Stormy Peters

Is AI Killing Open Source Software?

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:06:52 -0700

I love giving talks that explore big questions — the kind that are facing all of us right now and that nobody has fully figured out yet. “Is AI Killing Open Source Software?” is exactly that kind of question. It actually reminds me of a talk I gave really early in my career where I was worried that paying maintainers to work on open source would kill open source. (Spoiler: it didn’t.) I like doing research, having lots of conversations, and then bringing it all to an audience to start a bigger conversation.

How to Own Your One-on-Ones and Boost Your Career

Wed, 28 May 2025 12:20:58 -0700

Your one-on-one meetings with your manager aren’t just another meeting. They’re one of the most powerful tools you have for advancing your career. And here’s the thing that might surprise you: you own those meetings, not your manager.

I know there are a lot of guides out there telling managers how to run better one-on-ones (I’ve even written one myself), but the truth is, as an employee, you have way more control over these meetings than you probably realize. So let’s talk about how you can actually take ownership and make these conversations work for you.

Is AI Killing Online Collaboration? The Decline of Stack Overflow, Wikipedia, and What It Means for Open Source

Thu, 22 May 2025 07:23:04 -0700

Participation in online collaborative sites is decreasing, and the numbers are striking. Matt Asay recently wrote an article about how there are fewer people asking questions on Stack Overflow. If you look at December 2023 to December 2024, the number of questions that were asked dropped by 40%.

You can watch the video version of this article on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/WOYFIQxQoUc

Since ChatGPT has been released, he pointed out in 2023, there’s been this dramatic decline in the number of questions asked on Stack Overflow. However, the number of questions asked on Stack Overflow has been dropping since 2018, as shown in the graph. Perhaps there’s something else also going on.

Successful Open Source Software Leaders Are Great Communicators

Wed, 21 May 2025 18:41:16 -0700

Successful open source software leaders are great communicators. I realize I’m cheating a little when I say that because I think in order to be a great communicator in the open source software space, you have to be technical, you have to be authentic, you have to be passionate, you have to delegate, you know, build community. But I think all of those are part of being a good communicator. And it’s the communication that’s key.

Why AI Is Actually Helping New Coders!

Thu, 15 May 2025 16:57:00 -0700

There are two widespread beliefs about AI that I’m certain are wrong:

1. AI is not killing the role of software developer. It’s definitely changing it. It may kill open source software, but I do not believe it’s killing the role of software developer.

2. AI is not making it really hard for new developers to get started. On the contrary.

Let me explain both of these points. Here is the video with the text version below.

What is Open Source AI? Why It Matters and Where We're Headed

Thu, 15 May 2025 09:10:00 -0700

The debate over open source AI continues to rage after years of discussion. Despite all the arguments, we still don’t have clear answers about what open source AI actually means, why it matters, or how to make it work.

Let’s examine the different definitions, the challenges we face, and what history teaches us about navigating this complex landscape.

This was originally posted as a daily walk, share, and discuss video. The written version is below.

In order to grow your volunteer community, you must work in the open

Wed, 14 May 2025 14:38:02 -0700

Doing research for my Grow an Organization by Planting Volunteers at SCALE, I ran across Dirk Riehle’s article on the Five Stages of Open Source Volunteering. The whole article is worth a read but I thought I’d call out the open communication piece. He says to support a distributed community and to engage new volunteers, open communication is key.

Public communication ensures that all members of the community have the opportunity to participate, which creates buy-in and trust.

AI is Killing Open Source Software

Wed, 14 May 2025 08:40:56 -0700

AI is killing open source software. If we act now, it won’t do away with collaborative software development, but I do think it is changing open source software as we know it.

This was originally posted on YouTube as my daily walk, think and share. Below is the transcription.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgR4ww94Evk

Two recent events highlight why change is coming to open source software and why we should pay attention.

The $3 Billion Signal

OpenAI offered to buy Windsurf, an AI-powered software development tool, for $3 billion. That’s a lot of money for a software development tool, especially when OpenAI already builds AI tools and could develop their own. This signals that there’s significant money in AI-powered software development right now.

Will AI coding assistants change open source software?

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 07:10:46 -0700

I’m curious how AI coding assistants will change open source software development. If I write software with an AI coding assistant, am I more or less likely to use open source software solutions? Am I more or less inclined to make it into an open source software project than I would have before AI?

The first concern with AI coding assistants is that we’ll end up with many variations of the same code snippets, all being maintained separately. The anti-open source model.

OSPOs for Good: The United Nations encourages open source software

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 20:08:12 -0700

The United Nations is encouraging the use of open source. They see the value of open source software in helping with digital transformation, providing equitable access to technology, and accomplishing the world’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Last year they had an OSPOs for Good event, and the event went so well that this year it will be a week long UN Open Source Week 2025. In addition to the OSPO for Good day, they have added several other events including a 2 day hackathon for real world social good, “UN TECHover”. This builds on the success they’ve seen with hackathons.

Be Clear About How Things Work (How Open Source Can Work with Companies)

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 14:44:52 -0700

This post is one of a series of posts about what open source software projects can do (if they wish to) to make it easier for companies to participate in their projects.

When a company wants to get involved in an open source software, often they need some help understanding how things work. Sometimes it’s the developer who wants to contribute that has questions. Sometimes it’s their management who wants to understand what type of commitment they are making and what they can expect.

What open source governance models are available?

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 17:55:31 -0700

If you are looking for an open source governance model, there are two resources to explore.

Red Hat has published the Project and Community Governance Guidebook on GitHub. It covers things from roles of the participants, to how projects evolve (and governance should evolve with them), to policies and procedures.
The FOSS Governance Collection just launched with a collection of governance docs on Zotero. It is a great place to go see real, live documents used by existing open source software projects. (If you work on an open source software project, or just notice that one is missing, please upload the governance docs!)

Don’t forget, a project’s governance needs to evolve as the project evolves.

How Open Source Communities Work

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 19:35:22 -0700

Several happenings over the weekend are case studies in how open source software communities work.

The Dev Behind a Hugely Popular GNOME Extension Just Quit

While the news is about a developer quitting because it’s not “fun”. I think the message - or messages - are deeper than that.

Isn’t it awesome that are free software is developed by people that love doing it? Back when I started the OpenLogic Expert Community, I contacted many maintainers and offered to pay them to fix issues that our customers had. Some of them turned me down because they loved working on open source software and thought payment would change that. (That inspired my Would You Do It Again for Free? talk.) Some of them turned down payment because this was a hobby and if they got payment their family might view it and the time they spend on it differently. They took free tech goodies instead!
Wouldn’t it be great if when what you are working on no longer made sense, you could move on to something better suited for you at the moment? Working on something you love, because you love it, gives you the freedom to say it’s no longer your favorite thing to work on and to move on. You do still have responsibilities but in this case, it sounds like there was good backup.
Feedback. I do hope that the GNOME community takes this feedback as an opportunity to explore how things are going. They should survey other users and figure out if this is an individual problem or a systemic problem and how they might prevent it from happening in the future.

Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth makes peace with Ubuntu Linux community

Meeting someone who made history as part of desegregation

Sun, 13 Jan 2019 21:07:11 -0700

Do you remember those 4 brave, little, black kindergarten girls who were the first to attend a desegregated school? This is one of those girls, Leona Tate.

She went to kindergarten accompanied by US Marshalls. She said the first year and a half wasn’t bad. Her family never let her feel like they were afraid, the US Marshalls were nice and they were the only 3 kids in the school. Everyone else pulled their kids out because of fear they’d get hurt. She said the next school was tough. Kids broke a school bus seat on purpose and blamed her; they spit in her hair (she said that was the worst) and the white mothers harassed her. One day her mom told her to come out of school and walk past her like she didn’t know her. She did and when one of the white mothers harassed her, Leona’s mother chased the harassing mother down the street! She never had a problem with the mothers after that. I’m so honored to have met her and had a chance to chat with her. I’m also so impressed with her parents’ bravery and appreciate their willingness to put their family forward in making our country a better place for everyone.

1:1 best practices for remote teams

Tue, 22 May 2018 11:11:05 -0700

This article was originally published on Medium.

How often should you meet with each of your team members if you manage a remote team? How long should you meet? What else should you do?

My team spans geographically from the west coast of the United States to the Czech Republic and from as far north as the Netherlands and as far south as Brazil.

Here is how I have 1:1s. I am always looking for suggestions and best practices!

Does someone have to become poor for you to become rich?

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 11:37:38 -0700

I recently read Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class is Leaving Everyone Else in the DustÂ , Why that is a Problem, and What to do About It.

Dream Hoarders is a book with a good point hidden in a really annoying lecture.

The premise: Because of our society and our culture, the upper middle class is becoming a hereditary station in American life, not the meritocracy we imagine.

If parents watched math tests like they watch sports

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 09:53:23 -0700

[caption id=“attachment_2270” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] Photo by A Healthier Michigan[/caption]

I’ve been watching kids sports for 12 years now and I’ve seem some crazy behavior from parents. Every once in a while, I wonder if there’s some way to channel all this extra energy and support into academics.

