Luis Villa: Reading in 2024—tools

I was going to do a single post on my reading in 2024, but realized it probably makes more sense as a two-parter: the things I used to read (this post), and the things I actually read (at least one post on books, maybe a second on news and feeds). Feeds I still read a lot of feed … | Continue reading


@lu.is | 2 days ago

Luis Villa: Boox Page: A Review

I love words, and have as far back as I can remember. Mom says I started reading the newspaper religiously in kindergarten, I proudly show off a small percentage of my books in my videoconferencing background, and of course the web is (still) junk straight into my veins. So I’ve … | Continue reading


@lu.is | 10 months ago

Luis Villa: After Twitter

The number of self-identified thoughtful-people-in-tech whose social media energy still goes primarily to Twitter doesn’t bode well for, well, anything. I’m genuinely not judgy of people whose thing is Just Being Online, but if part of the self-image you like to project is “oh, y … | Continue reading


@lu.is | 11 months ago

Luis Villa: After Twitter

The number of self-identified thoughtful-people-in-tech whose social media energy still goes primarily to Twitter doesn’t bode well for, well, anything. I’m genuinely not judgy of people whose thing is Just Being Online, but if part of the self-image you like to project is “oh, y … | Continue reading


@lu.is | 11 months ago

Luis Villa: The brief guide to MSCD 5

My primary goal when trying to improve a contract’s drafting is not “plain english”. The goal is simplicity, clarity, and consistency, because complexity is a source of errors. As a pleasant side-effect, contracts drafted with rigorous attention to consistency and clarity are gen … | Continue reading


@lu.is | 1 year ago

Luis Villa: Announcing the Upstream podcast

Open is 1️⃣ all over and 2️⃣ really interesting and yet 3️⃣ there’s not enough media that takes it seriously as a cultural phenomenon, growing out of software but now going well beyond that. And so, announcement: I’m trying to fill that hole a little bit myself. Tidelift’s new U … | Continue reading


@lu.is | 1 year ago

Luis Villa: Notes on using Freedom to block digital distractions

“Escape” by Metaphox is licensed under CC BY 2.0, via openverse. I’ve been using freedom.to more or less since it launched. I was recently asked by someone how I use it, and since it didn’t fit in the text box on that platform, here’s a mid-ish-long set of notes on how I use it. … | Continue reading


@lu.is | 1 year ago

Luis Villa: Writing elsewhere; the pain of moving platforms

I’ve been doing a lot of writing elsewhere of late. Some links: I’ve written a fair amount in the past year for the Tidelift blog, most recently on the EU’s Cyber Resiliency Act and what it might mean for open source. I wrote last week at opensource.com; the latest in a now m … | Continue reading


@lu.is | 1 year ago

Luis Villa: Book Notes: Summer 2022 (burnout and the good life)

I promised in my post on water to blog more this summer. So far, so fail, but in part it’s because I’ve been reading a lot. Some miscellaneous notes on those books follow. “An interesting bookshelf photorealistic”, as rendered by Midjourney’s image-creation AI, another summer ho … | Continue reading


@lu.is | 2 years ago

Luis Villa: Water on the brain; joining OpenET board

I’m becoming a Westerner (in an age of aridification) because I have water permanently on the brain. vacation reading: Introduction to Water in Californiavacation activity: teaching A about center pivot and drip irrigationrecent Wikipedia editing: evapotranspiration Sprinkler … | Continue reading


@lu.is | 2 years ago

Luis Villa: Broader opens: on the relevance of cryptolaw for open lawyers

I’ve been thinking a lot of late about what “libre” and “open” mean to me, in large part by thinking about movements adjacent to open source software, and how open software might learn/borrow from its progeny. I hope to go into that more this summer, but in the meantime, I’m publ … | Continue reading


@lu.is | 2 years ago