Absolutely love this. Sean has understood the situation for a long time. Very cool to see his org was on board as well.

It _is_ supposed to be this easy.

It's been a long while since I worked at a big company but is it really unavoidable during a layoff that management can't identify the key people that cannot be lost?

Doing so seems like a real morale hit, "Oh, sorry, we didn't realize you were important. Please come back."

Oh, how I long for the days of blogs for miles and miles.

Actually, re-reading the tweet, I think he's looking for additional maintainers. He explicitly calls out that sponsorships ($) won't help him with the time requirements. I'm not sure the OSMF is right for him.

But I love the image. :)

It took me a second. Then I laughed. Then I answered the call.

I've considered similar. I have a bunch of stuff in the queue that is higher priority, so I don't expect to run that experiment soon.

However, the Open Source Maintenance Fee has eased much of my angst about LLMs slurping up everything. At least, until they put dev tools completely out of business.

I find this is a very real problem. And it's not just documentation and LLMs. The problem is also "us". We help some customers through their particularly gnarly problems then they kthxbye.

I wrote this last night, curious if you'd agree:

VAR needs a 30 second cap. If it isn't clear and obvious in 30 seconds let the call on the field stand.

VAR needs a 30 second cap. If it isn't clear and obvious in 30 seconds let the call on the field stand.

Forty Nine | RobMensching.com Today I turn 49. A lot has improved in the last year. So, as is tradition, let's take this time on my birthday to review it.

Forty Nine robmensching.com/blog/posts/2...

OSMF FTW :)

Open Source Maintenance Fee v1.1 | RobMensching.com Since it's release almost a year ago now, I've been collecting feedback on the Open Source Maintenance Fee. Earlier this week, I integrated a piece of feedback that deserved to bump the version number....

Open Source Maintenance Fee v1.1 robmensching.com/blog/posts/2...

@gregsdennis.bsky.social I have a few small changes planned for the OSMF EULA to address feedback from the last year. I see you're planning to adopt the OSMF, Feb 2. If you wanted to sync up, I'd be happy to show you the changes planned for OSMF v1.1.

Didn't have to be. I believe Astro could have done well if they adopted the OSMF. We're not likely to see that happen now.

Also, I knew with VC in the mix it was very unlikely. Oh well.

Still need to write up my thoughts on Astro, eventually.

I thought the exact same thing and I really like Cloudflare. But I preferred Astro as independent. Alas.

How can Tailwind CSS be so popular yet still struggle with sustainability? | RobMensching.com We don't use Tailwind CSS at FireGiant, but I can't stop thinking about it. As a CEO responsible for keeping the lights on, and as a long-time Open Source maintainer, the situation is uncomfortably…

Tailwind CSS has 30M weekly downloads and still had to lay off most of its dev team.

Popularity != sustainability in Open Source.

I wrote about what this says about OSS funding, sponsorships, and why maintenance needs to be treated like a real business cost.

robmensching.com/blog/posts/2...

Yeah, I don't know what to do about it. I guess it's one more thing maintainers have to deal with, get your SEO right from the beginning before someone else does a better job and directs traffic into a dead end forever.

It's interesting. I actually have this problem with my docs. Someone copied all of them, merged with some Microsoft docs, and made it look like one site. Problem is they lost interest and now it's terribly out of date but still ranks high in Google (better SEO with the MSFT doc mixed in, I guess).

How can Tailwind CSS be so popular yet still struggle with sustainability? | RobMensching.com We don't use Tailwind CSS at FireGiant, but I can't stop thinking about it. As a CEO responsible for keeping the lights on, and as a long-time Open Source maintainer, the situation is uncomfortably familiar....

How can Tailwind CSS be so popular yet still struggle with sustainability? robmensching.com/blog/posts/2...

Very interested. I've been writing about this around the OSMF. I'm curious how you see the world.

MSBuild In Depth: Putting It Together | Deployment Dojo S2E8 _Want your own dojo time?_ Train 1:1 with Rob: https://www.firegiant.com/services/consultation/?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Display&utm_campaign=dojo&utm_content=s2e7 0:00 Welcome 1:04 Topic…

This is the best episode of Deployment Dojo's MSBuild In Depth series yet. It's a capstone of the last 7 episodes. It's also a great example how the Deployment Dojo learning process works.

Join me watching it right now!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyIU...

It probably is real. Sounds like a Galen type of project. That means it's in MS Research, has 0 to 2 devs on it and is successful enough so far to add another.

That's how research projects work. A small group of exploring that which is believed to be impossible to see what actually is possible.

It felt like tons of people were purposefully failing reading comprehension to believe something stupid.

Galen is in MS Research. He's looking for one dev to join his project. A research project to explore the impossible to discover what is possible. That's what he does. Sheesh.

Galen is in MS Research. His goal is to try impossible things to explore the boundaries of what is possible. He's always optimistic about the future.

Could this project lead to MSFT rewriting all code to Rust? Maybe. But only because they discovered a way no one thought possible before they tried.

I read his post as an attempt to attract developers interested in an ambitious undertaking. Admittedly, I have more context than most as Galen recruited me for one of his projects long ago.

I can also recognize ambition vs charter. And research vs development.

But sensational assumptions are fun.

Oh, that's the research part. It totally sounds like Galen. He's built some amazing things by daring to.

Like the first Detours was ground breaking.

Galen is in research (I worked with him once). This is a research project, not actually a plan for Windows.

WiX Online Meeting 302 Live Now

We'll be reviewing WiX v7's final list of issues. There's only a bit over a month until WiX v7-rc.1.

See you there!

FireGiant FireGiant arms you with accurate support from the creators of WiX – so you can install with confidence.

Starting now - Deployment Dojo S2:E8 | MSBuild in Depth

www.youtube.com/@firegiantco...

Heh, too funny. Just saw a support ticket from an EU customer come in. :)