Some notes on my first serious coding projects in something like 20 years, possibly longer. If you’re curious what these projects mean , more thoughts over on the OpenML.fyi newsletter.

TLDR

A GitHub contribution graph, showing a lot of activity in the past three weeks after virtually none the rest of the year.

News, Fixed

The “ Fix The News ” newsletter is a pillar of my mental health these days, bringing me news that the world is not entirely going to hell in a handbasket. And my 9yo has repeatedly noted that our family news diet is “broken” in exactly the way Fix The News is supposed to fix—hugely negative, hugely US-centric. So I asked Claude to create a “newspaper” version of FTN — a two page pdf of some highlights. It was a hit.

So I’ve now been working with Claude Code to create and gradually improve a four-days-a-week “News, Fixed” newspaper. This has been super-fun for the whole family—my wife has made various suggestions over my shoulder, my son devours it every morning, and it’s the first serious coding project I’ve tackled in ages. It is almost entirely strictly personal (it still has hard-coded Duke Basketball schedules) but nevertheless is public and FOSS . (It is even my first usage of reuse.software —and also of SonarQube Server !)

Example newspaper here .

No matter how far removed you are from practical coding experience, I cannot recommend enough finding a simple, fun project like this that scratches a human itch in your life, and using the project to experiment with the new code tools.

Getting Things Done assistant

While working on News, Fixed a friend pointed out Steve Yegge’s “ beads ”, which reimagines software issue tracking as an LLM-centric activity — json-centric, tracked in git, etc. At around the same time, I was also pointed at Superpowers —essentially, canned “skills” like “teach the LLM, temporarily, how to brainstorm”.

The two of these together in my mind screamed “do this for your overwhelmed todo list”. I’ve long practiced various bastardized versions of Getting Things Done, but one of the hangups has been that I’m inconsistent about doing the daily/weekly/nth-ly reviews that good GTD really relies on. I might skip a step, or not look through all my huge “someday-maybe” list, or… any of many reasons one can be tired and human when faced with a wall of text. Also, while there are many tools out there to do GTD, in my experience they either make some of the hardest parts (like the reviews) your problem, or they don’t quite fit with how I want to do GTD, or both. Hacking on my own prompts to manage the reviews seems to fit these needs to a T.

I currently use Amazing Marvin as my main GTD tool. It is funky and weird and I’ve stuck with it much longer than any other task tracker I’ve ever used. So what I’ve done so far:

• wrapped the Marvin API to extract json
• discovered the Marvin API is very flaky, so done some caching and validation
• written a lot of prompts for the various phases/tasks in GTD. These work to varying degrees and I really want to figure out how to collaborate with others on them, because I suspect that as more tools offer LLM-ish APIs ( whoa, todoist! ) these prompts are where the real fun and action will be.

This is all read-only right now because of limitations in the Marvin API but for various reasons I’m not yet ready to embark on building my own entire UI. So this will do for now. But this code, therefore, is very limited to me. The prompts on the other hand…

Note that my emphasis is not on “do tasks”, it is on helping me stay on priority. Less “chief of staff”, more “executive assistant”—both incredibly valuable when done well, but different roles. This is different from some of the use examples for Yegge’s Beads, which really are around agents.

Also note: the results have been outstanding. I’m getting more easily into my doing zone, I think largely because I have less anxiety about staring at the Giant Wall of Tasks that defines the life of any high-level IC. And my projects are better organized and todos feel more accurate than they have been in a long time, possibly ever.

a note on LLMs and issue/TODO tracking

It is worth noting that while LLMs are probabilistic/lossy, so they can’t find the “perfect” next TODO to work on, that’s OK. Personal TODO and software issue tracking are inherently subjective, probabilistic activities—there is no objectively perfect “next best thing to work on”, “most important thing to work on”, etc. So the fact that an LLM is only probabilistic in identifying the next task to work on is fine—no human can do substantially better. In fact I’m pretty sure that once an issue list is past a certain point, the LLM is likely to be able to do better— if (and like many things LLM, this is a big if) you can provide it with documented standards explaining how you want to do prioritization. (Literally one of the first things I did at my first job was write standards on how to prioritize bugs—the forerunner of this doc —so I have strong opinions, and experience, here.)

Skills for license “concluded”

While at a recent Linux Foundation event, I was shocked to realize how many very smart people haven’t internalized the skills/prompts/context stuff. It’s either “you chat with it” or “you train a model”. This is not their fault; it is hard to keep up!

Of course this came up most keenly in the context of the age-old problem of “how do I tell what license an open source project is under”. In other words, what is the difference between “I have scanned this” and “I have reached the zen state of SPDX’s ‘ concluded ’ field”.

So … yes, I’ve started playing with scripts and prompts on this. It’s much less further along than the other two projects above, but I think it could be very fruitful if structured correctly. Some potentially big benefits above and beyond the traditional scanning and/or throw a lawyer at it approaches:

• reporting: my very strong intuition, admittedly not yet tested, is that plain-English reports on factors below, plus links into repos, will be much easier for lawyers to use as a starting point than the UIs of traditional license-scanner tools. And I suspect ultimately more powerful as well, since they’ll be able to draw on some of the things below.
• context sensitivity: unlike a regexp, an LLM can likely fairly reliably understand from context some of the big failures of traditional pattern matching like “this code mentions license X but doesn’t actually include it”.
• issue analysis and change analysis: unlike traditional approaches, LLMs can look at the change history of key files like README and LICENSE and draw useful context from them. “oh hey README mentioned a license change on Nov. 9, 2025, here’s what the change was and let’s see if there are any corresponding issues and commit logs that explain this change” is something that an LLM really can do. (Also it can do that with much more patience than any human.)

ClearlyDefined offers test data on this, by the way — I’m really looking forward to seeing if this can be made actually reliable or not. (And then we can hook up reuse.software on the backend to actually improve the upstream metadata…)

But even then, I may not ever release this. There’s a lot of real risks here and I still haven’t thought them through enough to be comfortable with them. That’s true even though I think the industry has persistently overstated its ability to reach useful conclusions about licensing, since it so persistently insists on doing licensing analysis without ever talking to maintainers.

More to come?

I’m sure there will be more of these. That said, one of the interesting temptations of this is that it is very hard to say “something is done” because it is so easy to add more. (eg, once my personal homebrew News Fixed is done… why not turn it into a webapp? once my GTD scripts are done… why not port the backend? etc. etc.) So we’ll see how that goes.

For Google Summer of Code 2025 , I worked on GNOME Crosswords . GNOME Crosswords is a project that consists of two apps:

• Crosswords , a crossword player
• Crossword Editor , a crossword editor.

Links

Here are links to everything that I worked on.

