@downey@floss.social
@downey@floss.social avatar

downey

@downey@floss.social

Software freedom and digital rights activist. Open Source Programs at United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). FLOSS.social founder. Boards: https://floss.social/@librehealth, https://floss.social/@fdroidorg, @gnome, https://fosstodon.org/@osuosl.

Formerly: #OpenSource programs at #UnitedNations Foundation, #Community at OpenMRS.

Quality toots since 2017.

#FreeSoftware #HumanRights #DigitalAutonomy #SurveillanceCapitalism #privacy #UN #fedi22

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

BrideOfLinux, to random
@BrideOfLinux@mastodon.opencloud.lu avatar

Ya know, Mozilla has kinda like become the laughing stock of open-source, I think as I shake my head sadly: Mozilla Drops New Privacy Partner After CEO Found Tethered To Data Brokers https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/28/mozilla-drops-new-privacy-partner-after-ceo-found-tethered-to-data-brokers/

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@BrideOfLinux Remember when?

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/

downey, to random
@downey@floss.social avatar

:trans_heart: Being a trans ally is easier than you think.

Animation with people doing various small acts of comfort and support.

downey, to privacy
@downey@floss.social avatar

:fists_raised: 👁️ Mass protests used to offer a degree of safety in numbers. Facial recognition technology changes the equation.

📰 Read "The changing face of protest":

https://restofworld.org/2024/facial-recognition-government-protest-surveillance/

downey, to VintageOSes
@downey@floss.social avatar

:fediverse: Now that there are so many people here, maybe there's a chance:

🖥️ In the 1990s, I used a #MicroVAX II with a #DEC #VT320 #terminal like the one shown here, but with an original black plastic case for both the monitor (white monochrome) and keyboard as sold new by the vendor (Evans & Sutherland).

🔎 Has anyone ever come across one of these with the black case? Surely some of these rare models were saved from the landfill.

:boost_love: #VMS #RetroComputing

drewdevault, (edited ) to random
@drewdevault@fosstodon.org avatar

Quick FOSS legal literacy quiz

Imagine the following situation: your project is MIT licensed. Someone takes the whole project and white-labels it (changes the name), then sells it commercially without providing the source code or sharing any of the sales revenue with you. They include "Copyright <your name>" and a copy of the MIT license in the "about" page of the software.

Is this allowed?

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@makdaam

That (trademarks are protected without registration) is also the case in the US, too.

@drewdevault

https://www.rocketlawyer.com/business-and-contracts/intellectual-property/trademarks/legal-guide/registered-vs-unregistered-trademark

thibaultamartin, to random
@thibaultamartin@mamot.fr avatar

Fediverse, what nonprofits do you donate to, and why did you choose them?

If you don't mind specifying, I'd love to know what region of the world you're from!

🔄 Please boost to help me discover the problems people want to solve and the orgs solving them!

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@thibaultamartin Nonprofits on the Fediverse to which I currently donate:

:gnome: @gnome - Making free software accessible for everyone's daily computing

🌳 @conservancy - Protecting software freedom and promoting its sustainability and diversity

:matrix: @matrix - Revolutionizing distributed, private, secure communication

:fsfe: @fsfe - The global leader in software freedom advoacy for the public sector

downey, to FediPact
@downey@floss.social avatar

Anyone who signed @FediPact might want a badge to add to your server's about page (or wherever). Get the SVG at: https://img.shields.io/badge/signed-brightgreen?label=FediPact&labelColor=e861a0&link=https%3A%2F%2Ffedipact.online%2F

downey, to opensource
@downey@floss.social avatar

📣 Once more for the people in the back.

:opensource: software is a public good.

👥 Open Source communities are common pool resources.

downey, to Roku
@downey@floss.social avatar

Normalize not perpetuating the myth that consumers have no choice but to obey unlawful terms of service.

PresGas, to random
@PresGas@freeradical.zone avatar

may be shutting down?

https://daniel-lange.com/archives/186-Opencollective-shutting-down.html

Looks like some and some groups will have some decisions to make and then communicate.

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@PresGas Not the platform or the Open Source Collective 501(c)(6) business league that hosts many groups. Only the OCF 501(c)(3) public charity entity is winding down.

The blog title is unfortunately misleading and, while a loss to the world, is also causing a lot of unnecessary panic today.

downey, to random
@downey@floss.social avatar

PSA: ICYMI or you're like me and got thrown off by leap day, today is ...

Go forth and support the independent musicians of your choice 🎵

Gargron, to random
@Gargron@mastodon.social avatar

There is an ongoing spam attack on the fediverse for the last couple of days. It's more widespread than before, as attackers are targeting smaller servers to create accounts. Before, usually only mastodon.social was targeted and our team could take care of it. For server administrators out there: If you don't need open registrations, switch over to approval mode. If you do, blocking disposable e-mail providers is a massive stopgap to the problem. Mastodon also supports hCaptcha.

