Podcast

Josh has a discussion with Vlad-Stefan Harbuz about the Open Source Pledge as well as his recent FOSDEM talk. The Open Source Pledge is all about trying to build a sustainable universe for open source maintainers. This ties into Vlad’s FOSDEM talk which was all about the challenge of just knowing what open source you are using. The importance of trying to make open source sustainable is a really important topic, but it’s also a really hard topic. Vlad helps explain all of this as well as some ideas for the solving this in the future. ...

Josh welcomes back David Bernstein to talk about creating a disaster recover plan. It’s a very timely topic given all the current events. There are more supply chain attacks and compromises than ever before. There are some great resources for this planning, but as David tells us, it’s really not that hard to put some plans together. It’s easy to over-plan, David gives some great tips on getting started with our planning for an eventual incident. ...

Josh talks to Paul McCarty of Open Source Malware about … open source malware. Paul explains why there aren’t many good open source malware datasets. We discuss why the existing data is lacking for many use cases. We of course touch on AI and the malware in skills problems and challenges. It’s a fun discussion with a lot of new and interesting problems we all have to deal with. Episode Links Paul McCarty Open Source Malware Open Source Malware Blog This episode is also available as a podcast, search for “Open Source Security” on your favorite podcast player. ...

Josh welcomes back Andrew Nesbitt to discuss some recent blog posts he wrote about the challenges of new ecosystems as well as challenges of no ecosystems like C. There aren’t very many people who look at multiple ecosystems in the way Andrew does. He has thoughts on why it’s so hard to create a new ecosystem as well as some of the reasons we don’t see a C language ecosystem. Andrew has a ton of interesting ideas and insight for us about both existing, new, and nonexistent ecosystems. ...

Josh talks to Michael Winser about a talk he gave at FOSDEM as well as his work on Alpha Omega at the Linux Foundation. Michael is approaching open source security in a way that nobody has ever tried before. What if we could fund some really big, really hard projects? It’s not cheap or easy, but he’s getting it done. We spend a lot of the time discussing package registries, which are a huge topic. Michael is doing some amazing work helping package registries which is the first step in a very long journey. ...

Josh chats with Brian Fox from Sonatype about their 2026 State of the Software Supply Chain report. Most of the number continue to grow at alarming rates, but there’s some new interesting findings in this one. We discuss end of life and open source which is tough to define. We touch on what using AI with open source dependencies looks like (and why it’s broken), and we discuss the challenge of upgrading your open source dependencies in a way that doesn’t break everything. It’s a great report and great discussion. ...

Josh talks to Luke Hinds, CEO of Always Further, about MCP and agent security. We start out talking about Luke’s new tool, nono which is a sandboxing tool that has AI agents in mind as a use case. We explain what MCP and agents are doing as well as why it’s so hard to secure them. It’s not impossible, but it’s not simple either. We end the show by discussing some of the more human aspects to security and how history may be repeating itself with security folks laughing at new users who don’t know any better. ...

Josh talks to Paul Kehrer and Alex Gaynor, from the Python Cryptographic Authority. Alex and Paul recently published a statement discuss the challenges posed by modern OpenSSL. We discuss the statement and their relationship with OpenSSL. We chat about some of the current features in cryptography, as well as some of what’s coming in the future. It’s a fun conversation that hits on a lot of great points. Episode Links Alex Paul pyca/cryptography The State of OpenSSL for pyca/cryptography x509-limbo Community Cryptography Specification Project This episode is also available as a podcast, search for “Open Source Security” on your favorite podcast player. ...

Josh talks to Sylvestre Ledru about the Rust coreutils project. We’ve been using GNU coreutils for decades now, and the goal of Rust coreutils is to rewrite these utilities in Rust. The primary reason isn’t security, it’s to modernize the code and attract new contributors. Sylvestre discusses with quite pleasant relationship with the GNU coreutils developers, some of the challenges in the project. What Ubuntu using this by default meant, and also gives us some things to watch for in the future. It’s a super fun discussion about why Rust is not only awesome, but also the future. ...

Josh chats with Brad Axen from Block about his creation Goose as well as the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF). I am quite skeptical of many AI claims, but Brad has a very pragmatic view about where things are today and where we might see them head. Donating Goose to the AAIF is great news as well as seeing MCP and AGENTS.MD in the foundation. We discuss how to deal with the problem of raising up junior developers, challenges of AI PRs, and some thoughts on how to get started if you’re interested in AI development. ...