Anyone know of any cheap (<50€) graphic tablets that work with #Linux?
See: babka
Finished my #website for now.
After setting up #nixos on the server, hardening #SSH access and writing a static site with #Pelican, I've now finished the last piece: a mirror of the my most important account's #RSS/#ATOM feeds on the site, updated daily.
https://gitlab.com/CSDUMMI/posse-feed
See: babka
Read MoreContinuing the discussion of the Technology Invesment Funds:
While the convenience that such funds provide is beneficial to acquire more donations, but the funds cannot pass on 100% of the donations to the projects and neither should they.
Operating such a fund requires at least the following costs:
- Researching and validating project dependencies. Projects do not necessarily disclose all of their dependencies, especially if they compete with their dependencies for funding, thus the dependencies have to be regularly and independently verified.
- Funding inter-project infrastructure: support hotlines, conferences, support groups - in short: Guild work.
- Usual operational costs of a digital business: servers, domains, administration
If these “funds” should operate as investment funds, this would be deducted as a percentage fee from any investment (i.e. 5% of all investments are used for fund operation).
Alternatively investors could be compelled to pay a more regular fee instead of the percentage fee, though this is a detailed discussion for which this is not the correct place.
The questions we should elaborate more here are: Who should initiate a TIF/TIP?
Should it be developers, a reputable foundation? How
Read More
I’m not considering this point an obstacle because we should assume that any project that is critical and in a desperate state is willing to be funded. Even when the maintainer does not want to receive compensation for their time, having the ability to hire a trusted contributor or maintainer to take over when the volunteer is exhausted, burned-out or wants to give up their hobby. The willingness to receive funds for your own work does not mean you don’t need money for other purposes. As the XZ affair has shown, it is increasingly difficult to impossible for a maintainer to find a trusted maintainer to take over from them and if the previous maintainer has to
Read MoreAccording to the 2020 FOSS Contributor Survey conducted by the Linux Foundation, 48.7% of respondents are paid for work on free and open-source software[1].
And yet there a critical free and open-source software projects that are chronically underfunded and that have no realistic ability to monetize.
Difficulty of financially supporting “FOSS”
Finding projects to support
It is surprisingly difficult to financially support “FOSS”. You can of course support some projects that you know you use or that you know you like. But this will always just be a small fraction of the projects you actually use.
A company or an individual has only one option when trying to support FOSS: they have to research what projects they actually use. They can’t fund all the projects they use, because even just using a single FOSS project (e.g. Mastodon, the Linux kernel) entails depending on hundreds, if not thousands of independent projects. Only the wealthiest donors can afford to split their donation into a thousand pieces and still end up with amounts that
Read More8 boost, 11 favorites. Not a single reply.
Either this post and the article referenced was perfect or people just aren't engaging with the contents of the posts here like they used to.
When I posted this article originally, there was a lively discussion here that led me to summarize some of the very good and interesting points made back then in a follow-up post.
Now, in the wake of a disaster caused by the problem this article is addressing, we don't have the time on this network anymore to engage with ideas beyond a mere press of a button?
I'm not accussing anyone who boosted this or favorited this individually - if I was I'd have to find myself guilty as well. It is just a sorry development to me - perhaps there is just too much "content" on here by now for anyone to meaningfully and critically engage with any single piece of it.
See: babka
Read Morehttps://discuss.coding.social/t/unionize-free-software-found-software-guilds/59 the recent #XZ disaster has prompted me to reread my own article from two years ago next month on "Free Software Unions". While I'd put some of the details in there differently today, I think the core point still stands: that free software maintainers are vulnerable to exploitation, both from Big Tech and, as is now evident, malicious attackers. And that the only way to protect them is to join into mutual support, solidarity groups.
See: babka
Read MoreDue to the #XZ dependency vulnerability, I've been looking for lists of projects that need maintainers and contributors. I found this website, which appears reasonably up-to-date: https://seeking-maintainers.net/
But both the list there and the GitHub maintainer-wanted topic appear far too small for the size of the problem.
https://github.com/topics/maintainer-wanted
seeking-maintainers also does not seem to be the first attempt to create such an index: https://github.com/flxwu/maintainerswanted.com (not updated for five years).
