Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 03/10/2025Would you like to submit an inquiry to Ruby Central on the incredibly important and nuanced difference between a fireside chat and a keynote? You seem to focus on what matters, after all. (muting and ending all contact with you) 130
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 03/10/2025Ufuk is a board member of Ruby Central and an employee of Shopify. DHH is on the board of Shopify. Aaron is a Shopify employee. Shopify is Ruby Central's primary sponsor. Shopify is the second largest publicly traded company in Canada. Shopify holds a net worth close to $200 billion. 220
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 03/10/2025I suppose in your mind things must be one but not the other. 110
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 03/10/2025There were two co-chairs. One of the two is a Shopify employee and Ruby Central board member. The program committee was not involved in this decision. So... even if the idea of unity was the underlying *intent* -- there's an inherent conflict of interest and no, it wasn't a consensus decision. 000
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 03/10/2025Sharing this for context. I've submitted a relevant question to Ruby Central and hope they give an official reply. 110
Reposted by Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO]Gregory Brown @skillstopractice.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2025I just signed the open letter to the Rails Core team, after hesitating for a long time about whether that was the right choice for me. I know and like several Rails core members, as well as several Basecamp employees. I understand the squeeze that can happen when speaking out individually only […]mastodon.socialOriginal post on mastodon.social 164
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/09/2025Of note is that DHH is a Shopify board member which is an infinitely larger leverage point. I would like to see evidence one way or another that resolves this question but any time I see DHH's name now I see it as a Shopify relationship, not (just) Basecamp 010
Reposted by Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO]Gregory Brown @skillstopractice.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/07/2025Thinking of doing an informal code reading session to explore the Sequel ruby gem's codebase. If you're interested in joining me, send an email to gregory@skillstopractice.com with the subject "Sequel Code Reading" and I'll get back to you with more details. 055
Reposted by Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO]Gregory Brown @skillstopractice.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/06/2025PSA: If you see a post from Mastodon bridged to Bluesky and reply to it, that reply will only make it over the bridge if you also follow @ap.brid.gy on Bluesky. That's literally all that's needed to make it so each side can stay in their own app happily, but without it your responses might not […]mastodon.socialOriginal post on mastodon.social 001
Reposted by Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO]Gregory Brown @skillstopractice.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/05/2025In 2016 I wrote "Programming Beyond Practices" for O'Reilly. It deliberately includes *no code samples* -- only discussions, design decisions, analysis, etc in story form. Many of its ideas are still relevant. You can find the PDF here (free, no signup needed) […]mastodon.socialOriginal post on mastodon.social 235
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 28/05/2025To make your Bluesky posts available to folks on Mastodon, all you need to do is follow @ap.brid.gy - If you do that, others who do the same on the Mastodon side will be able to reply, like, repost, etc like normal and neither side needs to use the other app at all. Please give that a try! 052
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 28/05/2025Even though I have switched to Mastodon I don't want to lose connections with the folks I have met here, so I set up a bridge. Follow this account if you're not on Mastodon but still would like to keep in touch and/or see what I am up to: @skillstopractice.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy 000
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 22/05/2025(The Bluesky/atproto stack has unique tech advantages + a different purpose which I sure hope stays alive in a way I could support but I did expect the overall state of Mastodon to be *much* more rough than what it is... and apart from some UX hiccups it seems like a nice place to be) 000
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 22/05/2025And if you're wary of all this, give Mastodon a try. I sort of wrote it off a couple years ago and either it improved a lot, the social graph got better, or it's just a shift in perspective to favor values-oriented projects that follow through on their claims... but it feels, not bad over there. 100
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 22/05/2025I'm going to keep an eye out for each of those things and if I see good faith efforts on them I'll be back here and first to acknowledge that this team is getting things right. I'm just a drop in the ocean here and I very much know that, but if you agree, ask for this stuff too. 100
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 22/05/2025Finished that convo - here's what would restore trust. 1) Public disclosure of the rumored January 2025 funding round that had a $700 million valuation. 2) A public business plan. 3) Something rolled out that makes money. 4) Legally+financially sound steps that shield protocol development. 100
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 21/05/2025... but even then, I've done my best to throw out some models of risks + mitigations and have shared a lot more in private with Why to give the sort of analysis I'd typically be charging silly amounts of money for. And with that... I'm truly out now. :) 010
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 21/05/2025... so I have taken the engineers at good faith in their effort to do that, but have also thrown up this giant red flag that as a business analyst who has done a lot of advisory work / exec coaching, I'm seeing a very rocky road ahead and an alarming lack of transparency... 100
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 21/05/2025My take is that regardless of how the sausage gets made, if this team manages to stand up atproto as a surviving and truly open protocol (i.e. two more microblogging platforms living atop it with different + sustainable business models), then it doesn't matter to me what Bluesky becomes... 100
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 21/05/2025... that said there are people on here who are more actively in a role of analyzing / critiquing social media and maybe someone like @cybercultural.com might be worth talking to for you? ... 110
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 21/05/2025Here's my writeup which reflects the landing point after public and private convos of where I stand on things. notes.skillstopractice.com/updates/2025... I'm not looking to turn over every stone personally because I've heard enough to know I need to step away for a while...notes.skillstopractice.comBluesky Business Model - Risk Factors | S2P :: NotesNotes from Gregory Brown 100
Reposted by Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO]Ruby + Rails : Distilled @distilled.skillstopractice.com · 21/05/2025Ruby + Rails : Distilled is moving to Mastodon. Just getting set up over there but you'll find the account here: ruby.social/@distilled I will set up bridging when I can, not sure if I will do crossposting though. If you're set up with @ap.brid.gy here I can still share your posts that way. 171
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 21/05/2025Vaguely remember that one. Subscriptions alone definitely isn't a complete model for a large scale platform. 000
