Green Software Writers Project

Posted on April 19th, 2022

Learn how the Green Software Writers Project operates and how you can get involved as a writer, reviewer or translator to spread the message of green software worldwide.

Green Software Writers Project

Sara Bergman is a Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft and the Chair of the Green Software Writers Project. 

Why do you find the Writer Project exciting?

I really like the Writer’s project because we get to share the work the GSF is doing with a broader audience. When I wanted to start learning about green software there were not so many resources out there and most of them were research articles. While I love reading research, I sometimes want something more “bite sized” and directly applicable to my use case. With this project, I feel like we are making green software learnings more easily accessible to a wider audience and I’m happy to be a part of educating others who also want to learn more about green software. 

Tell us more about the project

Our project has three main areas. The first is writing and curating articles about green software, how to be more energy efficient, hardware efficient and carbon aware. We also share interviews and work and news from within the GSF. Our objective is to be a learning resource for both for people with feet on the ground and hands in the code, but also for people interested in green software who aren’t necessarily engineers or developers. Like one of the philosophies in the principals of green software engineering says; everyone has a role to play in the climate solution.


The second area of our project is translating articles into more languages than English. For example, our GSF Manifesto is currently available in Brazilian Portuguese, Mandarin, German, Spanish, Japanese and Italian. Our core values in the GSF include being inclusive and open to all, and in the Writer’s project a big part of operationalizing this is to ensure more people have access to our content.

The third area of the Writer’s project is our external newsletter! You can sign up for our newsletter here if you want to receive it too. We want to increase the reach of the work within GSF by sharing articles, upcoming events and news from the GSF to everyone who is interested to learn more.

What progress have you made so far? 

We currently have over 60 articles available on our website, they are a mix of interviews, case studies, news from GSF working groups and technical pieces with hands on tips and tricks. Our newsletter has been sent out monthly since January 2022 to a steadily increasing reader base. Currently we have a few articles translated into one of six languages and we are adding more each week! 

Why is the Green Software Writers project important?

The Green Software Foundation is doing so many important activities in building an ecosystem of people, standards, tooling and best practices and our project makes sure our reach is beyond the foundation. We want everyone to take part in the climate solution and learning more about how to do that is the first step.

How does your project work? 

We are contributors and members from all over the globe so we work mostly asynchronously through Slack and emails and by collaborating on documents. 

In the newsletter we have an awesome group of members putting the content together, talking with the rest of the GSF to highlight the most recent news and content. 

Our translators work in pairs or groups based on which languages they write in to translate a GSF article into a new language. 

For writing new articles we have both writers and reviewers, the writer will craft an article using our supporting guidelines and the reviewers will help make the articles ready for publication. 

How can someone get involved?

The best way to get involved is to check out our 3 “Help Wanted” issues of GitHub:

[GSF Writers] Translating articles and other GSF content to other languages · Issue #3 · Green-Software-Foundation/community_wg · GitHub

[GSF Writers] Interested in helping with the monthly *public* Green Software Newsletter? · Issue #5 · Green-Software-Foundation/community_wg · GitHub

[GSF Writers] Interested in writing an article for the Green Software Foundation? · Issue #4 · Green-Software-Foundation/community_wg · GitHub

Is it only GSF members who can get involved? Is there a way for non members?

Our project is currently only open for GSF members, but we are interested in contributions in the form of articles and translations from non GSF members.

What does a GSF member get from becoming involved in the Writers project?

Getting involved in the Writer’s project is a great way to connect with people from other member organisations and expand your network. Writing, translating and reviewing content also gives you a chance to expand your knowledge of green software and share your learnings. You will be a part of spreading the knowledge of green software and the GSF to a wider audience.  

What challenges do you see for the project and how do you plan to overcome them?

We always want to expand our portfolio of languages we support. If you speak more languages than English, please consider helping us by translating or reviewing translated articles. We also need more people with a background in green software to content review articles before publication. This is a great way to learn more and get involved in the community.

What can we expect from your project in the near future?

We are not going anywhere, you can expect more exciting content from us!

This article is licenced under Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0)