got inspired by the work of @joshwcomeau.com to add animated icons to my website, and yeah, it sparks a lot of joy :3

My dear friend Chad is retiring from tech. Nobody has taught me more about Open Source, or about kindness and compassion. Between Gittip and the Pledge, Chad has helped OSS devs more than almost anyone. I will miss him very much, and I will try every day to carry his work forward. ❤️💃

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A new way to explore your node modules folder: nesbitt.io/heap

the replacements.fyi site now lets you drop a package.json into it to see which dependencies can be replaced with native functionality, or more performant choices 🎉

A new report from Bloomberg explains why companies should move “from passive consumption to active stewardship” of the Open Source packages they rely on: “you cannot have sustainable code without sustaining the humans who write it (…) if you live in the house, you help fix the roof”.

open source is gift economy, but the thing being gifted is the code, not unlimited access to abuse maintainers

OSS burnout claims another project. On 2 Apr, an entitled user angrily asked the burned-out maintainer of nvim-treesitter to “go switch to something that doesn't require interacting with people”. The maintainer replied “OK” — and archived the repo, stopping development of nvim-treesitter.

I said what I said katemanne.substack.com/p/how-sex-po...

"Keep open by default. Making everything private adds additional delivery and policy costs, and can reduce reuse and scrutiny. Openness should remain the default posture, with closure used sparingly and deliberately." www.gov.uk/guidance/ai-...

There's lots of important messaging in this new guidance from GDS / DSIT on AI, open code and vulnerability risk. In particular: "Private repositories can create a false sense of security" and "Openness can surface issues earlier" www.gov.uk/guidance/ai-...

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Andrew has been building tools to understand the Open Source ecosystem for over a decade, and a new independent paper confirms the effectiveness of his approach to supporting maintainers. I want to celebrate his work today! 🎉

Open Source maintainers need funding. But this means we also need to pay the researchers who create the very tools that allow companies to discover and pay the maintainers they depend on. Research on sustainability should itself be sustainable — otherwise, we'll struggle to get off the ground!

A very telling chart. Open Source funding has been frozen for the past four years, while everyone's needs for our shared commons infrastructure have continued to grow exponentially. Pay maintainers properly if you want your dependencies to stop feeling like a minefield.

So @patak.cat is absolutely doing the work. He is sharing a lot of important, thoughtful, pieces about how people, mostly builders, are feeling right now, the stresses and strains of the current era. I suggest you might appreciate following him.

listen to @vlad.website

The Mismeasure of Open Source: nesbitt.io/2026/05/09/t...

@andrewnez.bsky.social reviews a decade-old Open Source security census, which both succeeded and failed at predicting the concerning future we find ourselves in.

So happy to see that our open letter asking NHS England to keep its code open has reached 1000 signatures 🎉😊

Hello world! We're a non-profit research lab dedicated to ensuring the stability of the global Open Source ecosystem we all rely on.

It's a mistake for the NHS to abandon their commitment to keep their code open. I talked to @sparkes.bsky.social in @newscientist.com to try to explain why.

A Tufted Titmouse in a flowering Crabapple. 🌸

first day of our scottish open source adventures. great conversations while roaming around with @43081j.com, @vlad.website, @mirandaheath.website, and @willow.sh

The NHS is turning back on its commitment to keep its code open. We're asking them to reconsider. Would you join us?

The UK's NHS is abandoning its commitment to making publicly-funded code Open Source by closing down its repositories. Why? The NHS is spooked after researchers with access to Mythos have reported vulnerabilities in an effort to make NHS code more secure.

We need everyone to wake up to how fragile our shared commons are. We can't wait until we drown in security incidents and more projects close down, using them as excuses. If you're in a position to help (every company is), check who you depend on and need support (everyone), and fund them.

While others race away from Open Source, @vlt.sh is doubling down. 🖤⚡ Today we’re announcing our renewed commitment to @opensourcepledge.com and investing back into the ecosystem. www.vlt.io/blog/doublin...

Some incredible in-depth discussion between @vlad.website and @josh.bressers.name on the importance (and challenges) of paying OSS maintainers in this episode of Open Source Security! (PS thanks for the shout-out ☀️) opensourcesecurity.io/2026/2026-04...

I really enjoyed talking to @josh.bressers.name about the @opensourcepledge.com, and about why and how we should support Open Source maintainers 😊

From Hailey at social.hails.org/@hailey/1164... “With Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux you can run all your favourite Windows and Linux apps side-by-side with a modern Linux kernel running cooperatively with the Windows kernel in ring 0.” codeberg.org/hails/wsl9x

I was delighted to hear the "sweet-sweet-I'm-so-sweet" song of the Northern Yellow Warbler in my backyard marsh yesterday. Two of them were singing; perhaps they having a sing-off to see who gets to nest in the area.

Andrew does a better job than we do at walking through the features of npmx.dev. We need to set up a resources page to link to these kinds of posts. If you care about registries, ecosystems, and open source, queue every single one of Andrew's posts to your reading list.

My personal favourite is my human rights class, when I ask them what it means to be human but tell them they must answer it using LEGO. They then add and remove from their creation as the class continues.

Incredible seeing how much the Home Office doesn't want people to come study in this country, even when students pay fortunes to UK institutions. The part about a student being denied a visa because they had not sufficiently researched Canadian weather blew my mind. Mirror: archive.is/XbvNj

New blog post 🥳 Stamp It! All Programs Must Report Their Version In this article, I’ll explain how 3 simple steps (Stamp it! Plumb it! Report it!) are sufficient to save you hours of delays and stress during incident response. Read more: michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2026-0... #nix #golang #linux

What does Open Source mean? nesbitt.io/2026/04/04/w...

See, businesses are built on top of solutions they didn't build and don't control. And deep in the back, there are tired, underfunded, and unrecognized maintainers doing a ton of work to keep our industry afloat, with no reward.

NASA’s mission to orbit the Moon is being interrupted by Outlook (New) and Outlook (classic) both refusing to open 😂

I love this weird online era.

The invisible code running the world (and who pays for it) https://www.softwareheritage.org/2026/03/20/the-invisible-code-running-the-world-and-who-pays-for-it/ #OpenSource #SWH10

Absolute comedy from @danielroe.dev talking about npmx #monkigras btw . He is about communities but says 10x developers is bunk. "Life is about building a sense of community.".

joy driven development

“In Open Source, what looks like fairness often is not. Free for everyone sounds equitable, but the cost does not disappear. It is absorbed by those who can least afford it, while the organizations that benefit most often pay the least.”

Vlad-Stefan Harbuz: "This kind of trust reveals a deep understanding present in npmx’s culture — an understanding that we depend on other people more than we know, and that we can only go so far by ourselves." 🤍💚

We heard the Bluesky community cares about Open Source, so we showed up 👋 Our endowment dedicated to supporting Open Source maintainers is already at $729k, and we're developing a model for distributing our first funding round. Have ideas on how to identify critical OSS projects? We're listening.

The just-announced Open Source Endowment is now on Bluesky, and we're open to your ideas on how to identify critical OSS projects 🙏

there's so much bad in the world but there's also people who lift up and carry an elderly bat around every day so he can pretend he's flying again, and that's the part of the world I think is worth fighting for

Does anyone know of any recent studies around the effectiveness of different extrinsic (e.g. financial) vs intrinsic (e.g. community altruism) motivators for open source contributors? Asking for me, a friend, and also the rest of the OSS community.