229 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2024
  2. Oct 2024
  3. Sep 2024
  4. Jul 2024
    1. The problem is not about Open Source or Free Software. The problem is everything else.

      Good catch. There's more to the world than just that.

    2. When publicly distributed, the open-source code is hidden behind layers of indirection bypassing any packaging/integration effort, relying instead on virtualisation and downloading dependencies on the fly. Thanks to those strategies, corporations could benefit from open source code without any consequence. The open source code is, anyway, mostly hosted and developed on proprietary platforms.
  5. May 2024
  6. Apr 2024
  7. Mar 2024
  8. Nov 2023
  9. Sep 2023
  10. Jun 2023
    1. 10% more or less of academic libraries in the US use an open source system after all that time. And about either 17 or 14, I'd have the number in front of me for and to public libraries are using an open source I L S

      Percentage of open source ILS in academic and public libraries

  11. Apr 2023
    1. Twitter is a neat illustration of the problem with benevolent dictatorships: they work well, but fail badly. Because they are property — not protocols — they can change hands, and overnight, you get a new, malevolent dictator who wants to retool the system for extraction, rather than collaboration.

      Benevolent dictatorships: work well; fail badly

      Twitter is the example listed here. But I wonder about benevolent dictatorships in open source. One example: does Linus have a sound succession plan for Linux? (Can such a succession plan even be tested and adjusted?)

  12. Feb 2023
    1. I’m edging towards a new book, which is pretty formless at the moment, so I need a better solution for keeping my writing ‘chunks’ organised. I started playing around with a new piece of database software called Obsidian after recording an episode about it for the On The Reg podcast with my co-host Dr Jason Downs. Obsidian makes your notes more useful by ‘linking your thinking’. Basically, any word in an Obsidian note can become a link to another note, so, over time, your notes become like your own personal wikipedia. Obsidian also makes a cool visualisation of all the links between your notes, so you can surf through them, visually. Pages are represented as nodes; pages which have a lot of incoming links become bigger in the visual graph, literally showing you where an idea is ‘growing’:

      I'm not sold on Obsidian. I think TiddlyWiki has equivalent (and more) features (albeit requiring plugins for graphing), a more robust architecture, and a more open license.

      Horses for courses I guess, but depending on Obsidian's evolution, I suspect other writers might end up looking for alternatives.

  13. Dec 2022
  14. Oct 2022
    1. @route @twalpole as a community I think we're super grateful for your work on a CDP alternative to chromedriver/selenium, poltergeist etc. I do think collaboration could be very valuable though, although it would likely mean abandoning one of the projects and teaming up on the other, you both obviously have very deep knowledge of CDP and therefore would get a load more done than any of us "end users" trying to wade in there. The status for us on our Rails project is that Apparition fails with a ton of errors, they all seem related to handling timing events (accept_prompt doesn't work, opening new windows seems problematic etc etc etc) whereas Cuprite only rails with a cookie gem we're using (easy fixed) and doesn't support drag_to yet. So to me Cuprite seems more complete, but I don't know much about the internals.
    2. As both projects are written by 2 different people independently there's huge difference in the code. I don't think I have time or wish to merge them because it's huge amount of work. The common thing between them is only CDP that's all. Though Cuprite is already stable and supports all features that Capybara requires, we run tests and do many cools things with it in production.
    3. As a history mark, when back then I asked Thomas if he started to work on CDP, he said yes but never finished it, so I started this project from scratch which by now feels completed. After releasing it I only yesterday realized that he open-sourced his project and keeps working on it. I think it just feels hard to throw everything you have written to trash, but I wasn't proposed at the beginning to work together on common project and this is the reason Cuprite had began. Though since this project is completed I see no sense to work on something else especially for me, the only difference would be in Ruby implementation which is boring as you can do things in a different manner and CDP has issues too so the difference could be only how we workaround them.
    4. And yeah, you two should probably gang up :)
    5. what is the difference? and why do you write it from scratch?
    6. Haven't really looked through your code, so not sure what the difference is - I would guess not too much. I told you about my version when we were discussing the issues you were having on cuprite -- It was 70+ percent done so I released it and finished up most of the rest. I guess one difference is that you appear to be aiming at bleeding edge Chromium, whereas I'm more focused on things working on Chrome release since I think that's more important for people to test with (no customer is going to be running Chromium alpha).
    7. I also was surprised to see 2 "kind of similar" new drivers both targeting CDP I wonder if joining forces ultimately would be a good idea?
  15. Sep 2022
    1. people usually forgets about one of the greatest advantages of Open Source. YOU can fix the issue. You can download the source code and dig deep into the code allow you to keep moving. Also, you can merge this changes back to the original repository so others doesn’t have to fix it again. win-win relationship.
    1. Such schemas cannot easily be refactored without removing the benefits of sharing. Refactoring would require forking a local copy, which for schemas intended to be treated as an opaque validation interface with internal details that may change, eliminates the benefit of referencing a separately maintained schema in the first place.
  16. Jul 2022
  17. www.bookstackapp.com www.bookstackapp.com
    1. https://www.bookstackapp.com/

      mentioned by Jim Groom as one of the most popular wiki software available on Github

