Alex Band<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://ngmx.com/@mejofi" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">@<span>mejofi</span></a></span> <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://chaos.social/@nor4" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">@<span>nor4</span></a></span> Let's make this a little more personal. Hi Joni! It's Alex from <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://social.nlnetlabs.nl/@nlnetlabs" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">@<span>nlnetlabs</span></a></span> and I'm responsible for keeping the lights on. 👋</p><p>When NLnet Labs was founded in 1999, the foundation could be run on the bag of money Verizon gave NLnet, the first Dutch ISP with country wide coverage. This money, and two talented developers gave the world NSD authoritative <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/DNS" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>DNS</span></a> server, and Unbound recursive resolver; two <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/OpenSource" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>OpenSource</span></a> and liberally licensed projects we maintain to this day.</p><p>No marketing was needed, social media didn’t exist — good old word of mouth did the job. And if it didn’t, that was fine too. Talented developers like we're blessed to have can find a job anywhere.</p><p>It was only some 15 years later when NLnet Labs almost ran out of money that the internet community realised that they should play a part in our financial sustainablility, instead of doing an `apt install unbound` and resolve happily ever after.</p><p>Letting the product speak for itself isn’t enough to keep the lights on. We barely got away with it with Routinator, but that's only because we were the first with a well rounded solution for <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/RPKI" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>RPKI</span></a>. </p><p>With Cascade we're placing a product in an established <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/DNSSEC" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>DNSSEC</span></a> signing market, which includes people who are dependent on OpenDNSSEC, which we're EoL-ing. We also need to remind people that “free" in Open Source isn’t just the “as in speech” part. </p><p>Without marketing, finance, HR, legal, shareholders or a corporate sugar daddy I’m responsible for the livelihood of 16 people, 6 of which are working on Cascade. I’m betting everything on this. So yes, I turned the volume up to 11, and yes I post the same content to LinkedIn, and yes perhaps I should be fine tuning the messaging to each target audience. I'll put my comms team right on it! Oh, hang on... </p><p>I hope you enjoy the things we’ve been doing for the <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/DNS" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>DNS</span></a> and <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/BGP" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>BGP</span></a> community for the last 25 years. My goal is to make sure we can do this for at least another 25. I promise we'll do in-depth technical blog posts too, but right now the team is trying to make sure we can demo something at <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodns.net/@dnsoarc" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">@<span>dnsoarc</span></a></span> in three weeks. </p><p>Please bear with us and stay tuned! 💚 <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/LoveDNS" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>LoveDNS</span></a> <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/rustlang" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>rustlang</span></a></p>