Today, we’re looking at two case studies in how to respond when reactionaries appear in your free software community.Exhibit AIt is a technical decision.The technical reason is that the security team does not have the bandwidth to provide lifecycle maintenance for multiple X server implementations. ...

Tech workers have long resisted the suggestion that we should be organized into unions. The topic is consistently met with a cold reception by tech workers when it is raised, and no big tech workforce is meaningfully organized. This is a fatal mistake – and I don’t mean “fatal” in the figurative sen...

Tech workers have long resisted the suggestion that we should be organized into unions. The topic is consistently met with a cold reception by tech workers when it is raised, and no big tech workforce is meaningfully organized. This is a fatal mistake – and I don’t mean “fatal” in the figurative sen...

My spouse and I are on vacation in Japan, spending half our time seeing the sights and the other half working remotely and enjoying the experience of living in a different place for a while. To get here, we flew on British Airways from London to Tokyo, and I entertained myself on the long flight by ...

My spouse and I are on vacation in Japan, spending half our time seeing the sights and the other half working remotely and enjoying the experience of living in a different place for a while. To get here, we flew on British Airways from London to Tokyo, and I entertained myself on the long flight by ...

As of late, most of us have been reading the news with a sense of anxious trepidation. At least, those of us who read from a position of relative comfort and privilege. Many more read the news with fear. Some of us are already no longer in a position to read the news at all, having become the unfort...

As of late, most of us have been reading the news with a sense of anxious trepidation. At least, those of us who read from a position of relative comfort and privilege. Many more read the news with fear. Some of us are already no longer in a position to read the news at all, having become the unfort...

I had a fun idea for a small project this weekend, and so I quickly put it together over the couple of days. The result is Price Perspective. Humor me: have you ever bought something, considered the price, and wondered how that price would look to someone else? Someone in the developing world, or a ...

I had a fun idea for a small project this weekend, and so I quickly put it together over the couple of days. The result is Price Perspective.Humor me: have you ever bought something, considered the price, and wondered how that price would look to someone else? Someone in the developing world, or a b...

It must have been at least a year ago that I first noticed linkhut, and its flagship instance at ln.ht, appear on SourceHut, where it immediately caught my attention for its good taste in inspirations. Once upon a time, I had a Pinboard account, which is a similar concept, but I never used it for an...

Notice: linkhut has started to use generative AI tools upstream. Consequently, I have withdrawn my endorsement of the project.It must have been at least a year ago that I first noticed linkhut, and its flagship instance at ln.ht, appear on SourceHut, where it immediately caught my attention for its ...

This blog post is expressing personal experiences and opinions and doesn’t reflect any official policies of SourceHut. Over the past few months, instead of working on our priorities at SourceHut, I have spent anywhere from 20-100% of my time in any given week mitigating hyper-aggressive LLM crawlers...

This blog post is expressing personal experiences and opinions and doesn’t reflect any official policies of SourceHut.Over the past few months, instead of working on our priorities at SourceHut, I have spent anywhere from 20-100% of my time in any given week mitigating hyper-aggressive LLM crawlers ...

I’d like to write about intellectual property in depth, in this first of a series of blog posts on the subject. I’m not a philosopher, but philosophy is the basis of reasonable politics so buckle up for a healthy Friday afternoon serving of it. To understand intellectual property, we must first esta...

I’d like to write about intellectual property in depth, in this first of a series of blog posts on the subject. I’m not a philosopher, but philosophy is the basis of reasonable politics so buckle up for a healthy Friday afternoon serving of it.To understand intellectual property, we must first estab...

Good news: it appears that Jack Dorsey’s FOSDEM talk has been cancelled! This is a follow up to two earlier posts, which you can read here: one and two. I say it “appears” so, because there has been no official statement from anyone to that effect. There has also been no communication from staff to ...

Good news: it appears that Jack Dorsey’s FOSDEM talk has been cancelled!This is a follow up to two earlier posts, which you can read here: one and two.I say it “appears” so, because there has been no official statement from anyone to that effect. There has also been no communication from staff to th...

Update: Dorsey’s talk was cancelled! See the update here. Last week, I wrote to object to Jack Dorsey and his company, Block, Inc., being accepted as main track speakers at FOSDEM, and proposed a protest action in response. FOSDEM issued a statement about our plans on Thursday. Today, I have some up...

Update: Dorsey’s talk was cancelled! See the update here.Last week, I wrote to object to Jack Dorsey and his company, Block, Inc., being accepted as main track speakers at FOSDEM, and proposed a protest action in response. FOSDEM issued a statement about our plans on Thursday.Today, I have some upda...

Update: Dorsey’s talk was cancelled! See the update here. Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter, ousted board member of BlueSky, and grifter extraordinaire to the tune of a $5.6B net worth, is giving a keynote at FOSDEM. The FOSDEM keynote stage is one of the biggest platforms in the free software comm...

Update: Dorsey’s talk was cancelled! See the update here.Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter, ousted board member of BlueSky, and grifter extraordinaire to the tune of a $5.6B net worth, is giving a keynote at FOSDEM.The FOSDEM keynote stage is one of the biggest platforms in the free software commun...

In November of last year, I wrote Richard Stallman’s political discourse on sex, which argues that Richard Stallman, the founder of and present-day voting member of the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), endorses and advocates for a harmful political agenda which legitimizes a...

In November of last year, I wrote Richard Stallman’s political discourse on sex, which argues that Richard Stallman, the founder of and present-day voting member of the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), endorses and advocates for a harmful political agenda which legitimizes a...

Ugh. Drew’s blogging about Rust again. – You I promise to be nice. Two years ago, seeing the Rust-for-Linux project starting to get the ball rolling, I wrote “Does Rust belong in the Linux kernel?”, penning a conclusion consistent with Betteridge’s law of headlines. Two years on we have a lot of exp...

Ugh. Drew’s blogging about Rust again.– YouI promise to be nice.Two years ago, seeing the Rust-for-Linux project starting to get the ball rolling, I wrote “Does Rust belong in the Linux kernel?”, penning a conclusion consistent with Betteridge’s law of headlines. Two years on we have a lot of experi...

We are living through an interesting moment in source-available software.1 The open source movement has always had, and continues to have, a solid grounding in grassroots programmers building tools for themselves and forming communities around them. Some looming giants brought on large sums of money...

We are living through an interesting moment in source-available software.1 The open source movement has always had, and continues to have, a solid grounding in grassroots programmers building tools for themselves and forming communities around them. Some looming giants brought on large sums of money...

I needed a bit of a break from “real work” recently, so I started a new programming project that was low-stakes and purely recreational. On April 21st, I set out to see how much of a Unix-like operating system for x86_64 targets that I could put together in about a month. The result is Bunnix. Not i...

I needed a bit of a break from “real work” recently, so I started a new programming project that was low-stakes and purely recreational. On April 21st, I set out to see how much of a Unix-like operating system for x86_64 targets that I could put together in about a month. The result is Bunnix. Not i...

One may observe an axis, or a “spectrum”, along which free and open source software licenses can be organized, where one end is “permissive” and the other end is “copyleft”. It is important to acknowledge, however, that though copyleft can be found at the opposite end of an axis with respect to perm...