Here's my talk from #EO2026, "the unreasonable cost of open source contribution".
We all say we want lots of high quality open source software, but we don't like to pay for it. When we do talk about it, we rarely talk about the actual human on the end of it doing the work, and their wants, and needs, and aspirations and capabilities. We make the people invisible, and so we don't notice when they're burning out, or when they just disappear.
I can only tell you about one such person - me. So this talk is where I tell you about who I am, what I do, who I do it for, and how much that actually costs in real dollar terms, and I encourage you to think hard about your version of this talk. If we're serious about the open source future we say we want, then we have to talk about the humans that will do that work, or we all lose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_HLxReyFq0
