I am leaving my latest job and moving on to my new passion, Matrix.
Recently I have become passionate about the need for modern communications systems that are Open in the sense of freedom to talk to anyone. The currently dominant silos like WhatsApp only let me talk to the friends who are willing and able to subscribe to that company’s terms and restrictions, with no way to get around them when they decide to display advertising to me or stop supporting my mother’s not-terribly-old iPhone. To me, that is like some historical feudal system in which I live as a tenant and I must obtain agreement from the lord of the estate if I want to invite any of my friends to visit me. We need and deserve better than that: an Open way to communicate to our friends and business contacts. Email served that role for the first part of the 21st century, and Matrix now serves that role for the era of instant messaging.
My software development in recent years has been mostly on the open source Subversion version-control system, and I have particularly enjoyed helping to create something so widely used and appreciated. Nowadays its popularity is eclipsed by Git in small to medium sized projects, while Subversion still enjoys a strong following in certain fields such as games development due to its strengths in versioning large data sets and simplicity of usage. Participating in the development of Open Source software has given me the greatest satisfaction in my professional life, and I intend to keep it that way. That is why developing the Matrix communication system is so exciting.
p.s. I am still contracting on Subversion support work, so get in touch if you need any bug fixing or problem diagnosis.