Free, Libre, and Open Source Software, Open Access, and Standards

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jan 09, 2026

• Jan Lukas Else ☛ When did I start blogging?

  Taking that date, it’s already the 12th year I am blogging. The oldest post still alive on this blog is this one from October 2016. The domain I am currently using was registered in March 2019. One of my first websites I published was in February 2010 on a subdomain of my high school, created with Microsoft Publisher.

• Andrew Nesbitt ☛ brew-vulns: CVE scanning for Homebrew

  Years ago I wrote a tool called Brewdler that brought Bundler-style dependency management to Homebrew. You could list your packages in a Brewfile and run a single command to install them. Homebrew eventually absorbed it as brew bundle, and it’s now the standard way to manage reproducible macOS environments.

• James Stanley ☛ A parametric mannequin for FreeCAD

  It is based on the "average male" dimensions from this diagram that I found online.

• Linuxiac ☛ Seafile 13.0 File Sync Server Launches With Hey Hi (AI) Search, Advanced Metadata

  Seafile 13.0 updates its file sync server with Hey Hi (AI) search, structured metadata, real-time collaboration, and full-text indexing.

• Scott Reinhard ☛ Open Source Mapping for News: Reuters

  The news service Reuters was looking to build an open source web map that could work for a variety of story types, with a focus on automated data. As a graphic designer, cartographer, and visual journalist, I brought to this project a unique perspective on weaving together the range of considerations required for a seamless mapping experience. I worked with them to explore the current open source options and to design and build a tool that met their technical requirements while maintaining an aesthetic look and feel that could fit on their pages. In the following text I will walk through the process of designing and building the map system.

• LWN ☛ Google will now only release Android source code twice a year (Android Authority) [Ed: Open Source Initiative (OSI) Not Doing Its Job, Instead It's Promoting Microsoft Ponzi Schemes]

  Android Authority reports

  that Surveillance Giant Google will be reducing the frequency of releases of code to the

  Android Open Source Project to only twice per year.

• Education

  • Carl Schwan ☛ Events in December 2025

    December was quite an eventful month for me, with over 4,000 km travelled by train. This was in part caused by the holidays and visiting family, but also by the KDE PIM sprint in Paris and the 39th Chaos Communication Congress.

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Access/Content

    • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Hot Takes on the First Quarter of 21st Century Scholarly Publishing

      Scholarly authorship motivations are incredibly difficult to shift. We have seen many attempts over the past twenty five years to change author or researcher behavior. These have included trying to motivate authors to publish open access, to author rights retention addendums, to shifting assessment away from the Journal Impact Factor. Certainly, there are trends that have changed behavior in the community, notably with OA publishing over time. However, as a general rule, the research enterprise is extremely conservative when it comes to adapting to change that impacts their methods of assessment, promotion, and tenure. While much consternation is pointed to scholarly publishers or data aggregators as the source of these problems, they are rooted in the practice of the academy. It is highly likely that many of these are issues that will only be solved actuarially.

    • ACM ☛ ACM is Now Fully Open Access!

      This transition is the result of extensive dialogue with authors, SIG leaders, editorial boards, libraries, and research institutions worldwide. ACM is grateful for the community’s consistent advocacy for openness and its commitment to ensuring that computing knowledge is shared widely. Our goal is to make this transition smooth and supportive for eve ryone who contributes to ACM’s publications and conferences.

• Standards/Consortia

  • BSDly ☛ That grumpy BSD guy: A Major Mail Provider Demonstrate They Likely Do Not Understand Mail At All

    So it happened again. A major mail provider proved that they do not, in fact, understand how modern email works.

    I've been running mail services for longer than I care to remember. It started out back when I was running a small business on the edge of tech, mainly dealing with software localization and documentation writing.

  • Nathan Knowler ☛ 2026 CSS wishlist

    In 2024, I started the year with my CSS wishlist. Since then, many of those wishes have been fulfilled, particularly in 2025. Style queries, the @scope rule, anchor positioning, and view transitions are all (almost) available in all browsers. This year I want to switch it up a bit and describe a few features that I’m looking forward to and ultimately what I think they will allow us to do with CSS.