Which behavior do you have as a member of a FOSS community?

Which behavior do you have as a member of a FOSS community?

by AnnaLee ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Lately, I have been talking with other Outreachy applicants and integrating myself with more FOSS (Free Open Source Software) communities. One of the things that I have been observing, and asking myself is: How is my behavior reflecting on my community?


When we talk about FOSS communities we need to understand that the lack of an institution strongly representing the initiative, it’s us, the members who dictate the tone.


And as important members, people that should be welcoming people aboard the amazing initiative of FOSS how are we behaving? Are we portraying a friendly image, open to answer doubts, and embrace new colleagues? Or are we being reckless and distancing new members?


Programs as Outreachy, Google Summer of Doc, and Google Summer of Code are initiatives aimed to integrate new blood into FOSS communities. However, how are we welcoming those new members?


I’m writing this because I have been seeing applicants, people full of ideas and life, ready to commit themselves to the FOSS community being demotivated by distant colleagues, not feeling welcome, or just how hard it is to understand the process flow or how to contribute.


How can we make them feel at home with FOSS with we are making poor work as hosts and mentors? How to compete for them when the private sector is much more appealing and friendly?


We need to change our mindset. FOSS shouldn’t be that hard to contribute with. It should be organic, pleasurable, and give these members great experiences.


Communities that arise with internal drama, that have leadership fights, with founders that reject the idea that the community is bigger than them. This isn’t what we want to show to new members.


We should be welcoming to their doubts, we should create communication channels that bring them closer to us. We should work daily to make their experience as pleasant as possible. Because that’s the reason behind FOSS. Prioritizing people and not the software license.


Let’s start working to help our members feel valued and welcome, let’s work to integrate our interns and help them grow careers inside FOSS.
Let’s make the difference by being better communities than the private sector. We have the potential do to that. So why so many people lose interest in FOSS and just bleed out of our communities?


We need to look inside our community problems and try to work on that. If this isn’t fixed, there’s no incentive program that will make FOSS communities great and busy.


Let’s start with us!


So if you are a member of a FOSS community, especially one that works with programs like Outreachy, GSoC, and GSoD, look into your new members. See if they are welcomed, this goes a long way.

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The impacts of not documenting your software

The impacts of not documenting your software

by AnnaLee ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Here I am again talking about software documentation.


If you are still skeptical about the need for documenting your software product, I have some news for you.


My activism on behalf of software documentation and FOSS communities isn’t new. However, right now, all that I have been preaching about when it comes to documenting software came to be true.


Last month I got a call from a Brazilian company. They are desperate to get someone to organize their documentation and create a successful process flow for their company.

It turns out that I have been saying to people from this same company how they are lacking the proper care when it comes to documenting their product. Now, that they got to sign with an international company, they are desperate because said company won’t accept software that has no documentation.


Funny thing is, I have been predicting this situation for quite a while now. So here I go again. The best advice that I can give your company/startup is document, document, and document. So when you get the chance to sign an international contract, people won’t look down on your project.
Yes, the documentation process tells a lot about a company and how it deals with Software Quality, software assurance, and problems.


It’s evident that if you don’t document your failures and problems, then you got a big chance to repeat the same errors over and over. Does your company have a high rotativity of employees? And you haven’t think about creating legacy documentation? Well, guess who is going to spend much more time to train an employee? Yes, it’s you.


Big opportunities won’t embrace your idea if you can’t show the minimum respect for software documentation, and technical writing. It’s as important as your software running. Believe me, when the opportunity comes you don’t want to be caught by surprise and with just 2 months to organize your whole process and document it.


Do it right, from the beginning and you will see that the benefits are much better than the time you “spend” doing the boring documentation task.
This is about creating a whole organizational culture over documenting processes, mistakes, workflows, features. If you create this kind of mindset, then your company will be much more organized and grow a lot more.

Because writing helps us to identify great enhancements, problems, and even opportunities. It helps employees to understand better a project, to keep everyone on the same page.

The Brazilian software scenery has a lot to learn especially when it comes to preparing to do business with foreign companies.


The great advice here is to help you with keeping a budget when contracting someone to care for your documentation. If you already have workflows designed and organized, software partially documented, then this person won’t cost you a lot. Just enough money to organize your documentation process and get things on tracks. But if you have a mess and expect someone to solve it, then expect them to charge you accordingly.

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Software Documentation: Chiming About The Brazilian Scenery

Software Documentation: Chiming About The Brazilian Scenery

by AnnaLee ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

As a software documentation writer, I have been struggling since I decided to focus on that forgotten part of software development: documentation. Brazil is a country that is having a software development bloom for a couple of years now. We had an increase in software companies, digital solutions, and other I.T. related ones. However, the software documentation grows ever so slow.