Do you know any other resources, places where maintainers can reach out for help?
See: babka
Read More9h train ride from Vienna today. Had a great week, but that journey really floored me. Going to post pictures once I have the energy to write alttext.
See: babka
Read MoreHaben #ICE Züge eine gut genuge Klimaanlage, um bei Vollauslastung die CO2 Konzentration unter einem kritischen Level zu halten? Ich fühle mich nicht so, als wäre dem so.
See: babka
Read More#GDPR / #DSGVO Question: if I'm filmed by CCTV, that material would contain both my appearance and location. Would this material thus be considered personally identifiable information under the #GDPR and could I request this material from CCTV operators, such as the #DB or #ÖPNV? And would they then have to search all there material they have for me and provide me those recordings?
See: babka
Read MoreJust a thought: the mindset exams train me on is actually very unhelpful and dangerous when doing actual work.
When having an exam, oral or written, everything I do must be right and when I make a mistake, I'm incentivized to argue and spin the mistake to make it look less like a mistake, instead of accepting it and learning from it.
When there are actual stakes involved though, not just the whims of an examiner to please, this same attitude is not just counterproductive, but outright dangerous. Being open about mistakes is a basic prerequisite to working in a team, with clients or in a company and it's the absolute opposite of what I need to do when writing exams, papers, etc.
See: babka
Read MoreWebsite done.
I decided to use #Pelican as #SSG, because it uses #Python and #Jinja2, so I didn't need to relearn and was able to concentrate my efforts on modifying the theme and removing all JS and CSS I didn't need.
Next I want to experiment with #HTMX to integrate some dynamic elements into my website.
From now on, until I stop paying for the domain or the VPS, my website will be:
https://jorisgutjahr.eu
See: babka
Read MoreI was wrong. I'm running into an issue with my ssh config. I get some issue with ssh public key authentication:
When I try to connect, pubkey auth fails and I have to use a password (which I want to eventually disable).
On the client it fails in sign_and_send_pubkey stage saying agent refused operation.
On the server it fails because the host key type "they" sent are not supported.
The weird thing is: neither my client nor the server use the host key types listed in this log message - so I'm pretty much at the stage of trying to look into openssh's source code to figure out the exact conditions for this error and get pubkey ssh auth working.
See: babka
Read MoreFinished ssh configuration. Next: Backups. Afterwards: Installation of Services (Fun)
See: babka
Read MoreI've just managed to (hopefully correctly) setup nixos on my vps via the command line installation instructions.
See: babka
Read MoreI'm currently trying to setup my own VPS to run a static website and some other services, mostly for personal use. I was tired of using the pages feature of various forges for this and wanted the flexibility to also run some stuff server-side.
Do any of you have a suggestion for what to do with a small VPS like that?
See: babka
Read MoreWhy does @signalapp use #hCaptcha ? Is spam really a bad problem and is there no better way to prevent it?
See: babka
Read MoreFirst semester: done
See: babka
Read MoreDas ist wirklich super Timing. Deshalb ist es ein Problem, wenn wir unsere wichtigsten Dokumente nicht runterladen können sondern nur online benutzen können.
Ausfall Online-Kataloge & Ausleihzentrum geschlossen https://blog.sub.uni-hamburg.de/?p=37607 #öffenungszeiten
See: babka
Read MoreHave #DW and #NYTimes shut down their onion services?
They no longer set the onion service header, it seems and the domain they published in their announcements no longer work in my #Tor installation.
Is this just me?
See: babka
Read More#AskFedi: any recommendations on a workbook for learning #German from #English?
Best would be starting from A2/B1 level.
See: babka
Read MoreI just noticed: my "Login or Register" button has been translated to German in the Mastodon UI.
See: babka
Read MoreI think inline #documentation is an important tool to making software readable. It makes software maintainable, encourages future development and makes it easier to join the project as a developer.
This is why I advocate for #mastodon to start encouraging inline documentation with #yardoc, requiring it for any new PRs and serving this API documentation on joinmastodon.org.
