Free, Libre, and Open Source Software Leftovers and Sharing Advocacy

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Aug 01, 2026

• GitLab ☛ Change <delete> to delete forward in the editor menu. (dda22dba) · Commits · Mutt Project / mutt · GitLab

  There was a long discussion on mutt-dev about this change. The history of the delete and backspace keys, and their bindings in Unix, is convoluted, and generally accepted defaults have changed over time (and still haven't completely been made consistent.)

  Not everyone was in favor of changing the default, as this can be extremely annoying to older users who want that behavior.

• Protesilaos Stavrou ☛ Emacs: tmr version 1.4.0

  TMR is an efficient package that has been stable for years. This new version introduces some nice new features as well as several smaller internal refinements.

• Dedoimedo ☛ VLC secrets: Convert or stream multi-audio multi-sub videos

  I come to you with a weird little problem, one that I thought should have been resolved many many years ago, but apparently, no. As it happens, I have some old DVDs, and I wanted to back up their contents before the discs fade beyond repair. All right, so you need some program that can do this. As always, I start with VLC, my favorite go-to software for all things media, alongside ffmpeg, that is. I've used VLC for many wondrous things, including a subset of what we will discuss today. Indeed, I wanted to back up a video that has multiple audio and subtitle tracks available.

  As I outlined in my VLC & subtitles tutorial, you can do this quite easily. But then, I noticed that there was quite a bit of discrepancy between conversion, stream, and the method by which you select the necessary audio and subtitle tracks. Namely, when using the conversion option, VLC ignored the GUI-selected tracks and chose randomly. The streaming option worked fine, but not on the command line. The exact same settings that worked well in the GUI did not when I invoked the program in the terminal window. Thus, I would like to give you what I hope will be a rather precise and definitive guide on how to handle this "problem", script your data conversions, and avoid any errors. Let's begin.

• SaaS/Back End/Databases

  • PostgreSQL ☛ plRuby

    PL/Ruby is a procedural-language handler that lets you write database functions in Ruby, stored and executed inside PostgreSQL. You get the expressiveness of Ruby and its standard library with the full power of a native PostgreSQL function: plain functions, set-returning functions, triggers, event triggers, and procedures with transaction control.

• Licensing / Legal

  • Lee Yingtong Li ☛ Reverse engineering 1990s legacy enterprise software licensing

    This article explores a software licensing system used in a proprietary enterprise software package from circa 1994, which is no longer supported by the original developers. The licensing system operated on the basis of short alphanumeric licence keys issued to licensees (e.g. ABCD 012345 67890). The software is distributed as a binary executable (say, foo.exe) and accompanied by a number of supporting files.

    At the outset, we know that foo.exe displays an error message to the effect of ‘Serial number is invalid’ if an invalid serial number is entered. We proceed to static analysis from this starting point.

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Access/Content

    • Becky Spratford ☛ RA for All: New Book on Gen Z Reading Habits-- Free Download Through 8/6

      Portland State University researchers Kathi Inman Berens and Rachel Noorda have a new book from Cambridge University Press entitled, How Gen Z Discover and Consume Books. It is free to download here but only through August 6th!

    • uni Cambridge ☛ How Gen Z Discover and Consume Books

      This Element is free online from 23rd July 2026 - 6th August 2026

• Standards/Consortia

  • Document Foundation ☛ Why OOXML-Based Suites Handle ODF Badly

    The question arises naturally for anyone who chooses the standard format over the proprietary one: why do office suites that use OOXML as their native format handle ODF in ways that range from poor to appalling?