Archive

Join our next call: What now? Open Source Careers

The open source world is changing quickly. The maintainers, OSPOs, advocates, community builders - the people who have poured time and energy into open source for years are now watching AI reshape the landscape. Its easy to feel discouraged, but a lot of people in our community are already adapting,

AI Alignment in Open Source - Discussion Framework

I'm on my way home now from CHAOSScon and FOSDEM, where I ran two complimentary sessions called 'AI Alignment for Open Source' . AI alignment is the effort to design Artificial Intelligence systems so their goals, behaviors, and decisions are consistent with human values and intentions, making

What I Want to Learn in Brussels

I'll be at CHAOSScon (January 29), the Open Source Policy Summit (January 30 although still on the waitlist), and FOSDEM (February 1-2). If you're around, I'd love to connect over coffee ~ learn from and share with you! Digital Sovereignty in Canada There's

AI alignment for OSS moderation

The question of 'how to moderate AI contributions' is a hot topic: My OSS project is over two years old and leverages AI if the user chooses to use it. However, this also seems to attract vibe coders who submit pull requests that absolutely do not follow coding

Safe, paid, attributed, community-driven: my intentions for openness in 2026

I started this post intending to 'look back' (a year in review), but found my spirit lowering as I described loss of power and fear - what has felt like an extraction of open culture, value and effort in service of the already very powerful; the role of

Return to light - open source practitioner gathering

We're in a strange moment for open source careers. Many people who built the infrastructure, shaped the standards, crafted the policies, and nurtured the communities that open source depends on are increasingly being hit by layoffs and a shifting grant landscape. In parallel there's a rallying

Open Source Needs an Attribution Standard

Or How we might build on Drupal Credits approach to standardize attribution Evaluating open source contributions, especially at the organizational level,remains frustratingly opaque. Who's actually investing in the projects we all depend on? Right now, there's no reliable way to say definitively. That lack of

The urgent need for AI consent frameworks in open communities

The open source origin story describes a time when transparency, collaboration, and inclusion helped us build software that shifted power and value over the tools and infrastructure we depend on away from corporations and toward people and communities. It worked. Not without its own inequities and blind spots, but it

Open Source Wishlist: Community Infrastructure for OSS Sustainability

Despite countless calls for open source sustainability, there's still no clear pathway for maintainers to express needs and receive help. In my personal time, I've built a working proposal for how this problem might be solved using a community-based approach. It's called Open Source

Building a bridge over hungry monsters for open source sustainability

Launching next week: Open Source Wishlist Every open source security incident teaches us something new; but more often than not we are reminded of past lessons. Projects and maintainers need help, succession plans, modern security practices, trusted governance as well as moderation and funding strategies. Minimally. Despite years of experiments

New CHAOSS AI Alignment Working Group

I'm really interested in understanding how the work of CHAOSS (Community Health Analytics in Open Source Software) can be applied to the efforts around AI alignment/safety. AI alignment is the effort to design Artificial Intelligence systems so their goals, behaviors, and decisions are consistent with human values

What do YOU mean by open source AI?

How OSPOs can drive alignment around meaning for openness and AI Ana Jiménez Santamaría’s blog post How Open Source Program Offices Make OSS and AI Work did a great job of speaking to to the ways in which OSPOs can help organizations navigate AI risks. I also believe OSPOs

Can coding assistants make a TPMs life easier? 9 Hours of Misery and Hope

The Technical Program Manager role require a strong mix of business skills including: business analyst, software development, project and people managers. We hold a lot together, but also depend on engineers and designers to prototype and build solutions. This means we're often waiting for the time of those

Helping Employees Build the Case for Open Source Contribution

The career benefits of open source contribution are well-established. The business value for companies is also well known. However, I have noticed a significant challenge over the years: employee at many technical companies (even those with brand identity tied to open technologies) struggle to secure leadership approval for their time

The best time to create a moderation plan is before launching your OSS project. The second best time is now.

Moderation is the heart of open source capability - the success of which drives critical outcomes for security, sustainability and innovation. The lack of which can cause significant harm to projects and people.

Alignment with who? How AI safety can build on open source scaffolding

This past week, I listened to a very interesting (and at times scary) podcast interview with Daniel Kokotajlo, an AI safety researcher and former Open AI employee. I was very interested to learn about 'alignment' . Alignment in AI, is the term used to describe the challenging of ensuring

Open collaboration strategy (now with AI prompts)

Back when the wonderful Carol Smith and I were part of Microsoft's Open Source Programs Office (OSPO), we built this simple resource to help those new to open collaboration, or revisiting their approaches - think creatively, realistically, and tactically about their goals. Each of the six steps came

Can Model Context Protocol (MCP) help 'open' win?

Right now, many of us are suspicious of AI as something being done to us rather than for us. Corporate-driven efforts to advance capabilities feel more in service of stock prices than uplifting and empowering users' lives. This lack of control and user influence is why the open source

What I've learned so far - Hugging Face MCP Course (Module 1)

It’s a buffet out there! If you want to learn about open source + AI, there’s no shortage of ways to start. I began with Hugging Face, the epicenter of machine learning developer communities. I noticed on LinkedIn that they were running an online course to teach folks about

Just starting this thing

This is Emma's notes. 'Notes'. I want to share some ideas, and what I am learning so others can maybe benefit. I want to get back to working in the open more, and this is a first step. Social media has changed so much that, part