      BookStack is a simple, self-hosted, easy-to-use platform for organising and storing information

  18. Jun 2022
    1. Many believe that companies should give more time to employees to contribute to open source, with 79% agreeing or strongly agreeing that companies should give time during work hours to contribute.
    2. while just 20% have been paid for their contributions to open source, 53% agree or strongly agree that individuals should be paid for open source contributions
  19. Mar 2022
  20. rom-rb.org rom-rb.org
    1. We are looking for sustainable sponsorship. If your company is relying on rom-rb or simply want to see rom-rb evolve faster to meet your requirements, please consider backing the project
  21. Feb 2022
    1. “Well, it’s Open Source, I guess I could go download the source code… but… meh, it’s so far out of my way, not worth it,” and the urge fizzles out. I think that a lot of potential human creativity is being wasted this way.

      This reminds me of physical tinkering, like building or fixing your own small furniture. That's also hard with the products we often buy today -- it's difficult to fix minature electronics which are meant to be replaced.

      But with software (esp. open source) it could be easier, as everyone can have the same tools. I very much resonate with the idea of tinkering more and using less standards.

    1. Hypothesis wurde 2011 als non-profit Organisation in San Francisco gegründet. Die Hypothes.is-Server stehen in Kalifornien. Hypothes.is ist Open Source Software und steht unter einer BSD-Lizenz. 

      -2011 -San Francisco -Open Source -BSD-Lizenz

  22. Dec 2021
    1. Standard algorithms as a reliable engine in SaaS https://en.itpedia.nl/2021/12/06/standaard-algoritmen-als-betrouwbaar-motorblok-in-saas/ The term "Algorithm" has gotten a bad rap in recent years. This is because large tech companies such as Facebook and Google are often accused of threatening our privacy. However, algorithms are an integral part of every application. As is known, SaaS is standard software, which makes use of algorithms just like other software.

      • But what are algorithms anyway?
      • How can we use standard algorithms?
      • How do standard algorithms end up in our software?
      • When is software not an algorithm?
  23. Oct 2021
    1. Open source software is cited as the first domain where networked open sharing produced a tangible benefit

      The phrase should be:

      The Free Software and Open-source movements were the first domains where networked open sharing produced a tangible benefit.

      Why?

      Free Software movement started in 1983.

      Open-source movement started in 1998.

  24. Sep 2021
    1. (They blame Chrome's "feature" addition treadmill, where "they keep adding stupid kitchen sinks for the sole and only purpose to make others unable to keep up.")
  25. Jun 2021
    1. Users who have installed it decided to trust me, and I'm not comfortable transferring that trust to someone else on their behalf. However, if you'd like to fork it, feel free.

      Interesting decision... Seems like the project could have been handed off to new maintainers instead of just a dead-end abandoned project and little chance of anyone using it for new projects now.

      Sure you can fork it, but without a clear indication of which of the many forks in the network graph to trust, I doubt few will take the (massively) extra time to evaluate all options and choose an existing fork as a "leader" (or create their own fork) to go with continuing maintenance...

  26. Apr 2021
    1. I also sell Sidekiq Pro and Sidekiq Enterprise, extensions to Sidekiq which provide more features, a commercial-friendly license and allow you to support high quality open source development all at the same time.
  27. Mar 2021
    1. This is not a fork. This is a repository of scripts to automatically build Microsoft's vscode repository into freely-licensed binaries with a community-driven default configuration.

