Free, Libre, and Open Source Software Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Mar 13, 2026

• Klara ☛ The Real Cost of Technology Dependence

  Technology dependence in storage is no longer just an operational concern — it is a strategic risk affecting cost control, compliance, and digital sovereignty. As vendor lock-in tightens, organizations are turning to open-source storage and OpenZFS to reduce structural dependence and build long-term infrastructure independence.

• Henrique Dias ☛ Update On File Browser

  Last year, I wrote a bit on maintaining open source projects. At the time, I was struggling with one of my most (unexpectedly) successful side projects, File Browser. Today, I want to give an update on it, since I never wrote again about it. I’m hoping that this post helps explaining the current status of the project.

• Linux Links ☛ NetWatch – htop for your network

  NetWatch is a lightweight, keyboard-driven TUI application that gives you instant visibility into network traffic.

• HowTo Geek ☛ 8 open-source tools that secretly power the world [Ed: Some of these are proprietary and spyware]

  Although the term "open source" didn’t arrive until the late 1990s, the principle has been around since programming really took off in the 50s and 60s. Early developers shared their code and protocol designs, a process that ballooned with the advent of the internet in 1969.

  Open source software is now ubiquitous, both hiding in plain sight and acting as an unsung hero behind the scenes. The tools I’ll cover here are vital for vast swathes of our daily lives, even if they rarely get the credit they deserve.

• SaaS/Back End/Databases

  • Ben Congdon ☛ Feature Flagging at Databricks

    I’ve been the tech lead for SAFE for a while now, and the project has scaled significantly in headcount, scope, and usage. The work described in that post represents the efforts both of an initial core team of people that got it off the ground (which I was fortunate to be a part of), as well as a larger group of engineers who’ve shepherded it into a durable platform that has evolved to meet the needs of a now-$134B company.

    A few particular things I’m proud of:

    𐡸 We really optimized the heck out of the evaluation runtime “SDK”, such that the p95 for flag evaluation is roughly ~10μs. After publishing the blog post, someone reached out to me internally and asked me, effectively, “Really? You were able to get evaluation that fast, even in the JVM?” I had a moment of panic thinking maybe I’d grabbed outdated numbers, but then looked at the live prod latency statistics, and yup – we were humming away at around 8μs in prod.

• Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • Tech Central (South Africa) ☛ Europe is building an alternative to Microsoft Office

    Office.eu, a cloud-based office suite built entirely on open-source software and hosted exclusively on European servers, has launched as a direct competitor to Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Its pitch is straightforward: keep data in the EU, run on transparent open-source components and comply with EU law by design.

• Education

  • Miguel Grinberg ☛ Introduction to SQLAlchemy 2 In Practice

    In 2023 I wrote "SQLAlchemy 2 In Practice", a book in which I offer an in-depth look at SQLAlchemy version 2, still the current version today. SQLAlchemy is, for those who don't know, the most popular database library and Object-Request Mapper (ORM) for Python.

    I have a tradition of publishing my books on this blog to read for free, but this is one that I never managed to bring here, and starting today I'm going to work on correcting that. This article includes the Preface of the book. If you are interested, keep an eye out on this blog over the next few weeks, as I will be publishing the eight chapters of the book in order. If you can't wait for the installments, you can buy the book in electronic or paper format today, and I will be eternally thankful, as you will be directly supporting my work.

• GNU Projects

  • David Revoy ☛ GNU Terry Pratchett - Tiffany Aching

    A digital painting tribute and fan-art to my favorite author and witch (and her "hat full of sky").