Merge requests

Merge requests related to the word suggestion algorithm:

1. Improve word suggestion algorithm
2. Add word-list-tests-utils.c
3. Refactor clue-matches-tests.c by using a fixture
4. Use better test assert macros
5. Add macro to reduce boilerplate code in clue-matches-tests.c
6. Add a macro to simplify the test_clue_matches calls
7. Add more tests to clue-matches-tests.c
8. Use string parameter in macro function
9. Add performance tests to clue-matches-tests.c
10. Make phase 3 of word_list_find_intersection() optional
11. Improve print functions for WordArray and WordSet

Other merge requests:

1. Fix and refactor editor puzzle import
2. Add MIME sniffing to downloader
3. Add support for remaining divided cell types in svg.c
4. Fix intersect sort
5. Fix rebus intersection
6. Use a single suggested words list for Editor

Issues submitted

Issues I submitted on GitLab.

Design documents

• Word suggestion algorithm
• Intersection-based word suggestion algorithm
• Forward-checking word suggestion algorithm
• AC-3-based word suggestion algorithm
• Grid helpers

Other documents

Development:

• Ideas list
• Editor roadmap thoughts
• Crossword Editor architecture notes
• Naming problems
• Font testing

Word suggestion algorithm:

• CSP notes
• Miscellaneous papers
• Sub-alphabet idea

Competitive analysis:

• Survey of existing crossword editors
• Survey of printing feature in existing editors

Other:

• Review of docs

Blog posts

1. Introducing my GSoC 2025 project
2. Coding begins
3. A strange bug
4. Bugs, bugs, and more bugs!
5. My first design doc
6. It’s alive!
7. When is an optimization not optimal?
8. This is a test post

Journal

I kept a daily journal of the things that I was working on.

Project summary

I improved GNOME Crossword Editor’s word suggestion algorithm, by re-implementing it as a forward-checking algorithm. Previously, our word suggestion algorithm only considered the constraints imposed by the intersection where the cursor is. This resulted in frequent dead-end word suggestions, which led to user frustration.

To fix this problem, I re-implemented our word suggestion algorithm to consider the constraints imposed by every intersection in the current slot. This significantly reduces the number of dead-end word suggestions and leads to a better user experience.

As part of this project, I also researched the field of constraint satisfaction problems and wrote a report on how we can use the AC-3 algorithm to further improve our word suggestion algorithm in the future.

I also performed a competitive analysis of other crossword editors on the market and wrote a detailed report, to help identify missing features and guide future development.

Word suggestion algorithm improvements

The goal of any crossword editor software is to make it as easy as possible to create a good crossword puzzle. To that end, all crossword editors have a feature called a word suggestion list . This is a dynamic list of words that fit the current slot. It helps the user find words that fit the slots on their grid.

In order to generate the word suggestion list, crossword editors use a word suggestion algorithm . The simplest example of a word suggestion algorithm considers two constraints:

• The size of the current slot.
• The letters in the current slot.

So for example, if the current slot is C A _ S , then this basic word suggestion algorithm would return all four-letter words that start with CA and end in S —such as CATS or CABS , but not COTS .

The problem

There is a problem with this basic word suggestion algorithm, however. Consider the following grid:

+---+---+---+---+
| | | | Z |
+---+---+---+---+
| | | | E |
+---+---+---+---+
| | | | R |
+---+---+---+---+
| W | O | R | | < current slot
+---+---+---+---+

4-Down begins with ZER , so the only word it can be is ZERO . This constrains the bottom-right cell to the letter O .

4-Across starts with WOR . We know that the bottom-right cell must be O , so that means that 4-Across must be WORO . But WORO is not a word. So, 4-Down and 4-Across are both unfillable, because no letter fits in the bottom-right cell. This means that there are no valid word suggestions for either 4-Across or 4-Down.

Now, suppose that the current slot is 4-Across. The basic algorithm only considers the constraints imposed by the current slot, and so it returns all words that match the pattern W O R _ —such as WORD and WORM . But none of these word suggestions actually fit in the slot—they all cause 4-Down to become some nonsensical word.

The problem is that the basic algorithm only looks at the current slot, 4-Across. It does not also look at other slots, like 4-Down. Because of that, the algorithm doesn’t realize that 4-Down causes 4-Across to be unfillable. And so, the algorithm generates incorrect word suggestions.

Our word suggestion algorithm

Our word suggestion algorithm was a bit more advanced than this basic algorithm. Our algorithm considered two constraints:

• The constraints imposed by the current slot.
• The constraints imposed by the intersecting slot where the cursor is.

This means that our algorithm could actually handle the problematic grid properly if the cursor is on the bottom-right cell. But not if the cursor is on any other cell of 4-Across:

Consequences

All this means that our word suggestion algorithm was prone to generating dead-end words —words that seem to fit a slot, but that actually lead to an unfillable grid.

In the problematic grid example I gave, this unfillability is immediately obvious. The user fills 4-Across with a word like WORM , and they instantly see that this turns 4-Down into ZERM , a nonsense word. That makes this grid not so bad.

The worst cases are the insidious ones, where the fact that a word suggestion leads to an unfillable grid is not obvious at first. This leads to a ton of wasted time and frustration for the user.

My solution

To fix this problem, I re-implemented our word suggestion algorithm to account for the constraints imposed by all the intersecting slots. Now, our word suggestion algorithm correctly handles the problematic grid example:

Our new algorithm doesn’t eliminate dead-end words entirely. After all, it only checks the intersecting slots of the current slot—it does not also check the intersecting slots of the intersecting slots, etc.

However, the constraints imposed by a slot onto the current slot become weaker, the more intersections-removed it is. Consider: in order for a slot that’s two intersections away from the current slot to constrain the current slot, it must first constrain a mutual slot (a slot that intersects both of them) enough for that mutual slot to then constrain the current slot.

Compare that to a slot that is only one intersection away from the current slot. All it has to do is be constrained enough that it limits what letters the intersecting cell can be.

And so, although my changes do not eliminate dead-end words entirely, they do significantly reduce their prevalence, resulting in a much better user experience.

The end

This concludes my Google Summer of Code 2025 project! I give my thanks to Jonathan Blandford for his invaluable mentorship and clear communication throughout the past six months. And I thank the GNOME Foundation for its participation in GSoC and commitment to open source.

[ The below is a cross-post of an article that I published on my blog at Software Freedom Conservancy . ]

Our member project representatives and others who collaborate with SFC on projects know that I've been on part-time medical leave this year. As I recently announced publicly on the Fediverse , I was diagnosed in March 2025 with early-stage Type 2 Diabetes. I had no idea that that the diagnosis would become a software freedom and users' rights endeavor.

