Latest thoughts, if any, of Rachel Lawson...

US President, Joe Biden, recently suggested that the US Government would be in favour of a waiver of patent protection surrounding COVID vaccine development. Whilst the US is only one country at the WTO and they generally only act on consensus, it will certainly make other countries think hard.

To be honest, though, I can't say I'm in favour of a patent waiver here. Avoiding the patents of other pharmaceutical companies isn't the "hard problem" in the pandemic environment we find ourselves in; getting hold of the ingredients to manufacture at global scale is.

Over the last few weeks, I have found myself thinking more and more about Drupal.org and the various websites and services that surround it, such as groups.drupal.org, events.drupal.org, git.drupal.org, api.drupal.org, jobs.drupal.org, Slack, drupalchat.me, drupical.com, drupal.tv,

Whilst the article published by JOE is important, it bothers me intensely that it takes time to challenge Michael Gove, quite rightly, on disabled rights but utterly fails to meet its own obligation to provide that content in an accessible format. All the quotes in the original article are as images, without any alt text.

Last night, along with thousands of other free software and open source community members, I signed the open letter calling for Richard Stallman, otherwise known as RMS, to step down from the Free Software Federation's board, and the rest of the board to also step down.

Thank you to Josh Simmons for bringing the letter to my, and many other people's, attention:

Tech(k)nowday is an online conference, featuring over 200 women in tech and it is taking place on Monday 8th March. Not only that, it is FREE to attend so why not take a look at the program and see what interests you?

I knew I wanted to allow "social" login on this website as it made me happier that the usernames I might see appearing are more likely to be the people I assume they are — they will have some sort of "background check" by virtue of their activity on those other social sites, whatever they were. Well, thanks to drupal/openid_connect, I have successfully implemented login via GitHub, LinkedIn, and Google.

There are a few things we do as a community at Drupal that really warm my heart and recognising those displaying the very best values and principles of the Drupal project through the annual Aaron Winborn Award is one of them.

Whilst everyone in the Drupal community can, and should, nominate those they think deserve such an award, it is one of the few truly lovely tasks of the Drupal Community Working Group to read all of the nominations, select a recipient, and present the award at DrupalCon North America.

Well, I don’t think it will come as a complete surprise to hear me say that. After all, I’ve made it no secret that I have a trans history and I do talk about it, on occasion, when I feel the moment is right. 

The reason I need to state “trans women are women”, though, is because the more people who see others stating this, the easier others find it to accept and, crucially, it exposes the often vitriolic replies such a statement prompts on social media.