Latest thoughts, if any, of Rachel Lawson...

Let's first be honest; this isn't yet a post COVID-19 world and it won't be for some time yet. However, in-person events are beginning to happen and we need to consider what that means, practically.

How do we maintain reasonable levels of safety for those people who attend? What do we do about those who simply cannot attend, either through concerns over their health or the inability to travel? I might not even be allowed into events in the USA at the moment as the Astra Zeneca vaccine I had isn't recognised there.

It's time to say farewell to Idris, my BMW S1000XR. In the five years since I bought it, we have made a pretty good job of living up to the "adventure" category this bike supposedly falls into in the BMW Motorrad line-up. We have travelled across dozens of countries in two, nearly (!) three, continents and ventured off-road once or twice in that time. 

Well, Pride Month is over, we saved the gays.

It's truly amazing how changing a corporate logo for a month can have such an effect. Obviously, we don't need to actually do work to improve the lives of a marginalised group all year - that would be far too much like work - stick up a colourful logo for a month and maybe a few posters. That'll do!

I have even removed all the colour from my own website in support of this approach.

“Would you like to come to my wedding?” I receive as a Slack message from a friend in the Drupal community.

“Sure! When is it? Where?”

“It’s in November, in Kota”

“Oh - wow - yeah, I’ll come if I can!”

At this point, it seemed like a good idea to look at a map - where on Earth is Kota????

How many times do we see corporates declare a love for the LGBTQIA community when Pride Month comes around? And then all that support seems to mysteriously go back into hiding at the end of the month? It's almost like it's "just for show"...

US President, Joe Biden, recently suggested that the US Government would be in favour of a waiver of patent protection surrounding COVID vaccine development. Whilst the US is only one country at the WTO and they generally only act on consensus, it will certainly make other countries think hard.

To be honest, though, I can't say I'm in favour of a patent waiver here. Avoiding the patents of other pharmaceutical companies isn't the "hard problem" in the pandemic environment we find ourselves in; getting hold of the ingredients to manufacture at global scale is.

Over the last few weeks, I have found myself thinking more and more about Drupal.org and the various websites and services that surround it, such as groups.drupal.org, events.drupal.org, git.drupal.org, api.drupal.org, jobs.drupal.org, Slack, drupalchat.me, drupical.com, drupal.tv,

Whilst the article published by JOE is important, it bothers me intensely that it takes time to challenge Michael Gove, quite rightly, on disabled rights but utterly fails to meet its own obligation to provide that content in an accessible format. All the quotes in the original article are as images, without any alt text.

Last night, along with thousands of other free software and open source community members, I signed the open letter calling for Richard Stallman, otherwise known as RMS, to step down from the Free Software Federation's board, and the rest of the board to also step down.

Thank you to Josh Simmons for bringing the letter to my, and many other people's, attention: