Games, GNOME Maps, BSD, and Software Freedom

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jan 29, 2025

• GNU/Linux and BSD

  • Games

    • Godot Engine ☛ 2024 Cherry-picks

      Over the course of 2024, the Godot project has amassed more new features and community highlights than any one person can keep track of. To ensure you did not miss anything essential, we have selected a few memorable moments and key updates to revisit together.

    • Forbes ☛ The Steam Deck Has A Serious Switch 2 Problem

      I never expected to write an article directly comparing the Steam Deck with the Switch 2. But Nintendo is poised to give its PC-powered competition a rude awakening.

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Marcus Lundblad: Pre-FOSDEM Maps wrap-up

         As I've done some times previous years, I thought it would be appropriate to give a bit of a status update on goings on with regards to Maps before heading for this year's FOSDEM

        
        

        Refreshed Location Marker

        One of the things that landed since the December update are the new revamped location markers

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • BSD

    • Dan Langille ☛ gw01 – setup photos – very little commentary

      Earlier today, I installed FreeBSD 14.2 on gw01. Here are some of the photos. The system is very quiet. I cannot hear it from 10 ft away. First boot – that first boot can take some time. 1-2 minutes. First boot trying the USB drive. Selecting bios options The install begins Look at that!

• Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • Opengrep ☛ Opengrep - The open-source code security engine

    We’re launching Opengrep, a fork of Semgrep CE (formerly Semgrep OSS), in response to recent changes by Semgrep that affect its open-source nature and shift focus to its paid offering, limiting access and innovation for the broader community.

    Our commitment to Opengrep ensures that its static code analysis engine and rules remain accessible to everyone. We’re investing for the long term with a strong roadmap for impactful new features. Together, we will democratize Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and code security to empower developers to build more secure software.

  • Cory Dransfeldt ☛ Migrating from Plex to Jellyfin for music

    I've been using a hosted Plex instance for my media consumption for a bit now and while I've been happy with it, I've moved my listening over to a Jellyfin server. I've been working to self-host more of the infrastructure and services I rely on and moving my music consumption and streaming under that umbrella felt like a logical next step.

  • Libre Arts ☛ Weekly recap — 26 January 2025

    Week highlights: new releases of Skyfill, Mayo, and Shotcut; great new features in Dune3D; FreeCAD Project Association has part-time job openings.

  • Events

    • GNU ☛ Volunteers Needed for LibrePlanet Event in Shiraz, Iran (May 2025)

      Dear LibrePlanet Community,
      
      
      I hope this email finds you well. My name is Delta, and I’m reaching
      out on behalf of a team planning to host a national-scale LibrePlanet
      event in Shiraz, Iran, this May. The main goal of this event is to
      advocate for software freedom, introduce free software and the
      Fediverse to both technical and non-technical audiences, and explain
      why using free software matters.
      
      
      We believe this is an important opportunity to grow the free software
      movement in Iran and inspire more people to join us in defending
      technology freedom. To make this event a success, we need help from
      passionate volunteers who share our vision.
      
      
      We’re looking for individuals who can:
      
      
      Speak about free software and its importance.
      
      
      Share technical knowledge about free software and the Fediverse.
      
      
      Help organize workshops or activities.
      
      
      Assist with event planning, promotion, or logistics.
      
      
      If you’re interested in volunteering or have any ideas to share,
      please reply to this email or contact me directly at
      delta.shahinpoor@iau.ir . We’d love to hear from you and work together
      to make this event impactful.
      
      
      Thank you for your time and support. Let’s spread the message of
      software freedom far and wide!
      
      
      Best regards, Delta
      

  • SaaS/Back End/Databases

    • The New Stack ☛ Why Vector Databases Are Here to Stay in the AI Age

      In the most basic terms, vector databases are databases that allow the storage and retrieval of vectors. Vectors are the key component of LLMs that abstract and reason about the data the model has been trained on.

      Vector databases, however, being databases, can do more than just store and retrieve vectors. They also provide built-in approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) algorithms, which enable vector similarity search capabilities directly within the database.

  • Content Management Systems (CMS) / Static Site Generators (SSG)

    • Clayton Errington ☛ Securing 11ty with SSL Locally

      In a previous post I wrote about how to secure Jekyll with SSL locally. I first was able to find out you can accomplish this while using the Browsersync module. Most of this was in an old eleventy issue that asks for support and then comments lead you to documentation for Browsersync with little assistance in if this would work with 11ty still. Since I found that 11ty can use and supports Browsersync I started with this processes.

  • Licensing / Legal

    • Endor Labs ☛ Everything You Need to Know About Opengrep

      Opengrep is a fork of Semgrep's open source static code analysis engine, created in response to Semgrep's December 13th, 2024 announcement that moved critical features behind their commercial license. Opengrep provides a drop-in replacement that maintains and extends the capabilities developers rely on, while ensuring they remain truly open source.

