The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
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From open source hits to OpenAI (Interview)
1 hour 46 minutes Posted Jun 5, 2026 at 7:00 pm.
This week on The Changelog
Sponsor: Coder.com
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Max's drive to make things to solve his own problems
Why for free instead of charging?
Does it still make sense to share work for free in the current world?
Even if the value isn't in writing code, it's still worth it to share things with the world
Building things is still hard work
The history of Spectrum and Spec.fm
Sponsor: WorkOS
How Max joined the Spectrum team
Joining GitHub and the origins of GitHub Discussions
Any regrets about the outcome of Spectrum and Github Discussions?
Exploring the idea of buying Spectrum back
Reflecting on the time spent working at GitHub
What Max worked on after GitHub
The challenges of building a good team
Learning how to provide good critical feedback
Using the COINS framework for feedback
The benefits of providing better feedback
Building Stellate
Sponsor: Notion
Why Stellate's caching worked so well: Partial Query Caching deep dive
Is GraphQL still popular?
The danger of building a good product for a undersized market
Managing a dual aquisition for Stellate
Moving from Stellate to Shopify and discovering the right role
Why Max chose to work on Shopify's Liquid Storefronts
Why Max decided to join OpenAI
What Max is working on at OpenAI
MCP Apps deep dive (MCP server for UI)
Are MCP Apps a potential replacement for building a website?
Max's closing thoughts
Closing thoughts and stuff
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Show notes
This week I'm talking with Max Stoiber, currently working on ChatGPT's plugin directory and app platform at OpenAI. We discuss the hundreds of open source projects nobody remembers alongside the big ones like react-boilerplate and styled-components, how Spectrum became part of GitHub and eventually helped shape GitHub Discussions, the founder growth that came from building Stellate, the GraphQL cache that turned into a dual acquisition by Shopify and The Guild, and why ChatGPT apps feel like a new surface for software.
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