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/29141
See: babka
Read MoreI just learned that these existed and I'm just dumbfounded by it.
Who? Why? And for what do people "celebrate" Work Anniversaries?
And why are there so many articles about writing and celebrating this "event"?
See: babka
Read More2023-09-18: Sprint Midpoint
What have we accomplished?
Sprint
- @CSDUMMI Added fetching of ActivityPub Actors PR #5.
- @mjh has created a PR #4 with fixes for database creation and the media carousel.
- @mjh has made upstream improvements to LibRate security.
What’s Next?
- PR #4 & #5 needs review and merging as soon as possible.
See: socialcoding
Read More2023-09-23: It’s LibRate ActivityPub Support
The result of the second ballot is in.
A strong majority has selected LibRate ActivityPub Support as the project to work on during this sprint. The results of the ballot can be reviewed here
See: socialcoding
Read MoreWith the conclusion of the first Guild Alpha sprint and beginning of the second, a new way of developing free software is starting to take shape.
We are trying to innovate on the basic structure of free software development defined by often uncoordinated work of individuals with a collective and democratic approach.
Every sprint a group of people comes together to vote on a project to work. Goals are set, development takes place for eight to ten weeks and then the sprint ends and results are either proposed to an upstream project or handed over to a maintainer to continue development in a smaller team.
All work is voluntary. More detail about the structure and progress can be found in the links above and on the website.
We are still iterating on the format of the Guild itself.
The following is my personal opinion on the future of the Guild and not a position of the Guild or the Editors of the Guild. I hope for a constructive discussion on the
Read More2023-09-13: Announcement
Today the sprint officially starts. The announcement has been published on our brand new website and we, the editors, are looking forward to new members, new proposals and a new project.
Changes from last sprint:
More editors
Thanks to our new addition, @dannymate, there are now three editors. The editors can thus take on more organizational tasks this sprint than last.
Promise System
Every week we will now ask members to tell the editors, what tasks they want to try to complete in the week and check in with them at the end of the week to see how they have been progressing.
Weekly reports on Wednesday
The weekly reports will be published on Wednesday for this sprint. A week for guild purposes is now from Wednesday to Tuesday. This is so we don’t have a deadline every Monday and we can all enjoy our weekends a little more.
Always open
As there are now three editors,
Read MoreSeptember 13. 2023 - Start of the second sprint
Today we have announced the Second Guild Alpha Sprint.
The last two weeks were spent in the inter-sprint. We have setup a website, a kbin magazine and rewritten the forms for starting a guild.
This sprint has been concluded with the proposal of the PR with our changes to bookwyrm. Our concluding thoughts on this sprint can be read here.
The second sprint is now looking for members and open for project proposals. Read about everything on our website.
We will continue posting our weekly report of the sceond sprint here
See: socialcoding
Read MoreThis will be where the editors (@dannymate, @CSDUMMI and @tomat0) publish weekly reports for the second sprint of Guild Alpha.
See: socialcoding
Read MoreAugust 14. 2023 -
What have we accomplished?
- @dannymate fixed some issues casued by the merger for Celery tasks #27 and re-added Hugh’s fix for #25.
- hugh fixed numerous bugs with #28 and is currently being tested for merge.
What’s next?
- We’ll have a check-up meeting this week to conclude this sprint and discuss the organization of the next.
- @dannymate and hugh work on making #28 stable and tested
- Research the Django File Storage and FileField API and answer the questions:
- Implement self-contained archive as a tar or zip file
See: socialcoding
Read MoreAugust 7. 2023 - Mergers and Tasks
What have we done?
- @CSDUMMI added links to exported files in #26
- All export and import logic has been moved to celery tasks and merged by @dannymate and @CSDUMMI.
What’s next?
- The current state of the export-import branch needs to be tested on the staging server.
- Documentation for the export-import branch (in the form of docstrings) should be added and reviewed
- All media files fetched from the origin server during imports should be added to a tar archive
- A pull request needs to be created to bookwyrm with our changes in export-import. We should reach out to bookwyrm maintainers and create a draft of the PR text.
See: socialcoding
Read MoreJuly 31. 2023 - Celery Tasks
What have we done?