What if parents followed their kids’ math tests like they follow their kids’ football games?

Whenever I mention this possibility at a game, parents give me a blank look. No one laughs, no one explores the idea, they just look at me like I don’t get it. Which obviously I don’t.

Why People Don't Contribute to Your Open Source Project

Wed, 14 Feb 2018 15:28:43 -0700

I just listened to Mike McQuaid’s FOSDEM talk, Why People Don’t Contribute to Your Open Source Project. Â If you are interested in communities and how they grow, I highly recommend you take a half hour and watch it.

Some of the things I got from the talk:

I get asked a lot what the difference between a contributor and a maintainer is. Mike does a great job of explaining it around minute 4:00. Contributors are people who write code or docs or do triage for your project but who need help from others to get their work included. Maintainers are people that review and merge contributions.
You should users as your source for contributors. The type of contributor that is not a user is not likely someone you want.
Once maintainers are not users, they are not likely to continue contributing. So if you stop using your project, you need to start recruiting someone else to maintain it because it’s unlikely that you’ll continue to maintain it.
Most maintainers are talked into it. Nobody thinks they are qualified at first.

I did wonder what Mike would think about open source software projects where most of the contributors are people paid by a company to work on it. There are projects that are unlikely to be used by individuals, that are primarily supported by paid contributors. Do the same rules apply?

Do not mention time when giving a talk

Mon, 29 Jan 2018 10:15:08 -0700

One of the challenges of public speaking is timing your talk. And paying attention to that timing without distracting your audience.

Do not mention the time to the audience.
Do not say you only have 5 minutes.
Do not say you won’t take up too much of their time.
Do not point out you finished with one minute left.
Do not mention you are running a couple of minutes over.
Do not ask for a time check.

If you focus your audience’s attention on time, they will think about time, instead of the topic you’d like them to be thinking about.

How do you rate books?

Sun, 17 Dec 2017 11:14:24 -0700

Every time I rate a book, I struggle with what I’m rating it on.

Both Amazon and GoodReads use a 5 star system. If I loved the book, that’s easy. However, what if I liked the book except for the ridiculous stereotypical romance that was a minor theme. Do I ding it half a star? What if I read a romance and it’s really well written and the character development is good but I hate romances? Do I rate it on how good of a romance it is? (Maybe pretty good.) Or on how well I liked it?(Maybe not at all.)

It's unacceptable to not know it all

Wed, 13 Dec 2017 11:30:14 -0700

It’s become unacceptable to not know it all. And in today’s world of information overload, that’s not ok. It’s not doable, so we are fooling ourselves.

I find myself silently thanking people who look confused when some famous person is named or some incident is mentioned or a meme is laughed at. Keeping track of all the current affairs is getting harder and harder and the looks when you don’t know what they are referencing are getting more and more incredulous.

Chefs don't believe in Four Burners

Tue, 12 Dec 2017 11:25:10 -0700

I read the Four Burner theory and I call bullshit.

Mozillians cooking.

The Four Burner theory says that your life can be represented by a stove with four burners, one each for family, friends, work and health. The theory goes that you can only do two of them well because a chef can only pay attention to two burners at once. So you can do great in your career and with your family but you’ll be in poor health. Or you can be in good health and have great friends but your career will suffer.

How "I am Groot" defines a community manager's role

Tue, 12 Sep 2017 11:27:08 -0700

I was watching Guardians of the Galaxy, Part 2 and I realized that while baby Groot was making me laugh, it was Rocket that I understood. Rocket is an interpreter. He might even be a community manager.

In Guardians of the Galaxy, there’ a character called Groot. And the only thing he ever says is “I am Groot.” After a few instances, it becomes clear that he is saying a lot with each “I am Groot.”

What I learned about human evolution in a book about sex

Tue, 12 Sep 2017 11:17:38 -0700

Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships was an interesting book that sparked many interesting conversations in my life. (Yes, animals do practice oral sex.)

Once I got over being angry about the final chapter that explains why all that history excuses why men cheat but not why women do, I realized the thing that stuck with me was not about sex but about how farming has changed our health.

Create better processes to avoid difficult conversations

Tue, 25 Apr 2017 15:27:03 -0700

The best way to handle difficult conversations is to prevent them from ever starting. The way to prevent them from happening (or at least to keep them less painful) is to have good governance. Governance is the solution to difficult conversations and trolls.

My motto is that you’ve done the best job you can do when you work yourself out of a job. When you have solved the problem, you eliminate the need for anyone to need to work on it again in the future. So the best solution to difficult conversations is one that means we no longer have them. We’ll still have differences of opinion and a need for conversation but hopefully it won’t happen in painful ways. In order for that to happen, you need to have clearly defined ways to bring up new ideas, discuss differences of opinions, to make decisions and to execute on them.

Can your community get too big?

Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:51:36 -0700

Open source software communities, like companies and cities, can come in all sizes. They don’t get too big but they can grow faster than their infrastructure and processes.

Take for comparison, the size of companies and cities. Companies come in sizes from one person LLCs to 100,000 employee megaliths. Cities come in sizes from a single person farm toÂ enormous cities with 10’s of millions. Are some big companies too big for some people? Absolutely. Are big companies good at getting certain types of tasks done? Yes. Some people prefer some companies and small towns (maybe not the same set of people) and some people prefer big cities and large companies (again, maybe not the same set of people.)

10 Ways Community Managers Make Sure Projects are Healthy

Tue, 18 Apr 2017 13:50:21 -0700

Community managers must make sure their projects are healthy. Before they can help foster and grow a community, they have to make sure it’s a well functioning, welcoming place.

[caption id=“attachment_2211” align=“aligncenter” width=“705”] Photo from the Library of Congress.[/caption]

While community managers and project leadersÂ often don’t explicitly talk about what’s not working well, you will often find themÂ doing a wide variety of things. They are doing whatever is needed – filling in the gaps – to make their project work well so that new people can join.

3 ways open source software communities could learn from Crossfit

Mon, 10 Apr 2017 15:27:41 -0700

[caption id=“attachment_2207” align=“alignleft” width=“300”] Photo by Anthony Topper.[/caption]

This week I am participating in the opensource.com community blogging challenge: Encouraging New Contributors!

Crossfit gyms are great at creating community and welcoming new members. Here are 3 things that Crossfit boxes do that open source software communities could also do to encourage new contributors:

Say hi to the new person. I drop in at gyms around the world, and no matter where I go, everyone in the class comes up to say hi to me and introduce themselves. How awesome is it that I can go to a gym in Frankfurt and have 10 total strangers walk up and introduce themselves and say how happy they are that I’ve joined them? For open source: When you see a new person on your mailing list or IRC channel, stop and say hi. Introduce yourself and tell them they are welcome. You can do it publicly or privately. (If you do it publicly, you might set a good example for others!)
Celebrate daily accomplishments. When we finish a workout at my Crossfit gym, we all post our scores in an app. It gets ordered from best to worst but no matter where you are in the line up, everyone will Â give you a virtual fist bump and most of them will notice when you’ve had a spectacular work out based on your skill level and they’ll congratulate you for it. For open source: Have a place where people can note what they’ve done, maybe point out what they are proud of or what was hard for them, and get kudos from others. Sometimes this happens on source code control systems. Sometimes on IRC. I think most open source software projects could do better at this.
Allow for off topic interactions. To really build community, you have to know each other. Sometimes that’s hard to do if you just focus on the work all the time. There has to be a place to chat, to share goals, ideas and maybe every once in a while, a non-project focused thing. In my Crossfit box, we do this in a Facebook group. Usually, it’s fitness related but sometimes it’s just chatting about life in general. The group gets noisy and I turned off notifications, but I still visit at least once a day to congratulate, commiserate and just visit. It’s a place new members can ask questions, learn more about the community and get to know each other. In open source communities: Find a channel where people can chat. A place where they can ask all their questions, express frustration over a piece of code or complain about the weather. Sometimes it’ll get noisy but usually it will bring people together and, more importantly for the new people, help them “see” the community they are joining. Most open source software projects do this on irc or Slack.

How do you think open source software communities can Encourage New Contributors? What have you learned from the other communities in your life?

Life at Red Hat: Week 1

Tue, 22 Nov 2016 08:00:29 -0700

I just finished my first week at Red Hat! I flew out to Raleigh last Sunday night and attended New Hire Orientation (NHO, in Red Hat speak) Monday and Tuesday. There were 18 of us in the class from across Red Hat functions and business units. Most of us were a bit apprehensive of what 2 days of orientation would look like and all of us were anxious for our new laptops and email addresses which didn’t come until the end of the second day. We were all impressed - we got a good overview of Red Hat functions and Red Hat culture. Red Hatters are proud of their open, participatory culture.

