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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 1,100 posts.
The unusual way I'm funding my open source work
From the Linux kernel to Firefox and Wordpress, Open Source is changing the world for the better. But how to achieve financial sustainability when you produce something that can legally be copied, by design, at zero cost? Revenue models for Open Source A lot has been written about achieving profitability
Starting Over: A FOSS proposal for a new type of OS for a new type of computer
My talk should be on in about an hour and a half from when I post this. A possible next evolutionary step for computers is persistent memory: large capacity non-volatile main memory. With a few terabytes of nonvolatile RAM, who needs an SSD any more? I will sketch out a proposal for how to…
OpenBSD on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano
Lenovo has finally made a smaller version of its X1 Carbon , something I've been looking forward to for years.
Cracks are showing in Enterprise Open Source's foundations
I've worked in open source my entire career1. To say that I'm worried about the impact recent events have on the open source ecosystem would be an understatement. In the past couple months: Red Hat effectively killed CentOS Elastic effectively killed Elasticsearch People may rightfully refute these statements, but the…
Bitcoin Core Lead Maintainer Steps Back, Encourages Decentralization
Recent events have made me reflect on a few things in my life I was already thinking about for a while. Also, responses on social media have made me realize that people have strange expectations from me, and what my role in the Bitcoin Core project is.
Update: YouTube-dl reinstated thanks to EFF (2020)
In October, the popular and famous archivist tool youtube-dl was taken down by GitHub due to a DMCA request by the Recording Industry Association of America. I posted a detailed analysis explaining the relation between international, US, EU and German law, and showing why this request was very different from what most…
Make Your Own Internet Archive with Archive Box
One of the biggest challenges of internet investigation is preserving data once you’ve found it. We have access to more information than ever before, but so much of it can be easily lost if w…
Milestone: Half a million downloads for VideoLAN packages in the .NET ecosystem
This page has moved to https://martinfinkel.com/blog/half-a-million-downloads/ .
I received my first donation on my open-source side project
I decided to build an extension for VSCode. That would add handy buttons for many common commands like save file, format file, show opened files etc.
GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker and my toilets are blocked
GNOME filepicker and my toilets are broken because of culture of mediocrity.
Opensource your abandonware (2010)
As you may know, back in 2007 I ressurected the development of GrafX2 . this old pixelart program, made only for DOS, was left out 6 years earlier by the authors, that had moved on to more modern computers. Today, graFX2 is amongst the best tool for pixelling, particularly on Linux or other alternative operating…
Contributing Without Code
In the mid-90s I was an avid user of online conferencing system called CIX (Compulink Information eXchange). CIX was built using the CoSy Conferencing system from the University of Guelph, which has since been open sourced. Think of it like a dial-up or telnet-accessed forum or message board with a nerd-heavy…
Datasette.io, an official project website for Datasette
This week I launched datasette.io—the new official project website for Datasette. Datasette’s first open source release was just over three years ago, but until now the official site duties have …
“I took FSFE to court. This is my story”
er the first lockdown in Berlin this year I filed a public case in the Berlin Tribunal of Labour Court against the president of Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), Matthias Kirschner, for workplace...
On the Graying of Gnome
The GNOME project turned 23 this year, and despite equally persistent rumors to the contrary, it's still alive and kicking. Just how alive, though?
Death of an open-source business model
Eulogy for a simpler time
Librem 5 Evergreen vs. Pinephone
Huzzah! I recently received my Librem 5 (Evergreen) from Purism . The Librem 5 is a smartphone that runs an otherwise standard linux kernel. However, unlike Android which also relies on the linux kernel under the hood, the Librem 5 uses a GNU userspace, adapted for mobile. This makes it more akin to your typical…
Precursor’s Custom PCBs
While the last few updates about Precursor have focused on evidence-based trust and security, this update is more about the process of making Precursor itself. There is an essential link between evidence-based trust and understanding the manufacturing process: to convince yourself that something has been constructed…
Using Matrix to replace proprietary and centralized chat apps
The website of Jae.
Origins of the youtube-dl project
As you may know, as of the time this text is being written youtube-dl’s repository at GitHub is blocked due to a DMCA takedown letter received by GitHub on behalf of the RIAA. While I cannot comment on the current maintainers' plans or ongoing discussions, in light of the claims made in that letter I thought it would…
What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if they are open source?
Note: This post originally appeared as an update in the crowdfunding campaign for Precursor.
One Week of NixOS
The website of Jae.