I keep getting cold emails from VPN companies asking me to blog about their services. So, as a middle finger to them, I thought I’d share this instead:
Category Archives: Ethics and Values
A Short Guide to Consensus Decision Making
The Short Guide for Consensus Decision Making is a compelling introduction to the process.
Preventing a Tragedy of the Commons
Dries Buytaert wrote a compelling article on the challenges that large open source projects like Drupal and WordPress face in seeking to be sustainable, and preventing a tragedy of the commons, where large corporations use open source software without giving back.
Exercising Care and Giving Users Control
Aaron Gustafson makes a great point about the responsibility that developers have to respect the users of their applications.
Death to Bullshit
Death to Bullshit.com has been around for a long, long time (in Internet years), but it’s still just as relevant as ever.
Replacing Exclusionary Terms in Tech Jargon
There are a lot of cringe-worthy terms in technical jargon, but in addition to being exclusionary, they're also often bad metaphors, and more descriptive alternatives exist.
Guest on Hallway Chats
Tara Claeys and Liam Dempsey have a really interesting podcast where they talk to people in the WordPress community about what it means to be successful.
How Open Source Can Mitigate the Harms of Employer Copyright Claims
Almost every software company claims copyright on their developers' side-projects in order to protect themselves from lawsuits, but there's a way to do it without taking away the employee's rights.
Open Source World
TED Radio Hour has a great episode about the pre-technology roots of the ideas behind today’s Open Source movement, and how they’re being applied beyond the digital realm, to things like architecture, deep-sea rovers, and even democracy itself.
The Web We Lost
The Web We Lost does a great job of contrasting the values of today’s big tech companies and the values that made the Internet and Web so radically different from the mediums it replaced. The tech industry and its press have treated the rise of billion-scale social networks and ubiquitous smartphone apps as an unadulterated […]
Internet Slowdown
Today is the Internet Slowdown, to show support for Net Neutrality.
If you want to participate, you can install the Cat Signal plugin on your WordPress.org site, or enable the setting for your WordPress.com blog.
Walled Gardens
Jeff Atwood makes a compelling argument that the ideology and values behind private social networks (e.g., Facebook) conflict with the core values of the Internet, and that they’re doomed to fail.
Challenges for the WordPress Community as it Matures
Mike Jordan’s post on the WordPress community has some great insight and challenging thoughts. The truth is, however, that our community does not have these rare traits simply because its members are just that awesome. The primary reason that our community is so approachable, is that for the first several years of its life we had to […]
The Values Behind Startup Culture
What Your Culture Really Says is a compelling peak behind the startup culture curtain.
This is not a critique of the practices themselves, which often contribute value to an organization. This is to show a contrast between the much deeper, systemic cultural problems that are rampant in our startups and the materialistic trappings that can disguise them.
Sexual Harassment at WordCamps
It’s really disheartening to read stories like this coming out of the WordPress community, but kudos to Sarah for speaking out about it. We all need to be more aware of these issues and look for ways to prevent things like this from happening in the future.
The Importance of Taking Time Off Work
Seth Bannon’s article on taking vacations is a great reminder of how important it is to take time off, and that you should never feel guilty for it. I didn’t take enough time off last year, even though I could have, so I’m going to try and plan out some more time in advance this year.
The Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming
The Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming are very insightful, and worth revisiting from time to time.
Something to Keep in Mind
“Nothing recedes like success.”
– Walter Winchell
They Had This Beautiful Office…
I love this quote about Ani DeFranco from Small Giants: IRS Records wanted to sign Ani, and we went to see them in Los Angeles. They had this beautiful office. I thought, ‘Who’s paying for this?’ I couldn’t see anything they had that we really needed. IRS had a phone; we had a phone. IRS […]
How WordPress Saves Lives: Freedom, Hope and Custom Post Types
Paul Clark’s presentation at WordCamp Phoenix 2013 is a must-watch for any developer who’s interested in using technology to advance human rights and social justice. He describes how his team used open-source technologies to help a human-rights organization in Burma manage their information in ways that have a direct impact on their mission and the lives […]