create open source to actually, you know, get some of that value that they create back to themselves rather than just creating value for people who build on top of it.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Yeah, so we've built it. We've been running the testnet since February, and we got 1.7 million people who've signed up to use this testnet, which are pretty great numbers by any standards, but especially in the Web3 space, you don't get that kind of users.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
I think it's a testament to people understanding that what we're doing is important, but also that we've cracked it, that we understand how to take the value of open source and actually expose it. So until now, we all understand the value of open source. Everyone builds everything on top of it. But very little of that value ends up going back to the people who maintain it. That's my story.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Homebrew was a passion project that became my full-time job for free. And I had to keep taking new jobs. quitting them after I'd saved up some money working on it. And that's why I founded T-Protocol. I was once again in that position, wanting to work on open source full time. So our system, it changes the economics of open source.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
That was one of my conclusions before founding T-Protocol, is that the system of economics that we use in this world, it doesn't fit cleanly onto how open source works. Open source is really weird. There's no real thing that's like it elsewhere in the world. So it was necessary to build something new that used economics in a new fashion. So that's what we've built.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
We have an on-chain Oracle called Chai that computes the impact of all the open source projects, all 10.5 million of them.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
using package manager data and dependency data to calculate that the higher your impact the higher your rewards every 24 hours we just give you free t token and then we have uh like with the 1.7 million people who signed up only a third of them are developers two-thirds of them are people that maybe didn't even know about open source before once they heard the story
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
of how everything they've used on the internet for the last 30 years is built on top of this open source. They understood that there's a huge amount of untapped value there that they want to participate in. So they're the input for the monetary parts that allow the open source to be remunerated. And I've had loads of tokenomics experts looking at it over the last three years.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
You know, you have to calculate the sell and the buy pressure correctly in order to make it so the token price stabilizes at something, which then makes it so the open source maintainers can sell their token and use it to fund the developers.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Yeah, exactly. It's very important that we do that. Otherwise, it will be a project that just goes whoop and down, as you were saying. Right. And then it hasn't succeeded at all. And that was a difficult problem to solve. We have lots of mechanisms in there that will be there for the launch. We're hoping to launch later this year or early next year.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
So it's not live yet. No, but the testnet is, so people can sign up. We have 17,000 open source projects that have onboarded 2T protocol during the testnet. So, you know, we've got good traction. I'm hoping when mainnet goes live, the proof will be in the pudding, you know. People will see that this is something that actually could fix these fundamental issues with how open source is funded.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
And it's really a no-brainer if you're an open source project with any clout. Onboarding is free. It's very low effort to do so. Too low effort, as you probably saw some of the negative press we had over the last year or so.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Yeah. We incentivize people to try and break T-Rank or Chai. And they found a way to do it by creating more than 200,000 packages on NPM. We're glad they found a way to break it because that meant we could fix it. And that's what the test set is for. But yeah, don't feel good about it. But when you're building new things, there's always unanticipated consequences to that.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
A lot of people think I should have seen this coming. I kind of agree with them. I should have seen it coming, but when you're building stuff, you only have so much time.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Yeah, and it won't happen again. We've closed the gap.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
What exactly is T? Well, the main purpose of T, at least, you know, what I wanted to accomplish when I came up with the idea, was to use cryptocurrency to fix what we call the Nebraska problem after that famous XKCD comic. You know, the tower blocks representing all of... open source as they get stacked on top of each other.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
And those little projects near the bottom that are fragile because the people who maintain them don't have the time or the incentive to do so. And yet it's holding up so much critical infrastructure. So, yeah, it's a cryptocurrency project that uses a unique tokenomics model in order to give open source developers token rewards on a 24 hour basis.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
And a lot of the other pieces of it are designed to attract the interests of typical crypto investors or just like normal developers who want to show real support for their open source projects. A key differentiator between us and most ways of supporting open source is that there is no donations in our system. You can buy a token and then stake it against projects.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
So both you and the project is gaining from this. There's no gift. It's more like an investment.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
So nothing's different. Going into it, I knew that this wouldn't work if we changed anything about how open source already works. Right. You know, you can't charge for open source. You can't make it so you have to, you know, buy token and stake it, even if you can get that token back before you can use things. So it works based on calculating the impact of open source projects.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
And then you are creating a yield on top of those projects that then goes to the project maintainers. They then distribute the token however they see fit. But yeah, as a user, nothing's different. And as a maintainer, Nothing's different. I didn't want to change the incentives in open source either. It's still incentivized in exactly the same way.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
