Open Source Design

@opensourcedesign
2.1K Followers
149 Following
1.2K Posts

Announcing Zotero 9, with Read Aloud, a Recently Read collection, direct annotation citing, and more

https://www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-9/

Wednesday, March April 15th, at 18:00 CEST / 12:00 EDT / 8:00 PST / 16:00 GMT we'll have our next meeting in chat.

It's the last chat meeting before the physical LGM in Nuremberg! If there are any issues you want to review before the meeting, this is a good place to do so!

You can join via IRC and Matrix - the channels are bridged - see the
information here: https://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2026/contact/

For all meeting notes from previous meetings, see the pad:
https://pads.ccc.de/s5FpMS8Rr1

#libregraphicsmeeting
#lgm

Contact - Libre Graphics Meeting 2026 โ€“ RE:wire, Nuremberg, Germany

ยปOur experience with Greenstone suggests that open-source development methods may need to adapt if they are to produce software for the desktop of the typical user. A community of developers will not necessarily pay sufficient attention to issues of usability that they themselves do not experience. An interesting question is whether a large open-source project could address usability issues without the well-known benefits of studying real users?ยซ

Maybe the first paper on open source software and usability:

"Usability and open-source software development", D.M. Nichols, K.Thomson and S.A.Yeates, 2001: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2331812.2331822

#research #opensource #opensourcedesign

GNOME Calendar has gotten *so good*, it just handles ICS files, multi-day events, multiple calendars, and mismatched timezones so well now. Hands down my favorite calendar app on any platform. If there's a "most improved app award", surely it must be a contender.

What makes one decide to make a parody movie trailer for, of all things, the GNU Image Manipulation Program? I asked the puppeteer behind Pork Johnson, the star of the semi-viral GIMP clip.

https://tedium.co/2026/04/07/pork-johnson-gimp-parody-interview/

new @tedium

The Puppeteer Behind The Fake GIMP Movie Trailer

What inspired the semi-viral fake GIMP trailer that recently fluttered around FOSS circles? The creator and puppeteer behind Pork Johnson explains.

Tedium: The Dull Side of the Internet.

RE: https://post.lurk.org/@lgm/116368035956380848

Our project, #GIMP, believes in the community, sharing and collaborating to make a great creative ecosystem together.

This is also why we have sponsored #LGM many times across the years.

We would like to encourage other creative FLOSS projects to sponsor LGM, if you can afford it! This call obviously also extends to any corporation using Free Software! ๐Ÿค—

RE: https://mastodon.social/@opensourcedesign/116368106527325894

"What are patterns of rejection of design input/contributions?"

- Aesthetics framed as being opposed to efficiency
- Rejection of defaults
- Keeping ideosyncracies
- disagreements lead to demand for settings
- no feedback/rejection that allows improvement

Discourse thread: "What are patterns of rejection of design input/contributions?": https://discourse.opensourcedesign.net/t/4395

#opensourcedesign

What are patterns of rejection of design input/contributions?

I was writing a bit about how designers might want to start being involved in open source projects. A part of getting involved is โ€“ potentially โ€“ also getting not-so-constructive feedback or outright rejections. I would like to hear from others how their less-than-ideal interactions went and if there are any patterns. Ideally, we could find some constructive responses, but even just collecting some experiences can be helpful!

Open Source Design

Open Source Design has some small funds to pay someone who has experience in helping OSS projects/communities build out effective governance work.

Please check our job posting here:

https://opensourcedesign.net/jobs/jobs/2026-03-31-open-source-design-governance-research-and-documentation-project