Women in Open Source: Claire Hernandez

by Kalleen Marquise on Mar 10, 2021

This month we are interviewing some wonderful women in the open source community! Here are some excerpts from our interview with Claire Hernandez of BibLibre.

Please tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and your current role in open source.

I have been working for BibLibre for 10 years in France. We participate in developing the use of open source softwares in libraries. I have a technical background as a developer and I have been a facilitator in teams too. I am now in charge of the R&D facet of the company. I suggest enhancements of the products we provide or new open source software that could be useful to our users.

What led you to open source?

Looking for a model that makes sense in my digital life most likely. I have been using open source software since I started using computers. The model quickly won me over.

What is a favorite project, experience or memory related to open source?

I have been pleasantly surprised the past year by the dynamism of the Folio community (which is a library services platform) and its welcome to new entrants. Despite the system being complex, people take time to answer your questions with quality.

I am currently interested in the activity around the "linux phone" pinephone and the communities that revolve around it (notably KDE-plasma and Mobian). It's yet another initiative to put linux on a mobile device and it's great to see the projects and people coordinating for an interesting free experience. I do not shy away from my pleasure of finding a usual technical environment on my phone.

What do you love about open source?

The co-creation of tools, the sustainability of the solutions created, the meaning, doing it together, transparency... Everything ?

What is something you are listening to or reading right now?

Regularly podcasts and articles about agility, management and facilitation and a lot of things about soil and trees.

Anything else you'd like to share?

I believe that the open source world is above all a question of teams that come together. Contributing is not just submitting a patch, it's all there is to help the emergence of this software and content.