Like - the public good. We have people actually talking about, and working toward, the public good. Super cringe. I am so fucking here for it.

Andrew nails here many parts of what actually makes OSS maintaining hard work. Empathy is needed more for OSS sustainability than money.

Treating Maintainer attention as a finite resource: nesbitt.io/2026/02/13/r...

A Dark-eyed Junco (slate-colored subspecies) on a snowy day. The amount of brown points to this bird being a female hatch-year bird. I wonder what she thinks of her first winter?

“Sovereignty is not about where a company is headquartered or where software was originally written. It is about who ultimately controls the technology. The right question to ask about any technology: can someone take the software away from me?”

Are there any Pokémon people on here who can 1. Give me tips on acquiring non-scalped trading cards and or 2 suggest a cool gift idea for a teen Pokémon lover that isn’t the new legos — kid went on a tear making fun of the two that are in my birthday budget. Thanks!

We need better tools for uncovering phantom binary dependencies. Not having these tools makes our global tech infrastructure less secure, and puts a strain on the Open Source maintainers we rely on. I collected some resources on this topic in this new post.

Scotland has passed a law that all new buildings must install ‘swift bricks’ which are hollowed out bricks to help nesting swifts and other endangered birds! Swifts are especially endangered because so many chimneys now have chimney caps. Swifts return to the same nesting spot year after year.

Here's my FOSDEM 2026 talk about phantom binary dependencies 👻 — software packages we depend on without realising it, which leads to security and sustainability issues.

I can officially confirm that the snow in NC is roughly one (1) corgi deep

Anthropic, makers of Claude, have published a report saying that “AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average”; for Claude Code specifically, they expect even “more pronounced” impacts on learning

A Black-capped Chickadee showcasing winter fashion by donning a snowflake accessory.

This is something really special, from one of my favorite science communicators, but also one of my favorite cultural commentators. Do yourself a favor and set aside some time to watch it. Your dishwasher will thank you.

Let's do this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9...

Now listening to @vlad.website talk about 👻 phantom dependencies in the context of funding initiatives like @opensourcepledge.com #FOSDEM

"Luchs speaks five languages: English, French, Italian, and some German and Russian. She approached grasping Gen Z parlance like she was learning another language. ...An Instagram commenter wrote: 'She’s so natural with it too like it’s not even cringe.'"

“A package’s value isn’t primarily its implementation code. Anyone can rewrite curl in a weekend. They can’t rewrite years of bug reports, arguments in issue threads that eventually settled on the right behavior. That knowledge is spread across the package’s history…no [AI] prompt captures it.”

Come to my FOSDEM talk on Saturday to hear a terrifying tale about _phantom dependencies_! 👻

Welcome aboard! 👏 We are now up over $3M ARR from Pledge members to OSS maintainers. 💪💃

I didn’t realise just how US centric all of package management was until I made these tables 😅 The Dependency Layer in Digital Sovereignty: nesbitt.io/2026/01/28/t...

The C-Shaped Hole in Package Management: nesbitt.io/2026/01/27/t...

Can you help me make a list of people/orgs working on problems that cause burnout in OSS to share at FOSDEM? Looking for work on: OSS advocacy, OSS value metrics, payment and governance models, dependencies research, community events/spaces, mentor schemes, codes of conduct, AI attestation & more!

We're getting ready to launch - making sure we've got testing, observability and backups all in good order. It's taking a smidgen longer than we hoped but first invites will arrive on the first week of February and roll out throughout the month. Thank you for your patience 🙏

“Public money flows around Open Source instead of into it. Governments should contract with Open Source maintainers and builders, not middlemen who merely resell it.”

“The original pitch for AI coding tools was straightforward: writing code is slow, AI makes it faster. But writing code was never the hard part. The hard part is everything else. Understanding the codebase. Knowing why decisions were made. Actually maintaining what you shipped.”

Fellow UK residents might be interested in writing their MP about this

This video has an outstandingly sensitive portrayal of the Ukrainian invasion, alongside deep storytelling about the social dynamics of Open Source. So proud of @chadwhitacre.com for making this.

Have you ever wondered how it's possible to call C code from other languages, like Python? I wrote a post w/the technical details. This isn't just a technical curiosity. Binary dependencies are often phantom dependencies — deps that we can't track, resulting in security and sustainability issues.

It’s book release day! I’m back on social media! I feel slightly awkward about it because part of the book is about how social media transforms your motivations for communication! But honestly writing a book is lonely, weird basement-work, and now I want to talk to people about this weird jank.

the discourse on what jobs are acceptable to replace with generative AI reveals a lot about what we think of other people's jobs

We are overdue with our @opensourcepledge.com for 2025, but hearing the news from @tailwindcss.com made us turn around and get it done™ We're now processing $146,000 to open source projects that we use and like at Sanity HQ. www.sanity.io/blog/open-so...

It's heartbreaking to see widely-used frameworks like Tailwind become even less financially sustainable due to LLMs. I appreciated Tailwind's creator sharing his feelings of failure and frustration in an emotionally vulnerable way, and I made a short video to explain how I see the problem.

@tailwindcss.com's business model went away overnight — partly because LLMs are accelerating the Open Source sustainability crisis. I wrote a post about how LLMs popularise projects while simultaneously financially harming their creators. Another reason for companies to join @opensourcepledge.com.

prospective Pledge co's: idk it's a lot of money, will it really help with recruiting? prospective employees:

watching Paul Graham become a Marxist from first principles is extremely funny

Great Tit at Blackford Pond, Edinburgh

Learn how we utilize Gen AI at Buttondown–it may surprise you. buttondown.com/blog/generat...

I shared the joy of creating documents using @typst.app on my YouTube channel today

Life is so much shorter than it seems. So much of what we’re pressured to focus on just doesn’t matter. But people do. Love does. And they’re the only things that make this hellscape worth the trouble in the end. Love them if you’ve got them 💛💛💛

Fox at Blackford Pond, Edinburgh — very sassily came right up to me.

Why are girls always cold?

I got in my bathtub with my clothes on to tell you that Netflix, YouTube, Disney+ and others should give back to Open Source maintainers

Christmas came early in the form of @aidanmcglynn.bsky.social's new book 🎉

Time to stop working for free to springer and elsevier.

oh my god I am so excited for this

I tried to go for a full day without using Open Source software. It didn't go well.

hey #feministsky - who's writing or has written things you've found valuable about platonic friendship between men & women? #philsky

I am tremendously grateful for open source, as it’s had such a huge impact on my career. That’s one of the reasons I’m so happy that Posit has committed to the @opensourcepledge.com. Read about our contributions to non Posit projects at posit.co/blog/posit-o....

met this spherical guy

Pope Leo XIV told students not to use artificial intelligence for homework, saying that AI ‘won’t stand in authentic wonder before the beauty of God’s creation.’