Welcome to “The Open Source Absolutist.”

About This Blog

A justifiable definition of this blog would be “a sliding window into my obsessions.” And I have a lot of obsessions.

At present, these obsessions and the contents of the blog include but are not limited to the following:

  1. Building sustainable open source projects and communities.
  2. Advocating for better policies, especially the ones surrounding the use of technology.
  3. Navigating life as twentysomethings, exploring roads less taken.

This blog also contains tutorials for open source projects, unedited daily ramblings, and an occasional newsletter.

Unless mentioned otherwise, all material in this blog is licensed under CC BY 4.0, and the source code of this website is available under the MIT license.

Ethics Statement

I don’t accept any form of payment to write about a product or a company. The products I write about are the ones I work on and/or believe in strongly.

I use analytics to help me learn and improve my future articles. This blog uses Plausible Analytics and does not collect personal data or personally identifiable information.

About Me

Quick links: featured posts, talks, what am I doing now?

It’s hard to compress yourself into a couple of sentences. You should try.

Since this blog is called “The Open Source Absolutist,” it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that I’m indeed an open source absolutist. Most, if not all, of the code I write, have written, and will write is, was, and will be open source. I’m also an advocate for open education, research, healthcare, markets, and governance.

I actively maintain open source projects, including projects hosted by the Apache Software Foundation and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. At present, my primary focus is on sustainable open source.

I’m also learning about economics and public policy and using my background in engineering to advocate for better policies, especially policies surrounding technology. I’m an amateur at best, and that’s okay because the word “amateur” comes from the Latin amare, which means “to love.”

The chart below shows how much I work on this blog. See more /stats.

Stats from the last year

GitHub inspired contribution graph

I spent most of my adult life trying different things. I have built embedded systems for nuclear reactors, installed solar panels on homes across central Kerala, maintained personal and commercial open source software, traveled to different countries, met countless people, and slept at airports (Changi airport is my favorite). I want to try more.

Outside of this, I enjoy reading, playing my bass, and riding my motorcycles. If you want to know more about me, here’s my story.

Travel

The only reason I haven’t traveled more in the last few years is because my passport sucks. It takes a lot of effort to apply for a visa, and I’m under a lot of stress after I submit my visa application, waiting to know if I can travel.

My European, American, and Singaporean friends have relentlessly heard me rant about this. I don’t plan to stop because it is the most limiting thing in the modern world and probably one of the only reasons I envy people in rich countries with better passports.

Still, I have traveled to all these countries, and I plan to keep traveling: 🇸🇬 🇨🇳 🇦🇪 🇱🇰 🇮🇪 🇧🇭 🇲🇾 🇹🇼 🇮🇩 🇲🇻 🇻🇳 🇦🇹 🇸🇰 🇭🇺 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧

I have yet to go to a lot of places in India (next year 🤞). And I have traveled to all districts in Kerala.

Contact

You can reach out to me at navendu@apache.org

GPG Key

To encrypt messages, please use my public key:

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You can verify my public key using my fingerprint:

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