Moving Forward; A Follow-Up to the Cautionary Tale for Open Source Devs
Published: 2022-02-01 15:39:58

Following up from recent events with good news and hopeful outlook.

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<center>~ Making lemon meringue pie from lemons ~</center>

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## On Employment and Collaboration

Justin Meyer, CEO of [Bitovi](https://www.bitovi.com/), reached out to me and invited me back to the position I left. This will be my 3rd time joining Bitovi, so that was a significant show of empathy and I cannot overstate how grateful I am for it.

As a result, I will not suffer any significant damages from what occurred.

In addition, to protect my job, empower my excitement for the future, and most importantly be an example of the change I want to see in the world; I proposed a collaboration with Bitovi to offer augmented-ui consulting in addition to the rest of the stack + devops that we already cover. They've agreed _and_ offered a better deal than I asked for! THANK YOU SO MUCH.

![augmented-ui consulting in collaboration with bitovi](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/8pzukx0d0b3cz6yhatm1.png)
 
A win for Bitovi,
a win for me,
a win for augmented-ui,
and a win for our clients.

The timing and potential for this are great too because interest has been growing recently and many companies before this have reached out about augmented-ui. The first notable one long ago was Microsoft MakeCode and much more recently it was the frontend team for Starship at SpaceX.

(And of course, I can & will continue answering questions, helping with tricky code, and generally engaging casually over social media with anyone seeking informal help with augmented-ui 💜)

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## On the Air of web3 Hatred

I did not engage with any support that simultaneously cast blanket hateful sentiment to an entire group of people.

I wish we lived in a world where that didn't happen to anyone, ever.
At the same time I wish we lived in a world where it didn't _seem_ so justified at times -- but we must be better than that.

I am a member of two distinct minorities that have been historically oppressed and silenced by fear, mockery, negative media, and group-think.

There are good, genuine people with integrity in every single walk of life. And even the individuals in any group who fall short of that should be given opportunity for self improvement and redemption. Condemnation is not the answer.

{% details I am transgender %}

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I lived my whole life in fear of being myself and I constantly ruined friendships and opportunities because I was afraid of feeling stuck in the social expectations of consistency.
Both the expectation of consistency with how I present myself yesterday vs today, and the expectation of consistency with any prevalent negative sentiment towards the groups I identify with.

When entire groups (any groups) are ridiculed with the collective hate focused on each individual as soon as they appear without further consideration, the good among us (even when we're the vast majority) are terrified of identifying ourselves because we do not want the social baggage of a label.

![abstract art I drew of my feeling trapped in my own skin in 2003](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/gfa7bwferzuvdu08t0qz.png)
<sup>abstract art I drew of my feeling trapped in my own skin in 2003, [13 years before "Egg" was coined to mean pre-self-acceptance transgender person](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/egg-transgender)</sup>
 
**Blanket hate is soul crushing.**

It's lazy, ugly, and I want nothing to do with it.

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{% enddetails %}

{% details I have experienced really bizarre, "alien" for lack of a better word, lucid dream-like interaction my whole life %}

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I know, it seems nuts if you haven't experienced it but hopefully that wouldn't automatically invalidate my experience in your mind.
If you HAVE experienced something like this though, you become obsessed and you **will** find others with integrity among the sea of deafening noise.

There is orders of magnitude more bullshit in the UFO/Alien world than in all of web3.

It takes work, a lot of work, and kindness, and listening, and consideration, and understanding, to find us because, again, we are silenced by the baggage of the label.

![screenshot of augmented-ui commit history showing the dream origin of the tagline](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/2qu17c4hp12y1hbz218a.png)
<sup>commit message for augmented-ui's tagline that was given to me in a dream: "...new description recieved in dream time"</sup>

**Blanket hate is soul crushing.**

It's lazy, ugly, and I want nothing to do with it.

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{% enddetails %}

## On Wonderverse, the company from earlier events

The publicly stated goals of Wonder are absolutely, 100% something I would *LOVE* to see come to fruition. I honestly do not know a genuine developer among us who wouldn't find more fulfilment in their life if Wonder's vision fully succeeds.

> Our long-term vision at Wonder is to help people self-actualize by doing work they love. By moving people up Maslow’s hierarchy, we want to help the next generation of builders, creators and learners find meaning and form lasting impact through their projects.

Their plans to achieve this are specific, well founded, and absolutely within reach.

But...

### They fucked up

And still, condemnation is not the answer.

In the end, I did not suffer any significant damages thanks to the grace of Bitovi.
And, if I may rub just a pinch of salt in the wound because it's kind of funny; If they had actually paid attention to [the about page of my portfolio](http://propjockey.io/about/), I felt it was important enough of a trait to specifically mention that I can sense exploitable logic without putting much effort into it. (and apparently it applies to legalese too):

> When I think about a code base or language spec, I automatically pick up on paths to exploit it.

Game hacking is one hell of a useful way to begin a life in programming so thank goodness this happened to me and not someone else.

{% post janeori/a-trip-down-memory-lane-how-game-hacking-became-my-web-development-career-1h21 %}

It's not my place to say how they should rebuild trust with the community, but they have already apologized and taken public steps to begin:

{% twitter 1487869836390813697 %}
{% twitter 1487872071300489229 %}
{% twitter 1487876218917732357 %}
{% twitter 1487880322796634120 %}

We must try to stop imagining people as being squarely in simple, all-encompassing labels and incapable of change.

It's an exclusively false mindset.

{% youtube p0McA9BDHEU %}

We're all imperfect humans.

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## <sup>"To forgive is to give up all hope for a better past."</sup>

[https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-stuff-you-should-know-26940277/episode/how-forgiveness-works-92106732/](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-stuff-you-should-know-26940277/episode/how-forgiveness-works-92106732/)

> the valuable relationship hypothesis
- if somebody hits you, hit back but then make up
- send the signal you're not to be messed with then repair the relationship so everyone can move forward

![gif of mr chow from the hangover](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/cp4rupu4ccwysz8ee4dm.gif)

If Wonder still wants to use augmented-ui, they're [free to do so](https://augmented-ui.com/docs/#install), adhering to the existing license of course
`$ npm install augmented-ui`

If Wonder wants my help to implement augmented-ui, the price went up, but you can [hire me through Bitovi](https://www.bitovi.com/web-application-consulting-services) and I'd still be _**very excited**_ to see what we create.

That's all I have to say on this.

## My sincere appreciation for all the support
The amount of support I've received is much more than I could have hoped. Thank you all.

As level-headed as I tried to be presenting all this, there were of course private moments of anger and self-directed disappointment as I worked myself up going over the details. Fortunately I was able to get those off my chest with my friends, privately, who nudged me towards positive resolve.

Specifically to [Matthew P](https://twitter.com/matthewcp) who listened to most of my grief, advocated for me right out of the gate, and really allowed me to quietly share the destructive thoughts, which made it easier to choose the positive ones. Acknowledging negative paths without invalidating them is a powerful way to illuminate those positive alternatives.

And to Mike M, who is always full of good advice, great references, and linked me to that podcast I shared earlier in this post. The sentiments resonate with me and my feelings on the world I want to experience, and I really appreciated hearing it. Mike is also my source for "_We're all imperfect humans._", something he got from his friend.

Thank you each and all, truly.

To the future!
// Jane Ori 💜