FOSS | Splint.rs

In Praise of Recfiles

Jul 14, 2026 · 3 min read · FOSS

Recfiles let you write and check plain-text notes. They look like this: %rec: Book %key: slug %sort: year month slug: thinkingexperience author: H. H. Price title: Thinking and Experience year: 1953 publisher: Harvard University Press, Cambridge slug: yugocaves author: Dr Neven Krešić title: Karst I Pećine Jugoslavije …

Git Servers Have an Identity Crisis

Jun 15, 2026 · 8 min read · Git FOSS

Git servers like Github and Gitlab are a complete mess, because they try to appeal to every use-case. If they were a person, they would be someone who says 'yea, me too' so reflexively that everyone gives them pitying looks. Each could do better as a more specialized service for a particular use. But we don't need …

Markdown Processors: Surprisingly Bad

Apr 24, 2026 · 2 min read · Review FOSS Wikis

The modern wiki software shipped by Gitlab and Github assumes that everyone writes their docs just for the platform, and the project will never need to leave. Their strange syntax means nobody can just use the regular markdown notes they might have, either for their own purposes or from another Git project. Gitlab's …

Managing Dotfiles with a Makefile

Apr 10, 2026 · 3 min read · FOSS

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  …

Watching Your Health

Jan 22, 2026 · 2 min read · Politics FOSS

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, …

Narratives on Freedom

Nov 16, 2025 · 2 min read · FOSS

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 …

Review: GraphHopper

Jul 17, 2025 · 1 min read · FOSS Technology Review

GraphHopper provides map information to people who write phone apps. They also have an app, though, so you can ignore all the different phone applications that want you to see this or that, and just see everything. I took a while to get used to the app, as it structures information in a fundamentally different way. …

Anarchy in Linux

Jun 12, 2025 · 2 min read · Politics FOSS

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 …

Quis Manualis Manuales?

May 13, 2025 · 3 min read · FOSS Learning

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 …

Fear of the FOSS

Apr 17, 2025 · 3 min read · FOSS

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 …