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 21/05/2025We spoke about this privately and cleared up some misunderstandings and my writeup reflects what I took away from that conversation, which I will revise if we missed each other. This has been civil and productive for 24 hours with mutual respect despite where it started. 000
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 21/05/2025That was an exact quote from Why in the thread you didn't read and is what I discussed in private convo with them as well, so you are once again, completely misinformed. 110
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 21/05/2025Compared to OpenAI, atproto is much more open + much lower in opex. That part I've modeled and explored. But you're not wrong about the general trend. That's why I'm trying to focus the network effects side of thing to shine light on that. We can at least try to understand these models better. 010
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 21/05/2025If so, mission accomplished and it doesn't matter what happens to Bluesky the company. If not, then yet another good idea left to die due to a lack of a serious business model. We shall see. 110
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 21/05/2025The nature of the underlying protocol in theory should reduce operating expenses over time rather than keep increasing infinitely. I don't think anyone expects Bluesky to be an actor that stays good forever. All this turns on whether the protocol is independent in the next 18 months. 100
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 21/05/2025It's a benefit corp which is chartered to build an open protocol that will outlast the company. It sucks because I have seen several businesses fail at similar things in my exec advisory / management consulting work from folks who also meant well. 110
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 21/05/2025I did believe that the business leadership for Bluesky understood this at a *threat* level and were intentionally avoiding it so that's what has me pulling back to not be "content" 100
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/05/2025I'm not an ad hater, I find ads to be incredibly dangerous when they form the primary revenue model (i.e. are used to cover opex) for ubiquitous network operators. Detailed writeup here: notes.skillstopractice.com/updates/2025...notes.skillstopractice.comBluesky Business Model - Risk Factors | S2P :: NotesNotes from Gregory Brown 122
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/05/2025... On a company level they have ideas that sound like they come from well intentioned product designers and not people who build + validate business models. A limiting factor for an engineering lead org. Trying to share my threat assessment here. notes.skillstopractice.com/updates/2025...notes.skillstopractice.comBluesky Business Model - Risk Factors | S2P :: NotesNotes from Gregory Brown 010
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/05/2025That's indirectly what I am worried about on some level because ad revenue in a ubiquitous network can accelerate dependence and then a collapsed network is a network that can be bought for pennies on the dollar. I believe this team doesn't want that. On a tech level they have defenses... 120
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/05/2025I will look into syndication options when I see how this shakes up and get situated well enough to do POSSE + Mastodon. And honestly if the team makes commitments to a model I would support I still will be here, or if they course correct later. It's that I genuinely misunderstood the commitments. 010
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/05/2025Open letter to @why.bsky.team regarding Bluesky revenue model risks + potential mitigations. We've discussed some of this over DM and will continue to be available so, and the notes within it reflect my own take on things only but hopefully clarify. notes.skillstopractice.com/updates/2025... 040
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/05/2025That's generally true! Did it have the same architecture of Bluesky though? If not, can't compare. (To be clear I do *not* assume subscriptions would be self-sustaining... they'd just narrow the gap some) 100
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/05/2025... I apologize for hijacking your thread and I should have wrote a reasoned writeup up front and sent it to Why directly. It didn't feel like that would have been welcome. I was wrong about that but now working on getting it sorted. Not w. the goal of agreeing but just understanding each other. 120
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/05/2025This is about how Bluesky makes money, and only is relevant until atproto has at least two other alternative providers for microblogging with self-sustaining business models and comparable network effects. It's not about customer UX but about global scale governance... 100
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/05/2025Just seeing this now. Doesn't really matter one way or another because you're not trying to run a global communications network as the sole operator at the moment and I'm not against ads. It's only when your scope of influence is "everyone" that this stuff starts to matter. 100
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/05/2025The thread is very hard to read because there are so many subthreads and truly I can't even get back at them to quote them properly for the writeup I'm preparing for Why. Will share that here when it's ready. 010
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/05/2025I'm talking with Why over DM and working this out. There's a reason for the hair trigger here because this was a disconnect from prior conversations with the bsky team... but we're talking through things to at least understand each other. We have a lot of common ground after clearing things up. 120
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/05/2025Designing network based revenue models has been a big part of my work in the last decade. You're reading the random misinformed quotes not the conversations that have emerged since this first interaction. 100
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/05/2025No, I've made a commitment to stop producing my own posts here and running my feed here because of a potential difference of values, and I'm also here talking to Why over DM to talk through the risk model I've put together which we've been working through so we understand each other. 100
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/05/2025I'm having direct conversations w. Why on this now and it's actually that I'm saying that ad revenue is not likely to be a sustainable or sufficient source of revenue to achieve the end goal of operating long enough to see atproto become independent and that there are complex network effects at work 000
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/05/2025You didn't read anything I wrote. I'm literally making the exact opposite point. 200
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/05/2025Bluesky becomes "just a company" the moment in which you can get the same network effects as a microblogger elsewhere from an independent operator that's got sound financials. I do believe that's their intent. Aligning incentives to make yourself non-essential is hard for any business though. 100
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/05/2025I can widen that and say I don't really care about the internals (even if for example, posts weren't interoperable) as long as you keep the same basic functionality + social graph intact. I believe microblogging is essentially as important as SMS/Email/etc is *the* core social need. 100
Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO] @skillstopractice.com · 20/05/2025... but if you unplug it from the ecosystem then the other instances right now become economically similar to Mastodon. I think the design of atproto is intrinsically more economically valuable (even if more subject to market failures), but it'd be a mortal wound for Bluesky to fail at this point. 010