The awareness for concise and clear documentation, be it for the final user or even to make the software maintenance understandable to new collaborators, is almost null. This reflects directly at the number of positions available for technical writers, software business analysts, and many more that deal with software documentation.


Following some Brazilian software developers closely, I began to see a pattern of companies hiring programmers and overwhelming them with all the processes related to software delivery. This isn’t a generalization, we do have some companies that are down to earth and understand the different roles making a good software product. However, it isn’t uncommon to have a front-end being responsible for writing legacy documentation of the software product or even instructional documentation aimed towards the users.


There’s no need to say that it doesn’t work well. A front-end developer has to study and develop front-end applications, worry about the design and user experience, about integration with the back-end, and so on. If we force those professionals to assume two different roles they will not exceed in either. Brazilian companies are still seeing software documentation as something unimportant, thus not giving enough importance to this role.


The international market has been improving daily, seeing how projects with strong documentation can lead to fewer mistakes and build a better experience for the users. We all learned about good practices to develop, and documenting your software is one of them. Worldwide and among international companies, we have been seeing how software documentation has been improving their workflow and, is taken seriously. They are recognizing the need and the benefits of hiring a professional to deal with it.


I hope that Brazilian companies understand how important it is to have good documentation, not only for their users but also to aid new members and help with software maintenance. Until there I follow advocating for respect to each professional and recognition for their value as a collaborator. A programmer isn’t supposed to do everything in your company.


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Integrating Into FOSS World: How Bad Documentation Can Scare Applicants Away

Integrating Into FOSS World: How Bad Documentation Can Scare Applicants Away

by AnnaLee ♥ 4 Comments
Documenting For A Better World!

There’s a constant urge to bring new contributors to FOSS communities. A lot of it is obviously because of the open-source and free characteristic of these communities. However, FOSS communities need new blood for much more than just help with their code issue and volunteer work.

Analyzing how new contributors feel when trying to immerse themselves in a community brought the need to document and expose it here. FOSS communities are so full of the same kind of people, tech-oriented, contributors to other similar communities, that a human factor to integrate new users is failing. This becomes clear when reviewing all the doubts from Outreachy Applicants that come to me (and I’m not even a mentor).

What I see is two different things:

  1. A friendly, welcoming speech;
  2. Frightening documentation;

People in these communities are often volunteering and overwhelmed with their own share of projects from the community. It’s natural that they don’t get the time to hold an applicant’s hand and guide them through all the processes. Therefore, all that new contributors can count on are the tutorials and documentation provided by said community. And there is where the breaking point is happening.

Slightly outdated documentation sometimes is unavoidable, and we can give it a free pass when it comes to FOSS communities. Nonetheless, when the introductory documentation is scattered among different sources/Websites or when it doesn’t have a clear path to be followed, it demotivates new contributors.

To document something is a human equivalent of holding someone’s hand and giving this person a tour through our main activities and interests. Are we even doing it as a FOSS community? Are we enabling easy and clear paths for new contributors? Or do they feel constantly lost? Agonizing because they feel like it doesn’t matter how much they read they can’t grasp how the community works?

FOSS communities need new blood to get out of all the tech-related tasks and reconnect with humanity. We need to understand that our flow as a particular community can be completely different from another, and it can be extremely confusing.

So the question is: How can we make it better? How can we be the most human possible with newcomers?

What about we stop thinking as veterans in the community, assuming that certain things are ‘obvious’, and begin documenting this properly?

  • Do we need to chart a process flow so an applicant understands better the steps to contribute? Let’s do it!
  • Can we centralize all our initial guide at one place to make it easier? Awesome!
  • Is it possible to turn the reading process less time consuming using UML diagrams and mind maps? Great!

This is the kind of worry that a FOSS community needs to have. New contributors’ insight is very important to reach that point where an introduction process gets organic and natural. And as communities that depend on new people, we so desperately need to think like that.

I’m not talking about new, small/growing communities. This is a generalized problem. From giant communities to small ones. Applicants get so frustrated because they don’t feel a natural clear process to be immersed in the community. I have been seeing people giving up Outreachy helping FOSS communities because of this problem.

We need to change how we document, we need to understand how important it is to have organic and welcoming documentation. We need to begin giving more value to our Writers. Because documentation can change experiences and help FOSS communities grow even more.

