Libre Software

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"Libre software" means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

In particular, four freedoms define Free Software:

The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.

Placing restrictions on the use of Free Software, such as time ("30 days trial period", "license expires January 1st, 2004") purpose ("permission granted for research and non-commercial use", "may not be used for benchmarking") or geographic area ("must not be used in country X") makes a program non-free.

The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs.

Placing legal or practical restrictions on the comprehension or modification of a program, such as mandatory purchase of special licenses, signing of a Non-Disclosure-Agreement (NDA) or - for programming languages that have multiple forms or representation - making the preferred human way of comprehending and editing a program ("source code") inaccessible also makes it proprietary (non-free). Without the freedom to modify a program, people will remain at the mercy of a single vendor.

The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.

Software can be copied/distributed at virtually no cost. If you are not allowed to give a program to a person in need, that makes a program non-free. This can be done for a charge, if you so choose.

The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.

Not everyone is an equally good programmer in all fields. Some people don't know how to program at all. This freedom allows those who do not have the time or skills to solve a problem to indirectly access the freedom to modify. This can be done for a charge.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
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Hi all

I've been working as a software developer for the past few years and frequently decided to leave a company/project myself because I could not find the motivation to keep working for it.

First, I was questioning whether software development was really for me. But in my spare time, I still enjoyed writing small useful tools, configuring my linux desktop and self-hosting.

I recently realised that my demotivation is mostly due to the kind of software I was working on for the companies I worked for. Usually building APIs to facilitate sales/marketing for products I don't really care for. Or configuring some unnecessarily complicated ERP/CRM microsoft stack.

Instead, I would like to work on software that I use myself. Or at least on something that will useful for other people in the future, not just boost the sales of some company.

But I'm not sure where to look. It seems like jobs focusing on free/libre software are difficult to find (Or I don't know how to look) and the few I find seem to be looking for senior profiles much more experienced than me.

Anybody have some tips or places I can start looking? Honesly I would prefer to just contribute to some project for free, but I don't really have the option to do so at the moment.

Thanks!

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submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by geoma@lemmy.ml to c/libre_software@lemmy.ml
 
 

Looking for a pretty, easy to use app to register my expenses and incomes and then get charts telling me how much I am spending on real needs or on luxuries and things like that. It has to be for Android, not an abandoned project, and libre software. It has to have an easy interface that allows me to enter records with minimal hassle.

I've researched a little and narrowed down to this:

Any recommendations? Or a new one I didn't find? thanks!


UPDATE: Money Manager EX gives a an error and somehow I missed what I entered. Buckwheat crashes. My Expenses seems OK but is not as straightforward as Oinkoin

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cross-posted from: https://leminal.space/post/4761745

Shortly before the recent removal of Yuzu and Citra from Github, attempts were made to back up and archive both Github repos; it's my understanding that these backups, forks, etc. are fairly incomplete, either lacking full Git history or lacking Pull Requests, issues, discussions, etc.

I'm wondering if folks here have information on how to perform thorough backups of public, hosted git repos (e.g. Github, Gitlab, Codeberg, etc.). I'd also like to automate this process if I can.

git clone --mirror is something I've looked into for a baseline, with backup-github-repo looking like a decent place to start for what isn't covered by git clone.

The issues I can foresee:

  • Each platform builds its own tooling atop Git, like Issues and Pull Requests from Github
  • Automating this process might be tricky
  • Not having direct access/contributor permissions for the Git repos might complicate things, not sure

I'd appreciate any help you could provide.

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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by dullbananas@lemmy.ml to c/libre_software@lemmy.ml
 
 
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I am not the author, although I find myself agreeing with several things he has said and have linked to his posts numerous times.

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It used to have links to my GitHub and YouTube profiles.

A while ago I made a Codeberg account and added a link to that. Eventually I decided to remove the GitHub link.

Finding a good YouTube alternative was hard. Eventually I began to work very hard to find a PeerTube instance. Shortly after I found one and uploaded my videos to it (mostly YouTube Poops), the admin removed them and added a banner saying "For the current occasion because a user has almost only uploaded many garbage videos today, we would like to tell that we will not tolerate such behavior and extinguish such garbage." Then I uploaded them to https://www.orion-hub.fr and they are still there 2 months later. Today I added a link to my PeerTube channel and removed the YouTube link.

That wasn't enough. I also wanted to stop letting Google mistreat the people who click on my rickroll link which said "my nudes". But I don't want to redirect to invidio.us which probably violates the copyright of the rickroll video. For now I removed the link completely.

This is a big achievement for me.

