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,...

It’s March 2nd, 1943. The user asks your software to schedule a meeting with Acmecorp at “9 AM on the first Monday of next month”. [6:17:45] homura ~ $ cal -3 2 March 1943 February 1943 March 1943 April 1943 Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3...

It’s March 2nd, 1943. The user asks your software to schedule a meeting with Acmecorp at “9 AM on the first Monday of next month”. [6:17:45] homura ~ $ cal -3 2 March 1943 February 1943 March 1943 April 1943 Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3...

There have, historically, been two kinds of operating systems: general-purpose, and special-purpose. These roles are defined by the function they serve for the user. Examples of general-purpose operating systems include Unix (Linux, BSD, etc), Solaris, Haiku, Plan 9, and so on. These are well-suited...

There have, historically, been two kinds of operating systems: general-purpose, and special-purpose. These roles are defined by the function they serve for the user. Examples of general-purpose operating systems include Unix (Linux, BSD, etc), Solaris, Haiku, Plan 9, and so on. These are well-suited...

I like stateless tokens. We started with stateful tokens: where a generated string acts as a unique identifier for a resource, and the resource itself is looked up separately. For example, your sr.ht OAuth token is a stateful token: we just generate a random number and hand it to you, something like...

I like stateless tokens. We started with stateful tokens: where a generated string acts as a unique identifier for a resource, and the resource itself is looked up separately. For example, your sr.ht OAuth token is a stateful token: we just generate a random number and hand it to you, something like...

Like last month, I am writing to you from the past, preparing this status update a day earlier than usual. This time it’s because I expect to be busy with planned sr.ht maintenance tomorrow, so I’m getting the status updates written ahead of time. aerc has seen lots of patches merged recently thanks...

Like last month, I am writing to you from the past, preparing this status update a day earlier than usual. This time it’s because I expect to be busy with planned sr.ht maintenance tomorrow, so I’m getting the status updates written ahead of time.aerc has seen lots of patches merged recently thanks ...

I’m working on improving the means by which API users authenticate with the SourceHut API. Today, I was reading RFC 6749 (OAuth2) for this purpose, and it got me thinking about the original OAuth spec. I recalled vaguely that it had the API clients actually sign every request, and… yep, indeed it do...

I’m working on improving the means by which API users authenticate with the SourceHut API. Today, I was reading RFC 6749 (OAuth2) for this purpose, and it got me thinking about the original OAuth spec. I recalled vaguely that it had the API clients actually sign every request, and… yep, indeed it do...

There’s a common pattern among free- and open-source software projects to include a “contrib” directory at the top of their source code tree. I’ve seen this in many projects for many years, but I’ve seen it discussed only rarely — so here we are! The contrib directory is used as an unorganized (or, ...

There’s a common pattern among free- and open-source software projects to include a “contrib” directory at the top of their source code tree. I’ve seen this in many projects for many years, but I’ve seen it discussed only rarely — so here we are!The contrib directory is used as an unorganized (or, a...

Hello, future readers! I am writing to you from one day in the past. I finished my plans for today early and thought I’d get a head start on writing the status updates for tomorrow, or rather, for today. From your reference frame, that is. Let’s start with Wayland. First, as you might have heard, Th...

Hello, future readers! I am writing to you from one day in the past. I finished my plans for today early and thought I’d get a head start on writing the status updates for tomorrow, or rather, for today. From your reference frame, that is.Let’s start with Wayland. First, as you might have heard, The...

Tim Bray’s excellent “Bye Amazon” post inspired me to take this article off of my backlog, where it has been sitting for a few weeks. I applaud Tim for stepping down from a company that has demonstrated itself incompatible with his sense of right and wrong, and I want to take a moment to remind you ...

Tim Bray’s excellent “Bye Amazon” post inspired me to take this article off of my backlog, where it has been sitting for a few weeks. I applaud Tim for stepping down from a company that has demonstrated itself incompatible with his sense of right and wrong, and I want to take a moment to remind you ...

As someone who has been often maligned by the disappearance of my data for various reasons — companies going under, hard drive failure, etc — and as someone who is responsible for the safekeeping of other people’s data, I’ve put a lot of thought into solutions for long-term data retention. There are...

As someone who has been often maligned by the disappearance of my data for various reasons — companies going under, hard drive failure, etc — and as someone who is responsible for the safekeeping of other people’s data, I’ve put a lot of thought into solutions for long-term data retention.There are ...

I use aerc as my email client (naturally — I wrote it, after all), and I use git send-email to receive patches to many of my projects. I designed aerc specifically to be productive for this workflow, but there are a few extra things that I use in my personal aerc configuration that I thought were wo...

I use aerc as my email client (naturally — I wrote it, after all), and I use git send-email to receive patches to many of my projects. I designed aerc specifically to be productive for this workflow, but there are a few extra things that I use in my personal aerc configuration that I thought were wo...

Wow, it’s already time for another status update? I’m starting to lose track of the days stuck inside. I have it easier than many - I was already used to working from home before any of this began. But, weeks and weeks of not spending IRL time with anyone else is starting to get to me. Remember to c...

Wow, it’s already time for another status update? I’m starting to lose track of the days stuck inside. I have it easier than many - I was already used to working from home before any of this began. But, weeks and weeks of not spending IRL time with anyone else is starting to get to me. Remember to c...

I have been using git for a while, and I took the time to learn about it in great detail. Equipped with an understanding of its internals and a comfortable familiarity with tools like git rebase — and a personal, intrinsic desire to strive for minimal and lightweight solutions — I have organically d...

I have been using git for a while, and I took the time to learn about it in great detail. Equipped with an understanding of its internals and a comfortable familiarity with tools like git rebase — and a personal, intrinsic desire to strive for minimal and lightweight solutions — I have organically d...

I drove a car daily for many years while I was living in Colorado, California, and New Jersey, but since I moved to Philadelphia I have not needed a car. The public transit here is not great, but it’s good enough to get where I need to be and it’s a lot easier than worrying about parking a car. Howe...

I drove a car daily for many years while I was living in Colorado, California, and New Jersey, but since I moved to Philadelphia I have not needed a car. The public transit here is not great, but it’s good enough to get where I need to be and it’s a lot easier than worrying about parking a car. Howe...

Since the first browser war between Netscape and Internet Explorer, web browsers have been using features as their primary means of competing with each other. This strategy of unlimited scope and perpetual feature creep is reckless, and has been allowed to go on for far too long. I used wget to down...

Since the first browser war between Netscape and Internet Explorer, web browsers have been using features as their primary means of competing with each other. This strategy of unlimited scope and perpetual feature creep is reckless, and has been allowed to go on for far too long.I used wget to downl...

Disclaimer: I am the founder of a company which competes with GitHub. However, I still use tools like GitHub, GitLab, and so on, as part of regular contributions to projects all over the FOSS ecosystem. I don’t dislike GitHub, and I use it frequently in my daily workflow. GitHub is rolling out a new...