      almost without a doubt, inspired by: chromium vs. chrome

    1. Sorry you’re surprised. Issues are filed at about a rate of 1 per day against GLib. Merge requests at a rate of about 1 per 2 days. Each issue or merge request takes a minimum of about 30 minutes (across at least 2 people) to analyse, put together a fix, test it, review it, fix it, review it and merge it. I’d estimate the average is closer to 3 hours than 30 minutes. Even at the fastest rate, it would take 3 working months to clear the backlog of ~1000 issues. I get a small proportion of my working time to spend on GLib (not full time).
    2. Age of a ticket is completely irrelevant as anyone can request anything but the number of developers is limited. If you'd like to see something implemented, please consider providing a patch. Thanks!
    3. Sorry if I sounded rude. I am using Gnome on a daily basis and am highly appreciating all the work anyone has put into it. I was just surprised when I found an AskUbuntu post from 2010 linking to this bug.
    4. Wow 14 years. I still keep stumbling over this issue...
    1. JavaScript needs to fly from its comfy nest, and learn to survive on its own, on equal terms with other languages and run-times. It’s time to grow up, kid.
    2. If JavaScript were detached from the client and server platforms, the pressure of being a monoculture would be lifted — the next iteration of the JavaScript language or run-time would no longer have to please every developer in the world, but instead could focus on pleasing a much smaller audience of developers who love JavaScript and thrive with it, while enabling others to move to alternative languages or run-times.
    1. For the $$$ question, nothing comes to mind. These problems i'm hitting up against are larger than a contractor could solve in a few hours of work (which would be hundreds/thousands of dollars).
    2. Yeah, can we pay money to make this go faster? Serious question.
    3. Progress is slow though. I want to change how assets are loaded, the current implementation of "pipelines" is challenging to work with.
  28. Feb 2021
    1. Our mission is to allow people to make money via educational efforts and to dedicate the rest of their time to creating great open source products.

      What does this mean exactly? "Our mission is to allow people to make money via educational efforts"

    1. We’re now relaunching PRO, but instead of a paid chat and (never existing) paid documentation, your team gets access to paid gems, our visual editor for workflows, and a commercial license.
    2. And yes, at TRB GmbH, we do pay people to work on OSS
    3. To tell you the truth, the new tracing feature was the original reason why I decided to write 2.1 and make you sit and wait in agony for years. Nevertheless, tracing is simply blowing my mind. I can’t count how many hours and angering rushs of adrenaline I’ve saved since the introduction of the wtf? method and its helpful higher-level stack trace.
    1. note that TRB source code modifications are not proprietary

      In other words, you can build on this software in your proprietary software but can't change the Trailblazer source unless you're willing to contribute it back.

      loophole: I wonder if this will actually just push people to move their code -- which at the core is/would be a direction modification to the source code - out to a separate module. That's so easy to do with Ruby, so this restriction hardly seems like it would have any effect on encouraging contributions.

    2. Trailblazer (TRB) is an Open-Source project. Since we want to keep it that way, we decided to raise awareness for the “cost” of our work - providing new versions and features is incredibly time-consuming for us, but we love what we do.
    3. This creates a win-win situation, you as the user have your peace of mind, and we can continue working with your funds.
    1. Great thanks to Blake Education for giving us the freedom and time to develop this project in 2013 while working on their project.
    1. This gives them a slight edge but that’s nothing substantial because those fixes eventually reach Ubuntu.
    1. But all of these attempts misunderstand why the Open Source ecosystem is successful as a whole. The ecosystem of fairly standard licenses provides a level playing field that allows collaboration with low friction, and produces massive value for everyone involved – both to those that contribute and to those that don't. It is not without problems (there are many essential but unsexy projects that are struggling with funding), but introducing more friction won't improve the success of this ecosystem – it will just lead to some parts of the ecosystem to break off.
    2. Part of me thinks that open source can be more rewarding to the creators/contributors. But maybe the real contribution is the permanent addition to the tools available to humanity, and if you have the wits, you can make a decent business out of it without tainting open source.
    3. Selling proprietary software is difficult when there is so much gratis Open Source software around.
    4. For a sufficiently successful and industry-relevant open source project, it's possible for the main developers to earn a living e.g. by selling related consulting services.
    5. It turns out that creating and using Free Software is not just good to individuals, but for businesses as well, for example by building upon publicly available components and by collaborating shared software. The term Open Source is a business-friendly rebranding of the Free Software concept. This line of thought was also widely successful, e.g. Firefox/Mozilla was an open sourcing of Netscape software.
  29. Jan 2021
    1. Unfortunately, this probably means a death knoll for this gem, at least I predict it will contribute to its slow trajectory towards insignificance/unknownness/lack-of-users.

      Why? Because it is already the less popular option in this comparison: https://ruby.libhunt.com/compare-premailer-rails-vs-roadie-rails

      and being actively maintained is an important factor in evaluating competing options.

      So of course people will see that the premailer option is the option that is still actively maintained, is still continuing to be improved, and they'll see that this one has been relegated to dormancy/stagnancy/neglect/staleness, which will only amplify the degree/sense of abandonment it already has from its maintainer (only now it will be its users that start to abandon it, as I now have).