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@sam To be fair there are like 5+ years of ignored admin/moderation improvement requests in the queue 😅

sonny, to Matrix
@sonny@floss.social avatar

I'm looking for a solution to only allow people with a specific email domain to join a Matrix room.

Ideally a bot that would be able to send emails, verify the user and invite them into the room.

Any idea or suggestion?

@matrix @element

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@sonny Thinking this might be a starting point: https://github.com/medienhaus/matrix-email-onboarding

@matrix @element

jik, to accessibility
@jik@federate.social avatar

If anyone knows of any concrete evidence that Google's Invisible reCAPTCHA adversely impacts people with disabilities more than others, I'd be grateful if you could share it with me.
I searched but could not find any; on the contrary, I found at least one study showing that Invisible reCAPTCHA is equally usable for disabled and non-disabled people.
To be clear, I'm not looking for theoreticals, I'm looking for concrete evidence one way or the other.
Thanks.

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@jik I don't know of any studies, but the problem with their "invisible" product is that it's only invisible if it has n inference (true or false) that the user is human. So it reverts to the same accessibility challenges as the others in a portion of visits.

downey, to mastodon
@downey@floss.social avatar

:boost_love: Boost if you think groups like @NGIZero @nlnetlabs and others should band together and fund a hard fork of that prioritizes trust and safety, and the needs of admins to protect their users from abuse.

⭐ Favorite if you would support with a little money, too.

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@NGIZero @nlnetlabs Yes, oops! 💚

anders, to random
@anders@mastodon.cyborch.com avatar

Are we getting to the point where we want to start instituting spam heuristics on posts just like we have on mail?

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@shanie @anders

If the powers that be ever decided to spend literally any time at all on features one thing they could have built would be a UI to allow admins to determine what server software and versions with whom to allow/block federation.

We can't even get simple admin-focused UI fixes.

stefan, to mastodon
@stefan@gardenstate.social avatar

Guess when the spam started?

I think the only way to reduce is to delete posts and media no one has interacted with in the past X number of days?

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@stefan Unfortunately Mastodon only has the ability to automatically purge-after-time for all content, and still doesn't allow keeping content that was interacted with (replies, favorites, bookmarks). This has been requested by folks and ignored for a long time.

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@stefan I'm referring to

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/discussions/19260

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@jwildeboer

😵‍💫🤪🙃🤯

mattj, to random
@mattj@floss.social avatar

Google have been quietly de-listing apps from their Play store one-by-one for made-up reasons. Today they finally came for Conversations (https://gultsch.social/@daniel/111929074071688694 ).

@fdroidorg doesn't have these problems, and they additionally rebuild from source, supporting reproducible builds (so unlike the Play store, you know the published source code matches what's in the app you download). With their recent enhancements (https://f-droid.org/2024/02/01/twif.html ) I'll be recommending it to more people.

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@strypey @chrastecky

And if the team needs to improve the documentation at https://f-droid.org/docs/Inclusion_How-To/ (or elsewhere) we can certainly propose some suggestions.

downey, to random
@downey@floss.social avatar

Dear —

Can someone explain to me how isn't simple copyright infringement?

🤔

For example, see this case that determined the implied license of an RSS feed for personal use, doesn't necessarily include permission for another site to republish the material: https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/copyright/1047416/implied-copyright-licenses-in-the-digital-world-blogs-rss-feeds-and-aggregators

codinghorror, to random

What's your biggest guilty pleasure band? It's gotta be borderline shameful. I have quite a few, but I'll go with Styx to start.. 😂

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@codinghorror https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=SPlQpGeTbIE

downey, to random
@downey@floss.social avatar

I am sad to not be able to safely attend FOSDEM this year. There are so many people I want to spend time with.

However, as is the case with hundreds or maybe thousands of us past attendees, our immune systems can't handle the risk of such a crowded event that makes no effort to implement a health and safety plan.

SARS-CoV-2 viral load levels in Belgium this January were 43x what they were in July, as indicated by highly reliable wastewater sampling.

Safe events can still happen: @phpledge

downey,
@downey@floss.social avatar

@rachel Hmm, interesting that wasn't communicated online in advance materials.

Nevertheless, our wider communities didn't accept blasé "do the right thing" Code of Conduct policies for events, and we shouldn't settle for the same passivity for ensuring people don't have to needlessly be at risk during an ongoing respiratory pandemic.

and @NorthBayPython come to mind as positive examples.

https://publichealthpledge.com/badging

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