E20: Building Programming Language & Infrastructure Company Dark

Transition Motivations

Ellen Chisa, co-founder of Dark, shares the motivations behind transitioning Dark to open source. Initially, Dark was not open source due to the complexity of its programming language, Ocaml, and concerns about open-source funding challenges. However, the need to address numerous edge cases and foster community involvement led to the decision to open source. Ellen explains, "The solution space of Dark was very large... our small team of basically ten couldn't fix everything." 1 2.

   

Community Engagement

To engage the community post-open source, Ellen Chisa implemented strategies like in-office coding residencies and private beta programs. These initiatives ensured real-world testing and valuable feedback from users deeply engaged with the product. Ellen notes the importance of providing early contributors with manageable tasks, stating, "You have to come up with a good set of early uses or like early things people can fix or add that will help them contribute to the code base." 3 4.