- @dannymate created the final two PRs for moving the Import/Export process to Celery #24 #26.
- hugh fixed an export bug #25
What’s next?
- Add link to created archive file after export job has completed to export page
- Add messages about successful import job on import page
- Complete the migration of import/export to celery tasks
- Start work on self-contained tar archive
See: socialcoding
Read MoreJuly 10. 2023 - Incremental advancements
What did we accomplish?
- @dannymate makes progress on the Export PoC and made SubTasks generic #17
- Deployment of Hugh’s #15 to facilitate further code reviews. There were group discussions around the export download mechanism, tarfile data inclusion and unit testing.
Our goals
- This week, we should merge #15. There are a few conditions that need to meet for that:
- All code reviews need to resolved
- Several manual tests must have been completed, including:
- A test that a no-op archive (exporting & importing into the same account) does not result in any change to the account (and does not throw an error)
- A test that a full archive (export from an account with books, readthroughs, saved lists, follows, blocks, comments and reviews) to an empty account, recreates all of the archive (without error)
- #17 should be rebased on #15 and deployed to test instances.
- We should start developing unit tests for the behavior implemented
Read More
July 3. 2023 - Successful progress on tasks, extending archives and TAR archives
What did we accomplish?
- Hugh continues progress on #15
- @dannymate shares a functional prototype for offloading import to Celery. #17
- @CSDUMMI begins work & discusses further with @Ryuno-Ki about the use of TAR Archives #16.
- Further discussion occurred over possible issues with the export mechanism (#3 - Create tasks for export/import instead of performing them in the request-response loop - bookwyrm - Codeberg.org)
What’s next?
Currently we are progressing quite well. We should aim to complete #15 and #17.
We’ll have to decide on how to create the archive. Currently there appear to be three options:
- Create it in-memory (currently the case)
- Store it on disk
- Stream the archive (creating it on-demand and archiving most used parts.
See #16 for more.
While we can experiment with different ways of generating the archive
Read MoreJune 12. 2023 - Code Review
This week we began reviewing the bookwyrm source code. The results of this review is being collected on our wiki in the form of an FAQ. Thanks Valery Briz, @tomat0 and @Ryuno-Ki for working on this.
@dannymate has created two ansible playbooks to setup an environment and a bookwyrm instance. These should make it easier to create test instances.
We also created and discussed several issues to organize our work.
What should be the goal of our work?
This has by now crystallized roughly three possible options for us:
- We can base our work on @hugh’s. This means we’ll use plain JSON in the archive, add the media in the form of a tar or zip to the archive, and create an activity
- We can follow Mastodon’s approach and use ActivityPub objects (actor, inbox, outbox, likes, followers, following) in the archive, together with media attachements. This
Read More
June 5. 2023 - Bookwyrm Proposal Accepted
Last week we gathered three proposals and held a vote between them.
The Bookwyrm Migration proposal has won the vote by a 4/5 majority on the first preference.
The form’s results have been published here.
Because this project will be contributing to the Bookwyrm project, we’ll be using the Anti-Capitalist License although the AGPL 3.0 License has won the second question.
What’s next?
We have forked Bookwyrm to our Codeberg organisation. If you send your Codeberg username on the Matrix, we’ll add you this organisation.
These are the current questions we need to answer to work on the Bookwyrm project:
I like the idea.
I’d think that an interactive web interface is the only way to get onboarding <1min. Especially if the Fediverse is experiencing sustained growth now.
To avoid the concept of “instance” as much as possible, we could:
- Develop a web app that considers a users interests (e.g. a list of hashtags/topics to select from) to suggest an instance
- include account creation in the actual web app (e.g. as an iframe)
- include invite- only instances through a special arrangement allowing direct sign-ups for users of the web app.
With something like this, the idea of an instances could be optional to using the fediverse.
See: socialcoding
Read MoreCommunication
The weekly report
-
Every monday the editor will publish a short, descriptive report on the activities of the guild during the preceeding week.
-
The editor is CSDUMMI and tomat0 if he is unavailable.
