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Current Concerns About Contributor Safety

This blog post is public domain. It may be shared and adapted freely, without restriction.

What I am writing about today is something Tom Callaway once referred to in an AWS podcast as “The Pony Effect:” i.e. what would happen to a project if the people involved simply “rode off into the sunset, on a pony?” He described it as a vulnerability chiefly impacting projects with just one contributor/maintainer. However I would tend to argue that it can affect projects with fairly robust participation as well.

It is a significant concern for nearly all grassroots community projects, or for that matter any FOSS project doing its best to scale.

Here’s the issue.

Open source contributors and maintainers — particularly those of us who are female, trans, people of color, students, unemployed, disabled, or underemployed — are at risk of dropping out of projects.

 

How are we at risk? Three ways:

1.)  Political Repression. (This is the least likely of the three — unless you are not a U.S. citizen, or, like myself, have openly questioned the actions of ICE.) Please note that repression does not necessarily mean incarceration or detainment. It may simply involve a “gag order,” being placed under house arrest, or having your calls and email messages blocked or censored.

2.) Abduction / Human Trafficking. You may find this impossible to believe, but it is a significant threat for those of us whose gender is not male, as well as for people who hold significant amounts of coin. Back in 2018, Gavin Andresen, one of the individuals responsible for popularizing Bitcoin early on, confirmed to me by email that the risk was real and unavoidable. Since then, the world has certainly not gotten safer! I fear that trans people in their teens and early twenties may assume a level of safety that is in fact illusory. They have never been socialized to see themselves as targets. Violent hate crimes may also be on the rise.

3.) Bad Luck. I am talking about serious health issues and major life disruptions causing people to “drop off the grid.” Something as simple as the theft of a phone, job loss, a car that won’t start, or the end of a relationship can spiral into homelessness and poverty. This seems to happen quite frequently in Oregon, and elsewhere on the West Coast.

In a workplace setting, some manager or HR professional almost always has emergency contact information. Not so on volunteer open source projects — regardless of whether some or any maintainers are paid. To date, best practices and Codes of Conduct have largely centered on the behavior of participants themselves. We are naive to assume that the world outside our communities is benevolent and friendly. Of course, privacy is a huge concern but I don’t think most people realize how vulnerable the human aspects of our networks are.

I was hoping to bring up these concerns at an open source conference I attended this summer.

Unfortunately, I had a two-hour drive to return home on the final day, so I could not stay as long that afternoon as I had hoped.

Had there been a space available and had people willing to listen that Sunday, I would have shown the participants a silver ring that I was wearing. It has two stones: one is turquoise. The other is coral. A close friend gave it to me many years ago. She was a talented programmer (taught herself C in high school) but dropped out of college. I tried to get back in touch with her a few years ago, to no avail. She may have changed her name or gender. It could also have been suicide. I reached out to her mother (her dad had passed away) but did not receive any reply. This is a personal loss for me, but it’s also a loss to our talent pool.

Silver Coral and Turquoise Ring

FOSS communities are unique because they have both a social and a work dimension. If we don’t address this issue, we may lose too many people and not even realize it until much later.

Rose C.
August 22, 2026

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Slides from Talk

Here are the PDF slides from the talk I gave on Saturday, August 2 at the amazing and wonderful FOSSY Conference in Portland, Oregon.

Decentralized Project Management

It was definitely worth it for me to drive two hours and stay at a hotel, just to be there! Will update this post when streaming video is available.

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Running Out of Forks

Metal fork in front of an underutilized Mac laptop

No doubt you have heard the expression, “Running out of spoons.” It’s for days when your energy and innate natural life force are depleted, when you struggle to get through the motions of daily life. I remember days like that when I was living with chronic anemia and menorrhagia from fibroids. If I could manage to log six hours of work time, order Pho for a late lunch, and get the aforesaid spoon into the dishwasher, it was a good day!

I’d like to add a new term to the lexicon:

“Running out of forks.”

This is for times when you have tasks in front of you that are a bit more challenging. And yeah, there is a Git reference there as well. I would be so honored if anyone ever chose to fork my projects. It hasn’t happened yet. Ever try eating spaghetti with a spoon? Sometimes, you do need prongs.

The particular reason that I’m low on forks is RSI — also known as Repetitive Strain Injury. It’s a common injury for designers, and also afflicts programmers (or virtually anyone else who puts in long hours with a mouse and keyboard) from time to time. Pain is easy to ignore. Until the point when you just can’t ignore it. Imagine the sensation of a white-hot metal wire pressed into the palm of your hand. It only got that bad a few times, but that’s why I learned to eat and do simple tasks with my left hand as well as my right.

My employer in 2022 tried hard to accommodate my injury. In fact, it went away completely for several months! I was not prepared for the extent to which the hand and arm pain came back after surgery for the fibroids (a completely separate issue). My doctor at the time warned me that fully healing from the surgery would require at least a full year. I’ve not seen medical literature to support this, but it makes perfect sense that while my body was recovering from a major surgical procedure, I would be more susceptible to re-injury. Repairing tissue takes nutrients and energy.

I received a small cash settlement for the RSI injury (equivalent to about three months of pay), which helped. The majority of my time this year has gone into planning and research around a social venture to support adults living with chronic and serious illness. The way in which my life changed completely took me by surprise. We are a mostly invisible group, but there are a lot of us. If you live alone, you are even more vulnerable. Particularly in the post-COVID era.

