kilo.bytesize

I did not want to write this post. I still do not want to write this post, but it has become impossible to ignore the very real effects impacting us all. These span from political instability and violence to software compromise and eradication to the theft and slaughter of art wholesale. I will not detail all of these grievances here, for a post attempting to do so would need gigabytes of space and miles of screen space. Instead, I want to do something about all of this. However, I cannot do so alone.

Community

Some weeks ago I made a post about starting a Software Collective and received a handful of applications by people wanting to build something together. In the time since, I have been struggling with the reality of creating something like this, the responsibility of doing so safely, and the ability to do so efficiently. I am concerned that an explicitly anti-capitalist, anti-ai, anti-fascist organization could be targeted by right wing organizations and governments, including my own country's, but the need for community and collaboration is inarguable. As such, I am belaying my desire for perfection and starting to send out invites to those that applied. If you would like to be included, you can apply here. This may take some time as my health has been quite poor recently and I am not able to consistently sit at the computer.

Software

A consistent theme has followed me throughout my entire career in software development. I want to build one thing, but need to build another. Each time I would start on a project I would find holes, errors, and usability issues that I could not ignore. I've needed a monorepo tool, project templating, simple logging, type-safe code generation, a simple configuration language, nix flake ergonomics, something better than nix flakes, a better nix package set, a safe bootstrap chain, and now, seemingly a new language and operating system.

Those are not all things that I have wanted to build, but rather things that I found myself needing to build in order to properly work on the things that I did want to make. Now, the infectious failures of the industry and larger economic system have sufficiently tainted pretty much everything I use. My OS, programming language, editor, browser. Everything is AI, being killed in favor of AI, or openly fascist and actively hostile. I can't trust software anymore and that is both a difficult situation to be in and a depressing one. However, it has given me the opportunity to step back and really consider how everything is built from the ground up. I think we can do better.

It's rare you get a do-over. It's doubly rare that you have decades of knowledge at your disposal to inform such an endeavor. Now is that moment. We have the opportunity to start fresh now that the rest of the software world has abandoned us. In doing so, we are not beholden to any legacy baggage and can build a much better foundation and the future we desire. Doing so will be difficult, though, and a lot of work is needed. Even worse, the experience and knowledge to do so is slow to attain. That's where you come in. On our own, we may be incapable of such a feat, but together we can build anything.

The Greenhouse Initiative

Some months ago I began working on the monumental task to rebuild modern computing, an initiative I deemed “Greenhouse” with the intent being to slowly and thoughtfully grow software in a safe, cohesive environment. Today, I'm asking you to join me. The project already bootstraps a basic Lisp from scratch and has much more planned including a modern programming language with memory semantics both similar-to and better-than Rust, an Operating System with a novel capability-based architecture pushing nearly everything into live, reloadable user space processes, a resilient and privacy-focused mesh network that avoids legacy centralization entirely. If any of those sound interesting or if you have ideas of your own to contribute (or just want to talk to people about rebuilding computing), then please join us. For the moment, the project is available on GitHub, but will be moving to Codeberg or a similar forge for permanent safe residence.

Lastly

I do not have all of the answers and as much as I would like to do all the work, my health won't allow it. I do, however, have hope in humanity still and that extends to all of you. I truly believe that we can build a better future together and starting to communicate is how we begin.