8 ways companies have influenced open source software

Mon, 26 Sep 2016 10:11:06 -0700

A decade ago, I researched and gave a talk called Would you do it again for free? If you worked on an open source software project for free, and a company started paying you to work on it, if they stopped paying you, would you stop working on it? At the time it was a valid question as many of my friends were starting to get paid positions doing their dream job. In case you are curious, the answer is “it depends”. Most people will stop working on that particular project but most will go on to work on other open source software projects. You can watch versions of the talks and see links to the research studies I found.

Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary

Wed, 14 Sep 2016 08:31:47 -0700

While I don’t agree with everything Sebastian Junger writes in Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, I love the way he manages to articulate some things that I’ve noticed but never been able to describe.

Just last weekend I was camping, and we had this torrential rain storm. People rushing to get their boats off the water were hurrying so much that they lost their boats off the trailers. Rain came down so hard and quick, it broke tent poles and tents literally floated away. People had to dig trenches to get water out of their campsites. And it was fun. Granted, my sleeping spot was completely dry, so I speak from a position of privilege. But everybody getting together to help make sure people were ok, finding ways to keep important things dry, finding dry places for people to sleep and ways to feed everyone, that was fun. There was a real feel of community. Of adventure. Of responsibility.

Our World Depends on Unseen Labor: Open Source Software

Tue, 13 Sep 2016 15:19:30 -0700

Our digital infrastructure is all open source. It’s built and maintained by a relatively small community of open source software developers. Right now the open source software work is funded by a variety of methods: volunteer time, nonprofit corporations and donations of time and money by a few corporations. Is that sustainable? Or should we be looking for ways to fund our digital infrastructure much like we do our roads and bridges through government or community efforts? This is the question that Nadia Eghbal poses in her very comprehensive paper covering her research funded by the Ford Foundation.

Don't let the medical industry own your death

Tue, 30 Aug 2016 09:54:05 -0700

When my grandmother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, we were all told to come visit immediately. By the time I got there, they had already given her a dose of chemotherapy. I was furious. Why do you give a dying 80 year old person a dose of chemotherapy? She never got out of bed again.

I could not understand why the doctors had given her the option of chemotherapy. She wasn’t expected to live more than a few weeks with or without it.

The Culture of Poverty

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 13:06:15 -0700

I am not an expert in poverty nor in economic culture. If there are any mistakes in this post, I likely understood it incorrectly. I hope that this post inspires you to go learn more about the social groups in our society and how we can all work more effectively together.

Bridges out of Poverty taught by Jodi Pfarr was a fascinating class about how the cultures of individuals living in the middle class is different than individuals living in poverty.

10 thoughts inspired by Always Hungry?

Mon, 11 Jan 2016 09:47:15 -0700

First published on Medium.

Always Hungry? by David Ludwig is yet another diet book but one written by a respected doctor specializing in obesity in children. I really enjoyed several articles about Dr Ludwig and his ideas, so I was expecting something more from the book but all I got additional was lots of recipes.

Dr Ludwig, like many others, blames sugar and refined grains for many of our health problems. I like how he explained it and provided supporting science and studies, but if this is why you are reading the book, I recommend Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. Dr Ludwig does do a good job of explaining inflammation, blood sugar and fat storage in a way that people without medical backgrounds might understand.
I love his point that the process of getting fat makes you eat more, not the other way around.
I hate reading cook books on the Kindle. Actually, I just hate reading cook books. I think you should search for recipes or ideas for recipes, not read them.
The advice for how to eat healthy seems pretty consistent these days – avoid processed foods, refined grains and sugars – and just as hard to follow.
He focused more on waist size than weight and only recommended weighing yourself once a week as opposed to most people’s recommendation to weigh yourself daily.
His supporting quotes and stories were all about people who had lost 5-20 pounds instead of the tons of weight most diet books claim.
New studies seem to be consistently saying that exercise is good but exercise makes you eat more, not less. I really wonder what we’ll be saying a decade from now.
He doesn’t really talk about overweight kids at all in spite of his background.
If I could not eat carbs, I’m sure I would lose weight. I would also be really sick of eggs and chicken and meat. And while I like vegetables and fruit, I just can’t imagine them replacing pasta.
Unlike Atkins, Dr. Ludwig recommends lots of fruits and vegetables and eventually some grains and carbs.

What did you end up thinking about as you read the book or these points?

How companies like Uber and Airbnb are gamifying work

Mon, 26 Oct 2015 09:49:15 -0700

First published on Medium.

Companies with the newer â€œsharing economyâ€ business models are gamifying work. They are making people work hard in ways that resemble how they play video games.

To better understand this, I compare their models to the components of a game as given by Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal:

Goal: A game has a very specific outcome, a sense of purpose. Where as at work you might wonder what the purpose is, in a game itâ€™s usually very clear what you are trying to do.
Rules: In a game there are clear limitations on how you are supposed to accomplish the goal. These limitations make it really clear where people can experiment encouraging creativity and strategy. At work, the limitations are often not clear. Maybe you can ask for more budget, maybe another department will help you, maybeÂ â€¦
Feedback system: all games have a scoring system or a way of knowing how close you are to the goal. I think this is often the most missing thing at work, especially if you donâ€™t have a clear goal (besides making money).
Voluntary participation: everyone who is playing the game knows and accepts the goal, rules and feedback. This allows people to play together and makes it safe and fun as you always have the freedom to leave.

Companies like Airbnb and Uber have all these components, and people have fun trying to see if they can gain new levels and statuses. I recently talked to an Airbnb host who is obsessed with making â€œSuper Hostâ€ status.

When you are afraid of risk, you create weak teams

Tue, 20 Oct 2015 09:50:47 -0700

First published on Medium.

When role models are risk adverse, they change the game for everyone.

Last night at kickball, a young woman on the other team decided to start bunting and she changed the preferred strategy for women on both teams. She was a strong player and she obviously thought her best option, maybe her only option, was to bunt. So quickly the feel became, to be a “team” player, all weak players should bunt. Never mind that by bunting you give up all chances of kicking a home run or even a double. Or of feeling proud of your kick.

7 tips: how to introduce yourself

Fri, 21 Aug 2015 08:56:24 -0700

I hate introducing myself. It’s very hard to introduce someone but especially yourself. So here’s what I’ve learned about giving awesome intros:

[caption id=“attachment_2162” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Photo by lucianvenutian[/caption]

Talk other people up. This may seem counter intuitive, but if you are doing a round robin set of intros, be sure to help others talk themselves up. For example, in a recent Kids on Computers set of introductions, Serena introduced herself. I jumped in to point out that she filed our original 501(c)(3) paperwork - which passed the first time. After that, several people jumped in to help others introduce themselves. The focus of the introductions becomes helping others, not trying to one up others.

What's in a good developer relations plan?

Thu, 13 Aug 2015 15:17:15 -0700

Developer relations is the combination of activities, programs and tactics to get developers using or developing for your organization’s product or ecosystem. The goal of a good developer relations team is often to make your organization’s product or ecosystem the first choice for developers. (You may be doing this just to sell more of your product or you may be doing this because you believe your product’s mission helps make the world a better place. You are still trying to get more developers using your product.)

The best jobs in life are challenging

Sun, 09 Aug 2015 20:08:47 -0700

The best jobs in life are not the easiest ones. The best jobs are the most meaningful ones. They challenge you - and make the most of your skills. The best jobs give you a chance to make a difference in the world. (And often great jobs also involve working with awesome people that also motivated by making a difference.)

Through exhaustive analysis of diaries kept by knowledge workers, we discovered the progress principle: Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work.

Mimi Geier, a great math teacher

Sat, 14 Feb 2015 05:01:19 -0700

The world lost a great math teacher this week. Mimi Geier not only loved math, she loved teaching math and delighted in watching kids discoverÂ solutions. If I had a picture to share here, it would be of Ms. Geier with a grin on her face, holding out a piece of chalk so that a student could teach.

My first day at BFIS, Ms. Geier asked me if I was in first or seventh period math. I wanted to ask which one was the advanced math class, but I didn’t. Instead I said I didn’t know. She told me to come to both and we’d figure it out.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of why I don't always work in the open

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 12:00:28 -0700

I was writing a post about why you must work in the open to get more volunteers and I ended up writing this post about why I don’t work in the open.

The Good

So I think there are some very valid reasons for not working in the open:

Personal. Not all projects are open source projects, especially personal ones. Where I’m going for Valentine’s Day or how to get my son to do better in school are not “open” projects. They could be, but they’re not.
Not mine to share. There’s a lot of things I think should be shared with the world but they aren’t my stories or plans to share. I’d be violating someone else’s sense of privacy in order to share. I think your 2015 project goals are good enough to share with the world - and more people would join if you did - but you may not feel the same way.
It’s not an open source project. Lots of projects in this world are not run in an open source way. If you are not looking to build a community, and you are not an open source software project nor a nonprofit nor a public entity, I think this is a totally valid way of working.

The Bad

And then I think there are some reasonable reasons (maybe right, maybe not) for not working in the open:

7 reasons asynchronous communication is better than synchronous communication in open source

Mon, 26 Jan 2015 16:45:32 -0700

Traditionally, open source software has relied primarily on asynchronous communication. While there are probably quite a few synchronous conversations on irc, most project discussions and decisions will happen on asynchronous channels like mailing lists, bug tracking tools and blogs.

I think there’s another reason for this.Â Synchronous communication is difficult for an open source project. For any project where people are distributed. Synchronous conversations are:

Inconvenient. It’s hard to schedule synchronous meetings across time zones. Just try to pick a good time for Australia, Europe and California.
Logistically difficult. It’s hard to schedule a meeting for people that are working on a project at odd hours that might vary every day depending on when they can fit in their hobby or volunteer job.
Slower. If you have more than 2-3 people you need to get together every time you make a decision, things will move slower. I currently have a project right now that we are kicking off and the team wants to do everything in meetings. We had a meeting last week and one this week. Asynchronously we could have had several rounds of discussion by now.
Expensive for many people. When I first started at GNOME, it was hard to get some of our board members on a phone call. They couldn’t call international numbers, or couldn’t afford an international call and they didn’t have enough bandwidth for an internet voice call. We ended up using a conference call line from one of our sponsor companies. Now it’s video.
Logistically difficult. Mozilla does most of our meetings as video meetings. Video is still really hard for many people. Even with my pretty expensive, supposedly high end internet in a developed country, I often have bandwidth problems when participating in video calls. Now imagine I’m a volunteer from Nigeria. My electricity might not work all the time, much less my high speed internet.
Language. Open source software projects work primarily in English and most of the world does not speak English as their first language. Asynchronous communication gives them a chance to compose their messages, look up words and communicate more effectively.
Confusing. Discussions and decisions are often made by a subset of the project and unless the team members are veryÂ diligent the decisions and rationale are often not communicated out broadly or effectively. You lose the history behind decisions that way too.

There are some major benefits toÂ synchronous conversation:

Use your vacation to do good in exotic locations

Sat, 22 Feb 2014 12:54:07 -0700

Kids on Computers is planning a trip to the Huajuapan de Leon, Mexico area in June. If you can, please join us! If you can’t, please consider donating to help the labs we’ll be working on.

Most of us will be going down for a week or so. There are travel stipends available for those willing to spend a month helping in the area.

**What could I possibly do to help? **I ask myself this every time I go. Especially since I usually drag my kids along. Here are the things you can help with.

Top 8 things to do in New Orleans

Mon, 25 Nov 2013 11:58:25 -0700

With an unprecedented number of friends visiting New Orleans in the next couple of months, I put together my top list of things to do.

Spend evenings on Frenchmen Street rather than Bourbon Street.
Walk down Royal and check out the antiques.
Have the double chocolate bread pudding at Red Fish. (We usually split an appetizer and the bread pudding.)
Have goat cheese crepes at Muriel’s at the bar.
Take the cocktail tour. There’s lots of fun historical stories involved.
Talk to the locals, especially on buses.
Have stuffed chicken wings at Nola’s.
Take the street car out to the Garden District and walk around.

And a bonus one:

Book Review: The Starfish and the Spider & Open source software organizations and money

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 15:13:38 -0700

The Starfish and the Spider compares two types of organizational structures. Spider organizations have a central command structure, like a CEO. If you detach one of the spider’s legs from the head, the leg can no longer function. It is not autonomous. Starfish organizations have very distributed command structures. Cut off a leg and it will continue to function and will even grow other legs and turn into its own starfish. Each type of organization has its benefits and drawbacks and each are useful at different times. One key to success is understanding what type of organization you are in, its strengths and weaknesses and when you might want to act more like the other type. Hybrids are also possible. For example, GE Â under Jack Welsh transitioned from a spider to a spider/starfish. Traditional companies tend to be more like spider organizations and open source software projects tend to be more like starfish.

Your competition helps explain who you are

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 02:47:00 -0700

“Where there is no competition, there is no market. This is why start-ups who “have no competition” have trouble engaging partners and making sales.” - Geoffrey Moore, Escape Velocity

Open source projects often shy away from competition. They value collaboration and leveraging existing solutions. But competition is good for more than making you run faster. Competition helps define who you are.

This is why the Nike iPod sensor had such a hard time when it came out. There was nothing to compare it to except pedometers. In contrast, Fitbit and Jawbone’s Up have met with a lot more initial success. And just about every article about them compares them to each other. (Interestingly, Nike has a new, similar product called Fuel Band that is mentioned in very few of the articles.)

How to have hallway conversations when you can't see the hallway

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 20:20:51 -0700

I recently listened to a talk by Michael Lopp about how to be a great manager.

During his talk, he stressed the importance of hallway conversations. Hallway conversations are informal conversations about projects, goals and status. As Shez says, they are great for bouncing ideas off people you might not normally interact with and just letting them know what you are up to.

Here’s how I do “hallway conversations” while working thousands of miles from my colleagues:

How to hire an Executive Director

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:04:19 -0700

When I told the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors that I was leaving my job as executive director, I told them my number one priority was to hire my replacement. Before I was hired, the GNOME Foundation went through a long period without an executive director and I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again.Â At the Boston Summit, there was actually some discussion about whether they wanted another executive director or whether they could hire more specialized individuals for particular tasks. For numerous reasons, they opted to hire another executive director. (I was relieved - speaking as a current GNOME Foundation board member, it would be a lot of work for a volunteer board to manage more staff without an executive director.)

How to get more visibility

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:36:07 -0700

I hear a lot of people worrying about getting more visibility. While I think visibility is important, I think worrying about visibility is the wrong way to go about it. Worrying about visibility makes people do weird, self-centered things.

If you want to be more visible, talk more about other people! Meet people, listen to them, laugh with them, spread their story.

Here are a few simple things that I think raise your visibility:

Does open source exclude high context cultures?

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:50:14 -0700

High context cultures value personal relationships over process. You have to know someone before you can trust them and work with them. They also tend to be less explicit and rely more on tone of voice, gestures and even status to communicate. Typically Asian countries are more high context than Western countries. Think Korea and Japan.

Low context cultures are process driven. They rely on facts and processes. Their communication style is much more direct and action-orientated. They are orientated towards the individual rather than the group. Western cultures like the US and Germany are considered low context.

The secret to my success in a field of men? All my friends. My guy friends.

Wed, 04 May 2011 21:09:34 -0700

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few weeks talking about why we have so few women in open source and web development and how to encourage more women to join. (I even got to spend an awesome afternoon with a bunch of girls. I was supposed to be mentoring them but they were already Python game developers and small business owners - at the ages of 10 and 15!)

Learning to write JavaScript

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 12:09:16 -0700

So now that I work at Mozilla, I figured it was time to develop a “web app” just to make sure I understood it all. And since my team is working on educational resources for web developers, I wanted to see what it was like to learn how to use some of them using resources online.

So I decided to use the resources I could find online and write some JavaScript to do a pet project of mine.

Kids on Computers sets up more labs in schools

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 14:41:31 -0700

[caption id=“attachment_1686” align=“alignleft” width=“300” caption=“Sewing at girls’ school in Santo Domingo, Oaxaca. Photo by Thomas Peters.”][/caption]

Kids on Computers folks have been busy, especially Hermes and Thomas and others in Oaxaca. In the past few months we’ve set up labs in a school for kids with disabilities and a boarding school for girls - both in small towns in Oaxaca, Mexico.

The lab for the kids with disabilities will also help their parents who will now be able to do research on the web both on their kids’ health and also on government resources that might be available.

Forking an open source project: regaining internal motivation

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 09:02:56 -0700

Can forking a free software project enable you to regain your internal motivation to work on a project? My current theory is that if you work on free software, then you get paid to work on it and then you get laid off, that you would work on a different project. Because the first one is no longer good enough to get paid, then it must not be good enough to work on for free.

How do I raise enough money to work on my project full time?

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 12:52:48 -0700

“How do I raise enough money to be able to spend all my time working on my favorite free software project?” is a question I hear often.

I have a few ideas and I’m very interested in hearing others as I think the world would be a better place if we all could afford to do work we loved and thought useful.

