Free-Software

Zip Files are Everywhere I grew up with PKZIP. It was a huge improvement over ARC files and other file formats that were supported on PCs in the 80’s and 90’s. Open source implementations of Zip have been available in Linux since the early days. In modern times, tools like 7-Zip provide a popular and friendly interface into the contents of these files. Hopefully this history is already familiar to you since I’m not going to focus on the usefulness of Zip to users, but how often developers have turned to it. ...

Introduction I really enjoyed reading The evolution of Lua, continued that I learned about thanks to this Hacker News thread. This is a great perspective on the long-term (15 year) evolution of the Lua programming language. While discussing language evolution is not completely unheard of, it is rather atypical of the discussion we usually have around programming languages. Most often you’re only concerned about the syntax or features of a particular language version, usually the latest one. Sometimes you might look at release notes to see when a feature was introduced or a bug was fixed. Our day to day needs don’t often benefit from a longer term perspective. ...

Subject: New Complete Example: DNSControl → CoreDNS Container with Automated Testing Howdy DNSControl Community, I’m excited to share a comprehensive example repository that demonstrates the complete workflow from DNSControl JavaScript configurations to a production-ready containerized DNS server: 🔗 Repository: https://github.com/fini-net/fini-coredns-example fini-net/fini-coredns-example Public Coredns with dnscontrol example Go 2 1 github.com What This Provides This repository showcases a real-world implementation of: ...

Well, well, well. Here we are in 2025 and Python packaging has finally been fixed. Not by the Python community, mind you - they had their shot for about 20 years. No, it took the Rust folks to come in and show us how it’s done. The Long, Painful History Let me paint you a picture. Back when I was starting out, we had distutils. That was it. Then came setuptools, which was supposed to fix everything. Then pip showed up to handle installation. Then virtualenv because global package installs were a nightmare. Then pipenv to combine pip and virtualenv. Then poetry because pipenv wasn’t quite right. Then pip-tools for deterministic builds. Then conda for scientific computing. Then… ...

Disclaimer I am not a significant member of the Redis community. I have not used Redis on a regular basis. I’ve discussed Redis more in interviews than during regular work. My few work encounters with Redis have been using Elasticache. These facts would discourage me and should discourage you from having me as your next redis admin. Despite all of that — I have been part of the free software and open source communities for many years. With all of the tumult around licensing with prominent open source companies in recent years I am well positioned to talk about companies and their relationships to their communities. ...

My reaction to getting this posted I’m so happy and relieved to have my first technical video on youtube. There are a few things I wish I had included, particularly more on decorators like OS and groups. Yet the video is also longer than I was hoping for and there’s nothing I wish I had cut out. ...

Introduction Howdy there, Internet People. I am known as “chicks” and I’m here today to talk about the Internet and community. Background First, a little of my story to set the stage. I started in the computer business before there was a web browser, but conveniently the Internet blew up at the right time for me and it has kept me employed or consulting steadily for 30 years. In my formative years the computer business had a variety of thriving magazines. You could read in Wired or ComputerWorld how tech companies were striving to maximize their number of users by building a community and taking advantage of network effects. ...

To protect our government we should insist on a preference for open source solutions. It is cheaper initially and overall. There are fewer bugs. There is less motivation for nefarious deeds. Vendor lock-in goes away. All of this is true for businesses and home uses as well. Links To Protect Voting, Use Open-Source Software - The New York Times Shared with: Public

Open source architecture is apparently all about building real buildings, not designing your latest twitter clone. Links 6 open source architecture projects to check out Shared with: Public +1’d by: Paul Fernandez

Blizzard is not known for their foresight in working with the open source community. If it isn’t on their terms they will kill it. The bnetd project also took nothing from Blizzard, but it scared them and so they destroyed it. Links Private MMO servers – A grey area with potential Shared with: Public