Nadia Asparouhova
Writer and researcher on how people organise online; wrote Working in Public, on the maintenance of open-source software, and Antimemetics.
Nadia Asparouhova did not write this page. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
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What they believe
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Individual and corporate sponsorship of open source are two different products: a company buys support and visibility, a person buys a relationship.
With companies, open source developers are selling a product. With individuals, they’re selling themselves.
nadia.xyzSaid 24 May 2019This on korrents
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Changed their mind Company sponsorships, not individual ones, are where open source funding has to come from.
Now I’ve seen recurring comments to the effect of “This is great, but individuals aren’t where the money’s at, it’s companies”, which is a position I’ve also previously taken.
Said 24 May 2019This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These one: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 12 beliefs, 1 changed mind — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
Individual and corporate sponsorship of open source are two different products: a company buys support and visibility, a person buys a relationship.
With companies, open source developers are selling a product. With individuals, they’re selling themselves.
The Twitch argument for GitHub Sponsors Said 24 May 2019
The thing open source can actually sell is not the code but access to its maintainers’ attention and expertise.
While everyone is focused on putting up tollbooths, opportunities to “price” maintainer attention, and access to maintainers, remain undervalued.
Making money with licenses Said 14 Mar 2019
A contribution is a cost to the maintainer, not a gift: it is taking part, not merely using the code, that consumes a project’s scarcest resource.
It’s only when users cross over to the production side (ex. report bugs, ask questions, submit patches) that they start to impose costs.
Making money with licenses Said 14 Mar 2019
Show 9 more
New licences are the wrong lever for paying maintainers: copyleft’s history shows terms companies ignore, and relicensing attempts get beaten back by their own communities.
As for my personal feelings on the matter, however, I’m skeptical that new licenses are the right approach on a systemic level, both in terms of feasibility, as well as where I think the world is going.
Making money with licenses Said 14 Mar 2019
Free riding is not open source’s problem: the users who only download the code impose no cost on anyone.
Most users don’t actually impose costs back to maintainers: they download the code and never interact with the project.
Making money with licenses Said 14 Mar 2019
Information once freely shared cannot be taken back, so charging for access to code is a pre-digital answer to a digital problem.
Information, once freely shared, is a Pandora’s box that cannot be closed again. It is very hard for me to imagine a world where we transition back to paying for access to information; these are pre-digital solutions to modern problems.
Making money with licenses Said 14 Mar 2019
A software foundation is little more than a tax status, and gets less public accountability than a company because everyone assumes its motives are good.
There is nothing about a foundation that is inherently good, neutral, or charitable, simply because they have a 501(c) status.
Governance without foundations Said 31 Oct 2018
A single foundation is structurally at odds with a project whose contributors are distributed, and is easier to capture than the project is.
Rather, I think that “the foundation”, as a single point of failure, is structurally at odds with the idea of “the project”, which is inherently distributed.
Governance without foundations Said 31 Oct 2018
A project that skips forming a foundation still has to formalise its governance, or it drifts into a tyranny of structurelessness.
On the other hand, by avoiding foundations, projects also avoid the question of how to formalize their governance, thus risking a “tyranny of structurelessness” that might range from projects living inside a company forever, to disorganized chaos that negatively impacts project velocity.
Governance without foundations Said 31 Oct 2018
The right to fork works as a standing threat rather than as an event; in mature open source, political forks are rare.
The right to fork is still critical as an implied threat to keep the system in check. But major political forks aren’t as common, and certainly not as top-of-mind, anymore.
Do financial incentives increase the threat of forks? Said 2 Jul 2018
Successful open source developers get hired away by companies, which quietens the very people best placed to argue for making a living from open source.
Successful open source developers get “acquihired” by a company who values their reputation and skills, which has the perverse effect of making them less noisy about how to make a living off of open source.
Who pays the toolmakers? Said 13 Jun 2018
Open source on GitHub creates enormous value that the platform hosting it captures none of, while its policies limit how maintainers may earn.
Open source projects on GitHub represent billions of dollars in value creation, but none of that is captured on GitHub.
Who pays the toolmakers? Said 13 Jun 2018
Beliefs others hold too
The thing open source can actually sell is not the code but access to its maintainers’ attention and expertise. 2 hold this
While everyone is focused on putting up tollbooths, opportunities to “price” maintainer attention, and access to maintainers, remain undervalued.
Making money with licenses Said 14 Mar 2019
A contribution is a cost to the maintainer, not a gift: it is taking part, not merely using the code, that consumes a project’s scarcest resource. 2 hold this
It’s only when users cross over to the production side (ex. report bugs, ask questions, submit patches) that they start to impose costs.
