Guest Episode - GR-OSS OUT Podcast: Building Welcoming Communities with Stacey Potter

Thank you to the folks at Sustain for providing the hosting account for CHAOSSCast!

CHAOSScast- Episode 128
Check out the original GR-OSS OUT episode on the GR-OSS OUT podcast:
https://podcast.gr-oss.io/15-openssf-community

In this episode of CHAOSScast, we have a special crossover episode with the GR-OSS OUT podcast, hosted by Tabatha DiDomenico from G-Research and featuring special guest Stacey Potter, Community Manager at the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF).

Stacey shares her journey into open source, which started in software license compliance and marketing before she found her passion in community-building through projects like Weaveworks and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) ecosystem. Her experience spans the full project lifecycle from early-stage incubation to graduation, giving her a unique perspective on how healthy, sustainable open source communities grow.

A central theme of the conversation is what makes open source communities truly welcoming. Stacey emphasizes the importance of clear documentation, accessible contribution guidelines, well-labeled “good first issues,” and, above all, kindness. Reducing the fear of “doing it wrong” is critical, especially for newcomers who may feel intimidated by contributing code in public. Creating psychological safety helps transform curiosity into long-term participation, and contributors feel mentored rather than judged. Community health, she notes, is fundamentally about people, not just processes or tooling.

The discussion also explores how marketing skills translate into community leadership. Stacey reflects on the difference between top-down messaging aimed at executives and bottom-up engagement with developers. Understanding your audience, meeting contributors where they are, and fostering authentic relationships are essential to building trust. At OpenSSF, she is helping shift perceptions so contributors understand that participation is open to everyone, not just member organizations. She also believes it's important to support education initiatives and strengthen developer experience across projects.

Finally, Stacey highlights several OpenSSF initiatives and projects that could benefit from broader community involvement, including Scorecard, Minder, and OpenVEX. She also previews upcoming events and a new ambassador program designed to make open source security more accessible, and even fun! The episode closes with encouragement for listeners to get involved, contribute to the projects they rely on, and help build secure, welcoming open source ecosystems.

Links:
CHAOSS
GR-OSS OUT podcast
G-Research
G-Research vacancies
Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF)
OpenSSF Training & Education
Linux Foundation
Scorecard
Sigstore
SLSA (Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts)
Minder
OpenVEX
Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)
Flux
Kubernetes
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America
OpenSSF Community Day Korea