Begun as part of the Processing Foundation Fellowship in 2024 ("Sustaining Community: Expansion and Access"), "Aligning an Open Source Ethos" attempts to take steps towards reconciliation and alignment of value-based goals among open source communities. Working with contributors to, participants in, and members of a variety of open source projects (both inside and outside of both the Processing Foundation and the creative tech field at large), artist, programmer and researcher Roopa Vasudevan has begun to explicate and outline core values that participants in these spaces take to heart.

This zine collects the preliminary findings from a questionnare and series of interviews conducted in the summer and fall of 2024. The zine introduces the question and the project’s scope, and then goes through several sections outlining the motivations that bring people to and keep people participating in open source projects; the challenges that people observe that lead to tension, conflict, and misunderstandings; and the first steps at future possibilities once we understand and articulate these common experiences.

Written and designed by Roopa Vasudevan. Risograph printed by Risolve Studio (Lancaster, PA), using black, sunflower, and fluorescent pink inks. 40 pages, edition of 100.