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Outreachy: A Contribution Is Required

Outreachy: A Contribution Is Required

by AnnaLee ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

This week I received a twitter message from one of the applicants for the current round. In fact, he wasn’t the first to seek my help when it comes to the contribution period.

I’ve noticed that both applicants that I helped were overwhelmed trying to choose a project and get involved with the communities that they wanted to help. And we all, interns and even the ones that didn’t make it to the internship, went through this moment filled with uncertainty and anxiety.

That’s why I wanted to write this post, to help and provide some guidance among the pressures of choosing which community to contribute with.

First of all, take a deep breath and try to relax. This is for you, overwhelmed applicant. It can be stressful to look at the projects available to contribution and all the requirements. Then come the process to understand the community and how it works. Believe me, make a contribution may seem so hard at this point.

  • Make a list of all the projects that you feel comfortable with and that contains skills that you’re passionate about.

It’s very important to choose to contribute to something that you love. During the internship, this will keep your willpower. As I said to an applicant, don’t choose a project that may lead to learning a programming language that you hate. In the long run, it will become a boring task and may demotivate your workflow. It’s important to think about skills that will help you step up your professional game, but also something that you’re genuinely interested on.

  • It’s all about the community.

The project may seem perfect and you’re dreaming about it. Then you begin going into the community, present yourself, seek how you can contribute. Suddenly you realize that you don’t click with people there, for one reason or another. Maybe you didn’t like the workflow or didn’t feel /that/ welcome. Maybe they use a communication channel that you just can’t see yourself adapting to. And there goes your desire to contribute.

Integrating into the community is super important, not only for you to ‘test the waters’ and see if that is what you really want. But also because the other members want to get to know you, the mentors want to see how you deal with this first task. So presenting yourself is a big step!

  • Ask, read and if needed ask again.

It’s important to ask, to understand what are the necessary steps to make a contribution. Each community has it own trials and ways to accept contributions. Of course, it requires reading and reading. Lots of information will be available at existent contribution guides, some may be more confusing than another. However, it’s important to read before asking. When you formulate a question it needs to be concise, after all not all the members of the communication channel will be involved or even knowing about Outreachy applicants.

So leave the reading aversion aside and immerse yourself into knowing better the community that you’re applying for. Understand its vocabulary and terminology. It will make the contribution project way easier and manageable.

  • Don’t overwhelm yourself.

Last but not least, go easy on the projects. Don’t try to embrace more than you can. Focus on two projects at max, and give your best on them. I’m sure that if you work hard it will be enough to make a mentor notice you. It’s better to have one project well done, than three catchpennies.

I hope it helps!

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What is Tor and Why Use It?

What is Tor and Why Use It?

by AnnaLee ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Since I’ve chosen The Tor Project as my internship community some close friends got curious about Tor. Some of them heard of it during ‘deep web’ conversations and others had even used it once or another. However many of them had doubts and misconceptions about the Tor Browser. I must add that this post represents my opinion and mine only.

  • So what is Tor?

Tor is a browser as many others that we can use to surf the web (Safari, Chrome, Firefox). However, Tor’s main mission is to provide online freedom, privacy and censorship circumvention to everyone, free of charge. Breaking it down, Tor protects your data online while surfing the web.

  • Why someone would like to have a browser like that?

Sometimes when living in a free country, where we have no consequences for giving our opinion or even accessing certain websites, we tend to take freedom for granted. When we aren’t threatened by our sexuality, gender, race, life choices, social status, is easy to forget how many people are frightened daily. When an opinion online can be the cause for persecution and hate, consequences that can go as bad as death. This is the reality of many people using Tor browser.

Along the years that I’ve been into college and my early professional life I’ve read and heard people talking about Tor in different ways. But mostly referring to it when talking about the ‘deep web’. Breaking news: there’s no such thing as ‘deep web’. It’s all the same, all the content online belong to the web. The difference is that some pages are indexed and reachable through search motors like Google, Bing, Yahoo and so on. And the other side is only reachable through specific components, as Tor.

The things that one may find while looking for the non-indexed vary. But mostly it will be journalistic pages, activist groups, alternative opinions. The non-indexed pages aren’t all made of cybercrimes and cybercriminals. It’s vastly used by people that otherwise could suffer harsh consequences for exposing their thoughts, gathering for a protest or even discussing a certain topic.

Journalists are known to use private means to get their tips and gather the information that otherwise would not be gathered. It’s an important maintainer of human rights.

If none of the situations above apply, you can still use Tor to stop google and other websites and extension to spying on your online activity. Do you know when you make a search and then for months you see ads about it? This is Google storing your search history, accessing your information, selling it to marketing companies and inducing you to buy things. All the online data of many users is stored and used for this daily, generating millions to these companies.

