Rahul gives unsolicited advice

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that I'll be giving up to 5% of my annual salary to Free and Open Source Software , and one of the projects that I'm donating to is the Python Software Foundation (PSF) . I joined PSF at the Supportimg Member - Sliding Scale tier at 25 USD membership dues + additional contribution of 25 USD per Annum - roughly 5000 INR. This was prompted by the recent decision by the PSF to pause the grants program . Like my decision to become a member of the  the TeX Users Group  (TUG), the right thing to do now is to check what the PSF doing with my money or what they've done with funds/donations in the past. The PSF announced the 2024 annual report in June of this year  - checkout the annual report itself at psf annual-report/2024 . The PSF gets, and spends, a lot more money than TUG. For instance Annual revenue was a little less than 4.3 Million USD in 2024 and annual expenditure was a little more than 5.7 Million USD The PSF awarded 297K USD ...

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has a sustainability problem. For those of you who are a part of the FOSS ecosystem, or are fairly familiar with it, Duh. But here's a short intro for the uninitiated - you are relying on Free and Open Source software when you read this blog post. Most commercial software applications are made up primarily of FOSS. Our digital lives are powered by FOSS. Yet, a majority of the people who create, maintain, and sustain the FOSS projects are underfunded, if not completely unfunded. This isn't really news - for more than a decade now, people in the FOSS community have been complaining about the sustainability problem, and people have come up with varying solutions to the problem. A real solution to the FOSS sustainability problem involves systematic support from for-profit enterprises and Nation-State Governments but for the moment, let's focus on what I can do as an individual. And why am I bringing this up now? Because of what's happene...

So far, I've submitted talk proposals for three FOSS conferences. See the list of conferences and my proposals below. I'm expecting to submit a couple of more proposals for PyConf Hyderabad - a talk proposal on the GIL-ectomy (that I presented internally for a client), a talk proposal about the fossunited.org platform that we have been building at FOSS United, and a workshop proposal on the Frappe Framework that powers fossunited.org! Why am I sharing this here? Because not all of my talk proposals get accepted at conferences but that doesn't mean that the ideas or talks are useless. In fact, I've been wondering for a couple of years now that if a talk proposal gets rejected, I should just livestream the talk on my own personal YouTube channel instead of letting the idea die. This post is me taking one step in that direction. PyConf Hyderabad by HydPy community - 22-23 Feb 2025  DEVCONF India by Red Hat India - Feb 28, March 1 2025 FOSSMeet'25 by FOSS Cell NITC -...