-
Anything that every member of the guild should know, must be sent to the editor to be included in the weekly report.
-
The report will be published in a topic on discuss.coding.social
The forum
- discuss.coding.social is the location for long-form discussion of the guild. There is a category called sc-guild for this purpose.
Matrix
-
The Matrix chat is for optional-but-quick communication.
-
Matrix will not be used as a basis of the weekly reports.
Video Conferences
-
Video conferences should not aim to be with all guild members.
-
Consider time zones when scheduling video conferences.
-
Keep video conferences spontaneous.
Issues and Pull Requests
- These serve for technical discussion relating to the respective repository.
- For discussions about the group, it’s structure and group decisions, please use the forum.
- Feel free and encouraged to assign yourself to issues,
Read More
(Replace this first paragraph with a brief description of your new category. This guidance will appear in the category selection area, so try to keep it below 200 characters.)
Use the following paragraphs for a longer description, or to establish category guidelines or rules:
-
Why should people use this category? What is it for?
-
How exactly is this different than the other categories we already have?
-
What should topics in this category generally contain?
-
Do we need this category? Can we merge with another category, or subcategory?
See: socialcoding
Read MoreIn this topic the editors (@CSDUMMI and @Tomat0) will publish brief reports about the activity of the guild.
Anything everyone should know, must be sent to to the editors to be included in this report.
See: socialcoding
Read MoreThe Social Coding Guild is a guild for software development.
We work collectively on the projects, we choose democratically as a group.
Through this we hope to realize more ambitious projects and be more sustainable than any of us could be individually.
See: socialcoding
Read MoreI’m just looking through the code of Takahe and must say that I like the code very much. I think I will use that as the basis for this project. Either as a soft-fork or by merging the changes into Takahe itself (less likely).
See: socialcoding
Read MoreThanks for you comment, especially the references to existing projects is very helpful. Could you give me a link to the Takahe and Mitra projects?
Integrating Payment Providers
On the topic of integrating payment providers, I’m concerned that the integrating any set of payment providers will reduce the accessibility of the entire software.
Integrating a crypto payment system is controversial in-and-of itself and I’m also doubting whether the effort required here would be worth the development time needed to implement it.
And other payment processors, such as Stripe, PayPal, Klarna, Direkt all have the problems of accessibility and privacy. Most of these systems are only available on certain markets or for certain currencies or for people with a bank account, credit card etc. And while it is completely legitimate for a single offer to restrict buyers to use a specific payment provider, doing so at a software level is very restrictive if not patronizing. If I only implement a subset of all existing payment providers (e.g. Stripe and not AliPay), I’m telling people from those
Read MoreThe following is an excerpt from a funding request I have submitted to the NLnet foundation under their Open Call, which relates to an idea that was inspired by the discussions taking place here. And which I would like to debate, improve and refine in this forum.
Abstract
My goal is to create a federated online shop. For this purpose I will implement an ActivityPub-compatible Python Server or fork an existing server and extend it.
Users will be able to offer products for sale at a set price. Others (either from the same or another server) can then accept these offers to indicate they wish to buy it.
Delivery is the responsibility of the seller. The seller creates an invoice object containing all relevant information (delivery date, payment details, name, tax, etc.) and sends it to the buyer via an ActivityPub Create activity.
Users will be able to interact with the Server through a Web interface, implemented with the ActivityPub C2S protocol.
As part of this funding I will set up and operate a first instance for a
Read MoreBut regardless of this idea, I’d help work with this project of Micro-crowdfunding. It’d be the basis of the more experimental idea I outlined above anyway.
I’m willing to work on this either as a co-maintainer or as a contributor. Are you interested in maintaining this project @IgnisIncendio ?
See: socialcoding
Read MoreThe business logic.
The business logic of this website is rather simple:
- Somebody creates a feature request
- Maintainer approves and declares an approved contributor.
- Approved contributor sets a bounty.
- Sponsors pledge support ($)
- If the bounty is reached before X time since step 3, the bounty is collected and access granted to the approved contributor.
- Otherwise the feature request is out-dated and removed.
The approved contributor is a programmer of sufficient skill and resources, who is trusted by the maintainer to complete the feature request according to the project’s standards. This can be the maintainer themselves.
