Open Source Opening My Eyes

Update Added additional donation links suggested by @d12frosted

The world of open-source has opened my eyes to many things. It is hard to fathom how people from all over the world have worked together to build software and community.

Most of the time, I get caught up in the technical aspects. However, today I have been swept up in the people side of things. Open-source software has been built across borders and beliefs. This work is often done with spare time out of passion and love. While I know the space is fraught with problems, many of which I will never see the true nature of, I find hope in the framework of community.

Over the last few weeks, since Russia invaded Ukraine, the global-ness of the community has become more obvious to me. Living thousands of miles away, clearly safe from the warzone, I can escape the issues and focus on my daily life. To be completely honest, I often strive for this, preferring to be lost in worry about something like work to ease the overwhelm of war, displacement, loss of life, pandemics, inequality...

Fortunately, my shell of ignorance is occasionally pierced, and I am forced to confront the cruelness of the real world.

I don't have anything clever or eloquent to say. I don't have an interesting take on the situation. I just want to express my sadness, my overwhelm, my hope. I want to thank people that have found ways to break through my hiding and ignorance and remind me that things are not okay. There have been several blog posts and efforts that have done this. I am writing this after seeing this post from @d12frosted. While I have never interacted with this person, I started following them because of their role in the Emacs community. They made it easy for me to use Emacs on my Mac...and now, they are living in a country that is being invaded.

I don't know the best or most effective way to support Ukraine. Starting with the resources outlined in @d12frosted's post is probably a good start.

The first suggestion shared is this page put up by Monobank. It is forwarding payments to the National Bank of Ukraine to support the Ukrainian army. Unfortunately, I was unable to successfully get my credit card payment processed (I am US-based). After using their handle in a commit message, @d12frosted received a notification related to my post and provided an alternative suggestion - Come Back Alive. They also re-iterated something mentioned in their post:

If you wish to help civilians in hot areas, there are many volunteers helping them (by evacuation or humanitarian help), just contact me via email and we’ll figure that out.

You can check out their GitHub profile or this comments for contact information.

Devs for Ukraine is a conference donating to multiple organizations and funds, including the National Bank of Ukraine (where Monobank is forwarding the donations) and Come Back Alive (@d12frosted's follow-up suggestion). You can also use Charity Navigator to help with vetting as well.

In a world of information that can provide better insights and guidance on this situation, this post feels useless. I don't know if I am providing any value to the world or reducing it by taking the time you could have used to read something from someone more informed. I don't doubt that deleting this file may provide more value than posting it. However, I am deciding to post it hoping to break through at least one person's shell of ignorance. Hoping to maybe get one other person to help in some way.