Wasm3 is sadly entering a minimal maintenance phase because the maintainer’s home was destroyed by Russian forces in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
But, Volodymyr will still be reviewing and accepting PRs, so this is a great opportunity to support him, the #wasm community, and the Ukrainian #OSS community by making contributions: https://github.com/wasm3/wasm3
Addendum: By "nobody is pushing hate speech," I mean that no company, owner of the Social Network, can deliberately and aggressively force posts with hate speech onto users solely for the purpose of selling more ads. This does not imply that there is no hate speech - unfortunately, this is a problem that also spreads in the Fediverse, and the tools are not always adequate.
I and others have talked a lot about the #Facebook / #Meta#FediVerse issue over the past few days, analyzing their strategy, and possible responses, and why pre-emptive blocking isn't an effective measure.
This leaves the question of "what should we do?" So....
ITT: actually effective measures for building the resilience of the FediVerse and #ActivityPub, informed by the experience of the #OSS movement.
I can't wrap my head around how almost all of the #xz reporting focuses on the failures of #opensource.
Yeah, sure, but ...
Good luck finding such an attack in proprietary code.
Via the cliché paid off/blackmailed employee, hacked dev servers/repos, or via capitalism's favorite cost-cutting measure: a remote "offshored" contracted temporary developer (or nowadays, embedded into some LLM output).
BEYOND proud to present "Beyond the Repository: Best practices for open source ecosystems researchers", a collaboration between myself, @amcasari, and @jlovato that was just published in the the @ACM Queue.
Please share with anyone who is doing research into open source!
Tooting the horn since it's been a while: I'm the lead maintainer for the Ruby passkeys organization, and we're actively looking for help: https://github.com/ruby-passkeys#help-needed
If you'd like to help make sure that Ruby apps are future-proofed from the start and markedly improve everyone's security, please reach out!
Codes of Conduct are a crucial tool to ensure we build safe, healthy, and inclusive communities in open source — here's an excellent opportunity to contribute to the body of knowledge surrounding them. The study findings will be used to "gain insights into current CoC usage, identify challenges, and suggest optimal practices."
Test suites of this kind can be a very powerful tool for #OSS projects that interact with the private sector, and for preventing hegemony by any one group.
As an example, this is used to with the the JVM and Java specs.
First of all, let me assure you that I truly appreciate your work. Releasing software under a free license is a gift to us all. It shows that you care about the widespread adoption of your project, and that's quite commendable. However, I have a humble request – please, pretty please, don't release it with the statement, "compiling it is so complex and full of dependencies that the way to use my program is 'docker compose up'."
By doing this, you're limiting access to your software for those who can't use Docker or those who can't/won't use Linux. It's almost like telling someone to click on 'Install.exe.' Surely, you can do better than that.
I trust you'll consider my request. Thanks again for your hard work!
Every time I look at the drawers of 'put away' items, especially old cell phones and tablets, I see still-functioning devices that could continue to serve a purpose. Take, for example, the old Motorola phone my mother discarded due to years without security updates. I believe it's no less efficient than an old Raspberry PI - it even has a screen, good built-in WiFi, various sensors, a camera, etc. Yet, this Android terminal has been abandoned since 2018, and I feel quite insecure running software on it.
The European Union, often too focused on bureaucracy and not enough on the real world, did make progress with USB-C. It would be wonderful if they could mandate manufacturers to open up their devices once they are abandoned. I dream of being able to install an updated OpenSource OS (not necessarily *BSD, but at least Linux) detached from Android, or at least an AOSP version of Android, without resorting to questionable binaries from XDA.
Essentially saying: 'You've bought my device, I won’t update it anymore, but since the hardware still works, you're on your own but you can keep it running.'
My drawers are full of high-quality, still usable but abandoned devices. I'd rather use my old Huawei as a surveillance camera (which now has outdated and unupdated software) than any device sending my images to obscure clouds in countries with questionable laws.
I'm considering starting a petition – not sure if there are any yet, will do some research – but I'm fairly certain it won't lead to much. Planned obsolescence is a concept too ingrained in today's technology, and there are too many interests behind it.
I was remembered today that opensource is much more than just writing code together. It's about knowledge sharing, teach other developers how to deal with certain issues. This is even more rewarding than writing a piece of code. #oss#php
Sometimes in academia, people use the term "open source" to mean that the code is publicly available. To many in the #OSS community, "open source" means a lot more.
What should we call prototype research code that accompanies a paper that is made public?
What should research code include, at bare minimum, when shared publicly? (README, docstrings, requirements..)
What is the minimum to actually make something "open source", beyond just publicly posting?
Over the last 15 years, we have supported the use of open technologies in public administration.
The Open Source Observatory has helped the European public sector leverage open technologies effectively and efficiently by providing various resources, including a knowledge centre to reveal the benefits and follow #EU open source software development.
Open source contributors, what did you wish you knew when you started contributing? Or is there something that kept you from contributing for too long?
I am asking for a presentation, which I will give in two weeks.