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An open-source maintainer's guide to saying “no”
Stewardship in the age of cheap code
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The most popular curl download – by a malware
During October 2015 the curl web site sent out 1127 gigabytes of data. This was the first time we crossed the terabyte limit within a single month. Looking at the stats a little closer, I noticed that in July 2015 a particular single package started to get very popular. The exact URL was…
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Welcome, New Emacs Developers
Emacs switched the version control system from Bazaar to git yesterday, so now is the time to start hacking away at Emacs. Emacs: The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread If It Wasn’t For The Fact T…
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Everything I Know About the XZ Backdoor
Please note: This is being updated in real-time. The intent is to make sense of lots of simultaneous discoveries
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WordPress 5.0: A Gutenberg FAQ
Update: On December 6th we released WordPress 5.0. It was definitely the most controversial release in a while, but the usage and adoption metrics are looking similar to previous releases. I’m look…
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Open source does not imply open community
Open source software has existed long before the invention of the (D)VCS. The author likely hosted a barebones HTML webpage or a txt file describing the project. There definitely was an FTP server somewhere with tarballs. The author may have been reachable by email. If you were really lucky …
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Mono 3.0 is out
Miguel de Icaza's Blog
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Trust is good, control is better: Reproducible builds at F-Droid
Free Software is a great thing, because it allows users to check that apps are doing what they pretend to do. But almost nobody compiles apps themselves.
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DIY Onewheel – open-source self balancing skateboard
digital build guide
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Librebooting the ThinkPad T480
Muh freedumbs on muh hardware!
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The Joy of Linux Theming in the Age of Bootable Containers
Having spent a couple of decades in the Linux world, I have always had an interest in Linux desktop environments and how they are themed. I would often come across a post on /r/unixporn that inspired me to try to customize the look and feel of my desktop environment. So I would install Xfce, LXQt or Sway and try to…
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Open-Sourcing Inform 7
This is a talk and slides from Narrascope 2019 , held at MIT, Boston, on 14-16 June 2019. It's a sequel to a talk given in London a year earlier , when I went into "literate programming" at greater depth, but when the design of Inter was more embryonic. I'd like to thank the Narrascope organisers for fitting me in to…
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Porting systemd to musl Libc-powered Linux
I have completed an initial new port of systemd to musl. This patch set does not share much in common with the existing OpenEmbedded patchset. I wanted to make a fully updated patch series targetin…
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Software Freedom Doesn't Kill People, Security Through Obscurity Kills People
The time has come that I must speak out against the inappropriate rhetoric used by those who (ostensibly) advocate for FLOSS usage in automotive applications.
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Curl 8.0.0
Exactly one month since the previous release, we are happy to give you curl 8.0.0 released on curl's official 25th birthday. This a major version number bump but without any ground-breaking changes or fireworks. We decided it was about time to reset the minor number down to more a manageable level and doing it exactly…
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From Gongkai to Open Source
About a year and a half ago, I wrote about a $12 “Gongkai” cell phone (pictured above) that I stumbled across in the markets of Shenzhen, China. My most striking impression was that Chinese entrepreneurs had relatively unfettered access to cutting-edge technology, enabling start-ups to innovate while bootstrapping…
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What OpenStreetMap can be
Over the past two years, the biggest buzz among the geo chatterati has been Justin O’Beirne’s meticulously argued (albeit bizarrely formatted) feature-by-feature comparisons of Google and Apple Maps: their design choices, their data, their production processes.
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Dusting off Dreamcast Linux
Yes, here at Old VCR we live in the past, when RISC Unix workstations still ruled the earth like large boxy tentaculous Cthulhus. Oh, sure, ...
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Xfce 4.14 released
Why is the release manager late to the party with his blog post? The explanation is simple: We prioritized sticking to the schedule and getting our releases out to everyone as planned, as our codebase was ready. What was not (entirely) ready was some parts of the website, which were brought up-to-date over the course…
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The License Zero Manifesto
sustainable software in the open
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Org-mode 9.4 is out. Can you help?
This page does not exist (anymore). Back to home
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The Cathedral, the Bazaar, and the Winchester Mystery House
The internet made coordination cheap and gave us the Bazaar. Coding agents make code cheap and are giving us sprawling, idiosyncratic software.
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Entitlement in Open Source
Homebrew experiences on entitled behaviour in open source, why boundaries matter for maintainers, and definitions for users, contributors and maintainers.
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Playing the Open Source Game
You've surely read plenty about how simple is good, but what's wrong with easy?
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Open Source and Saying “No”
An Open Source project can balloon to extreme sizes and then lose purpose of why it started - a rant.
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Dependency cooldowns turn you into a free-rider
Against dependency cooldowns as a response to supply chain attacks