chore: Newsletter 2025q1

sites/org/newsletter/2025q1/index.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,120 @@
+---
+date: '2025-01-01'
+edition: '2025q1'
+intro: 'Welcome to the 2025 Winter edition of the FreeSewing newsletter.'
+title: '2025 Winter edition'
+authors:
+  - 1
+toc_max_heading_level: 2
+---
+
+Welcome to the 2025 Winter edition of the FreeSewing newsletter.
+
+Here's what we've cobbled together on this first day of the year:
+
+- 🎉 Happy New Year (1-minute read by Joost)
+- 🏆 How did we do in 2024? (2-minute read by Joost)
+- ✅ What are we doing in 2025? (2-minute read by Joost)
+
+<!-- truncate -->
+
+Let's begin.
+
+&nbsp;
+
+&nbsp;
+
+&nbsp;
+
+&nbsp;
+
+## 🎉  Happy New Year
+
+I would like to start by wishing you a happy New Year. 2025 is officially here,
+and it's kind of an exciting year as far as numbers go.
+For one thing, 2025 is 45 squared (45²), which is rare as far as years go, as
+44² happened way back in 1936, and 46² won't be here until 2116.
+
+But there's more, because 2025 is also the sum of the cube of all single digits
+(1³+2³+3³+4³+5³+6³+7³+8³+9³), and it also happens to be [a Harshad
+number](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harshad_number).
+
+Wikipedia tells me that:
+
+> _harshad comes from the Sanskrit harṣa (joy) + da (give), meaning joy-giver_
+
+So, my optimistic interpretation is that 2025 announces itself as a year that
+is supposed to bring joy.
+
+My only wish is that the numbers don't lie and that indeed this year will bring
+you lots of joy.
+
+## 🏆 How did we do in 2024?
+
+FreeSewing passed a non-trivial milestone in 2024, when we passed the 100k
+activated user accounts on FreeSewing.org.  As I'm writing this, our website
+has 106.734 activated user accounts. That's a lot. As a matter of fact, the
+growth of the site has caused issues big and small as we needed to scale up and
+sometimes adapt the way things are handled behind the scenes to deal with the
+sheer numbers. We've got a good handle on things, and I expect we'll be culling
+older/dormant accounts throughout the year, so this is not something that has
+me worried.
+
+2024 was also the first (full) year since we switched to a pay-what-you-want model.
+Revenue for the year clocked in at €10.386,63 ($10.808), which is slight increase
+over the year before (1.6% increase over 2023's €10.222,07).
+
+I am happy about that number, but it's also a source of worry because the ever
+increasing number of users does not translate in any sort of meaningful way to
+more financial support. In other words, an increasingly smaller percentage of our
+users are the ones who make it all possible, and that concerns not only because
+it's a small minority but also because my feeling is that this group skews
+heavily to users who have been with us for longer.
+
+In other words, I do have some concerns for the longer term future. But I
+prefer to focus on the positive and more than 10k [going to those who need it
+most](https://freesewing.org/docs/about/pledge) is certainly reason to be thankful.
+
+## ✅ What are we doing in 2025?
+
+Version 4 of FreeSewing, that's what we're doing.
+Yes, the next major release is on its way, although it needs more time in the
+over before it's really to be consumed. (If you're curious, you can [keep an
+eye on this pull request](https://github.com/freesewing/freesewing/pull/7297)).
+
+The instigator for the new major release is that we'll drop support for NodeJS
+18, and expect at least version 20 going forward.  We use the so-called LTS
+release (long term support) which is recommended for production deployments.
+The end-of-life date for version 18 is the end of April of this year, so by
+that time we will move to v4 and NodeJS 20, which necessitates a major version bump.
+
+We are of course using the opportunity to make some other (breaking) changes,
+although those changes will be minimal in our core library and designs.
+
+The majority of the changes will be in how we manage _all the other stuff_.
+From the very start, we've focused on making it easy for contributors to
+create and add their own designs, and that's proven very successful.
+FreeSewing's _collection_ of designs has grown not only in absolute numbers,
+but also in the amount of different people who have contributed them.
+
+Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the other things that keep
+FreeSewing ticking. Like the various websites, and backend code, and all the
+many things big and small that make FreeSewing what it is. We have great
+contributors who are eager to help out, but historically the focus has
+always been on providing tools, documentation, guidance, and handrails to
+create designs. When it comes to working on the website or backend code,
+documentation is often lacking, and it's just a lot harder to get involved with
+that aspect of the project.
+
+That is of course entirely my fault. For all the work that went into making it
+easy for people to contribute designs, no similar effort was undertaken for the
+other aspects of the project.
+
+So, that will be my personal focus in 2025, and the upcoming v4 release will be
+a big part of that.
+
+
+Take care of yourself.
+
+
+joost

