Free, Libre, and Open Source Software Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Apr 10, 2025

• PowerDNS ☛ PowerDNS Recursor 5.0.10, 5.1.4 and 5.2.2 Released

  These releases are maintenance releases that fix a few bugs and have a few improvements. The most important ones are: [...]

• Open Source: A capitalistic value engine

  Is Open Source just a feel-good movement? Christian Paterson, author of "Open Source: A Capitalistic Value Engine," argues otherwise. In this interview, Paterson, an expert in Open Source strategy and governance, talks about the overlooked business rationale behind adopting Open Source.

• Getting Started with Open Source

  Understanding the origins and philosophies of the software we use has never been more important in an era in which technology has become the backbone of our daily lives and the engine of innumerable industries.

• Web Browsers/Web Servers

  • Mozilla

    • Tor ☛ New Alpha Release: Tor Browser 14.5a6 | The Tor Project

      This version includes important security updates to Firefox.

• SaaS/Back End/Databases

  • The New Stack ☛ Why Use a NoSQL Database for AI? There Are Many Great Reasons

    Unlike relational databases, which were designed to minimize data duplication and scale vertically, NoSQL databases use flexible data models such as key-value, document, column, time series and graph formats to accommodate web, mobile and IoT applications. These databases operate as primary content stores, allowing flexible data access and high availability through horizontal scaling across distributed systems.

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

  • Zig ☛ Devlog ⚡ Zig Programming Language

    The official Zig website now builds using standalone Zine. A lot of code got rewritten so if you see regressions on the website, please open an issue. Regressions only please, thanks!

  • Taavi Väänänen: Writing a custom rsync server to automatically update a static site

    Now the obvious way to host that would be to hook up the HTML-generating code to a web server, maybe add some caching for the API calls, and then route external HTTPS traffic to it. However, that'd a) require that server to be constantly available to serve traffic, and b) be boring.

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Data

    • The Strategist ☛ No, it’s not new. Russia and China have been best buddies for decades

      The two countries have been each other’s most important diplomatic partner since no later than 2002, according to my research. Throughout this period, Russia has been central to China’s building of an alternative world order.

      Based on the structured way the Chinese foreign ministry publishes incoming and outgoing diplomatic visits, I built a database that covers the presidential periods of Hu Jintao (2002–2012) and Xi Jinping (2012–present). My clearest finding was the dominance of Sino-Russian exchanges. The graph below shows the trend in Russia-China visits.

  • Open Access/Content

    • Darren Goossens ☛ A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs – DSPACE

      Mark Nelson’s reading on Librivox comes highly recommended.