After the diagnosis, my doctor suggested immediately that I see the diabetes nurse-practitioner specialist in their practice. It took some time get an appointment with him, so I saw him first in mid-April 2025.

I walked into the office, sat down, and within minutes the specialist asked me to “take out your phone and install the Freestyle Libre app from Abbott”. This is the first (but, will probably not be the only) time a medical practitioner asked me to install proprietary software as the first step of treatment.

The specialist told me that in his experience, even early-stage diabetics like me should use a Continuous Glucose Monitor ( CGM ). CGM's are an amazing (relatively) recent invention that allows diabetics to sample their blood sugar level constantly. As we software developers and engineers know: great things happen when your diagnostic readout is as low latency as possible. CGMs lower the latency of readouts from 3–4 times a day to every five minutes . For example, diabetics can see what foods are most likely to cause blood sugar spikes for them personally. CGMs put patients on a path to manage this chronic condition well.

But, the devices themselves, and the (default) apps that control them are hopelessly proprietary. Fortunately, this was (obviously) not my first time explaining FOSS from first principles. So, I read through the license and terms and conditions of the ironically named “Freestyle Libre” app, and pointed out to the specialist how patient-unfriendly the terms were. For example, Abbott (the manufacturer of my CGM ) reserves the right to collect your data (anonymously of course, to “improve the product”). They also require patients to agree that if they take any action to reverse engineer, modify, or otherwise do the normal things our community does with software, the patient must agree that such actions “constitute immediate, irreparable harm to Abbott, its affiliates, and/or its licensors”. I briefly explained to the specialist that I could not possibly agree. I began in real-time (still sitting with the specialist) a search for a FOSS solution.

As I was searching, the specialist said: “Oh, I don't use any of it myself, but I think I've heard of this ‘open source’ thing — there is a program called xDrip+ that is for insulin-dependent diabetics that I've heard of and some patients report it is quite good”.

While I'm (luckily) very far from insulin-dependency, I eventually found the FOSS Android app called Juggluco (a portmanteau for “Juggle glucose”). I asked the specialist to give me the prescription and I'd try Juggluco to see if it would work.

CGM 's are very small and their firmware is (by obvious necessity) quite simple. As such, their interfaces are standard. CGM's are activated with Near Field Communication ( NFC ) — available on even quite old Android devices. The Android device sends a simple integer identifier via NFC that activates the CGM. Once activated — and through the 15-day life of the device — the device responds via Bluetooth with the patient's current glucose reading to any device presenting that integer.

Fortunately, I quickly discovered that the FOSS community was already “on this”. The NFC activation worked just fine, even on the recently updated “Freestyle Libre 3 + ”. After the sixty minute calibration period, I had a continuous readout in Juggluco.

CGM 's lower latency feedback enables diabetics to have more control of their illness management. one example among many: the patient can see (in real time) what foods most often cause blood sugar spikes for them personally . Diabetes hits everyone differently; data allows everyone to manage their own chronic condition better.

My personal story with Juggluco will continue — as I hope (although not until after FOSDEM 2026 😆) to become an upstream contributor to Juggluco. Most importantly, I hope to help the app appear in F-Droid. (I must currently side-load or use Aurora Store to make it work on LineageOS.)

Fitting with the history that many projects that interact with proprietary technology must so often live through, Juggluco has faced surreptitious removal from Google's Play Store . Abbott even accused Juggluco of using their proprietary libraries and encryption methods, but the so-called “encryption method” is literally sending an single integer as part of NFC activation.

While Abbott backed off, this is another example of why the movement of patients taking control of the technology remains essential. FOSS fits perfectly with this goal. Software freedom gives control of technology to those who actually rely on it — rather than for-profit medical equipment manufacturers.

When I returned to my specialist for a follow-up, we reviewed the data and graphs that I produced with Juggluco. I, of course, have never installed, used, or even agreed to Abbott's licenses and terms, so I have never seen what the Abbott app does. I was thus surprised when I showed my specialist Juggluco's summary graphs. He excitedly told me “this is much better reporting than the Abbott app gives you!”. We all know that sometimes proprietary software has better and more features than the FOSS equivalent, so it's a particularly great success when our community efforts outdoes a wealthy 200 billion-dollar megacorp on software features!

---

Please do watch SFC's site in 2026 for more posts about my ongoing work with Juggluco, and please give generously as an SFC Sustainer to help this and our other work continue in 2026!

Couple weeks ago Cloudflare announced it would be sponsoring some Open Source projects. Throwing money at pet projects of random techbros would hardly be news, but there was a certain vibe behind them and the people leading them.

In an unexpected turn of events, the millionaire receiving money from the billion-dollar company, thought it would be important to devote a whole blog post to random brokeboy from Athens that had an opinion on the Internet .

I was astonished to find the blog post. Now that I moved from normal stalkers to millionaire stalkers, is it a sign that I made it? Have I become such a menace? But more importantly: Who the hell even is this guy?

D-H-Who?

When I was painting with crayons in a deteriorating kindergarten somewhere in Greece, DHH, David Heinemeier Hansson , was busy with dumping Ruby on Rails in the world and becoming a niche tech celebrity. His street cred for releasing Ruby on Rails would later be replaced by his writing on remote work. Famously authoring “Remote: Office Not Required”, a book based on his own company, 37signals.

That cultural cache would go out the window in 2022 when he got in hot water with his own employees after an internal review process concluded that 37signals had been less than stellar when it came to handling race and diversity. Said review process culminated in a clash, where the employees were interested in further exploration of the topic, which DHH responded to them with “You are the person you are complaining about” (meaning: you, pointing out a problem, is the problem).

No politics at work

This incident lead the two founders of 37signals to the executive decision to forbid any kind of “ societal and political discussions ” inside the company, which, predictably, lead to a third of the company resigning in protest. This was a massive blow to 37signals. The company was famous for being extremely selective when hiring, as well as affording employees great benefits. Suddenly having a third of the workforce resign over disagreement with management sent a far more powerful message than anything they could have imagined.

It would become the starting point for the downwards and radicalizing spiral along with the extended and very public crashout DHH will be going through in the coming years.

Starting your own conference so you can never be banned from it

Subsequently, DHH was uninvited from keynoting at RailsConf on the account of everyone being grossed out about the handling of the matter and in solidarity with the community members along the employees that quit in protest.

That, in turn, would lead to the creation of the Rails Foundation and starting Rails World. A new conference about Rails that 100%-swear-to-god was not just about DHH having his own conference where he can keynote and would never be banned.

