Hello! 👋 My name is Martin Geisler. My passion for open-source software began over 25 years ago with my first Linux installation and has driven my career ever since. I soon published my first projects, PHP Weather and PHP Shell, simple tools for a time before SSH was common.

From Early Tools to Core Developer

From 2008 to 2013, I was a core developer for the Mercurial DVCS, becoming the second-most prolific contributor to the project. This experience was formative, teaching me invaluable lessons about long-term stability in foundational software. My open-source work has always been intertwined with my professional life, from my PhD work on the VIFF cryptography framework to contributions to the ZeroVM sandboxing project.

Empowering the Rust Community

Since 2016, my focus has been the Rust ecosystem. I maintain 10 crates, including a foundational crate called Textwrap which powers word wrapping in many Rust applications. My most significant contribution is Comprehensive Rust, the training course I developed at Google. With over 32,000 stars, it has become an important free resource for learning Rust worldwide. To support its global audience, I also created mdbook-i18n-helpers, a toolset for translating Markdown books. This is now used by other major projects like Rust by Example.

I enjoy sharing my knowledge with the community, having given several talks at the PyZurich user group and a workshop on concurrency at RustFest 2024. I spoke at RustConf 2024.

Looking back, my work has evolved from building individual tools to creating foundational infrastructure and educational resources that empower entire communities. This is the work I am passionate about, and your sponsorship will help me continue to build, maintain, and share these resources with everyone.

Why Sponsor Me?

Your sponsorship will directly support my ability to continue this work by helping to cover the costs involved:

• Hosting and Domain Name Fees: Covering the costs for my personal website and email (geisler.net).

• Development Equipment: Ensuring I have a fast and modern hardware setup for coding, testing, and building software efficiently.

• Conference and Travel Costs: Helping me attend conferences to share my work, learn from others, and stay connected with the open-source community.

By becoming a sponsor, you are helping to ensure that the projects you may rely on remain actively maintained, secure, and freely available for everyone. Thank you for considering supporting my work.