latest posts

My thoughts in writing.

A valley in the mountains is brightened by the sun as it peeks behind the clouds. Vast forests are warmly glowing in the fading sunlight. The image is subtitled, "I am the wilderness: On trust and community."

“I am the wilderness”: On trust & community

Perspective

There are seven elements to trust. Each element is a resource for being honest, authentic, and genuine. You can remember these seven elements as an acronym: “BRAVING”.

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The shoes and ankles of a person are visible, as they stand in the middle of a road. Their feet are evenly placed and spread across the stripes painted on the road. Decorative text appears in the image, subtitled "Middle path."

Middle path.

Perspective

The answer suddenly appeared that the only way to solve my dilemma of two split paths was to find the middle path. Those two separate paths were my personal life and my career. I walked both paths, but both paths were distinctly separate and isolated from the other.

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The hand of a person is visible as they are pointing at a whiteboard. The board has "Product roadmap" written on it, with big circles that represent each fiscal quarter of the year. A line from each circle connects to goals or ambitions for the product, like "Launch" or "publish iOS app". The image is subtitled, "Three product roadmap examples." This post is about product roadmaps.

Three great examples of open source product roadmaps

Open Source

Recently, I came across three product roadmaps from Proton, the company behind several open source, privacy-centered products. They did a great job with creating transparent product roadmaps. Here is what they did and excerpts from their roadmaps.

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The hands of a person is visible on top of a pad of paper. One hand is pointing to a diagram on the top pad of paper. The other hand holds a thick black marker and is adding a new section to the diagram on the piece of paper. A subtitle appears on the side: "Write yourself into obsolescence."

Write yourself into obsolescence.

Open Source, Perspective

A brief meditation on why you should write yourself into obsolescence and also what kind of writing matters most when documenting yourself and your responsibilities.

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A hand is extended, wearing a pink rubber glove. The hand is holding an unlabeled spray bottle aimed towards an unseen area off of screen. A subtitle appears in the open space next to the spray bottle: "Scrub gently: On data scrubbing in a community survey."

Scrub gently: On data scrubbing in a community survey.

Perspective, Technology

Should we be too quick to discard negative, harmful responses in a community survey? This short review considers a time when an Open Source community is evaluating its community with a survey. What did we decide to do in the end?

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A banner image with a white background. Text shown: CHAOSS D.E.I. Review. Supported by the Ford Foundation.

CHAOSS DEI Review: Midyear reflection

Open Source

In February 2021, the CHAOSS Project initiated a review of its diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. This post summarizes the progress made by the review team in 2022 and looks ahead to Justin’s aspirations for 2023.

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Three boys are smiling and gathered around together looking at a phone screen held in the hands of the boy in the middle of the group.

XPOST: Spurring new Digital Public Goods

Open Source, UNICEF

On 27 September 2022, I authored an article on unicef.org highlighting my work with the UNICEF Venture Fund in providing mentoring to startup companies pursuing compliance with the Digital Public Goods Standard. Discover the UNICEF Technical Assistance programs and the Venture Fund mentoring strategy in the last year.

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CrystalCraftMC forums sunset. The background picture shows a lake with the sun setting over it. The CrystalCraftMC forum logo appears in the center, slightly below the setting sun.

CrystalCraftMC forums sunset

Perspective

On 6 February 2022, the CrystalCraftMC forums officially closed down. This announcement gives some history about the forums, why the decision was made to close the forums, and what happens next.

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Six flowers of various stages in blooming are arranged in ascending order. The image is captioned, "sustainable investments."

4 metrics to measure sustainable open source investments.

Open Source, Technology, UNICEF

“Sustainability” is almost a buzzword now. But how do you measure it in an open source ecosystem? This post shares four CHAOSS metrics to help shape the next year of open source data exploration in the UNICEF Open Source Mentorship program.

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Subtitled, "on Free Software, Red Hat, and Iran". The Azadi Tower in Tehran, Iran appears in the background.

On Free Software, Red Hat, and Iran

Fedora Linux, Technology

A story in which I visit the Fedora Council ticket tracker and advocate for Fedora contributors from Iran.

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