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We’ve had another rough week in the Short household. The adults, at least, are exhausted. Max is fully energized. Sunny is getting nursed back to health. I always try to provide some value in the intro but, I have to say, I almost skipped this week due to everything. Some valuable nuggets live on a few other sites I run. New and old subscribers alike can get some benefit from these: DevOps README.md: What books 📚 to read to learn more about DevOps. DevOps Newsletters intends to be a one stop shop for the best DevOps content from around the world. Kubernetes README: What books 📚 to read to learn more about Kubernetes. Kubernetes News intends to be a resource to help keep up with the wide ranging and rapidly evolving world of Kubernetes. I’m speaking as part of a group talk about non-code contributions, specifically the work we’ve been doing on the Kubernetes Upstream Marketing Team. Please add it to your KubeConEU schedule. ...

I’ve had a rough week, please forgive me for not laboring over an intro. Event Call for Papers The GitOps Working Group is putting together a KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Day 0 event! Come share your experiences, practices, and challenges with us at #GitOpsConEU2021! Call for papers open through April 16, 2021. People The woman who took on Google and won “Google signed a document saying its employees ‘have the right to discuss wage rates, bonuses, and working conditions.’” Never wait for a staging environment again 👩‍💻🧑‍💻👨‍💻👩‍💻 Do you find that your engineers spend too much time creating and maintaining staging environments and yet, there never seems to be enough environments to go around? A shortage of environments is a top driver of low developer productivity and often impacts an engineering team’s ability to ship features on time. With Release, you can get a full instance of your app with all of its services with every pull request. You’ll never have to wait around for staging environments again. 💡 Get started now 💡 SPONSORED ...

An old headline rears its ugly head again this week. The company that now owns the remnants of The SCO Group (whose claim to fame was going bankrupt in suing Linux distro makers until their dying breath), Xinuos, has decided to try this strategy out for itself in hopes of a different outcome. Xinuos is suing IBM and Red Hat for using Linux. Talk about bringing back ancient memories of trying to keep up with a new and essential thing to me back in the early 2000s: Linux. Back then, getting your hands on Linux was a challenge, and Linux users were easy marks, according to SCO. Back in those days, SCO even said it would go after individual end-users. While it made Linux seem a little untrustworthy at the time to the outsider, insiders knew this was all bullshit. IBM was doubling and tripling down on Linux, and Red Hat was a public company. Yes, there felt like a potential disaster could happen with one lousy court ruling. But that day never came. It was a wilder world back then. ...

Well, what’s it like living in the last throes of the Free Software Foundation (FSF)? Many companies came out against the FSF’s recent decision to re-add he who was mentioned in DevOps’ish 145. Red Hat probably gave the most scathing repudiation. I can think of no worse strategy than bringing back someone who for so long abused, criticized, belittled, harassed, and bullied the people (especially women) around them. I used to support FSF and only did so after he who was mentioned in DevOps’ish 145 (droves of others are denouncing the decision too). It’s truly rare that I reassess my automated donations and think about where I’m donating money. I’m glad this utterly insane event sparked this reevaluation for me. Now that he who was mentioned in DevOps’ish 145 is back at the FSF, I put out a call on Twitter for suggested charities or foundations I could support. Folks came through. I’ve not only found a better place to send money than FSF, but I also added more causes in the process. I try to live life as transparently as possible. I do list what Causes I support on my website. I’m happy to say that I added the Software Freedom Conservancy, Outreachy, and /dev/color this week. I probably should have been supporting Outreachy long ago but, it’s better late than never. There are probably many other places I could be putting money to foster a more inclusive tech sector. If you, dear reader, have suggestions about which non-profits I should be engaged with, please hit reply and let me know. ...

The idea for the subject of this week’s intro came from K Rain Leander. Rain asks, “The past year has been one of lockdowns, increased security and decreased travel. DevOps became DevSecOps became DevSecOpsBiz. And the world embraced the work / life balance culture of DevOps. What are your favourite cultural shifts from the last year? What do you want to let go of forever? As we take a look at the latest updates in the DevOps world, also take a look at you and yours and let us know how you’re doing. And if we can help, let us know how.” I won’t touch on the “DevOps became DevSecOps became DevSecOpsBiz” point because, while I have seen more folks saying DevSecOps outright, I cannot say the same for “DevSecOpsBiz.” Lockdowns and constant existential dread are strongly demotivating. I’ll be happy when kids start getting vaccines in their arms. I’m very much tired of the constant worry and struggle. But, we as a society keep doing insane things. Case in point, letting the numbers get down to “safe” levels then reopening (in any capacity) until the number of deaths go back up. I get it; commerce is important. But do we constantly have to ride this up and down roller coaster? It’s disheartening and downright cruel to watch more people die so someone could sit in a half-capacity restaurant that they could have taken home. The things that haunt me in my life from my past are the lives I could’ve saved but was unable to. ...