In practice, what do ninety-something percent of small FOSS projects do? They sign up on Microsoft Github. If we are one of these, then we feel our little project has a home on the Internet, its own address: https://github.com/our-name/our-repo. Oops, but did I say an address of its own? Well, there's the catch. I meant an address of Microsoft's own.
Github is a Gatekeeper. Every link to our project now takes the reader through a virtual gateway owned and ruled by Github's owner, Microsoft. The domain name is the gate, and its owner holds the key. Want to visit the source code? Before we reach our-name/our-repo we must walk through their gate at github.com. We must pass through whatever they put in the gateway. Ads? Nagging to sign up? Then they will let us visit the source code that we feel is “ours”.
The famous inventor Zangemann lives in a huge villa high above the city. Adults and children alike love his inventions and are desperate to have them. But then... the inventor makes a momentous decision... The clever girl Ada sees through what is going on. Together with her friends, she forges a plan...
Ada begins to experiment with hardware and software, and in the process realises how crucial it is for her and others to control technology.
Decentralised linking from the Web (HTTP contexts) to a matrix user or room.
Status: This is a proposed, draft specification for consideration by the matrix development community. This version was initially posted before any discussion or feedback.
Matrix is supposed to be a decentralised protocol [MATRIX]. While much of it is, an important part isn’t. Matrix uses matrix.to [SPEC-TO] as a centralised mechanism for linking and invitation to matrix resources from HTTP contexts.
We can do better than centralised.
This is a proposal to fix an important part of that problem.
Resources around development of camera apps, camera API standards, and photos management, in Indie Phones, degoogled Android, Murena /e/-OS, Purism Librem, etc.
With sustained dedication from their producers working with very limited budgets, these alternatives are coming along nicely and by now are certainly usable. Understandably, however, they are not yet as slick as those funded (and controlled) by the mega-corps Apple and Google.
There is much more to be done to bring the indie phones up to a level of sophistication that ordinary people find a pleasure to use and to trust. In this article I look at one rather technical aspect of it: what developments do we need on the infra side?
These are some of the talks I'm most interested in, at FOSDEM '23.
I won't be there in person, I'll be watching some from home and in the matrix.
By Tracks or Dev Rooms | Times are UTC+1
Special Extras
Sat 18:00Book reading: Ada & Zangemann – A Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream — “In this hopeful story Ada and her friends join a movement that started back in 1983. Their courageous adventure of software freedom and learning how technology works is a wonderful way to introduce young people everywhere to the joys of tinkering!” —Zoë Kooyman, Executive Director, Free Software Foundation
Sat 14:00Linux Inlaws — A how-to on world domination by accident — the story of this podcast and its tech stack
Sun 12:00Rosegarden: A Slumbering Giant — How a 20-year old OSS project is still going strong — music composition and score software
Sun 12:00Practical Computerized Home Automation — “Home automation is an elusive technology — often desired, rarely achieved. This talk explores a successful ten-year home automation deployment, outlining the challenges that derail many attempts. It will cover technology choices, programing basics, and a dozen successful applications.”
I have been trying out a matrix-based blog comments system.
WriteFreely is a simple self-hosted blogging system. It uses Markdown for content. To let readers subscribe to follow new posts, it supports both RSS and ActivityPub (Fediverse). It has no comments system of its own.
Cactus Comments is a simple self-hosted comments system. It lets us add a comments section to any web page we control, such as a blog. It uses Matrix for the comments.
I recently framed a take on this issue as “FOSS Apps Live In FOSS App Stores”. Free (Libre) Open Source Software apps should be distributed in such a way as to be available to everyone, not only to Apple's and Google's users.
