Meet the team

Bob Goudriaan is director of Commons Caretakers BV as well as general director of the parent organization NLnet foundation. Goudriaan was previously partner and co-founder of the Amsterdam based management consultancy Gendo, specialised in technological innovation. Since 2014 he is also involved with the ethical security company Radically Open Security, a socially driven enterprise that at its start committed to donate its profit to NLnet foundation.

Goudriaan studied fiscal law at Leiden University, and afterwards moved back and forth between functions with large organisations like PWC and Deloitte across the globe and entrepreneurial activities.

Björn Wijers – Burobjorn.nl – has been supporting organisations with technical counsel, guidance and implementation since 2006. Formally trained as an engineer and interaction designer at Saxion University of Applied Sciences Enschede and HKU University of the Arts, Björn combines technical expertise with an eye for usability and design and a dedication to free, libre, open source software, open standards, privacy awareness and fairer copyright.

He has worked in a variety of roles, with a wide-range of organisations and initiatives, in various fields and industries. As a webdeveloper & tech lead at the Dutch Tax Office, sysadmin and developer at Voorjebuurt.nl and as unremunerated board member of Vereniging Open Nederland, NLUUG and as Chapter Lead of Creative Commons Netherlands.

As Coordinator at Commons Caretakers his goal is to connect projects and people and multiply our positive impact for society at large.

With two over decades of experience, Eric brings the perspectives of many codebases, programming languages, and development practices. Eric has experience in scaling, debugging, optimization, software architecture, codebase governance, and more. As lead codebase steward for the Foundation for Public Code, Eric facilitated development collaboration between diverse participants. Formerly a Principal Developer at Booking.com, he has lead the work on the data infrastructure of one of the top 10 largest e-commerce sites. He worked as a developer for MySQL and remains active in MariaDB and the greater Free and Open Source Software database community. In his spare time, he volunteers for Stichting Open Electronics Lab, where he writes embedded-systems software as well as designs, builds, and promotes Open Hardware. Eric loves Free and Open Source Software and will often be seen wearing a FOSS t-shirt.

Marjolein is a freelance UX and product researcher based near Lisbon, with versatile experience in UX design and research. She advocates for users needs with organizational goals in mind. Her specialisation is gathering data from stakeholders and end-users, and synthesizing insights into actionable recommendations that facilitate teamwork on improved product design and UX. Currently, Marjolein focuses on sustainability and ESG compliance projects and non-profit projects. She also volunteers with the Bellingcat community, contributing to OSINT geolocation challenges. In her spare time, she practices martial arts and Pilates, and enjoys exploring the coastal landscape of Sintra.

Miroslav is a Bulgarian-born UX researcher based in sunny Lisbon, passionate about supporting open-source projects. With over 5 years of experience in non-profits, tech, and consulting, he helps founders and developers enhance usability, refine product roadmaps, and deliver impactful solutions. Drawing on his academic background in behavioral science from the Netherlands and expertise in data storytelling, he excels in usability testing, user interviews, surveys, benchmarking, feature prioritization, heuristic analysis, and user journey mapping. His research has driven products in SaaS, gaming, e-health, LGBTQ+ resources, and digital communities. Outside of work, he enjoys fitness, jiu-jitsu, and curating an Amazon-inspired aquarium.

Julian Harty’s professional mission is to enhance the reliability and trustworthiness of software, ensuring it meets user needs and improves lives through appropriate application of technology. In his role at Commons Caretakers, he partners with open-source developers and maintainers to elevate software quality, refine codebases (including documentation and ancillary materials) and make their software more useful, accessible, and maintainable. His approach combines rigorous assessment and testing strategies with automated solutions to streamline ongoing quality assurance.

With a career spanning several decades, Julian has held global positions at leading technology firms and supported educators by introducing low-cost portable hardware and free software resources via the Kusaidia Mwalimu project. He has also contributed to open-source test-automation frameworks for both web and mobile applications. To augment his professional work, he pursued academic research into software development methodologies, culminating in a PhD awarded in 2023.

A Canadian by birth and a Dutchman by training, Adriaan studied mathematics and computer science at the University of Nijmegen. He has been part of the Free Software movement for 30 years, doing mostly C++-related projects and advocating for portability across Open Source operating systems for most of that time. He has been part of governance of projects and associations and managed legal and licensing groups. He is now co-maintainer of the Calamares Linux installer, a board member of KDE e.V. and works for a company that makes (proprietary) inspection systems for pharmaceutical glass. You can find him wearing Free Software T-shirts at punk-rock concerts around Nijmegen.

Jon is a freelancer writer who splits his time between Software as a Service (SaaS) copywriting and technical writing. Before he was a writer, he spent 14 years in software development as a tester, experience he uses in his technical writing for Commons Caretakers.

In addition to being an accomplished technical writer, Marcus is a PHP coder, Linux sysadmin, and MySQL DBA. He wrote the HTML5 email address specification and is a contributor to many open-source projects. Marcus is the maintainer of PHPMailer the second-most forked PHP project on GitHub, and one of the most popular email libraries. When not working with Commons Caretakers, he can be found working on clubzero.co, smartmessages.net, supporting 1CRM, writing and performing penetration testing for Radically Open Security, or acting as a Data Protection Officer. He's a strong advocate of digital rights and privacy, especially GDPR. Marcus has been speaking at technical conferences around the world since 2006, and lives in the French alps with his wife, kids, cat, guitars, bikes, and "far too many" skis.

Cleopatra has worked as a technical writer for numerous Free and Open Source Software projects writing user manuals, troubleshooting manuals, technical documentation, contributing documentation, READMEs, FAQs, and more. Her technical writing is supported by her experience as a software engineer, as well as her degree in mathematics and computer science, which included formal verification as well as number theory and its applications in cryptography.