Episode 277: Rynn Mancuso, Maryblessing Okolie & Mo McElaney on Ethicalsource.dev

Dec 19, 2025

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Guests

Rynn Mancuso | Maryblessing Okolie | Mo McElaney

Panelist

Richard Littauer | Eriol Fox

Show Notes

In this episode of Sustain, Richard and Eriol talk with members of the Organization for Ethical Source (OES), Rynn Mancuso, Maryblessing Okolie, and Mo McElaney, about how ethics, licensing, and codes of conduct intersect in open source. They unpack the origins and challenges of the Hippocratic License, the community driven overhaul of Contributor Covenant 3.0, what it really takes to collaborate across borders and cultures, and how OES is now turning its attention to ethical AI, translations and practical resources for communities to make it a safer and more inclusive space. They also suggest ways for listeners to get involved in these important initiatives. Hit download now!

[00:02:17] Rynn gives the elevator pitch on what the Organization for Ethical (OES) is.

[00:04:57] Mo explains the Hippocratic License is modeled on “do no harm” and it’s an open source license.

[00:06:06] Richard wonders if the Hippocratic License is open source since we’re not using OSI’s definition. Mo explains that OES still uses “open source” in a broader, “big tent” sense focused on work done in the open, and Rynn adds why definitions need to evolve.

[00:09:27] Rynn shares rewriting the Contributor Covenant 3.0, starting from their background, to being a limited scope, and getting feedback from translators that language was too American/Western and 3.0 needed a broader cultural fit.

[00:15:12] Maryblessing was brought in to lead v3.0 from an African, non-US perspective and to make the process community driven. She tells us what’s new in the Contributor Covenant 3.0.

[00:19:43] The discussion covers how they all worked together. It was a highly collaborative, consensus driven process where anyone could propose edits. They talk about how long it took, not work entirely on GitHub, and why not everything was public.

[00:24:59] We hear about some adoption challenges for codes of conduct for small projects and enterprises.

[00:28:53] Rynn, Mo, and Maryblessing touch on how they are approaching ethical AI work, they share options to support OES, how to get involved, and translation needs.

Quotes

[00:12:32] “It was a very limited scope, and we always designed it to work on the internet and be for open source projects.”

[00:13:23] “I would get these problems that really had to do with caste, but nobody would say anything about caste.”

[00:16:37] “This new version also emphasizes restorative justice, and we’re keen on using inclusive languages.”

[00:17:06] “We’re making progress on bringing in African translation.”

[00:17:38] “One of the things we did with the new website was to include the CC3 builder which was going to help make it easy for people to adapt the code of conduct.”

[00:21:37] “Every bit of feedback we got, we took it seriously, we talked about it.”

[00:22:13] “It took is a year and six months to do the entire thing, to make sure people were available. It took that long because we wanted to make sure we were incorporating every feedback.”

[00:23:14] “We do not do everything in the open on GitHub. One reason is structural. GitHub is not great at document management. Another reason we do that is we’ve received a lot of harassment form groups on the internet that were frankly invested in being able to cause trouble for a lot of people.”

[00:29:14] “We’re in the early stages of considering how we could approach ethical AI.”

Spotlight

[00:33:12] Mo's spotlight is for more folks to get involved with this project and other projects through the OES.
[00:33:34] Rynn’s spotlight is a shoutout to the folks at IBM and RedHat and Dev/Mission and JVS where they volunteer.
[00:35:25] Maryblessing’s spotlight is all the amazing people that helped put together the Contributor Covenant v.3.: Greg Cassel, Coraline Ada Ehmke, Gerardo Lisboa, Rynn Mancuso, Mo McElaney, Maryblessing Okolie, Ben Sternthal, and Casey Watts.
[00:36:11] Eriol’s spotlight is the OpenSSF Working Group on Securing Software Repositories.
[00:36:44] Richard’s spotlight is a fun paper called, Paradoxes of Openness: Trans Experiences in Open Source Software by Hana Frluckaj, Nikki Stevens, James Howison, and Laura Dabbish.

Credits

Produced by Richard Littauer
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound

Special Guests: Maryblessing Okolie, Maureen Mcelaney, and Rynn Mancuso.

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