Opensource

cross-posted from: https://links.hackliberty.org/post/2559706

Abstract

This paper examines the potential of the Fediverse, a federated network of social media and content platforms, to counter the centralization and dominance of commercial platforms on the social Web. We gather evidence from the technology powering the Fediverse (especially the ActivityPub protocol), current statistical data regarding Fediverse user distribution over instances, and the status of two older, similar, decentralized technologies: e-mail and the Web. Our findings suggest that Fediverse will face significant challenges in fulfilling its decentralization promises, potentially hindering its ability to positively impact the social Web on a large scale.

Some challenges mentioned in the paper:

• Discoverability as there is no central or unified index
• Complicated moderation efforts due to its decentralized nature
• Interoperability between instances of different types (e.g., Lemmy and Funkwhale)
• Concentration on a small number of large instances
• The risk of commercial capture by Big Tech

What are your thoughts on this? And how could we make the Fediverse a better place for all to stay?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19734027

[D.N.A] Elasticsearch and Kibana can be called Open Source again. It is hard to express how happy this statement makes me. Literally jumping up and down with excitement here. All of us at Elastic are. Open source is in my DNA. It is in Elastic DNA. Being able to call Elasticsearch Open Source again is pure joy.

[LOVE.] The tl;dr is that we will be adding AGPL as another license option next to ELv2 and SSPL in the coming weeks. We never stopped believing and behaving like an open source community after we changed the license. But being able to use the term Open Source, by using AGPL, an OSI approved license, removes any questions, or fud, people might have.

[Not Like Us] We never stopped believing in Open Source at Elastic. I never stopped believing in Open Source. I’m going on 25 years and counting as a true believer. So why the change 3 years ago? We had issues with AWS and the market confusion their offering was causing. So after trying all the other options we could think of, we changed the license, knowing it would result in a fork of Elasticsearch with a different name and a different trajectory. It’s a long story.

cross-posted from: https://fedia.io/m/Thunderbird/t/1140808

Plan Less, Do More: Introducing Appointment By Thunderbird - The Thunderbird Blog

Thunderbird has a new project under its wing: Appointment. Learn all about our approach to appointment scheduling, and try it yourself.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/21733808

Restrictive AI model licenses claimed as "open source" spark for clear standard.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/40779019

• Website: https://www.beyondallreason.info
• Trailer: https://youtu.be/8K_fSWfOC1w

cross-posted from: https://kbin.melroy.org/m/opensource@lemmy.ml/t/424247

plus the usual betterfox

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/40524574

It's a Web Lemmy client.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/40478082

Super exciting update that I've been working on for a while. Finally able to pull together a single Quiblr repo for folks to explore and follow.

Check it out here

From my previous post: https://programming.dev/post/17848699

Will update post when I found more links from web search and archive

The homepage (Internet Archive link, since its no longer accessible): https://web.archive.org/web/20190118040619/https://openblox.org/

Lua API docs (from mirror repo): https://github.com/openblox/api-documentation

OpenBlox using Ogre3D, Bullet Physics and OpenAL (except for Android, which uses FMOD LLP API): https://devforum.roblox.com/t/openblox-reboot/19115

Project page in TuxFamily: https://projects.tuxfamily.org/?do=group;name=openblox

As part of Intel's Scalable Video Technology (SVT) initiative they had been developing SVT-HEVC as a BSD-licensed high performance H.265/HEVC video encoder optimized for Xeon Scalable and Xeon D processors. But recently they've changed course and the project has been officially discontinued.

Grafana Labs, the open-source company that probably powers at least a few operational dashboards in your company, today announced the completion of a primary and secondary transaction worth about $270 million, with the proceeds going to the company and some of its stockholders.

Updates in this version:

• Order of Web Apps in menu can be changed
• File downloads are supported
• Native Alpha custom context menu can be deactived so that the standard browser context menu is shown
• Italian translation added
• General, technical version updates

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/18304280

markdown-oxide: Robust, Minimalist, Unbundled PKM for your favorite text-editor through the LSP.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/16316509

TiddlyWiki is a “non-linear personal web notebook,” as well as an exemplar project in the open source community. It can be a note-taking or information-ordering system in a similar vein to Obsidian or Notion, although TiddlyWiki was launched back in 2004. It can also be thought of as producing a wiki with interactive components.

However, as I discovered to my cost, TiddlyWiki has never had a strong “start here,” because it is not tailored to one specific task. Obsidian, by comparison, has the advantage of a clear vision of what it does. TiddlyWiki bewilders you with options at first because it hasn’t been designed to be sold. The community focus is on adapting it to different use cases.

So I’m going to take the advice in this explainer and use TiddlyDesktop while mentioning that there are plenty of other arrangements. It is, after all, just HTML and JavaScript. Let’s get started…

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ndlug.org/post/988335

The Sovereign Tech Fund is piloting a fellowship program to pay open source maintainers, aiming to address structural issues and support open digital infrastructure in the public interest.

Over the past two years, STF has successfully contracted over 40 FOSS projects, enhancing their technical sustainability through targeted milestones. While some contracts are with individual maintainers, most involve software development companies or foundations. Despite this success, a new and innovative program is needed to acknowledge the lived reality of how many maintainers work: stretched across multiple technologies, multi-faceted, and often behind the scenes.

Most maintainers are unpaid, working in their spare time, which both impacts projects’ stability and can lead to stress and burnout. The Tidelift Open Source Maintainer Study found that 59% of maintainers have quit or considered quitting, posing a risk to the digital infrastructure we all rely on. To even begin to mitigate this risk, it's crucial to understand the role of maintainers, who typically lead and oversee project development, review changes, manage community interactions, release updates, and fix security issues.

The application phase will start by the end of the third quarter of 2024, and with the goal that selected maintainers can begin the fellowship in the fourth quarter. The first fellowship pilot will run throughout 2025, and we will evaluate it on an ongoing basis. Based on these evaluations, our experiences running the fellowship, and feedback from participants, we’ll determine how to expand and grow the program for a stronger and healthier open source ecosystem.

There are a few nowadays

• Firefox vanilla
• Librewolf: https://librewolf.net/
• Arkenfox: https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/
• Floorp: https://floorp.app/en
• Zen browser (similar to Arc): https://www.zen-browser.app/

Which one is your favorite, and why?

Have you ever wondered if your keyboard shortcuts are set up optimally? Well, I did, so I decided to visualize it with a heat-map.

It proved to me that I rely on my left pinky too much, so I'll try to rework my shortcuts.

You can check out the project here, currently it only works on Linux.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/39549299

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/39549599