The power of sisterhood and allyship in open source
We are used to the term “career change” as if it were a break in a trajectory. But in my experience, that’s never really the case. A person cannot erase themselves from what they consist of, and this richness of diverse backgrounds resulted in several breaking points. Individual journeys, often far from computer science, hold accountability for the social implication of technology and bring richness and creativity to the technology industry.
Being an artist has always given me freedom and opened doors to explore several fields, from architecture to sciences. A great part of my artistic experience took place in hackerspaces in Brazil, surrounded by the Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) ideology, the open free/libre culture of sharing. Nowadays, for several ideological and practical reasons that do not fall within the scope of this article, the most common term is “open source”. And lucky for me, my career switch started with an internship in an Open Source Program Office (OSPO), which made this switch feel — almost — like home.