Mike McQuaid

I sometimes give interviews about open source, Workbrew, Homebrew, Git, GitHub and other things.

• How Homebrew Became Mac's Package Manager with Mike McQuaid

  27 January 2026

  Screaming in the Cloud

  Mike McQuaid explains how Homebrew grew from a side project into macOS’s de facto package manager and how the project is sustained today.

• The Most Important Skills Going Forward with CTO + Homebrew Maintainer Mike McQuaid

  16 January 2026

  freeCodeCamp Podcast

  Mike McQuaid joins Quincy Larson to discuss career lessons and the software engineering skills worth prioritizing next.

• Homebrew and macOS Package Management with Mike McQuaid

  21 October 2025

  Software Engineering Daily
  

  Mike McQuaid discusses Homebrew’s evolution, open source maintenance on macOS, and practical package management tradeoffs.

• Mike McQuaid: If You Don't Like It, Quit

  17 October 2025

  Breaking Change - Hotfix podcast

  Also available in swear-free/bleeped version on The Changelog and Friends podcast There will be bleeps.

• Mike McQuaid on the Greatest Lessons He’s Learned in Over 16 Years at Homebrew

  07 October 2025

  GitHub Podcast

  Homebrew’s project lead Mike McQuaid joins Abby and Andrea to unpack what it really takes to sustain one of the most-used developer tools on macOS and Linux.

• How Ruby Went Off the Rails

  29 September 2025

  Emanuel Maiberg on 404 Media
  

  What happened to RubyGems, Bundler, and the Open Source drama that controls the internet infrastructure.

• Distributing Your CLI with Homebrew: Tips from Mike McQuaid

  09 September 2025

  Ruby Rogues

  In this episode of Ruby Rogues, I sit down with Mike McQuaid, lead maintainer of Homebrew, to talk all about building and distributing CLIs. We dig into the practical steps for turning small scripts into reliable command-line tools, why Ruby is a great starting point, and when you might want to reach for Go or Rust instead.

• Maintainer burnout at critical Kubernetes project puts OSS contributions back in the spotlight

  20 August 2025

  Noah Bovenizer on The Stack
  

  “Typically the support cases we have are saying ‘if you don’t help me, the whole system of this government will stop’”

• AI-first hiring is everywhere and it’s not slowing down

  22 May 2025

  Sage Lazzaro on LeadDev
  

  Engineers might start being penalised for not using AI in technical interviews.

• Ep. #14, The Workbrew Story with Mike McQuaid and John Britton

  22 May 2025

  Open Source Ready Podcast
  

  In episode 14 of Open Source Ready, special guests Mike McQuaid and John Britton join Brian and John to share the story of Workbrew.

• Maintainers: Mike McQuaid

  20 May 2025

  Open Source Initiative

  Hi, I’m Mike McQuaid, the Project Leader for Homebrew and CTPO of Workbrew.

  I’ve worked on open source software in some form for 20 years. I got started in a fairly traditional way, using desktop Linux in university in the early 2000s. Through this I ended up helping people out in IRC channels, submitting bugs and then patches on bug trackers and modifying existing software for my own use.

• Episode 397: Software Bill of Materials with Workbrew

  29 January 2025

  Mac Admins Podcast
  

  The team at Workbrew has been focused on getting into full production, and they’ve gotten a huge head of steam going in 2024. They’re with us today to talk about SBOMs.

• Workbrew makes open source package manager Homebrew enterprise-friendly

  19 November 2024

  TechCrunch
  

  Workbrew emerges from stealth with the mission of mitigating the risks of “shadow IT” practices around Homebrew package manager deployments.

• The Homebrew maintainers who built a startup - Mike McQuaid and John Britton from Workbrew

  31 October 2024

  Scaling DevTools

  Mike McQuaid and John Britton are cofounders of Workbrew - a tool that gives you the missing features for enterprises running Homebrew.

• Workbrew, turning Homebrew into a business with Mike McQuaid

  17 October 2024

  The Tech Lounge Podcast
  

  I speak with Mike McQuaid, long-term maintainer of Homebrew, the macOS package manager, about Workbrew, a new commercial version of Homebrew that brings extra security and governance features to Homebrew.

• Homebrew, I'm more of a Whopper guy

  14 August 2024

  FLOSS Weekly

  This week Jonathan Bennett and David Ruggles chat with John Britton and Mike McQuaid about Homebrew! That’s the missing package manager for macOS; and Workbrew, the commercial offering built …

• After 15 years, the maintainer of Homebrew plans to make a living

  26 July 2024

  The Next Web
  

  Installing and updating applications and other dependencies on a computer really should be a solved problem by now. Yet almost every major desktop operating system provides multiple options, with no real clear answer to “which is best.”

