tychoish.com has always been a very eccentric and eclecticly focused weblog, with posts about knitting and technology sharing an equal stage with posts about tea. Despite this eclecticism, particularly in recently, one of my core interests and subjects for this site is free and open source software.
Having said that, I’m not your typical open source hacker. While I dabble in programing, I’m mostly a user experience guy. I’m interested in how we use technology and how technology affects our lives and thought. Most of my contributions, such as it is, to the open source movement is in the realm of documentation, usage scenario stuff, observation, and of course as an avid user.
In terms of the projects I use and am interested in, I’ve been working with git a lot recently, and when in need of a wiki engine, I always fall back on ikiwiki. I’m also interested in and am beginning to use a window manager called awesome which is a pretty clear reflection of my interest in user experience.
As for the larger issues surrounding open source, I’m interested in how leadership and democracy in project organization happen and develop, and how individuals deal with the problems that arise from collaboration in the development process particularly surrounding ownership and property rights. As you might imagine, some of these thoughts can stray into the academic, but I think it’s all pretty interesting.
And I hope you all do too; I look forward to hearing from you
tycho garen
2 September 2008