Video games are an interesting class of software. Unlike most software, they are a creative endeavour, rather than a practical utility. Where most software calls for new features to address practical needs of their users, video games call for new features to serve the creative vision of their makers...

It’s an open secret: the “secret project” I’ve been talking about is a new systems programming language. It’s been underway since December ‘19, and we hope to release the first version in early 2022. The language is pretty small — we have a mostly complete specification which clocks in at 60 pages. ...

It’s an open secret: the “secret project” I’ve been talking about is a new systems programming language. It’s been underway since December ’19, and we hope to release the first version in early 2022. The language is pretty small — we have a mostly complete specification which clocks in at 60 pages. ...

After the brief illusion of spring, this morning meets us with a cold apartment indoors and fierce winds outdoors. Today concludes a productive month, mainly for the secret project and for sourcehut, but also marked by progress in some smaller projects as well. I’ll start with those smaller projects...

After the brief illusion of spring, this morning meets us with a cold apartment indoors and fierce winds outdoors. Today concludes a productive month, mainly for the secret project and for sourcehut, but also marked by progress in some smaller projects as well. I’ll start with those smaller projects...

I have never been angrier about the corporate surveillance complex, which I have rallied against for years, than I am today. Buying and selling user’s private information on the open market is bad enough for the obvious reasons, but today, I learned that the depths of depravity this market will desc...

I have never been angrier about the corporate surveillance complex, which I have rallied against for years, than I am today. Buying and selling user’s private information on the open market is bad enough for the obvious reasons, but today, I learned that the depths of depravity this market will desc...

I’ve written about making money in free and open source software before, but it’s a deep topic that merits additional discussion. While previously I focused on what an individual can do in order to build a career in FOSS, but today I want to talk about how you can build a sustainable business in FOS...

I’ve written about making money in free and open source software before, but it’s a deep topic that merits additional discussion. While previously I focused on what an individual can do in order to build a career in FOSS, but today I want to talk about how you can build a sustainable business in FOS...

5× as many spam registrations on sourcehut are from gmail than from the second-largest offender. # SELECT SPLIT_PART(email, '@', 2) as domain, count(*) as count FROM "user" WHERE user_type = 'suspended' GROUP BY domain ORDER BY count DESC; domain | count ---------------------------+------- gmail.com...

5× as many spam registrations on sourcehut are from gmail than from the second-largest offender.# SELECT SPLIT_PART(email, '@', 2) as domain, count(*) as count FROM "user" WHERE user_type = 'suspended' GROUP BY domain ORDER BY count DESC; domain | count ---------------------------+------- gmail.com ...

This is not always true, but in my experience, it tends to hold up. We often build or evaluate tools which aim to replace something kludgy^Wvenerable. Common examples include shells, programming languages, system utilities, and so on. Rust, Zig, etc, are taking on C in this manner; so too does zsh, ...

This is not always true, but in my experience, it tends to hold up. We often build or evaluate tools which aim to replace something kludgy^Wvenerable. Common examples include shells, programming languages, system utilities, and so on. Rust, Zig, etc, are taking on C in this manner; so too does zsh, ...

Salutations! It's officially a year of pandemic life. I hear the vaccine distribution is going well, so hopefully there won't be another year of this. In the meanwhile, I've been working hard on free software, what with having little else to do. However, I'm afraid I cannot tell you about most of it...

There are a number of things that your FOSS project can be doing which will make the lives of your downstream users easier, particularly if you’re writing a library or programmer-facing tooling. Many of your downstreams (Linux distros, pkgsrc, corporate users, etc) are dealing with lots of packages,...

There are a number of things that your FOSS project can be doing which will make the lives of your downstream users easier, particularly if you’re writing a library or programmer-facing tooling. Many of your downstreams (Linux distros, pkgsrc, corporate users, etc) are dealing with lots of packages,...

The ongoing events around /r/wallstreetbets teaches us, once again, about the value of open platforms, and the tremendous risk involved in using proprietary platforms. The economic elites who control those proprietary platforms, backed by their venture capital interests, will shut us down if we thre...

The ongoing events around /r/wallstreetbets teaches us, once again, about the value of open platforms, and the tremendous risk involved in using proprietary platforms. The economic elites who control those proprietary platforms, backed by their venture capital interests, will shut us down if we thre...

Participation in open source requires you to surrender your monopoly over commercial exploitation. This is a profound point about free and open source software which seems to be causing a lot of companies to struggle with their understanding of the philosophy of FOSS, and it’s worth addressing on it...

Participation in open source requires you to surrender your monopoly over commercial exploitation. This is a profound point about free and open source software which seems to be causing a lot of companies to struggle with their understanding of the philosophy of FOSS, and it’s worth addressing on it...

Elasticsearch belongs to its 1,573 contributors, who retain their copyright, and granted Elastic a license to distribute their work without restriction. This is the loophole which Elastic exploited when they decided that Elasticsearch would no longer be open source, a loophole that they introduced w...

Einstein famously characterized the strangeness of quantum mechanics as “spooky action at a distance”, which, if I had to pick one phrase about physics to be my favorite, would be a strong contender. I like to relate this to programming language design: there are some language features which are sim...

Einstein famously characterized the strangeness of quantum mechanics as “spooky action at a distance”, which, if I had to pick one phrase about physics to be my favorite, would be a strong contender. I like to relate this to programming language design: there are some language features which are sim...

Elasticsearch belongs to its 1,573 contributors, who retain their copyright, and granted Elastic a license to distribute their work without restriction. This is the loophole which Elastic exploited when they decided that Elasticsearch would no longer be open source, a loophole that they introduced w...

Hello from the future! My previous status update was last year, but it feels like it was only a month ago. I hope you didn't miss my crappy jokes too much during the long wait. One of the advancements that I would like to mention this month is the general availability of godocs.io, which is a replac...

Today, we recall the Middle Ages as an unenlightened time (quite literally, in fact). We view the Middle Ages with a critical eye towards its brutality, lack of individual freedoms, and societal and technological regression. But we rarely turn that same critical lens on ourselves to consider how we’...

Today, we recall the Middle Ages as an unenlightened time (quite literally, in fact). We view the Middle Ages with a critical eye towards its brutality, lack of individual freedoms, and societal and technological regression. But we rarely turn that same critical lens on ourselves to consider how we’...

There’s an idea which encounters a bizarre level of resistance from the broader software community: that software can be completed. This resistance manifests in several forms, perhaps the most common being the notion that a git repository which doesn’t receive many commits is abandoned or less worth...

There’s an idea which encounters a bizarre level of resistance from the broader software community: that software can be completed. This resistance manifests in several forms, perhaps the most common being the notion that a git repository which doesn’t receive many commits is abandoned or less worth...

Megacorporations1 do not care about you. You’re worth nothing to them. Google made $66 billion in 2014 — even if you made an exorbitant $500K salary, you only cost them .00075% of that revenue. They are not invested in you. Why should you invest in them? Why should you give a company that isn’t inve...