Open source runs the internet. Most people who use it — including the companies profiting from it — have no idea. That’s the central tension in this conversation with Juliette Reinders Folmer, a Netherlands-based PHP developer who has quietly spent the last decade maintaining tools used by hundreds of thousands of developers worldwide.
You might not know her name. If you work in PHP code, you’ve almost certainly used her work. PHP CodeSniffer, PHPCompatibility, PHPUnit Polyfills — tools that run silently in CI pipelines everywhere — are largely her doing. And yet the open source ecosystem making all of this possible is straining under the weight of what she calls “exploitative capitalism”: companies and individuals consuming open source without contributing anything back.
We talk about the aging maintainer problem, why AI-generated pull requests are a ticking time bomb for open source, and what it actually looks like to put your money where your mouth is when it comes to funding the tools you depend on.
There’s also a great tangent about LinkedIn, a story involving Rick Astley, and the AI that once accidentally wrote Juliette’s own name into a docblock.
Listen here or on your favorite podcaster and don’t forget to subscribe.
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