About the site
The goal of this site is to provide longer-form articles on broadly Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) topics specifically and Computer Science and Information Technology in general.
They might range from commentary on policy (such as Digital Sovereignity, or FLOSS regulation), to experiences on developing FLOSS, business, models, license choices, or operating or deploying them.
Another ambition of mine is to further my own understanding and experiences, so notes on books, articles, papers, trainings, or my own experiments with processes or technology are also in-scope.
Practicing the art of writing and knowledge sharing; selfishly, because I have found there's rarely a better path to finding the gaps in your own understanding than trying to explain it to someone else, and be that a text document nobody else ever reads!
In contrast to my social media channels which show a wider slice of life, this site focuses on CS/IT/FLOSS.
However, it's impossible to have a meaningful dialogue about CS/IT/FLOSS topics without considering also their societal and political and environmental implications and contexts; I consider the attempts to "keep politics out of tech" to be deeply flawed, misguided, and something usually only very privileged people can afford.
About Me
My name is Lars Marowsky-Brée, and I have been dabbling with computers since 1988. My first true and conscious experience with Free Software was my switch to Linux in 1994, working for an Internet Provider as a student, and it's been my full-time career since about 1998.
Free, Libre, Open Source philosophy is one I care deeply about, more so than proprietary software. Given how software underpins so much of our civic infrastructure and influences our lives, I'm convinced that proprietary software has its places; and also places where it has absolutely no business to be chosen.
At a technical level, I'm extremely fascinated by dependability of (distributed) systems; from low(-ish) level storage to fault tolerance and availability of geo-scale services. The complexity of these systems holds a strong appeal to me. While I am not inclined to go off on rants about programming languages (which is mostly a waste of effort), the first time I read about Rust I felt someone had finally understood the collective PTSD C inflicts on us.
I am very much not a UI/UX person (as you perhaps can tell from the fancy design of this site!). Give me C/Rust any day of the week, and keep the graphical frontends away from me.
My professional life has arrived at that stage where I rarely get to write lines of code myself, but is mostly orientated towards architecture, processes, best practices, and providing meaningful glue between the various business functions. Yet, I feel I remain an engineer at heart - but it's impossible to do proper engineering without considering the trade-offs and constraints.
I'm currently based in Berlin, use he/they pronouns, and besides technology and its multi-dimensional impacts, have an obsession with food and tend towards an excessive amounts of reading.
At the footer of every page, there's a plethora of ways to contact me in case you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions about this site's content.
I'm also grateful if you let me know if anything I wrote was actually useful to someone else!
Disclaimers
Personal Content
In no way should content on this site be attributed to, or seen as official positions or statements of my past, current, or future employers, or any other associated organization.
Please do not contact me personally about them either, but utilize their dedicated channels directly.
If you wish to contact me in my role as an employee, please also utilize my work-related e-mail address.
Non-commercial
This site does not pursue any commercial goals nor contain any sponsored content. Should you find an untagged affiliate link, please let me know, because that'd be a mistake - unless I'm using someone else's sponsored link because I believe they deserve the exposure, or if it is the only way of referencing external content.
The articles on this site are not sponsored by, paid for, or requested by my employer.
Attributions & Credits
This site would not be possible without: