Welcome to 2026! | Handmade Network

Hello Handmade Network, and Happy New Year! 2025 was a relatively quiet year for us where we focused solely on running our jams and building relationships in the handmade community. But we have a lot of plans for 2026 and we are already working on them!

TL;DR:

• We’re finally launching the Handmade Software Foundation and using it to support the development of more handmade software
• We are planning an in-person gathering for this spring, more information to come
• We will have two jams as usual, dates TBD depending on other events

Launch of Handmade Software Foundation

A few years ago we announced that we were forming a nonprofit to support the development of handmade software. Well, it took a while, but I’m happy to announce that the Handmade Software Foundation is now officially a 501(c)(6) non-profit corporation.

What does this mean? This means we are a non-profit organization under the category created for business leagues, chambers of commerce, etc. In other words, we have a non-profit category that allows us to work towards improving business conditions in the software industry. This is perfect for us, because the software industry is in desperate need of fixing, and by supporting handmade software we can expose more programmers to how powerful computers are, while also providing direct benefits to Foundation members. And nonprofit status exempts us from income taxes, meaning 100% of donations will go directly to the nonprofit, not the government.

A 501(c)(6) differs from the more familiar 501(c)(3) designation in that we are not a Donation. The 501(c)(3) is explicitly designed for charitable organizations, and offers the added benefit of tax-deductible donations. However, over time, the definition of 501(c)(3) has become extremely distorted, especially in the software sector, as companies were able to convince the IRS that creating open-source software is a charitable/scientific activity. The result was that large companies were able to finance their own development by creating a “charity”, open-sourcing some of their core technology, and then building their own highly lucrative closed-source software on top. This way they get to deduct major tech expenses from their taxes! what a bargain!

This is stupid and the IRS is no longer allowing it. It set us back at least a year in our nonprofit journey, but it was a blessing in disguise: 501(c)(6) is a much better category that gives us much more freedom in our activities and fewer restrictions on how we spend our money. And we can support profitable projects (e.g. File Pilot) without any worries.

What will the Foundation do?

The number one goal of the Handmade Software Foundation is to support, promote, and sustain the development of Handmade Software.

In 2025 we saw the tremendous success of File Pilot. If for some reason you haven’t seen it, it’s a fantastic little file explorer for Windows, made by the same developer, that’s only 2MB and surprisingly fast. It has a completely custom UI and a lot of love and attention has been put into every pixel. And it came out at just the right time, as Microsoft continues to ship shocking bugs and terrible performance regressions month after month. They also messed up Windows Explorer’s performance, and then “fixed” it by preloading it in the background so the terrible performance wasn’t so obvious. Who will win: a trillion-dollar company, or a guy from Croatia who saw Handmade Hero? Obviously Croatian.

File Pilot is an excellent template for what handmade software should be and how to launch it. We want to take the lessons learned from File Pilot and use them to launch more industry-redefining software.

Basically, the thinking is that handmade programmers have the technical skills to create amazing software, but they don’t always have the aptitude or desire for many of the other tasks that go into shipping. Payments, licensing, email, support, design, marketing, testing, the list goes on. Also, we want to promote self-reliant businesses. We think we can bring people together to provide support and guide developers through that process.

Our core value is that we will never compromise on self-reliance. We won’t lock you into handmade e-commerce platforms; Instead, we’ll give you the code and resources you need to run it yourself. I’m excited to spend more time building these resources in the coming months.

How will the foundation make money?

Membership! You will be able to join the Handmade Software Foundation as a member for a monthly subscription fee, the exact price of which has not yet been determined.

Membership will give you access to a private Discord channel with other members, access to the business resources above, and possibly more benefits in the future. We have other ideas for the Foundation’s activities, but we do not want to distract ourselves from our primary goal of getting the Foundation off the ground.

can I join?

Not at all right now! We are now actively building out the payment processing infrastructure and look forward to launching subscriptions as soon as possible.

In-person gatherings this spring!

It’s been a long time now since we got together. We believe we must change this!

Later this spring, we will host an in-person gathering in Vancouver, BC. Community member Matthew (AbjMakesAPizza on Discord), a Vancouver native, volunteered to organize an event. We are looking at different locations and have got some good leads, and we hope to have the final location and date soon. We’re looking to host around 100 people, which we think is a healthy number to start with in our first year.

The plan is to host a kind of “super-meetup”: not a conference, but not just a meetup either. We want to create a space for demos, informal presentations, socializing, jamming, and generally inspiring each other. Think about a big room with lots of demo tables, a projector, some chairs, and a mic. What’s on the agenda? Display! Maybe some electrical stuff? It all remains to be seen as we discover what space will be capable of.

We’re targeting April or May, so although it’s somewhat short notice, we hope to give you all enough time to make travel plans. Stay tuned for more info!

jam as usual

Ultimately, we are planning to run two jams again this year. The theme of the first jam has not yet been determined; The second will be wheel reinvention as usual.

Unfortunately at this time we do not know when these jams will occur. Timing will depend on our in-person gathering in Vancouver, as well as any other events of interest to handmade people (such as other BSCs). But, just to confirm, we are doing them 🙂

As far as jam ingredients go, I’ve been thinking about how to keep jam from going rancid. And I’m open to ideas! Should we give awards for different categories? Force people to randomly generate project ideas? Shorten the jam? Let people work in teams? Ultimately, I want the Jam to spark new ideas and launch interesting projects, and that means we need to get the creative juices flowing and get lots of talented programmers participating. I’d love to hear your thoughts on Discord or in the comments below.

So long!

Stay tuned for more news next month! I’m committing to publishing one news post per month this year, for real this time. If I lag behind you all may harass me.

Hopefully the handmade community will rock the software industry in 2026!