Every other actor should be self-explanatory.
The most complex part of this project would be the integration with:
- (International) Payment systems (SEPA, Stripe, PayPal, etc.)
- Software forges (to connect a maintainer with their projects)
An out-there idea
Disclaimer: I’m not an economist or modern monetary theorist. I only watched this video about the subject and thought it was neat. This is my first attempt at applying the concept as I understood it.
One disadvantage of the feature request approach is that it only rewards and
Read MoreI like the idea and would like to make it possible.
On the implementation side: I don’t think it will be necessary to integrate this tool into an issue tracker or software forge.
A website could be created where a maintainer could list the feature requests and required commissions ajnd link to them from the relevant issues.
This approach is independent of the software forge and could be integrated using their APIs. And it could very quickly be prototyped.
See: socialcoding
Read MoreI added the first PR and structure laid out above. I hope this can both serve to create the first guild and be a pattern for future guilds to follow and adapt.
See: socialcoding
Read MoreA question for @aschrijver is the forg.es guild going to be that first guild?
See: socialcoding
Read MoreI just created this repository to try it out:
See: socialcoding
Read MoreI am committed to guilds.
I want to set up the first guild quickly. It only needs two steps:
- a member list
- a means to make democratic decisions
A first goal of the first guild should be the organization of labour by giving education, support and addressing the problems of the members.
I’d organize this first guild using a Codeberg Repo under the SocialCoding or Coders org. The repository contains these files:
- Members
- Decisions
- Constitution
The members text file contains a list of all members.
Decisions is a folder of decisions as text files.
And constitution is a text file containing the fundamental rules of the guild.
Issues
Issues in this repo serve as the ground for discussions on the guild and guild activity.
Pull Requests
Pull Requests are proposed decisions, membership changes or vhanges to the constitution.
Pull request must be voted on prior to being accepted, if they affect decisions or the constitution. If a member is removed, this must also be voted on.
New members do not need to be voted in.
I’m unsure on how voting should take place. It could happen by
Read MoreThis thread has become too large and detailed for anyone to act on it.
Social Coding’s aim is a sustainable, mutually beneficial community for and of software developers, practicioners and dependents.
To ensure this aim this forum is insufficient. It requires action and the structure to enable this action.
I propose that this structure should be the FOSS guilds. Guild’s should have a set list of members, though only for making voting practical.
The guild members’ democratic decisions must be the basis for all actions taken by and on behalf of the guild.
Guild’s allow for the organization of labour (developing standards, that are actually followed, teaching principles and technology to improve members), the organization against exploitation (oppossing the abuse of projects, ethically and legally, promoting free software to capital and enterprise, not just as a ressource but as a community and developing projects and invention beyond the limits and necessities of profit that too often limit the ideas implemented in software development.) and thez benefit society by providing an alternative entry and forum for software development to capital controlled
Read MoreDemocracy as mentioned in the description of Social Coding is not simply a description of the communication within Social Coding projects and movement.
It is my conviction, that sustainable development communities require the principles of democracy:
- Right of speech and proposal for all decisions.
- Equality of votes on decisions.
- Accountable and short lived leadership.
See: socialcoding
Read MoreIn order to do that properly I think we should launch an entry on the coding.social website.
Then reference it in a post or several on the Fediverse.
Perhaps we could even set up a contact page or E-Mail where maintainers can write us if they are willing to be listed? (Maybe an email ending in coding.social?)
See: socialcoding
Read MoreA little unoriginal idea for a Social Coding Event: 100days of social code improvement.
Two steps:
- Pick a small to medium size project in need of upgrading their code quality.
- read one of that project’s files/modules per day and see if you can make an improvement. Try to make a PR/MR/patch within the day.
- repeat step two for 100 days or until the project runs out of files to read
- (share your participation on the Fedi?)
Organizations TODO
- create a list of potential projects (projects should have an active maintainer, willing to merge these kinds of patches)
- create a hashtag
- create an entry on the website with all suggested projects
Important: These projects are suggested, not required.