Focus on the difference you’d make. First off, I wouldn’t approach it as “I need to raise money to pay myself.” Unless you are raising moneyÂ solelyÂ from people that love you, whether or not you get paid is probably not going to sway them one way or the other. You need to tell them what $100,000 a year would do. How would your project be great then? Who would it help? How would it make the world a better place? How would it help this particular type of sponsor?
Believe it. You need toÂ trulyÂ believe your project would benefit from the money and your work. If you aren’t convinced, you won’t convince anyone else.
Figure out how much you need. It helps to have a goal. Would you quit your day job if you had $20,000 in funding? $100,000? $200,000? (Don’t forget costs like health care, vacation time, etc.)
Identify different types of sponsors. Are you going to raise money from developers? Or software companies? Or philanthropic grant givers? Also think about how much money that type of sponsor is likely to give. Be realistic. Maybe they gave a project $100,000 once but they gave five other projects $10,000. You are probably going to get $10,000 if you get anything. Then figure out how many sponsors you’ll need. Figure out where those people are and how you are going to get introduced to them.
Create a pitch. You need a really good web page, a good email, an elevator pitch and unfortunately, you probably need a slide deck too.
Tell the world. Don’t ask everyone for money. But tell everyone about your project and what your goals are. (Hint: your goal is not to raise money but to make your project better. The money is a means to an end.) Use your elevator pitch. Listen carefully to their questions, their skepticism, their ideas. Evolve. Make your pitch better. Figure out how to pitch it to different types of people.
Sell your project. Don’t forget to talk about your project. You aren’t just asking for money, you are selling the potential of your project.
Collect stories. Studies have proven that people are willing to give more money to save one child identified by name and ailment than they are to save 100 kids. Personal stories are moving. Find a couple of stories of how your project has made a difference.
Learn about them. You are not going to get any money from someone whom you don’t understand. Know them, know their business, know what they care about, know how they view you.
Work with an organization that can help. For example, maybe you want money to work on your favorite project and you found companies that are willing to sponsor it but they don’t want to manage it. Would they be willing to funnel the money to you through a nonprofit organization that also supports your type of project?
Ask. Talk to lots of potential sponsors, ask them for money, apply for grants, look for opportunities. If you don’t ask for the money, you will never get it.

What else would you recommend?

Putting all the Hackfest pieces together

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 15:54:50 -0700

Planning a hackfest is not an easy process. You need an:

organizer - someone willing to put some time into making the whole thing happen
topic - what are you going to be hacking on, what do you hope to accomplish
attendees - this is usually a particular group of people that work on a specific project or team
date - have you ever tried to schedule a multi-day meeting with multiple people? Agreeing on a week can be really hard.
place - a place with affordable lodging and food with a comfortable place to hack with great internet. Preferably some place easy and cheap to travel to.
sponsors - flying a group of people to the same place often costs quite a bit of money

Luckily we’ve had people and companies willing to invest the time and resources to make this happen. During the past year we’ve had a record number of very productive hackfests and we have even more coming up!

Kids on Computers is officially a 501(c)(3)!

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 09:37:32 -0700

I got back from GUADEC and was ecstatic to find a letter from the IRS saying that Kids on Computers is officially a US federal 501(c)(3) organization!!!

It’s retroactive to February 25, 2009. (We have been a Colorado nonprofit since our start but this gives us federal status.)

Having 501(c)(3) status will enable us to qualify for more grants and programs targeted at nonprofit organizations. It also helps establish people’s trust (they know you are doing a public good) and enables some people to deduct their donation from the money they pay taxes on. Many thanks to Serena Robb who filled out all the paperwork for us! It was her first time filling out a 501(c)(3) federal application and she did a lot of research to make sure she got it right.

Books to read if you liked How to Train Your Dragon

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 09:13:39 -0700

[caption id=“attachment_1579” align=“alignleft” width=“300”] [/caption]

I watched How to Train Your Dragon yesterday and I really enjoyed it. I plan on reading the How to Train Your Dragon book series. I started thinking of all the dragon books I’ve read … and realized that while I know a few really good series, I know fewer than I thought. (I must be forgetting some …)

Fiction writing tip #1: Do not make things too easy for your protagonist

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:05:50 -0700

Here’s a writing tip from a reader: do not make things too easy for your protagonist.

I’ve been reading fiction books by new authors. They often make the protagonist struggle throughout the whole book and then suddenly give them super powers. Or sometimes they sporadically give them superpowers throughout the book. Or have magical creatures come to their aid just in the nick of time.

For example, in the book I read yesterday, the main character struggled with demons (the mythical creatures) her entire life. They killed people, they raped her, they chased her, they beat her up. And then suddenly, after several hundred pages of this, she realizes she needs other people and yells “I’m a soul catcher! Demons be gone!” and they all explode. Huh? Why didn’t she just tell them to all be gone 200 pages ago? The author could have saved us all a lot of agony.

Words are important - just not always the way you think

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:39:45 -0700

Recently I met someone who insisted on describing every department in his organization, all the acronyms and what they stood for. By the time he got around to describing how this whole thing related to me, he had lost my interest. (And I tried hard to hang in there!) He had given me too many irrelevant terms that didn’t relate to me.

We focus a lot in the free software community about what words we use: free software, open source software, free and open source software, …

How does a free software project do marketing?

Sun, 16 May 2010 09:09:59 -0700

Typically free software projects have lots of very smart developers. Large projects like GNOME might also be lucky enough to have lots of great translators, designers, artists and writers working on the project.

However, marketing is not typically an area free software projects have worked much on. GNOME is changing that. Over the past couple of years we have really increased our marketing activity from fundraising to spreading the word about GNOME. One way we’ve done that is through the marketing mailing list. Another is by getting together at GUADEC and having marketing hackfests.

10 skills to master to get things done online

Fri, 14 May 2010 10:14:20 -0700

I’ve recently watched a few people struggle to get things done in online projects. I’ve written and spoken on 12 tips for getting things done in the open source community but now I see that people also need to learn how to work with mailing lists and virtual teams.

Skills you should master if you plan on working in a virtual environment. I’m interested in any other skills you’d add to the list.

10 free apps I wish were open source

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:28:01 -0700

When it comes to web applications, I think free and open source software fans are settling for “free” instead of looking for the freedom they would get from open source.

Here are some free applications that I wish had open source software equivalents.Â I am not unhappy with these applications. I just wish I had open source software alternatives that were as good!

Here are 10 of the good web applications that I use daily that don’t have good enough open source software equivalents.

How does Malaysia encourage so many women in software?

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:28:37 -0700

In 2003 I gave a talk in Malaysia. What I noticed immediately is that my audience was well over half women. This was really noticeable because they were all wearing brightly colored hijabs. Usually I scan the room and count how many women I can find - usually on my fingers even in a room of hundreds. Yet here were hundreds of women attending a talk about the economics of open source software!

More Women in GNOME Now!

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:52:44 -0700

The GNOME community is extremely diverse when it comes to nationality. But we don’t have many women working on GNOME.

We want to make sure that women interested in working on GNOME know they are welcome, so we have announced the

GNOME Outreach Program for Women!

The goal is to encourage women to participate in GNOME and to provide internship opportunities in the summer.

We noticed a problem back in 2006. We had 181 submissions for Google’s Summer of Code - and not one was from a woman. So Hanna Wallach and Chris Ball launched the Women’s Summer Outreach Program. We received a 100 applications from women that summer and were able to accept 6 - six women were paid to work on GNOME and mentored by GNOME developers. (Sponsored primarily with a grant from Google.) Recently Marina Zhurakhinskaya followed up with those women and decided we should do it again and expand on the program.

Should you ask developers for money? And other interesting fundraising dilemnas.

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:36:22 -0700

Chris Blizzard introduced me to Clay Johnson. I had such an interesting time talking to him about social networking, free and open source software, governments and fundraising that I asked if he’d share some of his points in a blog interview.

Meet Clay Johnson, Director of Sunlight Labs!

Hi Clay, you have a lot of experience with online social networking. Where’d you get that experience? It’s weird– I started out with social networking before social networking was called “social networking.” In college, back in the early days of the web, my Dad would always ask me to look things up on the Internet for him. I began to get tired of answering questions, so I built a service that would let people ask questions and answer them online– that way, I figured, he could have a whole community of people answering his questions. That was KnowPost.com, the first “social network” I built on my own. A few years later, I found myself working on the same kind of project with some friends called ZeroDegrees.com, which was a social networking service built into Outlook. And shortly thereafter, the Howard Dean Campaign hired me to be their lead programmer and build Dean Link, a privately branded social network. Then quickly found myself starting the company that created My.BarackObama.com– yet another social network.

What's your vision of GNOME?

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:47:08 -0700

The GNOME Foundation’s mission is to provide a free desktop accessible to everyone. Accessible regardless of their ability to pay, their physical ability or the language they speak.

But I bet if you polled all 400 members of the GNOME Foundation and a few 1000 GNOME fans, you’d get a lot of different visions of what that means. And while I think that’s normal and I think that’s good, I thought it might be an interesting conversation to have.

Why you should only pick one New Year's Resolution

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:59:08 -0700

I “multitask” all the time. But every time I’m on a conference call and I have to say “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that,” I know I can’t really multitask.

Nobody can really multitask. When you try to do more than one thing at once, you are actually switching between the tasks continuously. You lose a lot of time context switching. If the tasks are ones that are familiar to you, like talking on the phone and running after a naked 3 year old with clothes in your hand, it might feel like multitasking, but really your brain is furiously keeping track of both tasks (the conversation with your friend and the route your 3 year old is taking) and switching back and forth between them.

Can free software transition to the web services world?

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:52:57 -0700

Etherpad is being released as open source software because the team is moving onto Google Wave. As an open source web hosted project, without a company behind it, it is unlikely to succeed.