It's just now you're getting token for doing that rather than before where all you get is reputation or kudos, satisfaction perhaps.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
You can stake against specific packages.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Not exactly currently. This is an idea we're playing with. You should be rewarded for seeing up and coming open source, right? That's fun. Right.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
It's good for the package because they get more stake yields initially that way. But currently, if something isn't very staked by many people, the yield you get is higher. So there is an incentive to go and find open source that isn't yet popular, but you think will become popular getting there early. Because your yield is also dependent on the impact of that project, the T-rank. of that project.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
So initially, the T rank of any new project is going to be close to zero. You don't get any rewards for less than 25. It's necessary to have a cut off, because otherwise people would just create fake open source packages, stick them in the system, and try to gain rewards that way. The T-Rank only grows as you become something other projects use, the dependency tree.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
So you do have to convince other projects you're worthy. And that's exactly how open source already works, right? You release something new, it takes time for the community to trust that your package is worthy and use it. So we don't fix the initial uptake problem, but that's the case as it is right now.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Like a percentage back? Mm-hmm. Why would I do that? Because you want to have a yield of 4% or 5%. What does the project maintainer get? They also get a slightly increased yield because they're encouraging people to stake. Now, the T we gain from people staking because it locks the token up, prevents people from suddenly selling it. There's an unstake period.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
This is common with crypto projects to prevent rapid fluctuations in token price. Yeah.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
So we're going to launch with several major exchanges, still haven't announced them. So most likely you will buy from them. But there will be other ways the token is distributed initially.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
There is a distribution of some of the token to the investors of my company, the founders like myself. some advisors as well, but it's a small percentage. We're doing what was considered a fair launch where more than 50% of the token goes to the community.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
across the board for it. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have done it with VC. I would have just launched the token myself, taken none myself, and then made it so 100% just goes to open source. But, you know, too late. It's fine. Can't do it. Can't change. Not if I don't want to be sued personally. But it's a very small percentage relatively.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
One of the things we're doing is we're launching the token from a completely separate company in Switzerland. It's a non-profit and the long-term goals for that company are to have it be governed and run by the open source community as well. But none of my investors or any of the other people that are related to the company they invested in have any say in how that company runs.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
It's very important to me that this is an open source project for the open source community that's governed by the open source community in the long run.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
T token, yeah.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Chai is the technology, the oracle that runs the chain.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Yeah, so the way the system works is it's project-based. So we declare that a project will receive X amount of T-token rewards every 24 hours. In order to have that token go to that project's wallet, it's a project wallet, one of the maintainers of the project needs to commit a file, the T-constitution, as we call it, to the GitHub repo or any Git repo. We're not GitHub-specific.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Once our system sees that file, then the rewards start coming in.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
The token goes to the project wallet, and then whoever commits that T-constitution can declare any number of people that are considered core contributors to the project. They all have control over that wallet. Now, we haven't made any deliberate decisions on what should happen next. Every project's different, right? Most projects really are just one person, so it's very simple for them.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
It gets a lot more complicated when you have large projects like Python or Node or whatever with loads of people. WordPress. And WordPress, exactly. So we're waiting to see what they're going to do about it. But it's on the blockchain. It's an EVM-compatible blockchain. We're using Coinbase's base, which is just Layer 2 on top of Ethereum. And you can write smart contracts to distribute the token.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
So that's what I'm hoping I'll see, is the open source community stepping up, writing smart contracts to fairly distribute the token. One easy way to do it is like, here's a list of people, split it equally. A much harder way to do it would be based on pull requests or code contribution. Lines of code. Just kidding, just kidding, just kidding. I've already thought this through.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Lines of code is not going to be a great metric for sure. Just incentivize people to make PRs that are longer and longer for no reason.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
On that front, I don't think we'll get egg on our face. But who knows? Mud in your eye, egg in your face, yeah. One thing I've certainly learned during this project is there's going to be people that really just don't like it. don't like what you're doing and they're going to be angry no matter what you do. When you're doing things that are genuinely new,
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
You've got to cross your fingers that you're doing it right and see what the community thinks in the end.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Like, why did you do this? So, yeah, we're going to be quite transparent. As transparent as possible, we're going to be open sourcing most of the... Probably all of it by the end of the year, actually. Even the website, who cares?