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cross-posted from c/softwareengineering@group.lt: https://group.lt/post/44632

This kind of scaling issue is new to Codeberg (a nonprofit free software project), but not to the world. All projects on earth likely went through this at a certain point or will experience it in the future.

When people like me talk about scaling... It's about increasing computing power, distributed storage, replicated databases and so on. There are all kinds of technology available to solve scaling issues. So why, damn, is Codeberg still having performance issues from time to time?

...we face the "worst" kind of scaling issue in my perception. That is, if you don't see it coming (e.g. because the software gets slower day by day, or because you see how the storage pool fill up). Instead, it appears out of the blue.

The hardest scaling issue is: scaling human power.

Configuration, Investigation, Maintenance, User Support, Communication – all require some effort, and it's not easy to automate. In many cases, automation would consume even more human resources to set up than we have.

There are no paid night shifts, not even payment at all. Still, people have become used to the always-available guarantees, and demand the same from us: Occasional slowness in the evening of the CET timezone? Unbearable!

I do understand the demand. We definitely aim for a better service than we sometimes provide. However, sometimes, the frustration of angry social-media-guys carries me away...

two primary blockers that prevent scaling human resources. The first one is: trust. Because we can't yet afford hiring employees that work on tasks for a defined amount of time, work naturally has to be distributed over many volunteers with limited time commitment... second problem is a in part technical. Unlike major players, which have nearly unlimited resources available to meet high demand, scaling Codeberg's systems...

TLDR: sustainability issues for scaling because Codeberg is a nonprofit with much limited resources, mainly human resources, in face of high demand. Non-paid volunteers do all the work. So needs more people working as volunteers, and needs more money.

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Can anybody reccomend a FOSS replacement for the museum software PastPerfect ? Needs to be available for Windows 10. I was able to find CollectiveAccess and CollectionSpace but neither seem very easy to get setup. “CollectiveAccess” for instance needs to be built from source. This museum has novices at best when it comes to tech.

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cross-posted from: https://group.lt/post/30446

1652 contributors, who authored 30371 commits since the previous release.

NixOS is already known as the most up to date distribution while also being the distribution with the most packages.

This release saw 16678 new packages and 14680 updated packages in nixpkgs. We also removed 2812 packages in an effort to keep the package set maintainable and secure. In addition to packages the NixOS distribution also features modules and tests that make it what it is. This release brought 91 new modules and removed 20. In that process we added 1322 options and removed 487.

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Open Letter to Gitea (gitea-open-letter.coding.social)
 
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/568420

In reaction to the surprise announcement of the creation of Gitea Ltd and the transfer of domains and trademark to this company, worried members of the Community have written an Open Letter to the elected Owners of the project.

The request is to return the assets and manage them by a community-led non-profit organization and furthermore improve the community organization, so that the Trust and Health of the project is restored.

The Open Letter can be signed by sending a PR to the Codeberg repository.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/434179

Arcmage - Free card game

Introduction

Hello everybody!

We're Franzo, Yusf, Jesusalva, Bikepunk, Nico and many, many others from arcmage.org, we’re a community of free culture-loving individuals, creating a high quality customizable card game (e.g. like Magic: The Gathering) that is open, innovative, free & gratis. The game is playable both with real cards as well as online in the browser.

A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY

Arcmage has a very long history and was born in 2016 as a successor to wtactics.org (2010-2013). We had in mind to create a community driven, fun, fantasy strategy game without artificial card scarcity or pay-to-win. Only your imagination, your deck building skills and your game tactics decides the outcome.

Lately we made great improvements to the online game experience working on the aminduna browser client, and we'll continue to further improve the game and would love some feedback!

As usual, we'll also release an entirely new set of cards next Fall! (SET 5 - Changing Winds).

A COMMUNITY DRIVEN CCG

What we offer is pretty unique: a chance to play and/or co-develop a free and open source customizable card game (CCG) with a proven track record of getting things done.

Join the community and suggest new cards, give input on the rules, or just play for fun and for free. Anybody could play it for free (donations appreciated) :-) You can also buy the cards from the website and play with your friends! Or print them and start playing right away.

You might want to read the rules and try out arcmage online (no adds, no registration, no tracking) or follow our mastodon page where we publish all the new stuff about the game.

You can also join our Matrix room and play some matches with us!

See you there, the arcmage.org team

LINKS

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I remember there was a website that had the laudable goal of sharing only software that they considered good. It felt a bit snobbish, but it also seemed interesting.

They seemed to have a bunch of packages, so most (if not all) of their software had no GUI.

I really don't know more than that. I'm hoping someone will know what I'm talking about just with this...

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Can federate via multiple protocols, including the one lemmy itself uses

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