Back when I used to talk about the business reasons for open sourcing code, “end-of-life” was always one of my first examples. People think, “oh, I have this project that I no longer want to work on but people still want to use it, so I’ll open source it!” They have the (often mistaken) idea that somebody out there will just start working on it.

Unexpected rewards are better than expected rewards

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:36:23 -0700

Since I’ve started talking about Would you do it again for free?, I’ve been very interested in any studies that show how extrinsic rewards change intrinsic rewards. The theory is that external rewards can replace your internal values to the point that you’ll no longer do what you valued without external payment or reward of some type.

This study showed that unexpected rewards are better than expected rewards. They took kids who liked to draw and put them in three groups. One group was:

GNOME Marketing Hackfest

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 07:17:08 -0700

Eight of us from the GNOME Marketing team got together in Chicago for a hackfest earlier this week. We had a lot of great discussions, came up with some good material for people manning a GNOME booth at conferences, a slogan and talking points for GNOME 3.0, presentation material for GNOME, ideas for mentoring GNOME marketing volunteers, conversations about recognizing GNOME contributors, fundraising, involving module maintainers in marketing, a plan for making GNOME videos and much more.

How companies leave the community out of the conversation

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:44:59 -0700

This morning I tried to attend a webinar, The Open Source Community vs. Patent Trolls - Preserving Developer Freedom. I knew the webinar was hosting on software that wouldn’t work on Linux, GoToMeeting. (Actually, who knows if it will work on Linux. The web page checks your operating system and if you are on Linux, it won’t even try.) I thought I’d just dialin. No such luck, you have to dialin to the webinar (on a Windows or Mac) in order to get the code for the phone.

How to plan a hackfest

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 08:00:00 -0700

hackfest n. A meeting where developers gather together in person to work on a free software project.

Hackfests are one of the ways that things get done on free software projects like GNOME. They get lots of good work done, they energize teams and raise visibility of the project and its mission.

The free software community is great at getting things done in a virtual environment. Large projects can fix bugs, add new features and put out regular releases without ever meeting over the phone or in person. However, there are some things that can be done much more quickly in person, such as design discussions or future plans. For example, according to Seif Lotfy, at a recent meeting at the openSUSE conference, the Zeitgeist team accomplished in 4 hours what would have taken them several weeks to decide on mailing lists and IRC channels. A conversation around a whiteboard or even a piece of paper can clear up a lot of misunderstandings and get a lot of work done quickly.

Who do you represent?

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:33:22 -0700

Chris pointed me at this cartoon as a comment to my It’s not about not offending post and I keep finding myself looking at it.

I almost always feel like I’m representing a group - if not more than one group. When we lived in Alaska, I represented Caucasians. When we lived in Spain, I represented all Americans. When I go to software conferences, I represent all women. When I go to software conferences in Europe, I represent women and Americans. Talk about pressure to do a good job! It’s probably not true that I’m always representing all those groups, but I really feel the responsibility to do a good job for everyone I represent, not just myself.

It's not about not offending

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 13:11:38 -0700

When talking about women in free software or political correctness in general, we seem to focus on saying things that “don’t offend” the minority group. But that’s not what it’s about. It’s about saying things that encourage people to join your group, that send the right message and represent our values. While not saying things that send them away. The focus should be on making the message welcoming, not on making the message “not offending.”

7 ways not to procrastinate

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:51:39 -0700

While I’ve learned not to procrastinate, the truth is that I do procrastinate every once in a while. This isn’t a post about why I procrastinate but rather how I deal with it. Here’s how I deal with my own procrastination:

Do the first step. Sometimes I procrastinate because the task is too large to even know where to start. “Publish a GNOME quarterly report.” That sounds like it’s going to be a lot of work, so I put it off until tomorrow. Once I realize I’m doing that I stop and think about what’s the first step? Deciding what’s in the quarterly report. So I do just that step and then define the next one.
Redefine the scope. Some times a task is just so big or so hard, it’s unlikely you are ever going to make time for it. “Research CRM systems.” I had in my head that this was going to mean installing 4-5 CRM systems or getting live demos, writing up a huge list of features in a spreadsheet and tracking with CRM system did what, gathering requirements and mapping those to the features. So I didn’t do it for a long time. I finally realized that I had been talking about it long enough that I knew what we needed and I knew what people recommended, so I should just write up a quick proposal to recommend the recommended CRM system and to verify it did what we needed.
Do it poorly - or at least not as well as I’d like. I like to do things well, so if I don’t know how to do something or think I won’t do a good job, I put it off. Every once in a while, I realize there’s a task I’ve been putting off forever because I’m afraid I won’t do it well. Then I just do it. And I put it out for review some where and cringe when I think of people seeing the unfinished work. But it gets done. (And the feedback I usually get is that it looks fine.)
Decide to do it as a favor for someone else. Another reason I procrastinate is because I don’t think something is important - someone else asked me to do it. In those cases (when I realize that’s happening), I either tell them I’m not going to do it or I decide I’m going to do it for them. Even though I don’t think it’s important, it is to them and so I do it for them.
Don’t do it. Sometimes I procrastinate because I’ve really decided not to do it. There are two reasons I might decide not to do a task:

Sometimes I procrastinate on things because I’ve subconsciously decided they aren’t important. Crossing them off my list relieves my stress.
Give it to someone else. Some times there are tasks that others can do more easily or with more joy. I really wasn’t the right person for the job. If I can, I give it to them to do. You can trade. For example, I do the laundry and the dishes and not much of the cooking.

Hold something hostage. I’ve been known to say I’m not eating lunch until this is done. That usually works. (It’s best to pick something that doesn’t make somebody else wait for you!)
Promise someone else. Often I’ll tell someone I’ll do it and by when. Then I feel like I’m letting them down if I don’t get it done. (Be careful. Some research shows that by publicly commiting to do something, you might be less likely to actually do it. Something about you already got the kudos for good intentions so now you don’t need to do the task.)

How do you deal with tasks you keep putting off?

Why you shouldn't do it all yourself

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 08:17:36 -0700

One of the hardest things to learn in management is how not to do it all yourself. People often call this a problem with “delegation”. But the problem isn’t with telling others what to do. The problem is learning how not to do it all yourself.

I talked earlier about how my style is to Trust and Empower, but I didn’t talk about why that’s hard or even why I chose that style.

Grants, bounties and free software

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 07:00:00 -0700

Bounties or grants are often suggested as a way companies can pay for work on free software projects.

The GNOME community has had mixed results with bounties and grants, so when Funambol community manager Stefano Maffulli contacted me about a GNOME grant and said they’d had success using grants for Funambol, I thought it’d be interesting to learn more about the program.

Here’s how the Funambol Code Sniper has successfully used grants to foster research and development efforts in free software projects. The responses are from Stefano Muffulli.

Book Review: Managing the Nonprofit Organization

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:47:44 -0700

If you follow any of the links to Amazon in this post, any purchases you make will send a referral fee to the GNOME Foundation.

Peter Drucker’s Managing the Nonprofit Organization was full of good ideas. I started ripping off pieces of my bookmark to mark interesting pages and ended up with no bookmark!

Managing the Nonprofit Organization discusses mission, marketing, fund raising, performance, people, relationships and developing the leader.

Mission

According to Drucker, mission matters most in a nonprofit - much more than the leader’s charisma or talents. Non-profits exist to bring about change in individuals and society and focusing on the desired outcome is essential for defining plans, executing a strategy and putting the right people in the right roles.

The GNOME Foundation Is All About People

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:13:45 -0700

One of the most common questions I get asked, right after “What do you do?”, is “What does the GNOME Foundation do?” I wrote an article explaining what the GNOME Foundation does in the current issue of OSBR, Women in Open Source, guest edited by Rikki Kite. (And there are some really good articles by some amazing women like Cathy Malmrose, Angela Byron, Cat Allman, Selena Deckelman, Amanda McPherson, Emma Jane Hogbin, Audrey Eschright and Melanie Groves VonFange.)

Open source is (still) changing the way work gets done

Sat, 30 May 2009 12:41:52 -0700

[The beginnings of a keynote. Feedback and input welcome.]

Open source is changing the way work gets done. Yeah, yeah, what’s new? We all know that. But really, free and open source software has changed the software industry in the past but it’s really changing things now. Especially when you look at industries that are now using open source software that didn’t used to be in the software business: cell phones, netbooks, medical equipment, …

Why do people go to conferences? For the people!

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:34:21 -0700

People go to conferences to see friends, meet people and learn new things.

Over 80% of people said that seeing friends and meeting new people was the reason they went to conferences or it was very important. 53% of people said “attendees they want to hang out with” is the reason they go to conferences. The comments really reflected this with people talking about how meeting people renewed their energy and many talked about how “fun” it is!

What would you say about the State of GNOME?

