Apr 2, 2019Goodbye Open Core — Good Riddance to Bad RubbishThis morning, Chef Software announced that it will be releasing 100% of its software as Open Source, under the Apache License. Going forward, all of its product development will be done in the open, with the community, and released as Open Source Software. Chef is done with being Open Core…Open Source8 min readOpen Source8 min read
Published in Sustainable Free and Open Source Communities·Mar 12, 2019Free Software is the only winner in Elastic NV vs AWSAt the heart of Open Source beats Free Software values. The AWS announcement that they are launching the Open Distro for Elasticsearch, an upstream-compatible distribution of Elasticsearch and Kibana, is a victory for those values. …Open Source10 min readOpen Source10 min read
Jan 3, 2019Monorepo: please do!You should choose a monorepo because the default behavior it encourages in your teams is visibility and shared responsibility, especially as teams scale. …Software Development7 min readSoftware Development7 min read
Dec 21, 2018The Non-Compete Software MovementIt’s officially a trend — when a company needs to protect its business model from a perceived threat, and does so via licensing, it calls the middle ground license (somewhere between fully proprietary and fully open source) a “community” license. I made a throw away joke on twitter, saying we…Open Source6 min readOpen Source6 min read
Published in Sustainable Free and Open Source Communities·Dec 13, 2018We need Sustainable Free and Open Source CommunitiesTl;dr The short version: we should stop focusing on how to protect the revenue models of open source companies, and instead focus on how to create sustainable communities. Both because it leads to better software, but also because it’s better for business. Today I’m launching the Sustainable Free and Open Source…Open Source6 min readOpen Source6 min read
Aug 27, 2018Introducing The Community CompactThe recent conversations around the difficulties in finding a sustainable open source business model are close to my heart. I have spent the last decade plus of my life working to build an open source company at Chef Software. Over that time, I’ve made plenty of mistakes, experimented with various models, and…Open Source9 min readOpen Source9 min read
Aug 20, 2017Ambient RacismWatching the events of Charlottesville, and the aftermath, has brought out so many of the small, simple things I was raised around that I now cannot deny were the kind of tiny, ambient racism that infects so many of us. Growing up, it was not an extreme position to say…Racism5 min readRacism5 min read
Feb 8, 2017Songs for ResistanceRecently, Lin-Manuel Miranda (of Hamilton fame) put together a playlist called “Rise Up Eyes Up Wise Up” — on a recent road trip home, we gave it a spin. It’s a good playlist — but to me, it’s a resistance playlist designed for soothing the soul, rather than calling you…Hamilton5 min readHamilton5 min read
Apr 8, 2016Between the World and MeTa-Nehsi Coates’ book, Between the World and Me, was an insightful, empathetic, and frame-shifting book for me. My life has no shortage of mind expanding intellectual experiences — my wife is an erudite, accomplished political organizer; my family spent vacations reading books; I’ve had the privilege of doing work that…Racism5 min readRacism5 min read
Sep 17, 2015How to get more autonomyI had the delightful opportunity to speak at Automacon, doing a version of my Chef Style Devops Kungfu talk. One of the things I talk about is the importance of creating high functioning teams, that understand the bigger reason why they are doing what they do, and share a set…Leadership3 min readLeadership3 min read
