Open source consulting

Open source is the specialism at the heart of my fractional leadership work. I help established open source projects and foundations navigate the complex challenges of growth, governance and sustainability - the particular puzzles of community-built software, foundation governance, and sustaining a project that belongs to everyone and no one.

What I do

Since 2020 I have led Mautic through corporate acquisition, a spin-out to independence, governance restructuring and financial recovery. I have built funding models, resolved community conflicts, grown contributor bases, and made the difficult decisions that keep an open source project viable long term. Now I have the chance to bring that experience to other projects facing similar challenges.

I work with established open source projects and foundations on the problems that come with maturity. How do you scale community governance when informal structures stop working? How do you build sustainable revenue without compromising your values? How do you navigate corporate relationships while staying independent? How do you grow your contributor base when you are competing with well-funded alternatives?

These are not theoretical questions for me. I have worked through all of them, sometimes successfully and sometimes through hard lessons, and that experience shapes how I approach open source work.

Areas where I can help

• Governance and decision-making - creating or refactoring governance models that actually work for your project’s size and maturity, and moving from informal leadership to structured processes without losing what makes your community special.
• Financial sustainability - developing revenue models, funding pathways and membership structures that align with open source values. I have built these from scratch and fixed them when they broke.
• Community growth and contributor retention - attracting contributors is one challenge; keeping them engaged and preventing burnout is another. I have worked on both.
• Marketing and positioning - helping projects articulate their value and reach their audience, with particular strength in privacy- and sovereignty-focused positioning.
• Strategic planning and recovery - making difficult decisions, restructuring operations, and navigating crises. I have led Mautic through acquisition, spin-out and financial recovery.
• Conflict resolution and community health - addressing tensions before they become destructive, and building governance that handles disagreement constructively.

How I work

My approach is informed by Buddhist principles around interdependence, skilful means, and working with things as they are rather than as we wish them to be. That means starting from your actual situation rather than an ideal one, considering the whole ecosystem rather than isolated problems, and finding pragmatic solutions that acknowledge your constraints while still moving toward your values.

I don’t believe in one-size-fits-all frameworks. What works for a project with fifty active contributors won’t work for one with five hundred, and what works for a foundation-backed project won’t work for an independent community. I start by understanding your specific context, then develop approaches that fit.

Experience and background

I have led Mautic since 2020, through some of the most challenging periods in the project’s history, and I am currently the fractional Director of Operations at Mercury Consortium. Before Mautic I served on the Joomla Community Leadership Team, and I have worked in open source community building for over eighteen years. Along the way I have navigated corporate acquisition, managed a spin-out to independence, created governance structures from scratch, built funding models, led through financial crisis, and handled the operational realities of keeping a global open source project running.

I bring that hands-on experience to open source work. When we talk about governance, sustainability or community conflict, I am speaking from direct experience rather than case studies.

Working together

This runs on the same footing as the rest of my fractional work - a set number of days a month, minimum term six months - though a focused piece such as a governance review or a funding model can sometimes stand on its own. Engagements usually start with some discovery to understand your situation, then move into the specific areas where you need support.

I am particularly interested in working with projects that share values around privacy, digital sovereignty, and building alternatives to proprietary tools. If your project is trying to prove that open source can compete with well-funded proprietary alternatives while holding on to its ethical principles, we will probably work well together.

Get in touch

If you are facing challenges with governance, sustainability, community growth or strategic direction, drop me a line with some context about your project and what you are working on, and I will let you know whether I think I am a good fit for what you need.