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:22:07 -0700

Against my dad’s best advice, I’m going to admit that I don’t feel like I’m the best person to give a “State of GNOME” talk. I mean, it’s an open source project. I don’t run it, I don’t manage it and people not only don’t ask me for permission to do things, they don’t make a point of making sure I know everything. And that’s good! I find out most of my GNOME news the way everyone else does - through blogs, mailing lists and wiki’s. We are an effective open source software project and communication is good. That said, I’m happy to help spread the word of all the good things GNOME is up to. (And if you’d like to help too, please join the GNOME Marketing team!)

Supporting free software with grant money

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 08:00:11 -0700

I recently started investigating how GNOME could fund projects with grant money. Will Ross sent me an email with a lot of good information and I’d like to share his experience with others in the open source software community.

**Will Ross is a project manager with Mendocino Informatics, a small healthcare technology consulting firm in Mendocino County, California. Prior to Mendocino Informatics, Will was CTO for a consortium of nonprofit community clinics, and before that worked on the network infrastructure teams for two Bay Area dot-coms that didn’t fail (Organic Online & LoudCloud). Will spent the 90s as CIO for a mail order company and writing SQL queries for a multinational manufacturing company.

Dries Buytaert's rules for creating a great community

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:16:06 -0700

At OSBC last week I saw a great presentation by Dries Buytaert on how to build community. Dries is the founder of Drupal. The slides for his presentation (20 MB) include “Dries’ 7 secrets” which I’ll write about here.

Dries started out by showing us how the Drupal community really is a community excited about Drupal. He had pictures of people carrying around cutouts of people that couldn’t attend a conference, hand made Drupal socks, Drupal cookies, etc. He then went on to give his “rules” for creating community:

Companies: fostering or controlling communities? An interview with Kim Weins

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:07:46 -0700

* Kim Weins is the Senior VP of Marketing at OpenLogic. Kim spent three years as a principal in CMO Strategy Group and helped companies such as Atomz (acquired by WebSideStory), TuVox and RedSeal to significantly accelerate their marketing efforts. Prior to CMO Strategy Group, she was at PeopleSoft where she was responsible for driving PeopleSoft’s CRM business strategy. *

I had lunch with Kim Weins from OpenLogic. We had an interesting discussion about open source companies and how they can either dominate or foster communities. In addition, we also talked about what it’s like for an open source software developer to work for an open source company. She works with many open source developers on a contract basis as well as many open source companies on a partner basis. Her insights were interesting.

Open source enables companies to collaborate

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:37:26 -0700

*Dave Neary gave me his speaking slot at OSiM USA. I have two challenges, make a talk to fit his title and abstract (although you can almost always safely ignore the abstract) and give a good talk in 20 minutes of time. Here are some thoughts I have. (The title of the talk is Increasing Ecosystem Collaboration through Open Source but I’ll let Dave blog that talk.) *

Open source software has proved that collaboration between individuals, regardless of geography, time and management structures, can work really well. The open source software model works:

5 types of company open source relationships

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:19:14 -0700

Companies and communities is a topic I’ll speaking on at SCALE. I welcome any feedback or points to consider!

First off, there is no ideal company/community relationship. There are lots of different types of relationships between companies and the communities they work with (or don’t work with) - and no one way is perfect for everyone.

The goal should be for companies and individuals who use and support open source software to work effectively together. And part of working effectively together means making sure that the open source model is sustainable. Which means interacting for the good of the project, not just taking or using open source software.

12 tips to getting things done in open source

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:27:28 -0700

Most people used to the proprietary software world, with no experience in open source software, are amazed that anything gets done. (And lots gets done in the open source, way more than in most proprietary software companies!) And people new to open source are usually at a loss as to where to start. Often they come with a great idea, tell a couple of people who confirm it’s a great idea, and then … well, and then they don’t know what to do and the great idea fades.

Setting up a computer lab in Mexico, how it all came about

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:52:57 -0700

Some friends and I are setting up a computer lab in an elementary school in Huajuapan de Leon, Mexico. You can read about our project on a new blog I set up. I’ll write there about what distribution, software, and hardware we end up using. (And if you have an old but not outdated computer lying around, we’d love to have it for the kids!)

I thought I’d share here how the project came about, as I get asked that a lot.

What do I do as Executive Director of GNOME?

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 10:55:54 -0700

I get asked a lot what I do, exactly, as executive director of the GNOME Foundation.

First off, I want to say I’m really glad I work for an organization where people feel comfortable asking “what do you do?” It shows they care about the organization and are not afraid to ask tough questions. Have you ever asked your boss what they did, exactly?

Secondly, I have to admit that when I first got asked, that first day on the job at GUADEC, I wanted to go “I don’t know!! What do you think I should be doing?” (I did ask the “What do you think I should be doing part” of a few people and I’m always interested in hearing anyone’s answer to that question.)

Sneak preview of my talk next week: "GNOME as the computing platform for the future"

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:15:44 -0700

Next week I’m speaking at the South Tyrol Free Software Conference where the theme is “free software for innovative business.” If you are in the area, you should come - the conference is free and has good speakers and lots of interesting attendees.

I know you are traditionally supposed to post the transcript of your talk after you give it. However, any feedback I get between now and then can only make the talk better. Also, the real talk, in person, with voice, slides and a chance to ask questions is very different experience than reading it in a blog and commenting. So I think one does not compete with the other.

2.4 million more open source desktop users

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:14:12 -0700

According to Stephen Vaughan-Nichols there will be 2.4 million more Linux desktop users by the end of the year. And that’s only counting Eee PC users.

To be exact, according to Asustek, “The company shipped 2.5 million notebooks in the first half of this year, 1.7 million units in the third quarter and is expecting to ship 1.9 million units in the fourth quarter, bringing the company’s annual notebook shipments in 2008 to at least six million units.” Breaking that down by operating system, “The ratio of Eee PCs preloaded Windows XP and Linux stands at 7:3.”

Does money kill good motivations?

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 06:28:02 -0700

I get asked a lot about my “Would you do it again for free?” talk. (“Would you do it again for free” was about the question, if you take developers that are working on open source software for free and you pay them, if you stop paying them, will they still work on open source software?Â This was the topic of my keynote at GUADEC, LinuxConf Australia, and SCALE - the talk evolved over time. The next step is to communicate how companies can work effectively with communities.)

GNOME Marketing Interview

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:14:21 -0700

Sandro Groganz interviewed me at OSiM - his questions were all about GNOME Marketing. (I even got to show off the GNOME Annual Report.) If you find it interesting, please add your thoughts or, better yet, join the GNOME Marketing team!

What does a nonprofit board do?

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:09:59 -0700

I now work for a nonprofit board of directors, so when one of my friends told me that she just joined a nonprofit board and took a class on what it means to be on the board of directors, I got pretty excited.

Over lunch, my friend (Serena) answered all my questions and brought me her class materials. The slides looked like the discussion might have been interesting. The booklet she got (which she said they valued dearly and I checked, it sells for $20) was a good summary. It was less than 30 pages of content but it summarized the board of directors’ duties well. (And I’m happy to say I’ve seen the GNOME Foundation’s board doing all of these things!) There’s an even shorter online summary here, as well as a lot of good (free) articles on the BoardSource website. From the book Ten Basic Responsibilities of Nonprofit Boards:

How I'm learning to create effective presentations

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 10:21:36 -0700

Creating effective presentations is really hard. Here’s a short summary of my journey and the two books that helped me. (This started out as a book review and I realized that what I really wanted to write about was how I was learning to create presentations.)

The number one thing that has helped me give effective presentations is giving lots of presentations. Practice makes perfect.

My very first professional presentation was at an HP Unix conference. My boss’s boss’s boss was in the room. He told me later that he wrote “SLOW” really big on a piece of paper and held it up over his head. I missed it.

Social Norms vs Market Norms

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:01:00 -0700

Social norms govern whether you are willing to help a friend move or cook dinner for your family. Market norms govern what you are willing to do for how much money. In an experiment to show how social norms vary from market norms, Dan Ariely created a computer task where volunteers had to drag circles into boxes. He then divided his volunteers into 3 groups.

Group 1 got $5.00.
Group 2 got either 50 cents or 10 cents.
Group 3 was asked to do him a favor.

Not surprisingly, group 1 - the highest paid group - outperformed group 2, but group 3 - the volunteer group - outperformed them all.

501(c): (3) versus (6)

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:36:50 -0700

501(c) organizations are US non profit organizations. 501(c) is actually the name of the IRS tax code that defines non profits.

There are actually 28 kinds of 501(c)’s. I’ll focus here on just two:

501(c) (3) - the GNOME Foundation is a 501(c) (3)
501(c) (6) - the Linux Foundation is a 501(c) (6)

They are both nonprofits, exempt from federal income tax.

Here are some of the main differences: (Note that I am not an attorney nor an accountant, so you should consult other experts if you are actually creating one of these organizations!)