Potential projects (nothing final)
See: socialcoding
Read MoreFreeCoop aims to be a tool for organizing democratic organizations, with a focus on commercial, labour organizations.
FreeCoop is built on three pillars:
- Decision Making
- Groups
- Accounting
Decision Making (Decision API)
Internet Voting (I-Voting) is a difficult software to implement.
FreeCoop relies on Decision API for implementing secret, certified and extensible I-Voting.
Decision API is another Social Coding project developed by me, so let me introduce it here in detail.
Decision API is not supposed to be invoked directly and instead decisions and accounts should be created by some service, such as FreeCoop.
Account Managment
An account contains a UUID id and a an optional name string.
When an account has been created, it’s id is returned to the creator (usually the services using Decision API).
This services then issues the id to the person, they want to use the account, who can then exchange the id for an authorization token.
After an authorization token has been issued for an account, it cannot be changed or reissued. And the authorization token remains valid for the lifetime of
Read MoreThere has been some very active discussion about this post on the Fediverse in response to my toot requesting feedback.
I want to summarize the arguments that were raised in response to this post and respond to them.
Free Software shouldn’t be developed to be exploitable by the big tech capitalists.
@alcinnz@floss.social made this argument, that they advised against making free software that suits the big tech capitalists.
Examples for this kind of software might be:
- Deep Learning Libraries, that can only be operated on super computers and cloud services - which profit big tech capitalists, who own these services.
- JavaScript Frameworks. These most benefit the websites with the most complex and advanced browser logic. And these are mostly profiting the big tech capitalists. While most websites only need a CMS or static website generator with a little bit of styling.
While these discussions are legitimate and should be had, this is a discussion on creating sustainable free software. And we shouldn’t make make more assumptions about free software than are
Read MoreIn the article “The changing economics of open source” Ken Mugrage present the Free Software Sustainability problem from the perspective of companies depending on free software developed by hobbyists.
The article defines three different types of free or open source software:
- Free Software developed by companies or individuals trying to make a living by this activity.
- Open Source projects used for publicity of Big Tech.
- Free Software developed by hobbyists as a recreational voluntary activity.
And provides examples for each of these types of projects, namely ElasticSearch, React and Log4j respectively.
It ends with a recommendation for companies to:
- Investigate what project’s they depend on
- Review how likely these projects are to change licensing.
- Investigate the possibility of maintaining a fork of a FOSS project if the project developers change licensing.
While these recommendations are rational from the perspective of a business depending on free software - which today is almost every business, even if they just use Wordpress for their website - I disagree with the underlying assumption that free software can be exploited for maximum gain and that companies should
Read MoreI have drafted a proposal for what I call “The Dependency Funding Tool” (TDFT).
It’s purpose is to provide funding to all free software projects, regardless of their proximity or visible to the people utilizing them.
TL;DR
- The tool relies on a federated graph of project (as nodes) connected by dependencies (directed and weighted edges)
- To calculate how reliant one project is on another all paths between the two projects in the dependency graph are taken, their edge weights multiplied and then summed up.
- The tool analyzes the usage of a person and creates a list of projects they are directly or indirectly reliant on by calculating for each program they interact with directly all the projects they depend on and sorting them by their dependency.
- The tool can be configured to send automatic recurring fees or direct people to a project’s CONTRIBUTE files.
See: socialcoding
Read MoreSomething of note about the FOSS Contributer Fund by Indeed is that the projects supported by anyone company running their own fund is entirely determined by themselves - which is inevitably going to lead to bias and oversight, maybe because some projects are not considered important or are ignored by the operators of the fund.
To solve this problem I’d implement a single shared dependency graph for all projects in the Dependency Funding Tool.
For example:
Suppose I work with the OrbitDB library, which depends on both IPFS and p-map. But I only know of the first and not the latter dependency - IPFS is considered part of the “OrbitDB Stack” and p-map only an auxiliary library.
If I worked at a company running the FOSS Contributor Fund, I’d probably propose and vote for OrbitDB and IPFS - but I’d not know about the dependency on p-map unless I looked at one of the many package.json files in OrbitDB’s source code. Thus removing an important source of support for