In the following years DHH would go to explore and express all the spectrum of “down the alt-right pipeline” opinions, like:

• Woke is so bad that it made me a racist
• People call me racist, but I found a book telling me how nice I am
• Fat people are bad and should feel bad
• DEI is bad
• DEI is bad part 2: trigger the libs with git branches
• Cheering for Affirmative action being banned in the USA
• The 80s were so great cause they were not woke
• Andrew Tate is a martyr
• Therapy is so bad, that I shall platform transphobes
• Therapy is so annoying that I’d rather make an Arch distro instead
• ADHD is not real
• Evey boy has ADHD
• Leave your work problems at therapy, instead of making it the problem of your boss (me)
• People not wanting kids are bad and Jordan Peterson nailed it
• Elon Musk and DOGE are awesome (Published 20 days after the Seig Hail )
• This private school is making my kids GAY
• London is full of “non-native Brits” and I am going to praise a race purity rally
• Words are not violence
• Words ARE violence, when they are against me

Omarchy

You either log off a hero, or you see yourself create another linux distribution, and having failed the first part, DHH has been pouring his energy into creating a new project. While letting everyone know how he much prefers that than going to therapy . Thus, Omarchy was born, a set of copy pasted Window Manager and Vim configs turned distro. One of the two projects that Cloudflare will be proudly funding shortly. The only possible option for the compositor would be Hyprland , and even though it’s Wayland (bad!), it’s one of the good-non-woke ones. In a similar tone, the project website would be featuring the tight integration of Omarchy with SuperGrok .

Rubygems

On a parallel track, the entire Ruby community more or less collapsed in the last two months. Long story short, is that one of the major Ruby Central sponsors, Sidekiq, pulled out the funding after DHH was invited to speak at RailsConf 2025. Shopify, where DHH sits in the boards of directors, was quick to save the day and match the lost funding. Coincidentally an (allegedly) takeover of key parts of the Ruby Infrastructure was carried out by Ruby Central and placed under the control of Shopify in the following weeks.

This story is ridiculous, and the entire ruby community is imploding following this. There’s an excellent write-up of the story so far here .

In a similar note, and at the same time, we also find DHH drooling over Off-brand Peter Thiel and calling for an Anduril takeover of the Nix community in order to purge all the wokes.

On Framework

At the same time, Framework had been promoting Omarchy in their social media accounts for a good while. And DHH in turn has been posting about how great Framework hardware is and how the Framework CEO is contributing to his Arch Linux reskin. On October 8th, Framework announced its sponsorhip of the Hyprland project, following 37signal doing the same thing couple weeks earlier . On the same day they made another post promoting Omarchy yet again. This caused a huge backlash and overall PR nightmare, with the apex being a forum thread with over 1700 comments so far.

The first reply in forum post, comes from Nirav, Framework’s CEO, with a very questionable choice of words:

We support open source software (and hardware), and partner with developers and maintainers across the ecosystem. We deliberately create a big tent, because we want open source software to win. We don’t partner based on individual’s or organization’s beliefs, values, or political stances outside of their alignment with us on increasing the adoption of open source software.

I definitely understand that not everyone will agree with taking a big tent approach, but we want to be transparent that bringing in and enabling every organization and community that we can across the Linux ecosystem is a deliberate choice.

Mentioning twice a “big tent” as the official policy and response to complains about supporting Fascist and Racist shitheads, is nothing sort of digging a hole for yourself so deep it that it reemerges in another continent.

Later on, Nirav would mention that they were finalizing sponsorship of the GNOME Foundation (12k/year) and KDE e.V. (10k/year). In the linked page you can also find a listing of Rails World (DHH’s personal conference) for a one time payment of 24k dollars.

There has not been an update since, and at no point have they addressed their support and collaboration with DHH. Can’t lose the money cow and free twitter clout I guess.

While I would personally would like to see the donation be rejected, I am not involved with the ongoing discussion on the GNOME Foundation side nor the Foundation itself. What I can say is that myself and others from the GNOME OS team, were involved in initial discussions with Framework, about future collaborations and hardware support. GNOME OS, much like the GNOME Flatpak runtime, is very useful as a reference point in order to identify if a bug, in hardware or software, is distro-specific or not.

It’s been a month since the initial debacle with Framework. Regardless of what the GNOME Foundation plans on doing, the GNOME OS team certainly does not feel comfortable in further collaboration given how they have handled the situation so far. It’s sad because the people working there understand the issue, but this does not seem to be a trait shared by the management.

A software midlife crisis

During all this, DHH decided that his attention must be devoted to get into a mouth-off with a greek kid that called him a Nazi. Since this is not violence (see “ Words are not violence ” essay), he decided to respond in kind, by calling for violence against me (see “ Words are violence ” essay).

To anyone who knows a nerd or two over the age of 35, all of the above is unsurprising. This is not some grand heel turn, or some brainwashing that DHH suffered. This is straight up a midlife crisis turned fash speedrun.

Here’s a dude who barely had any time to confront the world before falling into an infinite money glitch in the form of Ruby on Rails, Jeff Bezos throwing him crazy money, Apple bundling his software as a highlighted feature, becoming a “new work” celebrity and Silicon Valley “Guru”. Is it any surprise that such a person later would find the most minuscule kind of opposition as an all-out attack on his self-image?

DHH has never had the “best” opinions on a range of things, and they have been dutifully documented by others, but neither have many other developers that are also ignorant of topics outside of software. Being insecure about your hairline and masculine aesthetic to the point of adopting the Charles Manson haircut to cover your balding is one thing. However, it is entirely different to become a drop-shipped version of Elon, tweeting all day and stopping only to write opinion pieces that come off as proving others wrong rather than original thoughts.

Case in point: DHH recently wrote about how “men who’d prefer to feel useful over being listened to”. The piece is unironically titled “ Building competency is better than therapy ”. It is an insane read, and I’ll speculate that it feels as if someone, who DHH can’t outright dismiss, suggested he goes to therapy. It’s a very “I’ll show you off in front of my audience” kind of text.

Add to that a three year speedrun decrying the “theocracy of DEI” and the seemingly authoritarian powers of “the wokes”, all coincidentally starting after he could not get over his employees disagreeing with him on racial sensitivities.

How can someone suggest his workers read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me” and Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing and the BLM protests. While a couple of months later writing salivating blogposts after the EDL eugenics rally in England and giving the highest possible praise to Tommy Robinson ?

Can these people be redeemed?

It is certainly not going to help that niche celebrities, like DHH, still hold clout and financial power and are able to spout the worst possible takes without any backlash because of their position.

A bunch of Ruby developers recently started a petition to get DHH distanced from the community, and it didn’t go far before getting brigaded by the worst people you didn’t need to know existed. This of course was amplified to oblivion by DHH and a bunch of sycophants chasing the clout provided by being retweeted by DHH. It would shortly be followed by yet another “ I’m never wrong ” piece.

