All about Packaging Software (and Craft Beer) – InApps 2022

In many ways, packaging beer is not that different from packaging software, and not simply because many programmers enjoy a frothy lager. Now, analyst firm RedMonk’s upcoming Monki Gras event this Thursday, Jan. 26 in London, England plans to add a new dimension to the discussion of software packaging, by incorporating some fermented bevvies.

“The theme this year is packaging in all its forms. Obviously, people in software have a particular view of what packaging is, and what package management is, and I try at Monki Gras to be a little bit meta, to go with the similes,” said RedMonk analyst and co-founder James Governor on today’s episode of InApps Analysts podcast, hosted by TNS founder Alex Williams alongside co-host TNS managing editor Joab Jackson. In this discussion, the trio talk about what happens when the creativity and passion surrounding craft beer, coffee, microbreweries, and food culture meets the software-centric side of package management and software development.

#128: MonkiGras 2017 – Exploring the Parallels Between Software and Craft Beer

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Tools such as the Node Package Manager (npm) have shaped how developers address and work with software, allowing them to streamline a way to get their components, libraries, and dependencies set up for their applications or services.

“Taking it a bit further, should developers be making any decisions at all? We wanted to have a discussion about packaging. Where it’s good, where it’s bad, and we’ve got some great talks in all of those areas,” said Governor, adding, “Just to kind of inspire people, we have four different brewers that are going to come in and present about how and why they make the choices they do.”

One intriguing MonkiGras panel will be on role of governance organizations within open source communities. Panel guests will include Cloud Foundry Foundation Executive Director Abby Kearns, Bitnami co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Erica Brescia, and Weaveworks founder Alexis Richardson. “They’re going to talk about the modern role of a foundation in packaging and making open source more consumable. Quite frankly, I think the role of the foundation is becoming more important,” said Governor.

Ultimately, packaging is something that developers, UI/UX designers, and operations team members must all be thinking about in today’s ecosystem. “I think what we’re seeing in tech right now, with an organization perspective is, we want open pipelines. You want your engineers to make choices, but by the same token you do want some sort of control of that. You want to be encouraging people to do things in a way that means the applications and services they build are easy or at least manageable going forward.”

Bitnami is a sponsors of InApps.

Feature image via Pixabay.