Articles tagged with open-source
I maintain several open source projects. A few are healthy, a few are barely hanging on, and one nearly drained my desire to work in this field at all. "Free software" keeps getting read as "costs nothing," and I'm one of the people who pays for that misreading.
Yesterday the moderators of r/opensource, a community of about 392,000 people, banned any project that "uses AI, is made by AI, or is intended for AI." By the afternoon there was a revolt, a rival subreddit, and a pile of people pointing out that the Linux kernel takes AI-assisted code now. I don't think the rule will survive the week. The instinct behind it is another matter, because plenty of us have felt it.
Today I'm thrilled to announce the next release of Pride Flags, a pure CSS library that empowers developers to easily incorporate LGBTQ+ pride flags into their web projects. This lightweight, accessible solution lets you display flags as either full-sized images or compact icons with minimal effort and maximum impact.
The software industry has a diversity problem. Specifically that there isn't much diversity at all. We are also living in a time where we are hearing about project maintainers engaging in targeted harassment against minorities. This is a problem that we need to address. Why do we as a community have to deal with this, and how can we as maintainers help? Trying to fix a broken system is not a solution, but trying to make it better is the first step.
Developing code is not easy. It is a challenge, but it is also a fun thing to do. Maintaining a project, however, is not easy either. It requires a very different skillset and time investment. When I became a maintainer of Selectize, I was able to learn a lot about the project and how to improve it, and I was able to learn so much about how to interact with the community.