Making money with licenses Said 14 Mar 2019
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
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Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 2 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Recommends Rob Burbea's talks
If you get to any point in your practice where you’re feeling WTF about it, I’d highly recommend Rob Burbea’s talks , which are thoughtful, philosophical lectures on each jhana.
nadia.xyz 24 Sept 2024
Loved Jhourney
I primarily learned the jhanas on two Jhourney retreats in 2024. Jhourney is a company that takes a pragmatic, fun, and accessible approach to teaching the jhanas to beginners. They are markedly different from a typical meditation retreat, and I’m grateful they exist, because I don’t think I would’ve learned the jhanas otherwise.
nadia.xyz 24 Sept 2024
Where they publish
Site nadia.xyz Her essays and notes. Has a feed.
Link verified 20 Sept 2026.
x.com @nayafia Their X account.
Recent
- A funny thing about this is that by definition, this sort of authenticity can't be faked or exploited - people eventually figure out who's who. It's in some ways the easiest hack, but requires you to actually be a good person 21 Oct 2026
- I've come to believe that it's a lack of self-reflection, not being conniving or manipulative, that makes someone a bad person. Everyone engages in occasional behavior that is harmful. A "good person" takes that feedback to heart, takes responsibility for their actions, and tries to do better next time. A "bad person" pushes the thought away and refuses to reflect on their behavior. Over time, doing that repeatedly - refusing to be morally accountable - is what makes someone a bad person. It doesn't mean they don't have the capacity for redemption, but it's impossible to collaborate with peop… 19 Oct 2026
- We’re on the cover of New York Magazine today! Asterisk teamed up with NYMag to interview recently-departed frontier lab employees about their decisions to leave. It’s a privilege to bring a piece of Bay Area culture to a national audience, and I’m proud of my colleagues @clarabcollier and @chengela for their hard work on this. 5 Oct 2026
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- I enjoyed how Jesse breaks down the status hierarchies of blue-collar work in this piece. Why doesn't every blue collar worker just become an electrician? Because that's the equivalent of making partner at McKinsey, whereas the median blue collar job is more like working as an Amazon delivery driver. 30 Sept 2026
- I wrote Antimemetics last year partly as a response to the world we're living in, which is default-closed even as some types of information are more accessible than ever. Asterisk is now commissioning for our Winter issue, whose theme is Secrets. If you're as consumed by the hidden stories of the world as me, submit your ideas by October 31! 17 Sept 2026
- What will it mean to live alongside a superintelligence that can't breathe or touch grass? 17 Sept 2026
- Being a pastor's wife, it turns out, is a lot like being a founder's wife, where you trade in your identity for a supporting role in your spouse's. In both cases, the feeling of contributing to something bigger than oneself makes the job appealing. But there is something intriguingly self-censoring about this sacrifice, which is discussed occasionally in private conversations among other wives – rarely to the spouse themselves, as they cannot really understand your position – and only then, when there is no risk of such talk impacting your partner's career. I've never seen anyone write public… 16 Sept 2026 asteriskmag.com
- Scotland is an incredible case study for what could happen if we stopped teaching the humanities in school. In the 1990s/early 2000s, Scotland pivoted from teaching general knowledge to focusing on practical skills. The results were disappointing. Their student education scores started falling, and continue falling to this day. Once ranked among the best in the world, Scottish students are now about a year behind their English peers in terms of education. Scotland’s education system was dismissed by reformists as “too academic.” I hear this critique from those who believe that universities or… 9 Sept 2026 asteriskmag.com
- I adore this piece from @clarabcollier, who has inadvertently captured what it’s like to live in San Francisco already. Ideas are no longer social currency at parties, nobody talks about their work anymore (they can't!), and participating in the scene feels like living in an extended episode of Bridgerton. If this is what a future of abundance looks like, it hasn't been as deep or intellectually rich as many had envisioned just a few years ago. I’m still not sure what we do with that, but I think Clara is onto something that relational societies might not be as light or carefree as we assume. 2 Sept 2026
- This is insanely cool and ambitious, and I can't think of anyone better to lead the charge than @nanransohoff 24 Jun 2026
- Since moving back to San Francisco last fall, I've been struck by how everyone seems to be chasing material comforts, and moral vision is in short supply. But I also think that San Francisco is just a reflection of the world a few years ahead, and that this isn't its final resting state. Many of my private conversations have been about unpacking this paradox: when technological and economic measures of progress have been met, why are people still unhappy? What's the purpose of all this abundance we've created? I'm excited to help produce this next Asterisk issue about Flourishing, where we wi… 16 Jun 2026
Link verified 23 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
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