Archive

One year layoff-aversary: on finding community, creativity and wellbeing again

One year ago next week along with 6K others, I was laid off by Microsoft. I am really proud of the work I did to help the company advance its understanding and capabilities in open source - I believe we were successful getting to the moment where our work became

A Mirror That Talks Back

Centering open communities in the AI feedback loop Things that made me happy this week - My tulips are in full bloom! They are my favourite flower and every fall I plant a ton of bulbs hoping for the best (photo at end of post for subscribers). - Starting to

After the Pull Request: Four Proposed Areas of Work for Open Community Representation

Things that made me happy this week: * Creative Commons paused before charging forward. Their update on CC Signals - it made me happy to see their response to community push-back, and taking time, rather than rushing to something. * A focus for my future. I have decided to find a way

How Can Open Communities Shape Representation in a Model?

💡A new section I will add to my newsletters - good things happening! Duane O'Brien named Executive Director of the OSI. I am very encouraged by this news - Duane is an experienced expert, but also one of the most sincere, authentic people I have had the pleasure

Attribution vs. Preference Signaling: A Question for the Commons

Our AI Alignment in Open Source Working Group came across Stefano Maffulli's paper on Preference Signaling and wanted to learn more about whether this term, which cuts across a growing group of initiatives, might give people reason to feel more optimistic about the future of the commons. I

Moving to subscription model

Thank you to my subscribers and readers. I genuinely appreciate your trust and support. Also thank you to those, who made their way to my GitHub Sponsors - it means a lot to feel my work mattered to you. I am increasingly conscious that writing and building for the commons

Aha Moment - The difference between attribution and preference Signalling

Attribution and preference signaling Alignment misalignement

Digital Sovereignty in Canada: Why Education Is the Place to Start

This post is based on a presentation I gave at our Open Source Practitioner Call in March 2026 and related collaborations with educators and students. Like conversations around AI, I find that everyone uses this term (digital sovereignty) to mean different things (and in many cases this is due to

After Open Source - An Optimistic Prediction

In this moment, AI is being built for developers, by developers, and marketed back to developers. This hyper-focus on developer productivity, cheap tokens, and the corporate race to win these audiences has had an unsurprising side effect: human spaces and communities have been flooded with uninvited noise, cognitive drain, and

Right-Clicking on Open Source AI: 9 things I learned trying to 'view source'

I learn by doing, and this was one of those times In recent CHAOSS AI Alignment Working Group and in Open Future meetups, we've been talking about openness, and what it means for AI to be aligned with human intentions, specifically as it relates to honoring the work

Open Source Sustainability Playbooks

March 12, 2026 Update: You can find these playbooks listed as 'services' on Open Source Wishlist https://oss-wishlist.com/catalog One of the motivations behind Open Source Wishlist was promote the knowledge that: We know how to fix MOST sustainability issues in open source. There's not

We need open data in the open source AI definition (or an alternative?)

....Or how do we stop the impending 'finger pointing shit show' This is truly a 'note' of Emma's notes', maybe I'll rephrase this later (by the way I use dashes in my writing, not em-dashes, but dashes, its me not AI)

Open Source AI and the Two Contracts

The language of openness is everywhere in AI right now. As someone who has spent a long time in open source, open education, open government, and open data, it is increasingly noticeable that the words, and the technology output, are in service of profit and power - losing the origins

Open Future: a focus on community as infrastructure for reclaiming open

...and why I am moving Open Source Wishlist under this focus. Open Source Wishlist is something I wish existed when I led Microsoft's FOSS Fund. It has been a creative opportunity to demonstrate to the ecosystem how we can solve multiple sustainability problems at once through standardization, visibility,

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