Looking for sq stakeholders

By Lars | February 1, 2022

Do you use sq or want to use it in the future? Please volunteer to help guide its development.

Sequoia isn’t just a library. It just takes a library-first approach. Sequoia’s command-line interface, which exposes a lot of the library’s functionality, is called sq. It already exists in a basic form, but a lot of functionality is missing. You can help with that.

A crucial factor in developing good software is knowing what it needs to do, and how. This means talking to people who use it, or would like to use it. That is, talking to people who have an interest in the software doing what they need it to do, doing it well, and being comfortable for them to use.

If that’s you, then please help by joining a “stakeholder group” for sq. Stakeholder here means someone with an interest in the future of the software. You qualify as a stakeholder if you already use sq or want to use it in the future.

I would like to gather a group of volunteers to guide sq in a good direction. Please volunteer if you’d be willing to put some effort into this. I will interview the stakeholders about how they use sq and OpenPGP, and do user testing with them by observing them using development versions of sq to achieve specific goals. Both interviews and user testing will occur over the Internet using video conferencing. I expect this will take an hour or two at a time, two to four times over the next few months. In return, the developers of sq will be better informed to make decisions about its development.

To volunteer as a stakeholder, please send me email by mid-February saying so (liw@sequoia-pgp.org). I’m going to keep the list of stakeholders private, but I will make public summaries of results of interviews, user testing, etc.

(To be clear: stakeholders have an advisory role. They don’t get to make decisions. Sequoia developers will make decisions regarding their work, but stakeholders will influence those decisions by providing feedback on changes.)