    2. At work, I cannot maintain this project. At home, I'd rather spend time with my children and on projects that I'm currently passionate about.
    1. Augmented Steam is an open source project. You can verify the code for yourself, help us improve it or create your very own version.
    1. Would you work for free? It is a simple but loaded question that requires additional context. Is it working to help a friend do something? Is it work that you would enjoy? Does the act of working for free give you some level of satisfaction? Your gut reaction to the question may have been a hearty, “No,” but many people volunteer for a variety of things all the time, so people will work for free when there is something in it they enjoy.
    2. Open source is fundamentally good with the transparency and flexibility it brings; however, as our reliance on it goes up, the overall investment back into the ecosystem has not. It can be easy to take for granted the time and effort many developers put into open source projects. Yet it is with their time and effort that we often save our own.
    3. These developers are not greedy or selfish for wanting funding for their projects. To the contrary, they want funding to keep the project alive. A person has to eat, after all. Funding the project is a means of changing the maintainer’s timeshare—allowing themselves to put time into the project that otherwise would be used for other employment. There is only so much time in a day that a person can otherwise give.
    4. Funding should not be a struggle for open source projects. We embrace open source into our codebases frequently but have yet to fully embrace the idea that funding it actually helps us too. The bug fixes and feature requests need to be implemented, tested, and reviewed by someone who themselves can only put so much time into the project.
    1. I don’t think he implies that, he didn’t mentioned FOSS or non-FOSS. Third party doesn’t refer to licensing, only to who provides it.
    2. wouldn’t that « lesser » the FOSS effort towards desktop app’s ?
    3. Snap gets rid of dependency mess. Good. Snap offers in one place FOSS and proprietary app’s. Here I am suspicious. It may be an advantage for a commercial app-store and for some users. But this advantage may lead to loss of comfort and flexibility for the many users that rely first on FOSS.
    1. If it is powerful and reliable, that means it serves them better.

      software is often oriented towards performance as primary (if not only) criterium, it is developed through a performance-centric lens.

      other cultural, social, ethical factors are ignored or not taken into account

  30. Dec 2020
    1. You can also purchase a Nextcould hosting service, which on one hand may not seem any different from giving your photos over to Google or Apple, but there's a significant difference: Nextcloud storage is demonstrably encrypted, with source code to prove it.
  31. Nov 2020
    1. Express - 19 $ 🏃‍♀️ Skip the Review Queue 🕒 Published in 3 days 💌 Full Customer Support 💚 Support the team

      Wow, after seeing how this site works, I don't like much like it anymore.

      Esp. this below:

      Choose your preferred publish date - 9 $ Feature your project on top for 14 days and get an additional tweet - 19 $

      I hope there is/will be soon a more open/free alternative (like the "awesome" lists that use GitHub PRs instead of an opaque/proprietary submisison form).

  32. Oct 2020
  33. Sep 2020
  34. Aug 2020
    1. Stallman has also stated that considering the practical advantages of free software is like considering the practical advantages of not being handcuffed, in that it is not necessary for an individual to consider practical reasons in order to realize that being handcuffed is undesirable in itself.
    1. GitLab is moving all development for both GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition into a single codebase. The current gitlab-ce repository will become a read-only mirror, without any proprietary code. All development is moved to the current gitlab-ee repository, which we will rename to just gitlab in the coming weeks. As part of this migration, issues will be moved to the current gitlab-ee project.
    2. How does the licensing work in this new setup? Everything in the ee/ directory is proprietary. Everything else is free and open source software. If your merge request does not change anything in the ee/ directory, the process of contributing changes is the same as when using the gitlab-ce repository.
  35. Jul 2020
    1. "Other office suites are focusing on the 'power user' which is a valuable market, for sure, but the real power and range for an open-source office suite alternative is the vast majority which is the 'rest of us. Sometimes we all forget how empowering open source is to the entire world."
    1. A growing number of platforms, vendors, and partners support the AMP Project by providing custom components or offering integration with AMP pages within their platforms.

      I guess AMP is actually open-source software, but it still feels like it's something non-standard. I guess it's just an alternative open standard to the "main" web open standards.

  36. Jun 2020
    1. "You wanted open source privacy-preserving Bluetooth contact tracing code? #DP3T software development kits/calibration apps for iOS and Android, and backend server, now on GitHub. iOS/Android apps with nice interface to follow." Michael Veale on Twitter (see context)

  37. psyarxiv.com psyarxiv.com