On this episode we welcome Mike McQuaid, a long standing maintainer (10+ years) and project lead of Homebrew. We talk about Mike’s journey of becoming a maintainer and how he manages to sustain a healthy relationship with his project and it’s community by establishing a good work life balance and having a clear definition of a maintainer’s responsibilities. As a strong advocate for supporting maintainers Mike describes how he and Homebrew’s team of maintainers deal with the negativity of both the job and certain members of the community by the use of tools, bots and a supportive approach to day to day working with one another. We also talk about Homebrew’s progression to becoming a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy and the benefits it brings to both the project and those involved.