sites/org/newsletter/2025q1/index.mdx.bak

@@ -0,0 +1,118 @@
+---
+date: '2025-01-01'
+edition: '2025q1'
+intro: 'Welcome to the 2025 Winter edition of the FreeSewing newsletter.'
+title: '2025 Winter edition'
+authors:
+  - 1
+toc_max_heading_level: 2
+---
+
+Welcome to the 2025 Winter edition of the FreeSewing newsletter.
+
+Here's what we've cobbled together on this first day of the year:
+
+- 🎉 Happy New Year (1-minute read by Joost)
+- 🏆 How did we do in 2024? (2-minute read by Joost)
+- ✅ What are we doing in 2025? (2-minute read by Joost)
+
+<!-- truncate -->
+
+Let's begin.
+
+&nbsp;
+
+&nbsp;
+
+&nbsp;
+
+&nbsp;
+
+## 🎉  Happy New Year
+
+I would like to start by wishing you a happy New Year. 2025 is officially here,
+and it's kind of an exciting year as far as numbers go.
+For one thing, 2025 is 45 squared (45²), which is rare as far as years go, as
+44² happened way back in 1936, and 46² won't be here until 2116.
+
+But there's more, because 2025 is also the sum of the cube of all single digits
+(1³+2³+3³+4³+5³+6³+7³+8³+9³), and it also happens to be [a Harshad
+number](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harshad_number).
+
+Wikipedia tells me that:
+
+> _harshad comes from the Sanskrit harṣa (joy) + da (give), meaning joy-giver_
+
+So, my optimistic interpretation is that 2025 announces itself as a year that
+is supposed to bring joy.
+
+My only wish is that the numbers don't lie and that indeed this year will bring
+you lots of joy.
+
+## 🏆 How did we do in 2024?
+
+FreeSewing passed a non-trivial milestone in 2024, when we passed the 100k
+activated user accounts on FreeSewing.org.  As I'm writing this, our website
+has 106.734 activated user accounts. That's a lot. As a matter of fact, the
+growth of the site has caused issues big and small as we needed to scale up and
+sometimes adapt the way things are handled behind the scenes to deal with the
+scale. We've got a good handle on things, and I expect we'll be culling older
+accounts throughout the year, so this is not something that has me worried.
+
+2024 was also the first (full) year since we switched to a pay-what-you-want model.
+Revenue for the year clocked in at 10.386,63 euro, which is slight increase
+over the year before (1.6% increase over 2023's 10.222,07 euro).
+
+I am happy about that number, but it's also a source of worry because the ever
+increasing number of users does not translate in any sort of meaningful way to
+more fincancial support. In other words, an increasingly smaller percentage of our
+users are the ones who make it all possible, and that concerns not only because
+it's a small minority but also because my feeling is that this group skews
+heavily to users who have been with us for longer.
+
+In other words, I do have some concerns for the longer term future. But I
+prefer to focus on the positive and more than 10k [going to those who need it
+most](https://freesewing.org/docs/about/pledge) is certainly reason to be thankful.
+
+## ✅ What are we doing in 2025?
+
+Version 4 of FreeSewing, that's what we're doing.
+Yes, the next major release is on its way, altough it needs more time in the
+over before it's really to be consumed.
+
+The instigator for the new major release is that we'll drop support for NodeJS
+18, and expect at least version 20 going forward.  We use the so-called LTS
+release (long term support) which is recommended for production deployments.
+The end-of-life date for version 18 is the end of April of this year, so by
+that time we will move to v4 and NodeJS 20, which nesitates a major version bump.
+
+We are of course using the opportunity to make some other (breaking) changes,
+although those changes will be minimal in our core library and designs.
+
+The majority of the changes will be in how we manage _all the other stuff_.
+From the very start, we've focussed on making it easy for contributors to
+create and add their own designs, and that's proven very successful.
+FreeSewing's _collection_ of designs has grown not only in absolute numbers,
+but also in the amount of different people who have contributed them.
+
+Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the other things that keep
+FreeSewing ticking. Like the various websites, and backend code, and all the
+many things big and small that make FreeSewing what it is. We have great
+contributors who are eager to help out, but historically the focus is
+always been on providing tools, documentation, guidance, and handrails to
+create designs. When it comes to working on the website or backend code,
+documentation is often lacking, and it's just a lot harder to get involved with
+that aspect of the project.
+
+That is of course entirely my fault. For all the work that went into making it
+easy for people to contribute designs, no similar effort was undertaken for the
+other aspects of the project.
+
+So, that will be my personal focus in 2025, and the upcoming v4 release will be
+a big part of that.
+
+
+
+
+
+joost