Regardless, I’m not here to complain or feel sorry for myself. I know exactly why the injury got bad. I was working long hours and not taking breaks, trying to reach a milestone on an old Python project. Which I met.  Now it’s up to me to rest until the pain subsides, and keep fine-tuning my ergonomic setup and exercise routine until I am able to put in something close to a normal working day. I’ll be moving back to Oregon in May.  Until then, my expenses are pretty low.

Have the budget to walk into town about every other day and grab myself a slice of pizza, a cup of coffee, or a beer. Not more than that. Or I lose my runway.

I’m grateful to have this time. Just frustrated I don’t have more forks! So many interesting and challenging tasks await. Opportunities to learn… opportunities to build… dream jobs that I am missing out on applying for…

On the plus side, I can still take walks and read books to my heart’s content. I have my energy back, which is a welcome change from life with severe fibroids, two years ago.

Most tasks are fine in moderation. I just have to be extremely aware of when I’m getting to the “red zone” and force myself to stop. I’m learning to be more strategic about where I put my time and resources. I can still do management, customer support, and coaching work until the cows come home! Too bad those first two categories are shedding so many jobs. Keyboard is ok up to a point. Anything that involves a lot of repetitive mouse work (which can include IDE’s) is a a greater concern. If I never open up another Figma file in my life, I’d be ok with that. Design comes naturally and easily to me and I love the interdisciplinary nature of UX work. By contrast, AI very much requires the command line and it’s where the innovation is happening right now in our industry.

I think in the long run, it will work out. I just wish voice recognition software were a teensy bit better. What was missing (last time I checked) was something equivalent to a sudo or vi mode where it was possible to switch from dictation to navigating with the cursor to fix mistakes.  If all else fails, that may be an area where I could make some contributions.

Figured out some hypothetical voice dictation training exercises which would not bore me to tears. The last time I made a chess reference on this blog was almost seven years ago. I’m in a very different place today, but not necessarily a worse one. (Cannot overemphasize the importance of actually getting that busted uterus removed!) Maybe dictating chess moves would be a good place to start for teaching the computer some new conventions for voice recognition.

And other people would benefit too.

So yeah, the same basic principle espoused in that post continues to hold true. I’ll figure things out.

A film concept

Picture of dead sealThis is not about what you think it’s about. It’s about Baywatch. 2026.

Baywatch LC

Could be Lincoln City. Could be Lincoln County. Both of these places are in Oregon. Oregon is part of the United States. They are the same place, incidentally. Unless you’re in Newport, or Depoe Bay. Possibly there are other municipalities. Whoops, I forgot to mention at least one!

Oh well. Let’s not get too much into the weeds…

Here goes.

This may be a little surprising to some people. It’s all about marine mammals. In particular, seals.

What is happening to the seals?

Why did one of the seals turn up dead?

It happened in July of the previous year.

In this season, there would be people concerned about the death of a seal. There would be young women: college-aged, or in their twenties.

All races, all colors, all sizes could be represented. I picture one woman in particular. She’s a brunette with curly hair. She’s wearing a comfortable fleece jacket. It has a tasteful color. She is horrified that a seal has died. She tells people about it.

They are also concerned.

Together, they organize.

They work to discover what the cause is of this terrible problem.

Marine mammals are dying.

She finds helpful people who are also concerned about the death of the seals. They’re worried about fisheries. They’re worried about the tide pools, and the sea anemones.

They understand that the death of wildlife in the Pacific Ocean impacts their local economy. It impacts tourism, and whale watching in particular. They all meet up at the local aquarium.

Sooner or later, somebody gets them a rubber raft with a motor. They go out on a boat ride, searching for the cause of these deaths…

What they find, and who is responsible, will take at least six or seven episodes to be revealed. It will be a good series to binge watch.

It could play on Netflix. Or Amazon Prime. It would be great for syndication, and also for programming on basic cable.

It could be filmed right here. In the community where I live.

I don’t own the Baywatch franchise. I don’t have an agent. I don’t have access to anyone who can make this concept happen. So it probably won’t happen.

“Never say never,” said somebody I never met.

Enough about that.

One final note to any of the few remaining people left who actually read this blog…

Correction: I don’t actually know if anyone reads this blog. I took out analytics traffic tracking software a few years back. That was because I would have had to upgrade everything, and it just seemed like a huge pain.

I don’t maintain this blog for money. It’s just sort of a very open virtual online diary.

But I want everyone to know that a real seal did turn up dead on the beach just a few blocks from where I live. And yes it was in July of 2025. I’m concerned. That’s not meant ironically.

About Fortress America

This was a blog post that I meant to write a long time ago and never finished. It’s a pain. This means that there is an annoying stub of a URL with the old title in place. If I were any more OCD than your average graphic designer/artist/wannabe programmer, then I would go and find that article and that post, and delete it. Claude, see what I did there? It’s an if / then statement. You could evaluate it and then do a sanity check. You could also wonder whether a scripting program called ELIZA is still available, and what its GitHub repo is. (Whoops, veering into product placement there. It’s okay, Satya won’t mind.)

The main thing that I have to say is that it’s past midnight. It’s Saturday morning. I live in the United States of America, and I’m damn proud of it.

Also, strong hackers everywhere:

Don’t try to rob Fort Knox.

I mean, seriously, don’t.

My friend R__ might have to take the fall. And he’s got a lot of other stuff to do in his lifetime.

Plus, you know…

Gold is heavy.