  • How Tor works then?

Working with many access points and constantly changing the user network. Tor isn’t a VPN, isn’t a centralized point of access that can be easily tracked. It encapsulates your data and transports it safely across the Tor Network providing security and safeguarding your privacy. A website will not be able to keep your information as it would if using another browser. With powerful tools as First-Party Isolation, bridges to bypass censorship and bans, three layers of encryption, you get back the control over the internet and what you share online.

As Tor says: Sharing should be a choice. Privacy isn’t supposed to be a privilege.

I recommend people to follow Tor’s social media and read the blog. There you will find much more information. It’s important to normalize privacy among users and get the word out that Tor is here to help minorities and provide freedom.

You can also download Tor and try for yourself at The Tor Project website.

It is available for OS X, Android, Linux, and Windows.

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Are You Ready To Change Your Expectations?

Are You Ready To Change Your Expectations?

by AnnaLee ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

This post is one that I’ve been meaning to write for a while now. Because it is important to manage our expectations when it comes to projects. This topic has been discussed among Mentors, Alumni, and current interns in an Outreachy chat.


I had to give it a thought about all that I expected from my project and how things worked. It’s normal to feel a bit lost when things don’t go as planned, many of us interns, had to manage our expectations and be flexible about changes here and there. Many things happened during our three months interning and some changes and adaptations had to be observed.


When applying this to my project I can see clearly how I underestimated my tasks. I had mainly two main tasks. The first was to catalog all the posts from the Tor Blog and identify the used tags. The other one was to verify and update the press list. The first task took almost a month and a half, I was doing it manually and thought that I would be able to finish it in time. I was so wrong. As the weeks passed I began to panic, I had more than 2500 posts to catalog and then identify issues on the tags and I had done around 500.


My time was on the verge, I decided to take a few days and think about an automation solution. It came out as a JavaScript crawler to automate the info fetching from the blog and turn everything into a spreadsheet. It took me four days to finish the project. Then with more time, I began working on correcting the wrong tags directly in their blog.


Updating the press list was something that I know that would take some time as well, but I didn’t think that it would take as much time as the first task. It was harder than I expected because a crawler wouldn’t help me then! 😀


In the end, I’ve managed to complete all the tasks given and even began editing a post for the Tor Blog (I keep working on it with my former mentor). Therefore, my expectations were greatly modified. I see now that it’s a great experience that helped me to manage better tasks and my time.


What we all concluded is that changing expectations in a project is normal, and is a good sign of a professional that can deal with sudden problems and manage time effectively.


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Cybersecurity & Anonymity: What They Have To Do With You?

Cybersecurity & Anonymity: What They Have To Do With You?

by AnnaLee ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Sometimes being a Tech worker I tend to do and know many things, that I consider very normal and obvious, but many people around don’t. Our parents, grandparents, uncles, aunties and more may not understand simple security routines and the need for anonymity.

I didn’t realize that not only older generations underestimate the power of online info, but also newer generations. Sharing my thoughts with a friend around my age we got into a point where she was skeptical about the need to encrypt e-mails, use a safe search motor, use an anonymous browser and so on. This friend is quite techy herself, gaming, using 3D dev tools, however, she didn’t see the need for such things.

What I’ve been hearing most from people when talking about cybersecurity and anonymity is: “I have nothing to hide”. This is especially true when speaking about apps and software that track location, collect basic info, or ask for certain weird permissions before being installed. Also, talking about Google and how it makes a lot of profit from selling personalized adds based on personal e-mails and browser. Many of them tend to brush it off.

So why should we be concerned about this? Do we really have nothing to hide?

Recently The New York Times published an article about the tracking of American cellphones and its locations. For many users that was the first time that they really got face to face with the modern surveillance problem. A lot of people were shocked, but some already had an idea of how our data is being commercialized.

The data collected was sold to the journalists as “anonymous” data usually used to marketing and advertisement. A few days was all that it took for them to cross the dots and identify some of the people on the map. Exposing people’s daily life, legal and illegal activities, friends, habits and much more.

This is just a sample, imagine the places where women have no right to be at certain places at a certain hour? Or journalists fighting against barbaric regimes? Or even LGBTQIA+ people in countries that aren’t accommodative of them?

We take many things for granted due to being in a free country, where our rights are preserved. But have you stopped to think: what if the situation takes a twist?