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
But my personal reason for doing this is because three years ago, I was in between full-time work, trying to work on open source once again, and I looked to see if anyone had come up with something that could... pay me to work on it full time for, you know, this time. This time. I've tried things in the past, like Patreon.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Spent half my time marketing myself rather than writing code when I was trying to get that Patreon working. And there wasn't anything new. Everything treats open source like all it is is charity. All you can expect is a cup of coffee and five bucks. So I decided that maybe it had to be me who fixed this problem. And I went down the rabbit hole finding new ideas, trying to find new ideas about it.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
And it was a moment of inspiration one evening. I've had some weed. And I realized that crypto smart contracts and that package manager data, that dependency information, I could use that. I could do something with that. Maybe that would be the solution. So we're going to see. MARK MANDELMANN, We're going to see.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
When? When? Yeah, so hopefully by the end of the year, maybe early next year. And how long will it take? Everything's built. Everything's ready. Well, why aren't we hitting go? It turns out crypto's got a lot of legal red tape. Yeah. As you might expect. Yeah. So, yeah.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Well, you're totally right that a lot of developers are very anti-crypto, and so that's been a battle from the start. Hacker News hate me even more than usual. But inside the crypto sphere, it's very popular. 1.7 million signups is pretty unheard of.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
And what it turns out to be the case, to my surprise, I've spoken to over 300 open source devs over the last three years, just for market research reasons, a lot of them don't care if it's crypto or not. They like crypto in the respect that they like technology. Open source devs aren't as anti-crypto as the others, the rest of the devs.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
And yeah, I think we have a reasonable chance of showing that crypto is just a technology. We're not a scam. There's nothing scammy about what's going on with us at all. They'll see that once we've gone live and no one's, you know, rugging the token or anything like that. Right. And, you know, it's all open. That's one of the beautiful things about Web3.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
All those smart contracts are transparent and readable. You can see what's going on. Right. So I'm hoping a few success stories after the launch, people will start to reconsider. I have an idea for you.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Seems like a pretty genius idea, to be honest. I might have to give you an advisory token allocation. But yeah, like... You got a wallet?
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
There's certainly stuff we could do if the main idea doesn't work out. But my passion won't be in it.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
It would suck, but not everything always works out. You know, you kind of accept that when you're building things. Yeah. I think it would be a real shame if the only reason it doesn't work out is crypto skepticism.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
I just, you know, did a bad job.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Yeah. I'll certainly go away and think about it. I don't think it's likely we would launch with both. Partly because, you know, we're a small team at this point.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
You're currently tracking... Well, we do do the dependency graph against all projects everywhere. Already? Yeah. Gotcha.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
There's certainly lots of things we can do with the data, like the Chai database, on-chain, Oracle. It's got all the dependency data, and it's got the rankings. We're exploring the idea of building out S-bombs based on that, which give you actual impact for your stack, and threat identification, essentially. Allowing companies to donate or stake based on the S-bomb we're generating.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
The idea of building out some sort of polymarket-esque thing as well. But as you say, other people can do that, right? The data is on the train, you can build against it. It's one of the things we're looking forward to, actually, is seeing what the Overtools community just do on top of these primitives that we've built for them.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Almost, you know, because like I was saying... Because it wouldn't solve homebrew's problem. Not itself, no, interestingly. Homebrew isn't even actually in the system because it's not packaged by anything. Right. Pretty popular project, though. Kind of embarrassing for me. But it's a limitation of the current model. Yeah.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Like once Chai is open sourced, which, spoiler alert, I'm doing that during my keynote in an hour. Nice. We're hoping that people will come forward with suggestions for how to fill in these gaps and help us to build it out.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
to use this particular... Well, sometimes you can be a command line tool, because some of the command line tools are dependencies of other command line tools. Sure.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Well, we don't really track usage either, of course, but... But you would want to, right?
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Well, we have a new idea that we've been developing over the last few months that will fix this, that we'll be announcing next year. It's a different... You want to spoiler alert us? I... better not, better not. But it's rather lovely. I'm very excited about it, and it does solve some of these issues for a different use. It tries to tap into the fundamental utility of open source.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
So phase one, we're releasing this essentially a remuneration platform for open source maintainers. Phase two is exposing the real value of what open source represents. And yeah, it should be pretty exciting.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
No, I... You said something... We use Base, which is Coinbase's blockchain.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
To be disclosed, where we will be selling.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Yeah, so going into this, that was definitely one of the things I wanted to achieve. And we have ideas for how that could play out with what we've built already. We're kind of securing it to some extent because we're securing the maintainer's ability to actually work on these things. But we have plans later.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
One of them is inside the thing I was just talking about that we're going to be announcing early next year, which do have tangible benefits. as extra security benefits to the open source ecosystem.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
T.XYZ, is that right? Yeah, T.XYZ. T, the drink. T-E-A. T-E-A. Not T-E-E or just the letter T. T, yeah. With hindsight, the name wasn't great.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Yeah, well, thank you. Get to it. I'm looking forward to it. End of year? It's very soon.
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
ANTHOLOGY — Packages, pledges & protocols (Interview)
Oh, yeah.