Is there any chance for these people, who are shielded by their well-paying jobs, their exclusively occupational media diet, and stimuli all happen to reinforce the default world view?

I think there is hope, but it demands more voices in tech spaces to speak up about how having empathy for others, or valuing diversity is not some grand conspiracy but rather enrichment to our lives and spaces. This comes hand in hand with firmly shutting down concern trolling and ridiculous “extreme centrist” takes where someone is expected to find common ground with others advocating for their extermination.

One could argue that the true spirit of FLOSS, which attracted much of the current midlife crisis developers in the first place, is about diversity and empathy for the varied circumstances and opinions that enriched our space.

Conclusion

I do not know if his heart is filled with hate or if he is incredibly lost, but it makes little difference since this is his output in the world.

David, when you read this I hope it will be a wake-up call. It’s not too late, you only need to go offline and let people help you. Stop the pathetic TemuElon speedrun and go take care of your kids. Drop the anti-woke culture wars and pick up a Ta-Nehisi Coates book again.

To everyone else: Push back against their vile and misanthropic rhetoric at every turn. Don’t let their poisonous roots fester into the ground. There is no place for their hate here. Don’t let them find comfort and spew their vomit in any public space.

Crush Fascism . Free Palestine .

Yesterday I released Flatpak 1.17.0 . It is the first version of the unstable 1.17 series and the first release in 6 months. There are a few things which didn’t make it for this release, which is why I’m planning to do another unstable release rather soon, and then a stable release still this year.

Back at LAS this year I talked about the Future of Flatpak and I started with the grim situation the project found itself in: Flatpak was stagnant, the maintainers left the project and PRs didn’t get reviewed.

Some good news: things are a bit better now. I have taken over maintenance, Alex Larsson and Owen Taylor managed to set aside enough time to make this happen and Boudhayan Bhattcharya (bbhtt) and Adrian Vovk also got more involved. The backlog has been reduced considerably and new PRs get reviewed in a reasonable time frame.

I also listed a number of improvements that we had planned, and we made progress on most of them:

• It is now possible to define which Flatpak apps shall be pre-installed on a system, and Flatpak will automatically install and uninstall things accordingly. Our friends at Aurora and Bluefin already use this to ship core apps from Flathub on their bootc based systems (shout-out to Jorge Castro).
• The OCI support in Flatpak has been enhanced to support pre-installing from OCI images and remotes, which will be used in RHEL 10
• We merged the backwards-compatible permission system. This allows apps to use new, more restricting permissions, while not breaking compatibility when the app runs on older systems. Specifically access to input devices such as gamepads, and access to the USB portal can now be granted in this way. It will also help us to transition to PipeWire.
• We have up-to-date docs for libflatpak again

Besides the changes directly in Flatpak, there are a lot of other things happening around the wider ecosystem:

• bbhtt released a new version of flatpak-builder
• Enhanced License Compliance Tools for Flathub
• Adrian and I have made plans for a service which allows querying running app instances (systemd-appd). This provides a new way of authenticating Flatpak instances and is a prerequisite for nested sandboxing, PipeWire support, and getting rid of the D-Bus proxy. My previous blog post went into a few more details.
• Our friends at KDE have started looking into the XDG Intents spec, which will hopefully allow us to implement deep-linking, thumbnailing in Flatpak apps, and other interesting features
• Adrian made progress on the session save/restore Portal
• Some rather big refactoring work in the Portals frontend, and GDBus and libdex integration work which will reduce the complexity of asynchronous D-Bus

What I have also talked about at my LAS talk is the idea of a Flatpak-Next project. People got excited about this, but I feel like I have to make something very clear:

If we redid Flatpak now, it would not be significantly better than the current Flatpak! You could still not do nested sandboxing, you would still need a D-Bus proxy, you would still have a complex permission system, and so on.

Those problems require work outside of Flatpak, but have to integrate with Flatpak and Flatpak-Next in the future. Some of the things we will be doing include:

• Work on the systemd-appd concept
• Make varlink a feasible alternative to D-Bus
• D-Bus filtering in the D-Bus daemons
• Network sandboxing via pasta
• PipeWire policy for sandboxes
• New Portals

So if you’re excited about Flatpak-Next, help us to improve the Flatpak ecosystem and make Flatpak-Next more feasible!

– from Farewell to Malta
by Lord Byron

Friday was my last day at the GNOME Foundation. I was informed by the Board a couple weeks ago that my position has been eliminated due to budgetary shortfalls. Obviously, I am sad that the Board felt this decision was necessary. That being said, I wanted to write a little note to say goodbye and share some good memories.

It has been almost exactly twenty years since I started helping out at the GNOME Foundation. (My history with the GNOME Project is even older; I had code in GNOME 0.13 , released in March 1998.) Our first Executive Director had just left, and my husband was Board Treasurer at the time. He inherited a large pile of paperwork and an unhappy IRS. I volunteered to help him figure out how to put the pieces together and get our paperwork in order to get the Foundation back in good standing. After several months of this, the Board offered to pay me to keep it organized.

Early on, I used to joke that my title should have been “General Dogsbody” as I often needed to help cover all the little things that needed doing. Over time, my responsibilities within the Foundation grew, but the sentiment remained. I was often responsible for making sure everything that needed doing was done, while putting in many of the processes and procedures Foundation uses to keep running.

People often under-estimate how much hard work it is to keep an international non-profit like the GNOME Foundation going. There is a ton of minutia to be dealt with from ever-changing regulations, requirements, and community needs. Even simple-sounding things like paying people is surprisingly hard the moment it crosses borders. It requires dealing with different payment systems, bank rules, currencies, export regulations, and tax regimes. However, it is a necessary quagmire we have to navigate as it is a crucial tool to further the Foundation’s mission.

Working a GNOME booth

Over time, I have filled a multitude of different roles and positions (and had four different official titles doing so). I am proud of all the things I have done.

