I'm leaving at the end of March.
This has been in the works for a while. I've been planning this with the steering committee since last year, and we've found a wonderful new leader to take the Foundation forward. Someone you'll know, I promise. They're working through the processes on their side before they can go public, so I can't tell you who yet. And no, I won't answer guesses ;)
After five years, it felt right to tell you directly where I've been, what I've learned, and why I'm ready for the next chapter.
How It Started
I walked into this as an engineer and technologist. I'd been casually involved in standards conversations before, but nothing I'd call active. Honestly, I didn't see the power of standards.
Now I do.
A standard sounds dull. But it's actually just a microcosm of what we do as a society: come together and agree on things. Some people call it democracy. Some call it collective intelligence. Whatever you call it, I've watched it happen. I've seen a set of conversations lead to a hard-won agreement, and then watched that agreement ripple out over five years into projects, tools, certifications, and real change.
If you want to shift money, resources, and funding into the areas that matter, working on standards is one of the most powerful things you can do. You can change the world with a conversation.
That's the biggest lesson I'm taking with me.
The Early Days
The first year was a whirlwind. We didn't know who we were. We didn't have a clear definition of green software. We didn't know what problems to solve or how to solve them. So we tried lots of things.
The breakthrough was getting everyone together to work on the SCI specification. Many people are still critical of it, and that's fine. But once you understand the hours and hours of conversations, the debates, the thoughtful experiments that led to what looks like a simple equation, it starts to make sense.
It's very easy to make something complex. It's very, very hard to make something simple.
I'm proud that the working groups never lost sight of that. And I'm proud of the culture Abhishek Gupta (rest his soul) set from the very start: it's not about measurement, it's about action. That philosophy spread through everything we did. Adoptability became the point. There's no value in something that doesn't drive action.
What We Built
From the SCI, we grew: SCI for AI, SCI for Web, certification programs, tooling like the Impact Framework, and now Carmen.
I remember our first hackathon. Everyone was nervous. We pulled it off, and it was a huge success. It showed us the impact we were having externally.
Carbon Aware SDK was a beautiful example of competitors coming together to build enabling technology that they could then implement for their own customers. Open source collaboration at its best.
The podcast (Environment Variables, and now also CXO Bytes) grew into something I never expected. Half a million downloads! My advice to anyone starting something like that: you won't get many listeners in the first year. Power through. It's a hockey stick.
The Green Software for Practitioners Course now has over 130,000 completions. That started as a shared pain our members had. I don't think anyone believed it would grow that big.
The community program was something I believed in deeply, even when it was a hard sell. We launched during COVID, when in-person meetups felt like a relic. But I'd been giving talks about generative AI before ChatGPT, showing people what was coming. I knew we were heading to a world where people wouldn't trust what they see online. And when that happens, they go back to trusting what they see face to face.
Our global meetup program now has over 12,000 members, 37 meetup groups in 17 countries, and our online Movement Platform just reached 3500 members!
That's how I started in this space myself, meeting other people at meetups around London to talk about digital sustainability. I connected with like-minded people who cared about the same things, and that changed everything for me. I wanted to help other people find that same connection. It all starts by finding your people.
The merger with The Sustainable and Scalable Infrastructure Alliance (SSIA) and the formation of the Hardware Standards Working Group broadened our horizons. Software is the driver, but you can't think about software's environmental impact without thinking about hardware. They're synergistic. The Workload Dynamic Power and Cooling (WDPC) project came out of that group immediately, action-oriented, problem-focused. Exactly what we're about.
The Policy Working Group has been quietly doing essential work, building a clear mandate and engaging with policymakers. Standards matter, but for standards to be adopted at scale, you need policy engagement. That's exactly what this group has been driving.
And recently, the explorations into AI-facilitated consensus building. I know that might raise alarm bells. But it's not AI making decisions. It's AI helping people listen to each other. Surfacing where the agreements and disagreements are. Bringing people on a journey faster. We piloted it with SCI for AI, used it properly with SCI for Web, and it's now rolling out across all our specs. That might be one of the most important things we've done.
Why I'm Leaving
My interests have broadened.
Green software is still a huge problem. We haven't solved it. Far from it. But over the years, I've found myself drawn to a different question: how does humanity come together? How do we break out of our epistemic bubbles and echo chambers? How do we agree on anything?
I've spent five years helping people reach consensus on a small scale. Standards work is essentially that: getting people who disagree to find common ground. And I haven't been able to stop thinking about whether those lessons could apply at a larger scale. That question has been in my head for over a year now.
I came in as an engineer who thought open source code would change the world. I'm leaving believing that coming together and agreeing might be even more powerful.
I want to take what I've learned from growing the Green Software Foundation and apply it to other problem areas. I don't know exactly what that looks like yet. But I'm very interested, very willing to learn, and excited to explore.
I'll still be around. I'll be supporting the new leader as they settle in. But I'm also going to be exploring these different directions.
I'll be honest, I'm going to try and have very small problems for a while. But knowing me, I'll take on a big problem pretty soon.
On a personal level, my wife Zanete has built a successful knitwear design business over the last five years. She's helped me so much, even donating her time to the Foundation when we couldn't afford staff. Now she needs my help. So you'll probably see some posts from me about knitting!
If you're working in the space of collective intelligence, deliberative processes, or consensus building, I'd love to connect.
Thank You
The current team is the best I've ever worked with. It took a long time to get here. But one of the reasons I feel comfortable leaving now is because of them. They're excellent. The Foundation is in very good hands.
Thank you to the steering members, past and present. I used to see them as people I had to report to. Then one day, I had a vision: I was at the front, and they were all standing behind me, saying, "We believe in you. We trust you. That's why we put you in front." Ever since then, I've seen them as people who supported me. I'm proud of all of them.
Thank you especially to all the chairs and project leads who volunteered their time and worked through difficult topics over the years.
And to the broader community: thank you for being supportive in a complicated space. This is not a black-and-white issue. If anyone tells you it is, they're wrong.
What's Next for the Foundation
The new leader will be announced once they've worked through the processes on their side. As you'd expect for a senior position, there's a lot to sort out before they can go public. But trust me, it's worth the wait. I'm very, very excited to leave the Foundation in their capable hands. You need different types of people for different phases of an organisation. I was needed to help birth and grow this. They're the right person to scale its impact into the future.
In the meantime, Todd Moore (SVP Community Operations at the Linux Foundation) will act as interim ED. The team is fully capable and running everything. Gadhu and John remain as chairs. The roadmap is set. Nothing else changes.
It's been a privilege.
Asim
Read the official GSF announcement.
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