Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

Tag
Advice

08 Feb 2024, 13:00 p.m.

Whether And How To Trust A New Maintainer

How should we think about trust when it comes to adding new maintainers to a project? Another way of saying that is: if I'm an existing project maintainer, considering whether to entrust you with co-maintainership, …

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03 Jan 2024, 11:20 a.m.

Some Diversity Advice I Give

Colleagues ask me for advice on diversifying their hiring pipelines, recruiting and retaining volunteer contributors, and addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in marketing to and taking care of their users. Here are a few …

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19 Dec 2023, 11:05 a.m.

Nailing Down An Answer, Or At Least A Question

Someone in a group chat mentioned a particular annoyance in dealing with doctors, nurses, and similar medical experts. Sometimes you take pains to ask them a specific, deliberately-worded question, and they don't really seem to …

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14 Nov 2023, 10:45 a.m.

Going From Proprietary To FLOSS Product Management

Someone asked me for pointers on doing product management (and, to a lesser extent, project management) in Free/Libre Open Source Projects for the first time, after many years of experience in proprietary software. I basically …

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08 Nov 2023, 1:15 a.m.

Eldercare, Family Caretaking, and End-of-life Logistics: Stuff I Learned

My mother died recently, after a long decline in her health, and I was one of the main people who helped take care of her. (Here’s her obituary.) While caring for her, preparing for her …

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07 Nov 2023, 23:45 p.m.

Set Contributor Expectations To Reduce Ghosting

Let's say you're a maintainer who's just received a new contribution. A new contributor has submitted a patch/pull request. And the fundamental idea of it is one you like, but the diff itself will require …

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03 Oct 2023, 12:25 p.m.

A Few Tips on Seeking a Lawyer, Psychiatrist or Therapist

Recently I've helped a few folks as they sought professional help from lawyers, or mental health professionals such as psychiatrists or therapists. Here are a few tips; they're more relevant in the United States but …

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21 Aug 2023, 11:35 a.m.

User Support, Equanimity, And Potential Cross-Project Tools and Practices in Open Source

I met David Lord at this year's PyCon, talking about maintainer burnout and how to make projects more resilient. Since then, we've been chatting regularly to help us develop material for our respective writing projects. …

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29 Jun 2023, 12:15 p.m.

On Choosing Work Environments

Someone in a group I'm in just asked others' opinions on working in higher education. I said:In big institutions -- such as higher education and government and companies that have over, say, 300 employees -- …

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16 Jun 2023, 1:10 a.m.

My Current Approach To Reducing My COVID Risk

I follow a few main principles to reduce my risk of catching COVID-19:

  1. Avoiding sharing unfiltered air with people outside my household
  2. Noticing how safe I am and raising precautions accordingly
  3. Focusing on protecting myself over protecting unmasked people (in general)
  4. Spending money

In this post, I detail those principles as well as my specific protocols (masking, ventilation, self-testing, and so on), including links to examples and product vendors.

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