2025

What is a Package Manager?

A breakdown of everything modern package managers do, from installing packages to running security teams.

PromptVer

A semver-compatible versioning scheme for the age of LLMs.

Documenting Package Manager Data

Six repositories documenting how package managers work: commands, manifests, APIs, hooks, and more.

A Taxonomy for Open Source Software

I'm working on a structured taxonomy for classifying open source projects across multiple dimensions: domain, role, technology, audience, layer, and function.

Revisiting Gitballs

Nine years ago I experimented with storing package tarballs as git objects. A visit to Software Heritage got me thinking about it again.

Community Benchmarks for AI Coding Tools

AI coding benchmarks are heavily skewed toward Python and JavaScript. Framework maintainers could change that by defining what good code looks like in their ecosystems.

Extending Git Functionality

A practical guide to the different ways you can extend git: subcommands, filters, hooks, remote helpers, and more.

Podcast Interviews 2025

A collection of podcast interviews discussing ecosyste.ms, open source metadata, package management, and software sustainability.

Package Manager Timeline

A chronological timeline of package manager releases, major milestones, and significant events in the history of software dependency management.

Package Management Papers

A collection of academic research papers on package management systems, dependency resolution, supply chain security, and software ecosystems.

2024

From ZeroVer to SemVer: A List of Versioning Schemes in Open Source

A curated catalogue of versioning schemes used in open source software—from the conventional to the creative.

2023

Ecosyste.ms 2023 End of Year Update

Wrapping up what we've been up to over the past year on https://ecosyste.ms

2018

Making 24 Pull Requests more inclusive for 2018

24 Pull Requests is back for it's 6th year and this time we're making it more inclusive to all kinds of contributions.

Untangle your GitHub Notifications with Octobox

Octobox helps you manage your GitHub notifications in the same way Gmail helps you with email, it's now available on the GitHub Marketplace.

2017

What does a sustainable open source project look like?

What a successful, sustainable open source project looks like, the work people do on it, and the community it needs.

Exploring Unseen Open Source Infrastructure

Highly used open source libraries that have almost no stars or attention on GitHub.