Would Open Source Look Like If It Were Healthy?’

Sumana Harihareswara’s Github talk.

“What Would Open Source Look Like If It Were Healthy?” That’s the question Sumana Harihareswara set out to answer in her Github talk earlier this week — a talk that considers FLOSS in the broadest possible terms and still makes specific, concrete proposals.

https://www.harihareswara.net/sumana/2021/05/06/0

Harihareswara starts with the obvious proposition that “open source” can’t be healthy if the programmers who create it aren’t healthy, and draws a link between basic income, child care and universal health care and the health of open source.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q06viKCU4Z0

She also points out that the “health” of open source has been systematically poisoned by harassment, misogyny and racism, and names people who were driven out of OSS because of their gender and race — as well as people like Aaron Swartz, hounded to death by the FBI.

From there, Harihareswara embarks on three speculative narratives in which “user personas” — a common tool among software developers and product managers seeking to understand how to suit their work to its eventual users are elucidated.