Free, Libre, and Open Source Software Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Mar 20, 2025

• LWN ☛ The road to mainstream Matrix

  Matrix provides an open network for secure, decentralized communication. It has enjoyed some success over the last few years as an IRC replacement and real-time chat for a number of open-source projects. But adoption by a subset of open-source developers is a far cry from the mainstream adoption that Matthew Hodgson, Matrix project lead and CEO of Element (the company that created Matrix), would like to see. At FOSDEM 2025, he discussed the history of Matrix, its missteps in chasing mainstream adoption, its current status, as well as some of the wishlist features for taking Matrix into the mainstream.

  Hodgson said that the mission for Matrix is to build the real-time communication layer for the open web so that ""no single party owns your conversations"". Matrix is an open standard for a decentralized communication protocol. Often, when people refer to Matrix, though, they may be referring as well to the server and client implementations, or the providers, such as Matrix.org, that offer servers for users. The Try Matrix page is a useful start for those who have not yet dipped their toe in the Matrix waters.

• Evan Hahn ☛ Cheatsheet for Rink, the unit-aware calculator

  Rink is a unit-aware calculator for the command line and your browser. I’ve been wanting something like it for years!

  Here’s a Rink cheatsheet I made for myself. I hope it’s useful to others!

• PowerDNS ☛ First alpha release of PowerDNS DNSdist 2.0.0

  This is the first release featuring the whole new YAML configuration syntax for DNSdist. While the existing Lua configuration format will remain supported, the new YAML format is much more consistent, tremendously easier to understand, and can easily be processed by external tools. A bare-bone configuration file looks like this: [...]

• Web Browsers/Web Servers

  • James G ☛ Announcing Artemis Link Graph, a new way to explore the web

    Artemis Link Graph is a web extension that lists the web pages authored by people you follow that link to the page you are viewing.

• Education

  • Doc Searls ☛ Come from Everywhere

    All of the Internet’s protocols, from TCP/IP on up, were made to ignore national boundaries. I am inviting participants in the next IIW (April 8 to 10) to do the same: ignore the noise coming from the U.S. government and come join us to work on what’s good for the whole connected world.

  • BSD-NL ☛ BSD-NL — BSD-NL

    Whoohoo! It’s time for our third conference, held at the Maximus Brewery in Utrecht. There will be talks, hacking, slacking, beer and food.

  • APNIC ☛ APNIC Academy IPv6 certification in 2025

    APNIC Academy’s new IPv6 Certification (Associate) proved popular when we launched the ‘Alpha Trial’ last year in Nepal and the Philippines, with 62 participants achieving certification. Insights gained from the Philippines and Nepal alpha trials helped refine the content and delivery for this year. Four beta trials will be delivered in 2025, beginning with Bangladesh and Thailand in May. Two more locations for 2025 will be announced as soon as possible.

  • Julia Programming Language ☛ Building a Thriving Open Source Ecosystem: Lessons from JuliaSim and JuliaHub

    Sustaining an open-source ecosystem while balancing commercial success is a challenge many developers and organizations face.

    In a recent non-technical talk, with OpenTeams, Chris Rackauckas, VP of Modeling & Simulation at JuliaHub shared insights into how the Julia community has grown and how JuliaSim bridges the gap between open source development and industry adoption.

    Here are some of the highlights of the talk: [...]