• Riding the Homebrew Wave

  28 May 2024

  Open Source Startup Podcast
  

  John Britton & Mike McQuaid are Co-Founders of Workbrew, the company that provides additional features and support for companies using Homebrew. Homebrew’s main project, brew, is a wildly popular open source project with 40K GitHub stars and provides the missing package manager for macOS (or Linux). In this episode, we dig into John & Mike’s history with Homebrew and their time together at GitHub, how Homebrew has kept projects simple over time and avoided feature creep, how Homebrew has managed to get a lot of value from contributors, how their ICP has shifted from mac admins to dev and security teams & more!

• What Open Source Maintainers Should Know About Mental Health

  28 May 2024

  debug:mind

  In this special episode of “debug:mind”, I chat with Mike McQuaid, a leading figure in the open-source community and co-founder of Workbrew.

• Homebrew Turns 15

  21 May 2024

  "Homebrew Turns 15" stream

  Homebrew was created on May 20, 2009. Fifteen years later it’s in use on tens of millions of devices.

• Open Source Friday with Mike McQuaid and Homebrew

  03 May 2024

  GitHub's Open Source Friday

  🚀 Join us this #opensourcefriday with Mike McQuaid, early GitHub engineer (#232) and Homebrew maintainer (#3).

• Episode 356: Workbrew

  18 March 2024

  Mac Admins Podcast
  

  The team from Workbrew joins us this week to discuss the challenges MacAdmins face with Homebrew at their companies.

• A coffee with Mike McQuaid, Workbrew CTO and Homebrew project leader

  15 March 2024

  Tech Informed
  

  Homebrew’s maintainer on the economics of open source, his new commercial software venture and the power of saying ‘no’.

• Homebrew Unleashed: Diving into the Fast and Efficient Packaging Process

  13 March 2024

  Ruby Rogues

  Mike McQuaid is the CTO and cofounder at Workbrew. They dive into the world of Homebrew, an open-source package manager for macOS and Linux. They explore the history and development of Homebrew, from its origins in the Ruby community to its evolution into a widely-used tool for installing and managing software.

• Brewing up something for work

  20 February 2024

  Changelog and Friends
  

  Homebrew project leader Mike McQuaid joins us to weigh in on Apple’s big Vision Pro announcement. We also hit on our favorite (and least favorite) non-AR things from the WWDC 2023 keynote.

• External Forces At Play in our Digital Future

  06 February 2024

  State of Open Con

• State of Open: The UK in 2023 Phase Three “Skills or Bust” report

  22 November 2023

  OpenUK
  

• The best books for becoming a great open source software engineer

  01 October 2023

  Shepherd
  

  Mike McQuaid shares the 5 best books on becoming a great open source software engineer. Have you read The Design of Everyday Things?

• Reactions to Apple’s new vision

  09 June 2023

  Changelog and Friends
  

  Homebrew project leader Mike McQuaid joins us to weigh in on Apple’s big Vision Pro announcement. We also hit on our favorite (and least favorite) non-AR things from the WWDC 2023 keynote.

• Mike McQuaid's clean, ergonomic setup in Edinburgh, Scotland

  08 April 2023

  Hacker Stations
  

• Homebrew with Mike McQuaid

  27 March 2023

  The Developers' Bakery
  

  Into the most popular package manager for macOS with Homebrew and Mike McQuaid.

• Pop open a cask: Homebrew version 4.0.0 is here

  27 February 2023

  The Register
  

  Add-on package manager for macOS (and Linux if you need it).

• Mike McQuaid of Homebrew on Sustainably Working on OSS Projects

  15 April 2022

  SustainOSS
  

  Mike McQuaid shares on the history of Homebrew, his involvement in open source, boundary setting, and what software sustainability means for him.

• The Art Of Saying “No” As A Leader.

  09 February 2022

  Exaltitude

  Mike McQuaid is a Staff Engineer at GitHub, currently working on improving internal developer and external maintainer experience in Communities. He is the author of Git in Practice, an intermediate Git book, and writes and speaks about open source, engineering career development, remote work, and empathy in tech on his site, podcasts and conferences. He has also been the project leader and maintainer of the Homebrew package manager for 12 years.

• Mike McQuaid (GitHub)

  06 April 2021

  StaffEng Podcast

  Today we have a great guest to talk about his transition to, and current role as, a staff engineer: Mike McQuaid from GitHub!