• I have been the assistant to six different Executive Directors helping them onboard as they’ve started. I’ve been the bookkeeper, accounts receivable, and accounts payable — keeping our books in order, making sure people are paid, and tracking down funds. I’ve been Vice Treasurer helping put together our budgets, and created the financial slides for the Treasurer, Board, and AGM. I spent countless nights for almost a decade keeping our accounts updated in GnuCash. And every year for the past nineteen years I was responsible for making sure our taxes are done and 990 filed to keep our non-profit status secure.
  As someone who has always been deeply entrenched in GNOME’s finances, I have always been a responsible steward, looking for ways to spend money more prudently while enforcing budgets.
• When the Foundation expanded after the Endless Grants, I had to help make the Foundation scale. I have done the jobs of Human Resources, Recruiter, Benefits coordinator, and managed the staff. I made sure the Board, Foundation, and staff are insured, and take their legally required training. I have also had to make sure people and contractors are paid and with all the legal formalities taken care of in all the different countries we operate in , so they only have to concern themselves with supporting GNOME’s mission.
• I have had to be the travel coordinator buying tickets for people (and approving community travel). I have also done the jobs of Project Manager, Project Liaison to all our fiscally sponsored projects and subprojects, Shipping, and Receiving. I have been to countless conferences and tradeshows, giving talks and working booths. I have enjoyed meeting so many users and contributors at these events. I even spent many a weekend at the post-office filling out customs forms and shipping out mouse pads, mugs, and t-shirts to donors (back when we tried to do that in-house.) I tended the Foundation mailbox, logging all the checks we get from our donors and schlepping them to the bank.
• I have served on five GNOME committees providing stability and continuity as volunteers came and went (Travel, Finance, Engagement, Executive, and Code of Conduct). I was on the team that created GNOME’s Code of Conduct, spending countless hours working with community members to help craft the final draft. I am particularly proud of this work, and I believe it has had a positive impact on our community.
• Over the past year, I have also focused on providing what stability I could to the staff and Foundation, getting us through our second financial review, and started preparing for our first audit planned for next March.

This was all while doing my best to hold to GNOME’s principles, vision, and commitment to free software.

But it is the great people within this community that kept me loyally working with y’all year after year, and the appreciation of the amazing project y’all create that matters. I am grateful to the many community members who volunteer their time so selflessly through the years. Old-timers like Sri and Federico that have been on this journey with me since the very beginning. Other folks that I met through the years like Matthias, Christian, Meg, PTomato, and German. And Marina, who we all still miss. So many newcomers that add enthusiasm into the community like Deepesha, Michael, and Aaditya. So many Board members. There have been so many more names I could mention that I apologize if your name isn’t listed. Please know that I am grateful for what everyone has brought into the community. I have truly been blessed to know you all.

I am also grateful for the folks on staff that have made GNOME such a wonderful place to work through the years. Our former Executive Directors Stormy, Karen, Neil, Holly, and Richard, all of whom have taught me so much. Other staff members that have come and gone through the years, such as Andrea (who is still volunteering), Molly, Caroline, Emmanuele, and Melissa. And, of course, the current staff of Anisa, Bart, and Kristi, in whose hands I know the Foundation will keep thriving.

As I said, my job has always been to make sure things go as smoothly as possible. In my mind, what I do should quiet any waves so that the waves the Foundation makes go into providing the best programming we can — which is why a moment from GUADEC 2015 still pops up in my head.

Picture this: we are all in Gothenburg, Sweden, in line registering for GUADEC. We start chatting in line as it was long. I introduce myself to the person behind me and he sputters, “Oh! You’re important!” That threw me for a loop. I had never seen myself that way. My intention has always been to make things work seamlessly for our community members behind the scenes, but it was always extremely gratifying to hear from folks who have been touched by my efforts.

GNOME things still to be transferred to the Board. Suitcase in front is full of items for staffing a GNOME Booth.

What’s next for me? I have not had the time to figure this out yet as I have been spending my time transferring what I can to the Board. First things first; I need to figure out how to write a resumé again. I would love to continue working in the nonprofit space, and obviously have a love of free software. But I am open to exploring new ideas. If anyone has any thoughts or opportunities, I would love to hear them!

This is not adieu; my heart will always be with GNOME. I still have my seat on the Code of Conduct committee and, while I plan on taking a month or so away to figure things out, do plan on returning to do my bit in keeping GNOME a safe place.

If you’d like to drop me a line, I’d love to hear from you. Unfortunately the Board has to keep my current GNOME email address for a few months for the transfer, but I can be reached at <rosanna at gnome> for my personal mail. (Thanks, Bart!)

Best of luck to the Foundation.

I created the website you're reading with VS Code. Behind the scenes I use Astro, a static site generator that gets out of the way while providing nice conveniences.

Using VS Code was a no-brainer: everyone in the industry seems to at least be familiar with it, every project can be opened with it, and most projects can get enhancements and syntactic helpers in a few clicks. In short: VS Code is free, easy to use, and widely adopted.

A Rustacean colleague kept singing Helix 's praises. I discarded it because he's much smarter than I am, and I only ever use vim when I need to fiddle with files on a server. I like when things "Just Work" and didn't want to bother learning how to use Helix nor how to configure it.

Today it has become my daily driver. Why did I change my mind? What was preventing me from using it before? And how difficult was it to get there?

Automation is a double-edged sword

Automation and technology make work easier, this is why we produce technology in the first place. But it also means you grow more dependent on the tech you use. If the tech is produced transparently by an international team or a team you trust, it's fine. But if it's produced by a single large entity that can screw you over, it's dangerous.

VS Code might be open source, but in practice it's produced by Microsoft. Microsoft has a problematic relationship to consent and is shoving AI products down everyone's throat. I'd rather use tools that respect me and my decisions, and I'd rather not get my tools produced by already monopolistic organizations.

Microsoft is also based in the USA, and the political climate over there makes me want to depend as little as possible on American tools. I know that's a long, uphill battle, but we have to start somewhere.

I'm not advocating for a ban against American tech in general, but for more balance in our supply chain. I'm also not advocating for European tech either: I'd rather get open source tools from international teams competing in a race to the top, rather than from teams in a single jurisdiction. What is happening in the USA could happen in Europe too.

Why I feared using Helix

I've never found vim particularly pleasant to use but it's everywhere, so I figured I might just get used to it. But one of the things I never liked about vim is the number of moving pieces. By default, vim and neovim are very bare bones. They can be extended and completely modified with plugins, but I really don't like the idea of having extremely customize tools.

I'd rather have the same editor as everyone else, with a few knobs for minor preferences. I am subject to choice paralysis, so making me configure an editor before I've even started editing is the best way to tank my productivity.

When my colleague told me about Helix, two things struck me as improvements over vim.

1. Helix's philosophy is that everything should work out of the box. There are a few configs and themes, but everything should work similarly from one Helix to another. All the language-specific logic is handled in Language Servers that implement the Language Server Protocol standard.
2. In Helix, first you select text, and then you perform operations onto it. So you can visually tell what is going to be changed before you apply the change. It fits my mental model much better.

But there are major drawbacks to Helix too:

1. After decades of vim, I was scared to re-learn everything. In practice this wasn't a problem at all because of the very visual way Helix works.
2. VS Code "Just Works", and Helix sounded like more work than the few clicks from VS Code's extension store. This is true, but not as bad as I had anticipated.

