As I’ve written before, the best contributors to a FOSS project are intrinsically motivated to solve problems in your software. This sort of contribution is often fixing an important problem and places a smaller burden on maintainers to spend their time working with the contributor. I’ve previously ...

I received a bug report from Debian today, who had fed some garbage into scdoc, and it gave them a SIGSEGV back. Diving into this problem gave me a good opportunity to draw a comparison between musl libc and glibc. Let’s start with the stack trace: ==26267==ERROR: AddressSanitizer: SEGV on unknown a...

I received a bug report from Debian today, who had fed some garbage into scdoc, and it gave them a SIGSEGV back. Diving into this problem gave me a good opportunity to draw a comparison between musl libc and glibc. Let’s start with the stack trace:==26267==ERROR: AddressSanitizer: SEGV on unknown ad...

I will have more to say about Gemini in the future, but for now, I wanted to write up some details about one thing in particular: the trust-on-first-use algorithm I implemented for my client, gmni. I think you should implement this algorithm, too! First of all, it’s important to note that the Gemini...

I will have more to say about Gemini in the future, but for now, I wanted to write up some details about one thing in particular: the trust-on-first-use algorithm I implemented for my client, gmni. I think you should implement this algorithm, too!First of all, it’s important to note that the Gemini ...

There are some major problems on the internet which may seem intractable. How do we prevent centralization of our communication tools under the authority of a few, whose motivations may not align with our interests? How do we build internet-scale infrastructure without a megacorp-scale budget? Can w...

There are some major problems on the internet which may seem intractable. How do we prevent centralization of our communication tools under the authority of a few, whose motivations may not align with our interests? How do we build internet-scale infrastructure without a megacorp-scale budget? Can w...

A mercifully cool September is upon us, and after years of searching, I finally was able to secure Club Mate in the US. Let’s decant a bottle and recant the story of this month’s progress in free software development. First of all, I’ve been able to put a pin on operations work on SourceHut for the ...

A mercifully cool September is upon us, and after years of searching, I finally was able to secure Club Mate in the US. Let’s decant a bottle and recant the story of this month’s progress in free software development.First of all, I’ve been able to put a pin on operations work on SourceHut for the t...

The standard introduction to git starts with an explanation of what it means to use a “distributed” version control system. It’s pointed out that every developer has a complete local copy of the repository and can work independently and offline, often contrasting this design with systems like SVN an...

The standard introduction to git starts with an explanation of what it means to use a “distributed” version control system. It’s pointed out that every developer has a complete local copy of the repository and can work independently and offline, often contrasting this design with systems like SVN an...

The standard introduction to git starts with an explanation of what it means to use a “distributed” version control system. It’s pointed out that every developer has a complete local copy of the repository and can work independently and offline, often contrasting this design with systems like SVN an...

GitHub took a note out of the Microsoft “EEE” playbook when designing their git services. They embraced git, and then rather than building an interface on top of email — the collaboration mechanism that git was designed to use, and which is still used for Linux kernel development1 — they built their...

GitHub took a note out of the Microsoft “EEE” playbook when designing their git services. They embraced git, and then rather than building an interface on top of email — the collaboration mechanism that git was designed to use, and which is still used for Linux kernel development1 — they built their...

Disney’s Alice in Wonderland is one of my favorite movies and an undisputed classic. After its release in 1951, Alice holds a fond place in billions of children’s hearts, over almost four generations. And it has been stolen from those generations, as part of the theft of one of these generations’ gr...

Disney’s Alice in Wonderland is one of my favorite movies and an undisputed classic. After its release in 1951, Alice holds a fond place in billions of children’s hearts, over almost four generations. And it has been stolen from those generations, as part of the theft of one of these generations’ gr...

Software engineers solve problems. A problem you may have encountered is, for example, “this function has a bug”, and you’re probably already more or less comfortable solving these problems. Here are some other problems you might encounter on the way: Actually, the bug ultimately comes from a third-...

Software engineers solve problems. A problem you may have encountered is, for example, “this function has a bug”, and you’re probably already more or less comfortable solving these problems. Here are some other problems you might encounter on the way:Actually, the bug ultimately comes from a third-p...

Greetings! Today is another rainy day here in Philadelphia, which rather sours my plans of walking over to the nearby cafe to order some breakfast to-go. But I am tired, and if I’m going to make it to the end of this blog post in one piece, I’m gonna need a coffee. brb. Hey, that was actually pretty...

Greetings! Today is another rainy day here in Philadelphia, which rather sours my plans of walking over to the nearby cafe to order some breakfast to-go. But I am tired, and if I’m going to make it to the end of this blog post in one piece, I’m gonna need a coffee. brb.Hey, that was actually pretty ...

Enough is enough. The web and web browsers have become Lovecraftian horrors of an unprecedented scale. They’ve long since left “scope creep” territory and entered “oh my god please just stop” territory, and are trucking on through to hitherto unexplored degrees of obscene scope. And we don’t want wh...

Enough is enough.The web and web browsers have become Lovecraftian horrors of an unprecedented scale. They’ve long since left “scope creep” territory and entered “oh my god please just stop” territory, and are trucking on through to hitherto unexplored degrees of obscene scope. And we don’t want wha...

I get this question a lot! The answer is usually… don’t. If you already know what you want to do, then the question doesn’t need to be asked.1 But, if you don’t already know what you want to do, then your time might be better spent elsewhere! The best contributors are always intrinsically motivated....

I get this question a lot! The answer is usually… don’t. If you already know what you want to do, then the question doesn’t need to be asked.1 But, if you don’t already know what you want to do, then your time might be better spent elsewhere!The best contributors are always intrinsically motivated. ...

pkg.go.dev sucks. It’s certainly prettier than godoc.org, but under the covers, it’s a failure of engineering characteristic of the Google approach. Go is a pretty good programming language. I have long held that this is not attributable to Google’s stewardship, but rather to a small number of langu...

pkg.go.dev sucks. It’s certainly prettier than godoc.org, but under the covers, it’s a failure of engineering characteristic of the Google approach.Go is a pretty good programming language. I have long held that this is not attributable to Google’s stewardship, but rather to a small number of langua...

Google is well-known for forbidding the use of software using the GNU Affero General Public License, commonly known as “AGPL”. Google is also well-known for being the subject of cargo-culting by fad startups. Unfortunately, this means that they are susceptible to what is ultimately anti-AGPL propaga...

Google is well-known for forbidding the use of software using the GNU Affero General Public License, commonly known as “AGPL”. Google is also well-known for being the subject of cargo-culting by fad startups. Unfortunately, this means that they are susceptible to what is ultimately anti-AGPL propaga...

Hello again! Another month of FOSS development behind us, and we’re back again to share the results. I took a week off at the end of June, so my progress this month is somewhat less than usual. Regardless, I have some updates for you, mainly in the domain of SourceHut work. But before we get to that...

Hello again! Another month of FOSS development behind us, and we’re back again to share the results. I took a week off at the end of June, so my progress this month is somewhat less than usual. Regardless, I have some updates for you, mainly in the domain of SourceHut work.But before we get to that,...