3d ago

Is there a place to contribute, use, and discover trans developed software?

I'm a Software Engineer and I want to feel closer to the trans community. I live in a rural, remote, area and I don't have much of a chance of meeting fellow trans folks. I was wondering if there are publicly "trans" software. E.g., web applications that might help trans individuals, software that's just branded LGBTQ+, trans developers that need help in their repositories, etc. I don't have a ton of free time, but after my child goes to sleep (around 7pm-8pm) I find myself a bit idle. It might be nice to work on something passively a little here and there that supports the trans community in a small way.

7 comments

Aside from the game community, where developers tend to be a bit more public, you might have some issue simply from the fact most developers are kind of reserved with posting who they actually are.
I wouldn't be surprised if tonnes of software you use has trans folk in the dev pipeline maintaining it, but you'd never know cuz their github pfp is just a picture of an anime waifu with a link to their contact info and thats about it.
Considering how many lgbtq+ folks tend to post on dev focused discord channels (the main c# channel literally has a perma rainbow on it), and on their discord profile they will be more open about who they are, it stands to reason tonnes of projects probably have lgbtq+ folks involved.
Like I'm pretty sure if I open the chat history of any of my mainstream dev discords right now and flip through the m9st recent 20 posters in the main chats, I'd find someone openly trans in their profile within 30 secs lol
I've never seen any sort of aggregate repo of "Here's projects you can support!" Anywhere though.
On one hand, that sounds like a cool idea in a perfect world.
On the other, a part of me worries about how much certain people could abuse that and weaponize it though :c
Like I could, unfortunately, 100% see a threat actor leverage it as "Here's a whole target list of projects/maintainers to try and harass/doxx, script kiddies!"
Which sucks.
- Ah that's fair. I do follow some trans game developers but their stuff is streamed/closed-ish source. Good point about the script kiddy threats.
- arch linux discord also has a perma rainbow logo, as well as a dedicated lgbtq channel and like probably 50% of us in there are trans
  
  Alright. I'll cave and buy my socks and setup Arch.

Minecraft mods are almost all open source and there are a lot of trans people working on them, but thats really specific

As a sort-of developer myself (mostly network automation tools and backend things), it's not something I'd really share publicly. Not because of shame, or even worries of safety. Just because I don't really share my code or projects with the public anymore. I haven't worked on open source software in a long time. I wish I still could, but it's not in the cards for me. Most of my "a bit idle" time has unfortunately gone into obsession over "perfecting" my transition. We'll see if therapy helps there, but I honestly think it would just shift to life planning endeavors instead.
That said, maybe look at this with a different lens: while it would be good to band together and write our own things, software doesn't have a gender. Find projects that help with things you believe are worth doing. Sometimes it's tools to help the transgender community directly (https://github.com/cvyl/awesome-transgender could use some updating here!) and sometimes it's just making the world a better place for humans to be kind and helpful to each other.
I get the desire for community, though. I've posted about this myself, but it's very difficult to find people that "get it" who aren't already trans or questioning. I'd love a circle of friends to relate with. The software world can be pretty socially closed off, sometimes!

7 comments