VOOZH about

URL: https://thenewstack.io/good-bye-kris-nova/

⇱ Good-Bye Kris Nóva - The New Stack


TNS
SUBSCRIBE
Join our community of software engineering leaders and aspirational developers. Always stay in-the-know by getting the most important news and exclusive content delivered fresh to your inbox to learn more about at-scale software development.
REQUIRED
It seems that you've previously unsubscribed from our newsletter in the past. Click the button below to open the re-subscribe form in a new tab. When you're done, simply close that tab and continue with this form to complete your subscription.
The New Stack does not sell your information or share it with unaffiliated third parties. By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Welcome and thank you for joining The New Stack community!
Please answer a few simple questions to help us deliver the news and resources you are interested in.
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
Great to meet you!
Tell us a bit about your job so we can cover the topics you find most relevant.
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED
Welcome!

We’re so glad you’re here. You can expect all the best TNS content to arrive Monday through Friday to keep you on top of the news and at the top of your game.

What’s next?

Check your inbox for a confirmation email where you can adjust your preferences and even join additional groups.

Follow TNS on your favorite social media networks.

Become a TNS follower on LinkedIn.

Check out the latest featured and trending stories while you wait for your first TNS newsletter.

PREV
1 of 2
NEXT
VOXPOP
As a JavaScript developer, what non-React tools do you use most often?
Angular
0%
Astro
0%
Svelte
0%
Vue.js
0%
Other
0%
I only use React
0%
I don't use JavaScript
0%
Thanks for your opinion! Subscribe below to get the final results, published exclusively in our TNS Update newsletter:
NEW! Try Stackie AI
From clobbered drafts to real-time sync
Apr 14th 2026 10:00am, by David Moore
TypeScript 6.0 RC arrives as a bridge to a faster future
Mar 14th 2026 9:00am, by Darryl K. Taft
Mastra empowers web devs to build AI agents in TypeScript
Jan 28th 2026 11:00am, by Loraine Lawson
2023-08-23 05:57:36
Good-Bye Kris Nóva
Cloud Native Ecosystem / Tech Culture

Good-Bye Kris Nóva

The developer, open source leader, and alpinist died in a climbing accident, leaving the world poorer for her absence.
Aug 23rd, 2023 5:57am by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
👁 Featued image for: Good-Bye Kris Nóva

When anyone middle-aged or younger dies, It’s a cliche that they died much too young. Sometimes, it’s really true, though. Someone dies who’s a true, innovative leader who was changing the world for the better. Such a person was Kris Nóva.

I can’t claim to have known Nóva well, but she impressed me. Most people who’d met her would agree. Her job title when she died from a climbing accident was GitHub Principal Engineer. But, she was far more than that.

Not even 40, Nóva had co-founded The Nivenly Foundation. This organization is a member-controlled and democratically-governed open source foundation. Its goal is sought to bring sustainability, autonomy, and control to open source projects and communities. Specifically, it governs the popular tech Mastodon site, Hachyderm Decentralized Social Media, and the Aurae Runtime Project. The latter is a Kubernetes node workload management program.

👁 Image

Kris Nóva and Alex Williams

Many people claim to be “thought leaders.” Only a handful really are. Nóva was one. Her Kubernetes clusterf*ck talks were famous for revealing what’s what with Kubernetes and security. She also co-authored Cloud Native Infrastructure, a must-read for anyone considering running cloud native architectures.

Nóva also authored Hacking Capitalism, a book modeling the tech industry as a system. This book is interesting for anyone who wants to know how tech works.  It’s specifically for marginalized technologists who need tools to navigate the tech business. You should read this if you’re a programmer or engineer constantly flustered by tech’s management, social, and business sides. It will give you the insight you need on how investors, top leadership, and entrepreneurs view our ruthless, but predictable, industry.

She wasn’t just a speaker and writer, though. She was also an open source developer who contributed significantly to Linux, Kubernetes, distributed runtime environments, Falco, and the Go programming language. Altogether, she had created 388 GitHub repositories. In a word, she was “impressive.”

As Josh Berkus, Red Hat’s Kubernetes Manager, said on Mastodon, We lost one of the leading lights of tech this week. Relentlessly driven, astonishingly brilliant, and one of the bravest people I ever met, Kris Nóva was both an inspiration and a friend to dozens, if not hundreds, of people (including me). While it is fitting that she should have left us doing what she always did — taking risks — we are all poorer for having lost her.”

Indeed, we are.

Last Wednesday evening Kris Nova had a climbing accident and died.

All of us that loved her are heart broken and stunned. She was an amazing person that lived out loud and built connection and community wherever she went. She will be horribly missed. pic.twitter.com/zx8ODLrUx5

— Joe Beda (@jbeda) August 20, 2023

TRENDING STORIES
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, aka sjvn, has been writing about technology and the business of technology since CP/M-80 was the cutting-edge PC operating system, 300bps was a fast internet connection, WordStar was the state-of-the-art word processor, and we liked it.
Read more from Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
SHARE THIS STORY
TRENDING STORIES
SHARE THIS STORY
TRENDING STORIES
TNS DAILY NEWSLETTER Receive a free roundup of the most recent TNS articles in your inbox each day.
The New Stack does not sell your information or share it with unaffiliated third parties. By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.