Fundraising for a technical nonprofit

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:53:56 -0700

The GNOME Foundation is a nonprofit organization, a 501(c)(3), and is funded by donations from individuals and companies. So as executive director of the GNOME Foundation I figured I should learn a bit more about fund raising.

While there are a lot of books about fund raising, there’s very little information out there about fund raising for technical nonprofits. And technical nonprofits really don’t fit the traditional nonprofit model. (Anybody up for a telephone drive where you call all your friends and relatives and explain what great things we’re doing and ask for donations? Not.)

Afraid you'll get sued for using open source software? Think again.

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 14:54:22 -0700

I gave a talk at LinuxWorld called “Avoiding Open Source Lawsuits: Five Steps to Effective Open Source Governance in the Enterprise.” I suppose it wasn’t the wisest title since my point was to dispell FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) not create FUD. (I borrowed the title (and a few slides) from an OpenLogic webinar, although my talk was substantially different.)

The point of my talk was that although I think there’s very little chance you’ll get sued for using open source software, if you (or your manager) are worried about it, there’s a few things you can do to dispell those fears. (My goal is to convince more people to use open source software by dispelling myths and giving people tools to convince the opposition.) By having clear policies and processes for dealing with open source software, a company can ensure that not only will they not be doing anything they could be sued for, but if they are sued (or just approached by someone like the SFLC), they can show them that they were doing their best to comply with open source licenses. If you show you are doing the right thing, open source developers and those that represent them are more likely to help you straighten things out than they are to sue you. Open source software developers in general want their software to be used!

Imagine twice as many developers

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 06:31:14 -0700

I didn’t see Danese Cooper’s talk “Why Whinging Doesn’t Work” but the title has really been bothering me. I almost titled this post “stop telling me to stop whining!”

I should start by saying I have never complained about my career in technology. (And I’m sure Danese wasn’t thinking about me personally when she wrote her title!) To the contrary, I feel like I’ve lived a charmed life in technology. Not only have I had very few negative experiences but they’ve been outweighed ten times by all the positive ones. And as I tried to point out in my lightening talk, in every negative gender related experience I’ve had, it’s always been guys who’ve jumped in to straighten things out.

Sugar (the software on OLPC) and my conversation with Walter Bender

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:54:28 -0700

I had a good conversation with Walter Bender, former president of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) and the founder of Sugar Labs. Sugar is the software that comes on OLPCs. It also comes in some of the Linux distributions like Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora and can run on most laptops.

Walter is interested in how Sugar Labs can make Sugar successful. He wants to make Sugar successful because Sugar helps computers be effective in education by providing a user interface for kids that promotes “sharing, collaborative learning, and reflection.” It’s currently used by half a million kids world-wide through OLPCs but there are a lot more kids out there.

Seven mentors!

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:03:33 -0700

So earlier I blogged that I had seven bosses. (It was mostly in reaction to the fact that I felt like I was getting way too much attention!) But I realized this morning that I really feel like I got seven mentors. What a way to start out a new job - with not one mentor but seven!

The GNOME board of directors has been great. They were very clear from the beginning that I should feel free to ask them any questions. When I expressed concerns that I was going to flood their mailboxes, they said, no, no don’t worry. (I think that was Vincent - I hope the rest of you agree. :) They did tell me not to necessarily expect verbose replies and that I might see a lot of “+1"s which means “I agree” or “me too”. So I’ve been sending them lots of mails, some important, some FYIs and some just downright trivial (who does x?) and they’ve replied quickly to all of them!

20 things you can negotiate in a job offer

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:41:21 -0700

John Mark had a great post 10 Survival Tips for the Modern Wageslave. I thought I’d follow up with another piece of career advice that I never got: every aspect of a job offer is negotiable. I actually got advice from my university career office to NOT negotiate a job offer. Luckily I got other advice too and since then I’ve learned it’s all negotiable. This isn’t a post about how to get the biggest salary. It isn’t even a post about how to negotiate. My point here is to say that it’s all negotiable. If you’ve always wanted a title of “technical evangelist”, you can ask for it. If you’ve always wanted a love sack with your name embroidered on it, well, they might think you’re weird, but you can still ask for it.

Learning not to cry in today's work place

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:04:19 -0700

One of the things I’m passionate about is encouraging women in technology. With that in mind, I’m going to talk about something that’s never discussed in mixed company: crying at work. Or rather, trying desperately not to cry at work. I’ll tell you how I try not to cry at work and I’ll tell you how you can help someone who’s trying not to cry: create space. Tell a joke, change the subject for a minute.

7 of the most common open source myths

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 00:49:00 -0700

Here are some of the misunderstandings around open source software that I hear every day. Feel free to add your own!

The most important thing is whether you modify the code or not. I keep hearing from people, “we’re ok because we didn’t modify it.” Or they create a policy that doesn’t allow anyone to modify open source code because then they think they are risk free. I agree, modifying open source software may cause a support problem, but it isn’t what triggers anything special in the license. The GPL says that if you make modifications to the software, you have to distribute those modified source code files with your binaries. But it is the distribution that triggers that clause, not the modification. So if you distributed the binaries unmodified, you’d have to distribute the source code. And if you linked statically to those GPLed binaries, you’d have to distribute your source code as well. But only if you distributed your product. If you are using it in house, it really doesn’t matter whether you modified it or not. Except from a support perspective.
If you modify GPL code, you have to give the modifications back to the project. I highly recommend you do give your modifications back - it’s the nice, neighborly thing to do. It also makes your life easier to be using the standard version and not your own forked version. However, you don’t have to give those modifications back. You only have to give the modified source code to anyone you give the binaries too. Now note that they can give that modified source code to anyone they want, which brings me to the next point.
Distributing GPL code under an NDA does not count as distribution. I’m not an attorney, and it hasn’t been taken to court yet, but I thinkÂ most attorneys would agree with me that distributing GPL code under an NDA not only counts as distribution but the recipient can give that GPL product to anyone they want to under the terms of the NDA regardless of what your NDA says. It’s not a risk I would take.
**If you are only using open source software internally, you don’t have to worry. ** First I’d argue that nothing used internally stays internal - what if you share with a partner or sell a group to another company. That said, many licenses have clauses that trigger on something other than distribution. Sometimes they are simple, sometimes they aren’t. For example, one says that you have to buy a copy of the book for everyÂ developer on the team. Regardless of whether you redistribute or not.
Anybody can sue me for using open source wrongly. Only the person that owns the copyright for a piece of software can sue you for violating the license. Typically, the person that owns the copyright is the person that wrote the code. They can however give that copyright away. They can even give it away and keep it for themselves so that two people hold the copyright. The copyright holder is also the only person that can change the license on a piece of software. (Note that this is why SCO lost - in the end the court ruled that SCO didn’t hold the Unix copyright.)
There is no support for open source. First off,Â lots and lots of products are open source. The support options vary widely from the do it yourself variety to multiple companies competing for your business. The problem is you have to do a lot of research - the products’ name doesn’t give you a direct clue to the company that supports it. And you might come up with more than one name and have to compare several companies. But there are lots of people and companies out there supporting open source software.
Freeware and Shareware are open source. FreewareÂ and shareware are not open source. All things free are not open source. Just because it’s free, doesn’t mean it’s open source. The freeware and shareware licenses are very different and do not meet any of the traditional open source guidelines like providing source code, allowing modification and redistribution.

Got any others?

Book Review: Perfectly Legal by David Johnston

Mon, 10 May 2004 16:00:21 -0700

If you own stock in an American company, you should read this book. If you pay taxes in America, you should read this book. Clearly, I believe everyone should read it.

Here’s my quick review (with more details below):

David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter formerly with the New York Times, describes what is wrong with our tax system. It taxes the poor and rewards the rich. It allows the rich and their decedents to continue getting richer while leaving middle class and upper middle class salary workers less and less to save.

About Stormy Peters

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Short Version

For over two decades, I’ve helped companies navigate the shift to open source: building strategies, growing communities, and showing organizations how collaborative development creates real business value. As a keynote speaker, I take those lessons to the stage, helping audiences understand not just why open source matters, but how to make it work in practice.

What I Bring to the Stage

Everything I talk about on stage comes from experience. I’ve helped organizations navigate the open source journey firsthand, and that’s what I bring to every talk.

Contact

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Get In Touch

You can connect with me on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/stormy/

I’m always interested in connecting with organizations and communities looking to enhance their open source strategy or address specific challenges in their InnerSource and open source journey.

Whether you’re interested in having me speak at your event, provide consulting services, or simply want to start a conversation about open source opportunities for your organization, I’d love to hear from you.

Speaking

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Transform Your Next Developer Event

Are your developers struggling to adapt to rapidly changing technologies? Is your organization searching for practical ways to integrate AI and collaborative methods into your workflow?

I deliver keynotes that inspire action. From addressing the United Nations to energizing thousands of developers at major conferences to facilitating workshops with lead development teams, I create memorable experiences that drive real change.

My talks combine strategic vision with practical implementation – helping audiences overcome resistance to new technologies while providing clear pathways to success through collaboration.