Modern wiki software only fits other people's purposes - none seem designed for someone who has markdown notes and wants to interact with them. Switching wiki software demands changing the notes to adhere to the software's new standards. I can't find a single project which says 'we will process your markdown'. Gitlab's …

Read More

Assumed Knowledge: make, GPG, git. You can manage dotfiles with nothing but make and standard tools. Copy standard configs. Track changes with git. Keep separate branches for each computer. Securely handle secret files with GPG. Manage crontab. The Setup Mine looks like this: 1config/: 2 aerc  cava  khard  rofi  …

Read More

I have a minor health problem, and I'd like to look it up. Going to a corporate health clinic just results in some tests to determine which other tests they'll hand out next so that they can make a menu, and ask the patient to pick. Since I'd have to pick from a menu of tests, I may as well look things up myself now, …

Read More

An anti-open-source narrative has become louder lately. It doesn't say 'down with open source', it begins with 'I understand', and 'listen, we need to talk', 'we must be realistic'. Soon after (but never from the outset) 'you know what I mean, if you understand business'. People want to understand business. More than …

Read More

I see a standard story, repeated in FOSS spaces. It starts with an exchange. Open source projects are not actually as anarchic as people think. They work very much like a corporation, with a single person in charge, in a pyramid structure. I hear these repeated gripes that people do not understand open source …

Read More

Could you drive the car over to my sister's place? Then she'll give you the KEYS once you're there. What a confusing request! What keys could this person mean? The car KEYS, for the car that she needs. You'll get the KEYS once you're there. Now you have found the confusion - this person is not thinking clearly. You …

Read More

We - the open source zealots - talk a lot about corporations with unkind interests quashing the movement, pushing their proprietary code, and violating everyone's 'privacy'. We don't talk much about push-back from coders, but it exists, because writing in the open is scary. We can say to engineers, 'your users will be …

Read More

A direct comparison between the FDroid store and Google's PlayStore isn't possible. When you open the FDroid store, you see all recent apps. You can see everything, and even search in alphabetical order; start to finish. Google will never let you see everything, because of the unfiltered garbage on their platform. They …

Read More

When coders use the GNU Public Licence, they have no obligation to give anyone credit for anything.1 Despite this, coders almost always receive credit for everything they do, down to the exact line-changes.2 Meanwhile, the Creative Commons licences - far more popular with artists - have explicit stipulations, but don't …

Read More