Free, Libre, and Open Source Software Leftovers
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Jay Little ☛ A Change in Direction
They are slower than static websites. They are more prone to security issues than static websites. They require more resources to operate than static websites. In case you haven't picked up on the theme yet: I am going to move jaylittle.com over to a static website. I have opted to make use of Hugo to generate this new website. While it has been a learning curve, I'm happy to say that the vast majority of work required to get the new website online has already been done.
So why isn't it live? Well it's because I had a policy of prepaying Linode / Akamai (the provider who hosts the VM where this website lives) months ahead of time. Now that I want to leave, I don't really have any way of getting that balance back except by making use of it. So that's the plan. Once the balance runs out, that's when the transition will occur. That balance will run out at the end of August so that is when this website will transition to its new static version.
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Tudor Roman ☛ Zoomer Tries RSS: In Praise of Yarr
I ditched Instagram altogether, and then I also uninstalled the Reddit client I was using on my phone. I still read some subreddits from time to time, but now it requires me to manually type in the subreddit I want to read, scroll a bit, and then become very frustrated with the new web UI — which is totally not intentionally bad to make you download the mobile app. Not only that, but I also change the URL to old.reddit.com when needed (even harder when doing it on my phone…). And then I only read without ever logging in, which is why using Old Reddit is a requirement. You can easily see that it’s not the best reading experience for the web.
With this in mind, I remembered RSS and feeds are a thing, so I figured I should set up a reader. I’ve never used one before, but the concept sounded promising: I can subscribe to blogs and news outlets, directly!
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Jarrod Blundy ☛ RE: ‘Goodbye Micro.blog’
Definitely some valid points here, particularly around Khürt’s experience with customer service and the friction in design and with editing. I’d say neither are insurmountable, but also neither are best-in-class.
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Security Week ☛ Magento Vulnerability Exploited to Deploy Persistent Backdoor
The issue, tracked as CVE-2024-20720 (CVSS score of 9.1), is described as an OS command injection flaw leading to arbitrary code execution without user interaction.
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Thorsten Ball ☛ From Vim to Zed
After around 20 years of using Vim, in December last year I switched to Zed as my main editor. Since some friends have asked me about the switch — “Now that you work at Zed, are you using Zed instead of Vim?” — I thought I’d write about it. You now know that I did switch, yes, so what’s left to talk about is the Why.
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Chad Whitacre ☛ Open Source Is a Restaurant
Open Source is not a grocery store. At a grocery store (or pretty much any other store, but this analogy works best if we use food), you pay first, then you get to eat.
This is analogous to thinking of payments to Open Source projects in terms of ROI: what am I getting in the future for the money I am paying now? This doesn’t work, because you already used the software. You can pay for other things adjacent to the software—consulting, packaging, hosting, and so forth. These subsidize Open Source but do not directly sustain it. ROI as a mechanism depends on scarcity, and Open Source is essentially, intentionally non-scarce.
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Jennifer Moore ☛ The free software commons
The Free Software movement has been remarkably successful. As a result, the collective of free and open source software has become a kind of commons; a public, shared resource that benefits everyone. But, it's not clear to me that the leaders of that movement actually know this is what they've done, or that this was the truly valuable outcome of the goals they pursued. Now that this commons exists, it needs to be tended, and protected. Otherwise, it will suffer the same fate as most of our historical commons: it will be plundered and enclosed by private capital interests.
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Licensing / Legal
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VMS Software ☛ Updates to the Community Program
Despite our initial aspirations for robust community engagement, the reality has fallen short of our expectations. The level of participation in activities such as contributing open-source software, creating wiki articles, and providing assistance on forums has not matched the scale of the program. As a result, we find ourselves at a crossroads, compelled to reassess and recalibrate our approach.
In light of these considerations, we are implementing a strategic shift in our community program. Effective immediately, we will discontinue offering new community licenses for non-commercial use for Alpha and Integrity. Existing holders of community licenses for these architectures will get updates for those licenses and retain their access to the Service Portal until March 2025 for Alpha and December 2025 for Integrity. All outstanding requests for Alpha and Integrity community licenses will be declined. This decision is necessary to ensure a vibrant VMS Software OpenVMS community thrives and adapts to new technologies. Continuation of free licensing for old architectures does not incentivize community members to adapt to OpenVMS x86-64, virtualization, and future technology developments.
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