Strange Loop

2009 - 2023

/

St. Louis, MO

The Hard Parts of Open Source

As more people enter /r/elm and the Elm discourse, I have thought a lot about how "online communities" work. Patterns of conflict. Why those patterns exist. Structures that would diffuse that conflict in healthy ways. Initially I just wanted to get yelled at less, but I instead stumbled upon "a cultural history of open source" that may reveal a path to more civil and productive online communication in general.

Attendees will leave with (1) an inside perspective on open source projects, (2) a historical and cultural framework that I think can improve online communities right now, and (3) some interesting references and ideas to explore further in their own projects and interactions.

Evan Czaplicki

Evan Czaplicki

NoRedInk

Evan created Elm, a functional language for web programming. He is an open source engineer at NoRedInk, where the front-end code includes more than 200k lines of Elm. He works on Elm full-time, developing the compiler, language, tools, and libraries.