Acknowledgements

In primary position is A Book Apart, an unmistakable influence in shaping mine and many others’ world-view on web design and development. To Jeffrey Zeldman, who’s inspired, had random conference lunch with, and now entrusted me to add a new chapter to the spectrum—thank you. Unfortunate that mine and ABA’s partnership couldn’t bring the book into its final form, but they were with me in those critical first moments.

To Lisa Maria Marquis for the direct, sustained, and thoughtful feedback throughout. I lost count of moments where you pushed me and manuscript to be better. To Mat Marquis for time-travelling help, the hmmm… insights, and dimensional wisdom beyond my lived experience. I’m grateful to Tina Lee for the kindest of thoughts. And to Katel LeDû for helping me see all this through with compassion and poise.

This book wouldn’t be what it became without the early feedback and pep talks of Marty Henderson and Geoffrey Pursell. I extend ceaseless thanks for your time and insight charting early tributaries of this content. To you Geoff, a lot of my open source journey is owed. You saw promise in me and then gave me a mirror.

Thanks to Bobby Stockstead for being a resolute sounding board and at times philosophical foil.

Thanks to Lina Jebara for asking the tough questions when no one else will.

To Brad Frost and Dave Olsen, thank you for supporting me with unflappable confidence, patience, and energy when I was just some punk forking shit because I didn’t know PHP. That fork changed my life and made me a life-long open source believer.

Thank you to Alex Russell, Alice Goldfuss, Brad Frost, Duane O’Brien, Jenn Schiffer, Kat Marchán, Kelsey Hightower, and Shawn Wang for agreeing to attribute social media posts without direct links, in part due to instability of or exodus from the platform.

Unending gratitude to Andre “Staltz” Medeiros for relicensing the “Time Till Open Source Alternative” graphic especially for this book. Check out his Patreon @ https://patreon.com/andrestaltz

My humblest of thanks to Randall Munroe for granting permission to include his xkcd comic in the book. Your comics hold a lot of collective mindshare and I am glad for them to be present.

I try to pay forward several open source communities for their nurturing, collaborative atmosphere, but the Node.js community especially. Among many, Claudio Wunder, Antoine du Hamel, Jacob Smith, Wesley Todd, Rafael Gonzaga, Jean Burellier, and Robin Bender Ginn made me feel welcome from day one.

Monumental thanks to Abby Cabunoc Mayes for her time and insights into open source history and community-building.

Thanks to Luke Schlangen for his blessing to use the title “Approachable Open Source” for this book, which was not as novel as I’d thought.

Thanks to my father Jim Muenzenmeyer for detailing out the many ADA requirements building code must adhere to, and for your stories, disposition, and dreams. Long before this, you were my role model, in big ways and small. You gifted me my first ABA book when I was but a babe, how odd that I can now thank you within one (almost).

To Max, Jack, Ben, and Henry—you are the best of me and I cannot wait to see y’all grow up together in brotherhood. You put up with a lot of deferred time for me to write this. Show me this passage and we’ll go do whatever you want.

The final word always goes to you, Megan. Maybe you’ll see the back of the book too. Through all this and before and forward, it’s because of and for you. You don’t need to read between the lines with me, I love you.