The ongoing journey: A Latiné perspective on open source participation in 2025

Examining the gap between open source ideals and the lived experiences of Latiné and Indigenous technologists.

When representation gaps persist

Walking into the “All Things Open AI” conference, I experienced something familiar. Anyone who has been one of the few people of color in tech spaces knows this feeling. The room buzzed with excitement about artificial intelligence’s potential. I saw white, Black, and Asian attendees having animated discussions about the future of technology. But as I looked around, I found myself searching for faces that looked like mine, for voices that might share my concerns about climate justice, racial equity, and dismantling systems that harm our communities.

I made two meaningful connections that stood out. First, I connected with Will Mendoza and his consulting company i90, which had helped El Vínculo Hispano leverage AI GPT for rough drafts in grant writing work. That felt like exactly the kind of community-centered tech application that gets me excited. Second, I met Manisha, who does important work through Program Earth on environmental data visualization and geospatial research.

But beyond these bright spots, the visual absence was clear. What struck me more was how the conference’s approach to community building seemed to center entirely on online forums and contribution platforms. That felt like a mismatch with my understanding of community building, which draws heavily from in-person organizing and relationship-building traditions.

This experience brought me back to a 2013 NPR article that asked, “Why isn’t open source a gateway for coders of color?” The article examined why Black and Latiné developers remained underrepresented in open source despite it theoretically being an accessible entry point with no degree requirement and no hiring process. Nearly twelve years later, as a Mexican software engineer with Indigenous roots who has navigated tech spaces in the American South, I find myself asking similar questions about the gap between open source’s promise of openness and the reality of who actually participates. But my perspective has been shaped by experiences the original article couldn’t have anticipated. Based on my research into open source ideology, I’ve learned that the movement does explicitly embrace principles of openness and collaborative development, but my lived experience suggests these ideals don’t always translate into inclusive practice for people like me.

I want to be clear that what I’m sharing here comes from my anecdotal experience and may not represent the perspective of all Latiné, Brown, or Indigenous folks. We are not a monolith, and each of our relationships with technology, work, and community follows different patterns shaped by our unique circumstances.

Read more: Building a sustainable pipeline of open source contributors

Rooted in different ground

My path to software engineering began far from Silicon Valley’s tech hubs. As an undocumented high school student in North Carolina, I first learned about technology entrepreneurship through watching Anthony Carmona, a young Latino entrepreneur, on Al Rojo Vivo. His example inspired me to start Romero Repairs. This wasn’t a passion project but economic necessity, a way to contribute to my family’s survival while pursuing education.

For 25 years, I lived as an undocumented immigrant, including 10 years as a DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient before becoming a permanent resident. This experience fundamentally shaped how I understand work, community, and the luxury of unpaid creative labor. When you’ve grown up sacrificing time away from family and familiar spaces to succeed in predominantly white environments, when you’ve spent years navigating oppressive systems simply to exist with dignity, the idea of contributing unpaid labor to technology projects requires a different calculation than it might for others.

Growing up in North Carolina added another layer of complexity. The South’s tech ecosystem differs significantly from coastal hubs. There are fewer established pathways, less exposure to open source culture, and different economic pressures. During my time at UNC Charlotte studying mathematics and computer engineering, I was often one of the few Latiné students, constantly aware of being an outlier in spaces that weren’t designed with people like me in mind.

As a reconnecting Indigenous person, someone whose ancestral roots stretch back through Mexica, Tolteca, Otomí, Maya, and Zapotec civilizations while being labeled a “first-generation immigrant” in a country where my family predates European colonization, I carry a unique perspective on belonging, ownership, and the politics of technological participation. While my heritage centers in Mesoamerica, I recognize that this experience resonates with others whose roots trace to Inca, Quechua, Guaraní, Mapuche, and countless other Indigenous civilizations across what we now call the Americas.

When structure enabled contribution

My most active period of open source contribution came during 2021-2023, when I made contributions to both ElectricityMaps and Ruby on Rails documentation. The ElectricityMaps contribution was a mobile interface improvement for their climate data visualization platform. This emerged from my participation in Terra.do’s “Climate Change for Software Engineers” course, which created a structured pathway for engagement that felt both educational and purposeful.

The Terra.do program worked for me in ways that traditional open source onboarding often doesn’t. It provided context, community, and connection to larger climate justice goals that aligned with my values. The structured approach allowed me to enter the open source space in a way that felt sustainable alongside my full-time work responsibilities at the time. The mobile toggle fix I implemented wasn’t just a technical contribution. It was part of making critical environmental data more accessible to communities who need it most.

What made this contribution possible wasn’t just technical skill, but the way the program created space for learning and contribution within a broader educational context. It offered something rare in open source culture, which research shows often emphasizes individual merit and technical achievement over collaborative learning and diverse motivations.

When the pandemic shifted much of our professional and community engagement online, it temporarily changed the parameters of participation. Remote work eliminated commutes, created different rhythms, and for a brief moment, made sustained technical contribution feel more feasible alongside other responsibilities.

The economics of extraction vs. community

But as life returned to more traditional patterns, my capacity for sustained open source contribution diminished. Not from lack of interest or skill, but because of competing priorities and the economic realities that shape many Latiné professionals’ lives. This tension became clear in my work developing JüCal, a calendar automation tool that uses AI to extract event information from text and images.

JüCal emerged from my own workflow needs and my community organizing with Somos Durham, where we constantly manage events shared through flyers, social media images, and informal communications. These formats are common in Indigenous and Latiné communities. The tool works beautifully and could benefit others, but I’ve deliberately kept it in private repositories.

