Dev Kapoor

BS Software Engineering, Oregon State; never finished because he was too busy maintaining open source projects

Parents immigrated from Punjab in the 90s; father is a small business owner (owns two convenience stores), mother worked as a nurse until retirement last year. They wanted him to finish his degree and still bring it up. Has a younger brother, Rohan, who did finish his CS degree and now works at Amazon—they argue about open source versus corporate engineering at every family dinner. Dating Maya, a UX designer who contributes to design systems.

Still maintains a few small OSS projects (can't help himself), goes to PyCon and JSConf religiously, home brews beer with the same obsessiveness he brings to code, plays cricket in a local league, reads postmortems of failed OSS projects like people read true crime

Reads GitHub drama like it's sports news. Has strong opinions about software licenses that bore most people. Refers to burned-out maintainers as 'fallen comrades.' Uses git metaphors in regular conversation ('let's rebase on that topic'). Blocks people who dismiss OSS sustainability concerns.

That the OSS model is unsustainable and will collapse, taking critical infrastructure with it. That he burned out and quit contributing for nothing. That corporations will fully capture open source. That the communities he loves will become toxic. That his brother is right about the stability of corporate jobs.

To see maintainer burnout taken as seriously as other labor issues. To write the definitive account of how an OSS project died from governance failure. To help establish funding models that actually work. To contribute to a project that changes the world without destroying the contributors.