I have read so many posts like this, that try to explain why their company is a special case and why it could never happen to them, only to see the same thing happen again and again.
Tailscale are trying to insert themselves into the stack and become the go-to choice for this kind of networking. When their customers are dependent on it, of course they'll start extracting rent and capturing as much as they can.
That's their right, but it's also a little condescending to pretend otherwise.
I for one would love to throw money at Mozilla, or any alternative, that has experienced developers behind it, doesn't have conflicts of interest and acts on behalf of its users. This is why I donate to Servo, Ladybird and Dillo too (I know one of these is not like the others 😄).
I don't think they'd reach their current levels of funding through donations, but it might be possible to get enough together to keep it on life support.
I know this wouldn't be perfect, but surely better than losing it completely.
Tony Blair goes to bed clutching his driving license every night, but wishes it could be so much more. When he dreams, he dreams of a beautiful world of compulsory ID cards. When he wakes up, he remembers "ID cards are the answer!", but seems to have forgotten the question.
Who funds the Tony Blair Institute again? Oh, it's Oracle. Now, I wonder who would be administering the scheme.
I do think it is possible to implement ID cards in a way that respects democracy and privacy of its citizens. Unfortunately, knowing the record of our government with both parties in power, I just know it will be implemented in the worst possible way. Therefore, I think we should steer clear completely.
Do you think the government will get these questions right?
Ultimately, they are not trying to solve problems, they are deciding they want ID cards, and flailing around trying to find ways to sell it to us.
This was a good watch. I liked the emphasis that you're not paying for code per se, but paying to support a specific maintainer who is developing some code. In that context, already having a community around you, and doing a bit of self-promotion is important.
The same authour has another interesting video about the weird incentives around feature request bounties, which I enjoyed as well.
Very nice! I tried a passenger+mail only game recently, I had everything connected, but each town was just paired with another similarly sized town.
When you say any train can get to any town - how do you decide your trains' orders?
Also - do you have a screenshot of the track layout? Did you just evolve it over time or did you have a big plan from the beginning?
I host Synapse using this playbook. I can highly recommend it - the instructions are very clear and detailed and ongoing maintenance is straightforward too (just git pull and redeploy, and 5% of the time modify a deprecated variable).
As for how to delegate to a subdomain - that's covered here. Basically - you set it up on matrix.example.eu and then have a "well known" file hosted at example.eu that tells other clients/servers where to look.
Here in the UK, the new tax year just started. I've sent the order to fill up my ISA for the year. Here's hoping that Trump reverses the tariffs shortly after my buy order gets fulfilled(!)
The tariffs are a bit scary for me. They seem like a way to directly introduce inefficiency and waste into the market. I guess index funds are based on the assumption that over the long term, markets get more efficient and this makes the stock prices go up.
I am still confident that will continue to happen in the long term. But the talk about "dismantling globalism" does make me wonder if any of these underlying assumptions are going to be proven wrong eventually.
I still think common sense will prevail "eventually". These tariffs give a rallying point for the opposition in the US to start kicking in, and rationality to return. But it is funny how, with each downturn, you start to think "maybe this time it's different"!
The only way to get people to switch from Adobe is to wait for Adobe to make the life unbearable for their own customers
Completely agree with this! The big opportunities to get mindshare will come completely out of the blue, and likely as a result of massive blunders on Adobe's side.
We never know when the blunders will come, we just have to be ready and provide the next best user experience so that the free software is the "obvious" place to switch to.
As we saw from the twitter/reddit migrations, the fediverse did get a large amount of traction, but bluesky became the obvious alternative because its UI was basically the same.
And that's fine - the fediverse is it's own thing and many people (myself included) don't want "adoption at all costs" - but I think it's worth pointing out that it does hinder adoption in these big moments.
I have a lot of respect for free software projects that deliberately replicate the UI of an existing proprietary project. They make it so easy to recommend for people to switch when those moments come.
What I have seen is that once people get a taste of free software that really easily solves their problem, it makes the benefits "real" to them and they start to look for other alternatives on their own.
I agree with parts about entitlement. The expectation of support and treatment of open source software as if it was proprietary is a real problem.
But, the authour makes a similar mistake - they conflate open source software with source-available (proprietary) software. As an example, I strongly disagree with this part:
When software is open-source, it is open-source, not necessarily free and open-source (FOSS), and even if it is FOSS, it might still have a restrictive licence. The code being available in and of itself does not give you a right to take it, modify it, or redistribute it.
If you replace it with this version, I am happy:
When software is source-available, it is source-available, not necessarily open source or free and open-source (FOSS). The code being distributed under a source available license does not give you a right to take it, modify it, or redistribute it.
I think it's really important that we keep a clear delineation between free/open source software on one side, and source-available (proprietary software) on the other.
A lot of companies are trying to co-opt and blur the meaning of the term so they can say "seeing the source was always the point, none of the other freedoms mattered", in order to sell you proprietary licenses.
Open source gives you the right to take, modify and redistribute it. Source available does not. And that's ok, just please don't blur the terms together.
even if it is FOSS, it might still have a restrictive license
Likewise, this is definitionally untrue. The whole purpose of FOSS is to give you the four freedoms.
I am currently setting up munin on my servers.
I like it so far - it's old-school, lightweight and straightforward.