Justin Miller on how Mapbox runs like an open source project (Opensource.com)
Opensource.com has been running a series of interviews with
OSCON speakers. In this
article
Justin Miller, a
developer at
Mapbox, talks with
Michael Harrison.
[Michael] Mapbox is "running a business like you would run an open source
project." Can you elaborate on what that means?
[Justin] This is the meat of my talk, but basically, the organization is flat and open. People join in on projects based on interest and available time, or start their own projects based on an idea and the ability to convince a couple coworkers that it's a worthwhile effort. If you have an idea for improvement, talk is cheap and putting in the code to demonstrate its potential is preferred. It's a very exciting way to choose direction and participation and lets everyone engage based on their interests and skill set. And nearly everything we write, anything that's easily reusable by someone else, is completely open source.