• Homebrew! Part Deux

  06 March 2019

  The Changelog
  

  We’re talking with Mike McQuaid about Homebew 2.0.0, supporting Linux and Windows 10, the backstory and details surrounding the security issue they had in 2018, their new governance model, Mike’s new role, the core team meeting in-person at FOSDEM this year, and what’s coming next for Homebrew.

• Interview with Mike, a software engineer who works remotely at GitHub

  20 August 2018

  Remote Habits
  

  Mike got started with remote work after getting an offer from his dream organisation. Learn how he works remotely while working on open source projects and publishing books.

• When should you open source your software?

  13 April 2018

  IDG Connect

  It’s 20 years since the term ‘Open Source’ was coined. In that time the movement for free and open software has gone from a niche to a common method of distribution and a normal way of operating for businesses.

• 7 years of open source: GitHub, Puppet, DataStax, Severalnines

  25 October 2017

  ComputerWeekly.com

  “In 2010 GitHub had 1 million open source repositories, by the beginning of 2017 this had grown to 67 million. GitHub has become the default place for open source software development and this has been hugely beneficial for the open source community. The workflow for contributing to most open source projects is now the same: create a pull request,” said McQuaid.

• Homebrew with Mike McQuaid

  16 August 2017

  The Manifest
  

  Wherein we chat with Mike McQuaid, the lead maintainer of Homebrew. We discuss how he got started contributing to Homebrew, its differences from Macports, using GitHub as a database, patching upstream, and more.

• The Future of Open Source at OSCON 2017

  28 July 2017

  The Changelog
  

  This is an anthology episode from OSCON 2017 featuring awesome conversations with Kelsey Hightower (OSCON Co-Chair and Developer Advocate at Google Cloud Platform), Safia Abdalla (Open Source Developer and Creator of Zarf), and Mike McQuaid and Nadia Eghbal (GitHub Open Source Programs).

• GitHub launches Open Source Friday

  27 June 2017

  OpenSource.com
  

  From Andrew Nesbitt of 24 Pull Requests and GitHub’s Mike McQuaid, Open Source Friday is a weekly reminder to give back to the open source projects that power your daily work.

• GitHub declares every Friday open source day

  27 June 2017

  VentureBeat

  GitHub wants to help more people become open source contributors with a new initiative called Open Source Friday. As the name implies, the program encourages companies to set aside time at the end of the week for their employees to work on open source projects.

• How to avoid technical debt in open source communities

  23 May 2017

  ComputerWeekly

  Businesses that make use of open source software should dedicate resources to supporting and maintaining the projects their organisations rely on.

• Comment GitHub contribue à l’essor du développement en open source

  23 May 2017

  Numerama
  

  “How GitHub contributes to the development of open source development” (article is in French).

• GitHub launches app marketplace

  22 May 2017

  ITPro
  

  New storefront helps developers find programming tools

• GitHub Marketplace goes live

  22 May 2017

  TechNative

  GitHub debut a number of new features GitHub, the world’s leading platform for developers has unveiled GitHub Marketplace. The new portal offers an entirely new way to purchase and discover tools to power developer workflows. We had a quick chat with Mike McQuaid, Senior Software Engineer at GitHub to find out more.

• Homebrew MacOS package manager gets easier to use

  04 May 2017

  InfoWorld
  

  Homebrew 1.2.0 deprecates a number of repositories to improve ease of use and software quality.

• Looking Back on Homebrew’s First Year with Conservancy

  02 February 2017

  Software Freedom Conservancy blog
  

  This series covers new developments and exciting projects taken on by Conservancy member projects. To learn more about Conservancy member projects, or the non-profit infrastructure support and services offered by Conservancy, check out Conservancy’s Projects page. Please support Conservancy so we can continue to help all this important software.

• Homebrew and Package Management

  07 October 2016

  The Changelog
  

  Mike McQuaid joined us to catch us up on the latest in Homebrew and the recent 1.0.0 release. We talked about no more /usr/local — Homebrew moves to /usr/local/Homebrew to keep /usr/local cleaner, auto-updates, the growth of the Homebrew community and how it has grown to almost 6000 unique contributors, and more.

• But What About The Stars?

  04 October 2016

  Ruby on Rails Podcast
  

  In this episode, Kyle is joined by Mike McQuaid, a maintainer on Homebrew, to talk about open source, how Homebrew works, and the hardest part of running a huge package manager for Macs. Let’s give this new format a try!

• Interview with Mike McQuaid about Git in Practice

  04 March 2015

  InfoQ
  

  Mike McQuaid, Software Engineer at GitHub, has written “Git in Practice” which provides over 60 techniques for working with and managing Git projects. InfoQ caught up with Mike, and asked about it, including his advice for teams considering migrating to Git and what tools to use.