After a single week of usage, Helix was already very comfortable to navigate. After a few weeks, most of the wrinkles have been ironed out and I use it as my primary editor. So how did I overcome those fears?

What Helped

Just Do It

I tried Helix. It can sound silly, but the very first step to get into Helix was not to overthink it. I just installed it on my mac with brew install helix and gave it a go. I was not too familiar with it, so I looked up the official documentation and noticed there was a tutorial.

This tutorial alone is what convinced me to try harder. It's an interactive and well written way to learn how to move and perform basic operations in Helix. I quickly learned how to move around, select things, surround them with braces or parenthesis. I could see what I was about to do before doing it. This has been epiphany. Helix just worked the way I wanted.

Better: I could get things done faster than in VS Code after a few minutes of learning. Being a lazy person, I never bothered looking up VS Code shortcuts. Because the learning curve for Helix is slightly steeper, you have to learn those shortcuts that make moving around feel so easy.

Not only did I quickly get used to Helix key bindings: my vim muscle-memory didn't get in the way at all!

Better docs

The built-in tutorial is a very pragmatic way to get started. You get results fast, you learn hands on, and it's not that long. But if you want to go further, you have to look for docs. Helix has officials docs . They seem to be fairly complete, but they're also impenetrable as a new user. They focus on what the editor supports and not on what I will want to do with it.

After a bit of browsing online, I've stumbled upon this third-party documentation website . The domain didn't inspire me a lot of confidence, but the docs are really good. They are clearly laid out, use-case oriented, and they make the most of Astro Starlight to provide a great reading experience. The author tried to upstream these docs, but that won't happen . It looks like they are upstreaming their docs to the current website. I hope this will improve the quality of upstream docs eventually.

After learning the basics and finding my way through the docs, it was time to ensure Helix was set up to help me where I needed it most.

Getting the most of Markdown and Astro in Helix

In my free time, I mostly use my editor for three things:

1. Write notes in markdown
2. Tweak my website with Astro
3. Edit yaml to faff around my Kubernetes cluster

Helix is a "stupid" text editor. It doesn't know much about what you're typing. But it supports Language Servers that implement the Language Server Protocol. Language Servers understand the document you're editing. They explain to Helix what you're editing, whether you're in a TypeScript function, typing a markdown link, etc. With that information, Helix and the Language Server can provide code completion hints, errors & warnings, and easier navigation in your code.

In addition to Language Servers, Helix also supports plugging code formatters. Those are pieces of software that will read the document and ensure that it is consistently formatted. It will check that all indentations use spaces and not tabs, that there is a consistent number of space when indenting, that brackets are on the same line as the function, etc. In short: it will make the code pretty.

Markdown

Markdown is not really a programming language, so it might seem surprising to configure a Language Server for it. But if you remember what we said earlier, Language Servers can provide code completion, which is useful when creating links for example. Marksman does exactly that!

Since Helix is pre-configured to use marksman for markdown files we only need to install marksman and make sure it's in our PATH . Installing it with homebrew is enough.

$ brew install marksman

We can check that Helix is happy with it with the following command

$ hx --health markdown
Configured language servers:
  ✓ marksman: /opt/homebrew/bin/marksman
Configured debug adapter: None
Configured formatter: None
Tree-sitter parser: ✓
Highlight queries: ✓
Textobject queries: ✘
Indent queries: ✘

But Language Servers can also help Helix display errors and warnings, and "code suggestions" to help fix the issues. It means Language Servers are a perfect fit for... grammar checkers! Several grammar checkers exist. The most notable are:

• LTEX+ , the Language Server used by Language Tool . It supports several languages but is quite resource hungry.
• Harper , a grammar checker Language Server developed by Automattic, the people behind WordPress, Tumblr, WooCommerce, Beeper and more. Harper only support English and its variants, but they intend to support more languages in the future.

I mostly write in English and want to keep a minimalistic setup. Automattic is well funded, and I'm confident they will keep working on Harper to improve it. Since grammar checker LSPs can easily be changed, I've decided to go with Harper for now.

To install it, homebrew does the job as always:

$ brew install harper

Then I edited my ~/.config/helix/languages.toml to add Harper as a secondary Language Server in addition to marksman

[language-server.harper-ls]
command = "harper-ls"
args = ["--stdio"]


[[language]]
name = "markdown"
language-servers = ["marksman", "harper-ls"]

Finally I can add a markdown linter to ensure my markdown is formatted properly. Several options exist, and markdownlint is one of the most popular. My colleagues recommended the new kid on the block, a Blazing Fast equivalent: rumdl .

Installing rumdl was pretty simple on my mac. I only had to add the repository of the maintainer, and install rumdl from it.

$ brew tap rvben/rumdl
$ brew install rumdl

After that I added a new language-server to my ~/.config/helix/languages.toml and added it to the language servers to use for the markdown language .

[language-server.rumdl]
command = "rumdl"
args = ["server"]

[...]


[[language]]
name = "markdown"
language-servers = ["marksman", "harper-ls", "rumdl"]
soft-wrap.enable = true
text-width = 80
soft-wrap.wrap-at-text-width = true

Since my website already contained a .markdownlint.yaml I could import it to the rumdl format with

$ rumdl import .markdownlint.yaml
Converted markdownlint config from '.markdownlint.yaml' to '.rumdl.toml'
You can now use: rumdl check --config .rumdl.toml .

You might have noticed that I've added a little quality of life improvement: soft-wrap at 80 characters.

Now if you add this to your own config.toml you will notice that the text is completely left aligned. This is not a problem on small screens, but it rapidly gets annoying on wider screens.

Helix doesn't support centering the editor. There is a PR tackling the problem but it has been stale for most of the year. The maintainers are overwhelmed by the number of PRs making it their way, and it's not clear if or when this PR will be merged.

In the meantime, a workaround exists, with a few caveats. It is possible to add spaces to the left gutter (the column with the line numbers) so it pushes the content towards the center of the screen.

To figure out how many spaces are needed, you need to get your terminal width with stty

$ stty size
82 243

In my case, when in full screen, my terminal is 243 characters wide. I need to remove the content column with from it, and divide everything by 2 to get the space needed on each side. In my case for a 243 character wide terminal with a text width of 80 characters:

(243 - 80) / 2 = 81

As is, I would add 203 spaces to my left gutter to push the rest of the gutter and the content to the right. But the gutter itself has a width of 4 characters, that I need to remove from the total. So I need to subtract them from the total, which leaves me with 76 characters to add.

I can open my ~/.config/helix/config.toml to add a new key binding that will automatically add or remove those spaces from the left gutter when needed, to shift the content towards the center.

