Will McGugan is a software engineer and author living in Edinburgh, Scotland, and an enthusiastic developer of open source software. He is the creator of several very popular Python packages, including PyFilesystem, Rich, and Textual, tools used by large numbers of developers and companies across the Python ecosystem.

Rich brought modern terminal styling, tables, progress bars, and observability features to Python applications, while Textual extended those ideas into a full framework for building terminal user interfaces. That work led Will to found Textualize, a company dedicated to producing software for terminals, after Textual caught fire with developers around the world.

Will’s path in software started early, with projects such as a BBCode parser and chess libraries, and included a stint as a video game developer. As an author and speaker, he shares practical lessons on building in public, growing open source communities, and turning open source maintenance into a sustainable career and business.