Why? Because I’ve watched too many community innovations get absorbed by large capitalistic organizations without intentional consideration of the communities that created them. While open source ideology emphasizes collaborative development and shared knowledge, the licensing models often provide no protection against extraction. They assume that “openness” is inherently good while ignoring how colonial patterns of taking Indigenous knowledge and innovations persist in digital spaces.

This fear isn’t paranoia. Its understanding is rooted in community experience from groups that have seen their traditional knowledge taken without permission or benefit. Growing up, I was made to feel ashamed of the food my mom sent to school with me. Those huevos revueltos con tortilla that embarrassed me as a kid? Now they’re part of the “authentic experience” that anglo white folks seek out in gentrified Mexico City restaurants and resorts. When your ancestors’ innovations have been stolen for centuries, contributing to systems that make it easy for people to take community innovations requires careful consideration.

Community building as alternative practice

My real technical innovation has happened through Somos Durham, the grassroots organization I co-founded to create authentic spaces for Latiné and Indigenous folks in Durham. While I’ve built various tech tools to support our work, the most meaningful contributions have been creating in-person community spaces where Brown folks can exist fully as ourselves.

Somos Durham operates on principles that challenge dominant tech culture. We prioritize relationships over productivity, we center healing and joy alongside organizing, and we build collective power rather than individual advancement. These values directly conflict with open source culture’s emphasis on individual contribution, technical meritocracy, and the assumption that unpaid labor is sustainable or desirable. Our approach draws from Indigenous wisdom and practices that have sustained communities for millennia – knowledge that was dismissed as “primitive” by colonial thinking but is actually grounded in generations of proven community practice.

During my recent period between jobs, made possible by severance after layoffs at Merit America, I experienced something revelatory. For the first time, I had economic security without the pressure of a demanding full-time role. Instead of rushing into open source contributions, I chose to invest deeply in Somos Durham’s community building work and delve into tech projects that had alignment with community-related work. But beyond the technical projects, this time was filled with so much friendship, calm space at home with my partner and family, a balance that felt so good and more at ease. The fulfillment and joy I found in face-to-face organizing, in creating spaces for cultural celebration and political education, reminded me what technology should serve: human connection and community power.

The privilege of “Passion projects”

This experience illuminated something crucial about open source participation. It requires forms of privilege that many in my community simply don’t have. At 30, I already feel burned out from decades of code-switching, of moderating myself in predominantly white professional spaces, of carrying family responsibilities that extend beyond individual success.

Some young Latiné professionals in tech face similar dynamics, though I recognize that experiences vary widely across our communities. Even those finding stability within capitalistic success models often carry family dependencies that can limit their capacity for unpaid community work, including open source projects. Geographic factors matter too. While there are growing numbers of Latiné tech professionals in the Midwest, West Coast, and Northeast, as well as in parts of Texas, the Southeast still has fewer established support networks and pathways.

Within Techqueria, a vibrant community of 25,000 Latiné tech professionals, the open source channel was archived in 2022 due to inactivity. This data point speaks volumes about our priorities and constraints. It’s not that we lack technical skills or interest. It’s that our relationship with work and community follows different patterns than those assumed by traditional open source culture.

Toward Indigenous technology sovereignty

What would open source look like if it were designed with the economic and cultural realities of Indigenous and Latiné communities in mind? How might we create contribution models that protect rather than exploit community innovations? What if open source embraced values of reciprocity, collective ownership, and community accountability rather than individual contribution and corporate extraction?

These aren’t just theoretical questions. They’re essential for anyone serious about diversifying open source participation. My journey from undocumented student to software engineer to community organizer has taught me that the barriers we face aren’t bugs in the system. They’re features of a model that was never designed with us in mind.

The conversation that began with that 2013 NPR article continues today, but it needs new frameworks that center Indigenous and community ways of knowing, creating, and sharing. We need models that recognize that some of us choose family time over code commits not from lack of commitment, but from different values about what constitutes meaningful work.

The ongoing journey

As I continue this work, now as a Senior Software Engineer at RVO Health while maintaining my community organizing through Somos Durham, I’m committed to both contributing to and transforming the spaces I occupy. This means being strategic about when and how I engage with open source, protecting community innovations from extraction, and continuing to build alternative models of technology engagement.

The path remains ongoing, unfinished, and worthy of our continued attention. But it’s also evolving, as more of us bring Indigenous wisdom, community accountability, and values of reciprocity into technical spaces. We’re not just seeking inclusion in existing systems. We’re working to transform them into something more just, more sustainable, and more aligned with the liberation of all Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities who have had to navigate white-dominant systems.

The question isn’t simply how to get more Latiné folks contributing to open source as it currently exists. It’s how to evolve open source into something that serves rather than extracts from our communities and how to ensure that our voices help architect that transformation.

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Note on identity and terminology: When I refer to myself and others in our community as Brown folks, I’m acknowledging both the shared experience of racialization we face in the United States and the diversity within our communities. This includes recognizing that there are Black Indigenous folks whose experiences intersect with but differ from mine, and that our community includes people who identify as Latiné, others who prefer Latinx, and still others who reject these terms altogether. The term “Latin America” itself was coined by French emperor Napoleon III in the 1850s as a tool to justify French colonial expansion, which is why many Indigenous and decolonizing movements prefer terms like Abya Yala (from the Guna people, meaning “Land of Vital Blood”) to reclaim how we name our continent.

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