    • [Old] Eben Moglen, Columbia University ☛ Freeing the Mind : Free Software and the Death of Proprietary Culture

      Free software is an invocation for particular social purposes of the ability to develop resources in commons. This is not, as I have pointed out, an economic novelty. It is the single way in which we have produced the most important works of Western intellectual achievement since the Renaissance. It is also the way in which we have managed for all time fisheries, surface water resources, and large numbers of other forms of resource beyond human production. Free software presents an attempt to construct a commons in cyberspace with respect to executable computer code. It works. It works, with one interesting subdivision of structural decision-making on how to construct the commons. When we come to the technicalities of licensing, we will observe that there are two philosophies in the construction of the commons, one of which is characterized, oddly enough, by a license with the three-letter name BSD, the Berkeley Systems Division license, which originally covered the distribution of a Unix-like operating system, written on free-sharing principles, primarily at the University of California. The BSD license says: ``Here is a commons. It is not defended by copyright against appropriation. Everything in the commons may be taken and put into proprietary, non-commons production as easily as it may be incorporated into commons production. We encourage people to put material into commons, and we are indifferent as to whether the appropriative use made of commons resources is proprietary, or commons-reinforcing.''

      The second philosophy for the production of software in commons is embodied in the GNU General Public License of the Free Software Foundation, known universally throughout the world by another three-letter abbreviation, GPL. The GPL says: We construct a protected commons, in which by a trick, an irony, the phenomena of commons are adduced through the phenomena of copyright, restricted ownership is employed to create non-restricted, self-protected commons. The GPL, whose language you've been referred to, is not quite as elegant a license as I would like but it is pretty short; yet I can put it more simply for you. It says: ``Take this software; do what you want with it--copy, modify, redistribute. But if you distribute, modified or unmodified, do not attempt to give anybody to whom you distribute fewer rights than you had in the material with which you began. Have a nice day.'' That's all. It requires no acceptance, it requires no contractual obligation. It says, you are permitted to do, just don't try to reduce anybody else's rights. The result is a commons that protects itself: Appropriation may be made in an unlimited way, providing that each modification of goods in commons are returned to commons. Anyone making non-commons use of the material is infringing. One says, simply, ``You're distributing. Where's your license?'' The defendant has two choices: ``I have no license,'' which is not a good answer, or ``I have a license. It's the GPL,'' which is not a good answer unless you are giving everyone else the rights you had in what you started with.

    • Linuxiac ☛ Microsoft Launches an Open-Source DocumentDB Database [Ed: The term "permissive [sic] MIT License" is misleading. It is non-reciprocal.]

      Historically, NoSQL databases have often been limited to proprietary cloud-specific solutions, complicating interoperability and portability. To address this, in a bold (and unexpected) move, Microsoft has officially unveiled DocumentDB, a fully open-source document database platform under the permissive [sic] MIT License.

    • [Old] GNU ☛ Eben Moglen Harvard Speech - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation

      Those of us who believe in the GNU GPL as a particularly valuable license to use believe in that because we think that there are other licenses which too weakly protect the commons and which are more amenable to a form of appropriation that might be ultimately destructive—this is our concern with the freedoms presented, for example, by the BSD license—we are concerned that though the freedoms in the short term seem even greater, that the longterm result is more readily the one that you are pointing at, market participants who are free to propriatize the content of the commons may succeed in so effectively propriatizing it as to drive the commons out of use altogether, thus, if you like, killing the goose that laid the golden egg in the first place.

      So, to some extent, I would say, avoidance of the tragedy of the commons in our world depends upon the structuring of the commons. Institutions alone, as I also pointed out earlier in this conversation however, commons resources need active management.

    • [Old] Eben Moglen, Columbia University ☛ Free Software Matters: Enforcing the GPL, I

      But most proprietary software companies want more power than copyright alone gives them. These companies say their software is ``licensed'' to consumers, but the license contains obligations that copyright law knows nothing about. Software you're not allowed to understand, for example, often requires you to agree not to decompile it. Copyright law doesn't prohibit decompilation, the prohibition is just a contract term you agree to as a condition of getting the software when you buy the product under shrink wrap in a store, or accept a ``clickwrap license'' on line. Copyright is just leverage for taking even more away from users.

      The GPL, on the other hand, subtracts from copyright rather than adding to it. The license doesn't have to be complicated, because we try to control users as little as possible. Copyright grants publishers power to forbid users to exercise rights to copy, modify, and distribute that we believe all users should have; the GPL thus relaxes almost all the restrictions of the copyright system. The only thing we absolutely require is that anyone distributing GPL'd works or works made from GPL'd works distribute in turn under GPL. That condition is a very minor restriction, from the copyright point of view. Much more restrictive licenses are routinely held enforceable: every license involved in every single copyright lawsuit is more restrictive than the GPL.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Data

      • Wired ☛ Trump’s ‘Gulf of America’ Order Has Mapmakers Completely Lost

        Disputes over names and boundaries are common in the maps industry, with a number of countries having enacted laws requiring mapmakers to adopt specific titles and borders. Trump’s order, in particular, follows scant public input and is disputed even within the US.

        OpenStreetMap has various ways of labeling names. For instance, it’s possible to list Mexico as the colloquial name for the country while also displaying its official name, Estados Unidos Mexicanos, or United Mexican States. Other labels allow for different names to be shown in different countries and languages. Apps that license OpenStreetMap data can choose which of the labels to reflect to their users or add their own naming conventions.