Gregory Brown [MOVED, SEE BIO]

Thinking 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.

PSA: 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 […]

In 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) […]

To 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!

Even 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

(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)

And 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.

I'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.

Finished 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.

... 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. :)

... 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...

My 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...

... 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?

...

Here'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...

Ruby + 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.

Vaguely remember that one.

Subscriptions alone definitely isn't a complete model for a large scale platform.

We 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.

bsky.app/profile/why....

That 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.

Compared 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.

bsky.app/profile/skil...

If 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.

The 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.

It'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.

I 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"

I'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...

... 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...

That'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...

I 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.

Open 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...