[keys.normal.space.t]
z = ":toggle gutters.line-numbers.min-width 76 3"

Now when in normal mode, pressing <kbd>Space</kbd> then <kbd>t</kbd> then <kbd>z</kbd> will add/remove the spaces. Of course this workaround only works when the terminal runs in full screen mode.

Astro

Astro works like a charm in VS Code. The team behind it provides a Language Server and a TypeScript plugin to enable code completion and syntax highlighting.

I only had to install those globally with

$ pnpm install -g @astrojs/language-server typescript @astrojs/ts-plugin

Now we need to add a few lines to our ~/.config/helix/languages.toml to tell it how to use the language server

[language-server.astro-ls]
command = "astro-ls"
args = ["--stdio"]
config = { typescript = { tsdk = "/Users/thibaultmartin/Library/pnpm/global/5/node_modules/typescript/lib" }}

[[language]]
name = "astro"
scope = "source.astro"
injection-regex = "astro"
file-types = ["astro"]
language-servers = ["astro-ls"]

We can check that the Astro Language Server can be used by helix with

$ hx --health astro
Configured language servers:
  ✓ astro-ls: /Users/thibaultmartin/Library/pnpm/astro-ls
Configured debug adapter: None
Configured formatter: None
Tree-sitter parser: ✓
Highlight queries: ✓
Textobject queries: ✘
Indent queries: ✘

I also like to get a formatter to automatically make my code consistent and pretty for me when I save a file. One of the most popular code formaters out there is Prettier . I've decided to go with the fast and easy formatter dprint instead.

I installed it with

$ brew install dprint

Then in the projects I want to use dprint in, I do

$ dprint init

I might edit the dprint.json file to my liking. Finally, I configure Helix to use dprint globally for all Astro projects by appending a few lines in my ~/.config/helix/languages.toml .

[[language]]
name = "astro"
scope = "source.astro"
injection-regex = "astro"
file-types = ["astro"]
language-servers = ["astro-ls"]
formatter = { command = "dprint", args = ["fmt", "--stdin", "astro"]}
auto-format = true

One final check, and I can see that Helix is ready to use the formatter as well

$ hx --health astro
Configured language servers:
  ✓ astro-ls: /Users/thibaultmartin/Library/pnpm/astro-ls
Configured debug adapter: None
Configured formatter:
  ✓ /opt/homebrew/bin/dprint
Tree-sitter parser: ✓
Highlight queries: ✓
Textobject queries: ✘
Indent queries: ✘

YAML

For yaml, it's simple and straightforward: Helix is preconfigured to use yaml-language-server as soon as it's in the PATH. I just need to install it with

$ brew install yaml-language-server

Is it worth it?

Helix really grew on me. I find it particularly easy and fast to edit code with it. It takes a tiny bit more work to get the language support than it does in VS Code, but it's nothing insurmountable. There is a slightly steeper learning curve than for VS Code, but I consider it to be a good thing. It forced me to learn how to move around and edit efficiently, because there is no way to do it inefficiently. Helix remains intuitive once you've learned the basics.

I am a GNOME enthusiast, and I adhere to the same principles: I like when my apps work out of the box, and when I have little to do to configure them. This is a strong stance that often attracts a vocal opposition. I like products that follow those principles better than those who don't.

With that said, Helix sometimes feels like it is maintained by one or two people who have a strong vision, but who struggle to onboard more maintainers. As of writing, Helix has more than 350 PRs open. Quite a few bring interesting features, but the maintainers don't have enough time to review them.

Those 350 PRs mean there is a lot of energy and goodwill around the project. People are willing to contribute. Right now, all that energy is gated, resulting in frustration both from the contributors who feel like they're working in the void, and the maintainers who feel like there at the receiving end of a fire hose.

A solution to make everyone happier without sacrificing the quality of the project would be to work on a Contributor Ladder. CHAOSS' Dr Dawn Foster published a blog post about it , listing interesting resources at the end.

A couple of months ago I shared that I was looking for what was next for me, and I’m thrilled to report that I’ve found it: I’m joining ROOST as OSS Community Manager!

What is ROOST?

I’ll let our website do most of the talking, but I can add some context based on my conversations with the rest of the incredible ROOSTers over the past few weeks. In a nutshell, ROOST is a relatively new nonprofit focused on building, distributing, and maintaining the open source building blocks for online trust and safety. It was founded by tech industry veterans who saw the need for truly open source tools in the space, and were sick of rebuilding the exact same internal tools across multiple orgs and teams.

The way I like to frame it is how you wouldn’t roll your own encryption; why would you roll your own trust and safety tooling? It turns out that currently every platform, service, and community has to reinvent all of the hard work to ensure people are safe and harmful content doesn’t spread. ROOST is teaming up with industry partners to release existing trust and safety tooling as open source and to build the missing pieces together, in the open. The result is that teams will no longer have to start from scratch and take on all of the effort (and risk!) of rolling their own trust and safety tools; instead, they can reach for the open source projects from ROOST to integrate into their own products and systems. And we know open source is the right approach for critical tooling: the tools themselves must be transparent and auditable, while organizations can customize and even help improve this suite of online safety tools to benefit everyone.

This Platformer article does a great job of digging into more detail; give it a read. :) Oh, and why the baby chick? ROOST has a habit of naming things after birds—and I’m a baby ROOSTer. :D

What is trust and safety?

I’ve used the term “trust and safety” a ton in this post; I’m no expert (I’m rapidly learning!), but think about protecting users from harm including unwanted sexual content, misinformation, violent/extremist content, etc. It’s a field that’s much larger in scope and scale than most people probably realize, and is becoming ever more important as it becomes easier to generate massive amounts of text and graphic content using LLMs and related generative “AI” technologies. Add in that those generative technologies are largely trained using opaque data sources that can themselves include harmful content, and you can imagine how we’re at a flash point for trust and safety; robust open online safety tools like those that ROOST is helping to build and maintain are needed more than ever.

What I’ll be doing

My role is officially “OSS Community Manager,” but “community manager” can mean ten different things to ten different people (which is why people in the role often don’t survive long at a company…). At ROOST, I feel like the team knows exactly what they need me to do—and importantly, they have a nice onramp and initial roadmap for me to take on! My work will mostly focus on building and supporting an active and sustainable contributor community around our tools, as well as helping improve the discourse and understanding of open source in the trust and safety world. It’s an exciting challenge to take on with an amazing team from ROOST as well as partner organizations.

My work with GNOME

I’ll continue to serve on the GNOME Foundation board of directors and contribute to both GNOME and Flathub as much as I can; there may be a bit of a transition time as I get settled into this role, but my open source contributions—both to trust and safety and the desktop Linux world—are super important to me. I’ll see you around!