That’s why we should support projects that allow us to be anonymous if we wish to do so. I’m not saying that you should frantically change Chrome for TorBrowser, and Google for DuckDuck Go. However, it’s important to understand that these tools have a good reason for existing and maybe, just maybe, we should think better about all those apps asking for location, info, pictures, friends and phone numbers.

How much is it worth to have privileges with certain apps integrated services against having the risk of having your browser historic, e-mails, location and etc. sold to someone?

There’s a need to raise this topic and ask questions, to promote awareness among people. A lot of users are feeding Big Databases every day, offering metadata all the time, and they don’t even know.

Do you still think that cybersecurity and anonymity have nothing to do with you?

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Mailvelope – How To Keep Your E-mails Safe

Mailvelope – How To Keep Your E-mails Safe

by AnnaLee ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Last week, a trend on twitter about a woman that had her phone robed and consequently lost money due to bank accounts being connected to it, made me rethink my security model. It made me realize how careless most users are with sensitive information. Everyone walks around with smartphones, carrying data that a few years ago would’ve been in a safe at home.

My mentor brought up encrypting our e-mails. At first, I was a bit skeptical about the need for this, after all, I was never a person to send sensitive information through e-mail. However, how weirded out would I feel having someone reading my private conversations?

It’s disturbing to think that anyone could intercept our internet packages and read our deepest secrets. I admit that I’m one of those people that truly uses e-mail, almost like any other push notification messenger. If there was someone tracking my average time to reply it would be less than 30 minutes almost always.

People tend to dismiss online security (as a lot of other online things) because they can’t really idealize the damage. But how would you feel if your neighbor intercepted all your mail and letters, read them, and you didn’t even know the motivation behind this? Feels bad, right?

That’s why it’s time to begin taking online security seriously. Encrypting your e-mails doesn’t need to be the hardest tech task of this week.

I was able to discover Mailvelope through my Outreachy Mentor. It’s the best match for me, works wonders with my gmail account and I understood all the functionalities in less than a week.

It’s Open-Source, secure, easy to deal with, can be integrated to your gmail, outlook and much more. Also, work as an extension on your browser. Having a girly moment here, but the visuals are super cute, I’m having a great time with this encrypter.

Let’s take digital security seriously and avoid situations like that. Having a phone robbed is a terrible experience, but waking up the next day to know that every penny that you saved got stolen is heartbreaking. Stay safe!


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The Myth of the Perfect Professional

The Myth of the Perfect Professional

by AnnaLee ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Very often I meet friends, colleagues, workmates, internet acquaintances and also some not so acquainted beginning careers as myself. Something that came into light recently is how many of us struggle with the professional image that we idealize for ourselves.


Legend says that by 20 we all should know what to do, what we want to achieve. Around 30 there’s this pressure not only to know what we want but how to achieve it. The myth of the perfect professional has been bringing a lot of impostor syndrome to all of us.


It’s so easy to log in Linkedin and scroll through a feed where all our friends have great achievements and seem to be thriving perfectly in their careers. The Selective Success has spread from Instagram and Facebook to haunt professional beings.


Despite all that we see, it’s important to understand that this is just the pretty side of the embroidery. Turn it back and you will see the mess. Getting our professional life together is hard and not every day is productive. Working with a mentor, as I am right now, can be challenging for some people as they tend to think that they are the only ones struggling.


Being an Outreachy Intern made me realize how important it is to share our struggles. During our first meeting between alumni and new interns, we talked about our first week tackling our respective tasks. People mostly said that they were doing fine, but eventually, everyone opened up and exposed their feelings.


Some of us aren’t having any technical problems with our tasks, but realizing that it’s a bit overwhelming with all the new environment is important to show to others that it’s completely ok to be struggling.


We must take this to our professional journey, we need to accept that struggles will come and that’s alright to suffer with them.
I must admit that although I considered myself a very private person that worried about online security I had to Adapt. After having more contact with the Tor community there were tools and methods to be learned and used that I wasn’t expecting. Encrypting my e-mails was never something that I’ve considered doing, but it was necessary.


I struggled to try to understand the hundreds of different options to PGP encryption and trying to make something work out with my e-mail server. I felt like a tech noobie asking questions to my mentor and everyone in the community. Questions that now, two weeks later, I can see how shallow and easy they were.


Asking for help is necessary, it’s a process that may help us grow even though it may be embarrassing sometimes. With my mentor’s help, I was able to set a nice add-on on my e-mail to encrypt everything. It was something that I had tried to do for one entire week before giving up and asking for help.

So don’t let impostor syndrome crawl into your skin simply because you struggled about something. Asking for help and sharing problems don’t diminish your expertise and worth as a professional. If anything, it makes you a better person!

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