Tag: open-source
- Why I think "Sponsor Only" repositories introduced by Github is a terrible idea (03 Feb 2022)
Today morning, I woke up to this dull news that Github is soon going to introduce “Sponsor Only” feature, which means the ability for an open source project to hide its source code from everyone except the one who sponsors them. This incident shouldn’t be taken in isolation but as...
- Nobody likes standards anymore, everyone wants to create their own walled gardens (04 Aug 2020)
Exactly three years ago, Mozilla had made this wonderful blog post in which they solemnly announced a prize of $2 million to whoever comes up with a fully functional decentralized system. And while there have been some entries on the linked award website, none of them can be called fully...
- Two years later, the reasons for Microsoft's Github acquisition still remain a mystery (28 Jul 2020)
More than two years have passed since I shared my perspective on Microsoft’s Github acquisition in this blog post earlier, and the point still stands today. Why did Microsoft decide to acquire a startup company much smaller in size which had no viable and long term revenue/profit generation model? If...
- Announcing gh_announce - A python bot that posts a tweet each time you make a release on github (27 Jun 2019)
I happen to maintain a lot of python projects on github such as distroverify and vtscan. And each time I make a tagged release on Github, I have to make a status tweet like this to let people know: So today I thought why not automate this process by writing...
- listdir vs scandir vs glob - The one and preferably only way to do it (26 Jun 2019)
You know, sometimes when I read those python aphorisms like “beautiful is better than ugly” I wonder whether the makers were being sarcastic or real, and I’m not kidding! Its not just about listdir and scandir, a whole lot of things are ambiguous and you’ll find a lot of different...
- CodeMirror - A simple and efficient code editor component for your web applications (25 Jun 2019)
I’m a huge fan of simple things in life, things that achieve a lot with minimal efforts or configuration from the user’s end. And whenever I come across such simple things, I like to share it with everyone and that’s what I’m doing now. In my recent flask based web...
- Building a convention for configuration saver and reader module in Python (19 Jun 2019)
I maintain several python projects on github and some of them like VTScan has a need for user configuration. Now python has a plethora of ways and standards for parsing of configuration files like json, *.ini files, etc., but there is no standard about where to save them on the...
- How to enforce conventional commit messages using git hooks (14 Jun 2019)
Conventional git commit messages are not just nice to have but great to have. In fact, once you get to know them, you’ll start feeling that they are essential in any serious programming project. Consider the difference between following two commit messages for instance: git commit -m "added social login...
- A dark day for consumer rights - Right to repair bill killed in Canada thanks to corporate lobbying (03 May 2019)
When Linus Torvalds wrote the Linux Kernel in 1991 or Ian Murdock first released the Debian OS in 1993, talking about the “openness” of a PC or the “right to repair it” would have been a laughable affair! 8086 was an open standard then (just as standards should be) and...
- Open Source vs Free Software is a bit like Socialist vs Communist (03 Jul 2018)
Socialism and Communism have a lot in common, both ideologies aim to bring an equilibrium and welfare in the society by removing the income inequality between the rich and the poor. However, how they both go about doing their business is what makes the difference between sky and earth. Whilst...
- Why GPL isn't working - the Freedom vs Convenience Debate (29 Jun 2018)
What distinguishes GPL from other freedom licenses is their premise: The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or GPL) is a widely used free software license, which guarantees end users the freedom to run, study, share and modify the software. The GPL or copyleft strives for the freedom of the...
- Webpack Project has a Vulnerability (28 Jun 2018)
The other day, I was going through this medium post which describes the kind of chaos and insecurity currently plaguing the JavaScript world, and the numero uno reason for that is the astronomical number of npm packages. When you usually install a non-trivial library or application through a package manager,...
- Smyte is no more - The latest episode in the acquisition saga of Tech Giants (22 Jun 2018)
Not even a month has been passed since Microsoft gave a big surprise to the world at large and the open source community by acquiring Github Inc. a few days ago, and there has been another acquisition yesterday. This time, Twitter Inc. bought the well known online service Smyte. Smyte...
- People migrating from Github to Gitlab should learn about these details first (11 Jun 2018)
After Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Github, a mass exodus has kind of begun and many small and large projects are moving their code bases to the much hyped Gitlab in a hurry, and these include both open and closed source projects. However, before migrating to Gitlab, they should take a...
- Microsoft's Github acquisition - A perspective (08 Jun 2018)
As someone who has worked on Microsoft tooling since the days of Foxpro 2.6 to Visual Studio 2010 in IT career, and yet ditched them all for PHP, Python and open source years later, I think I am qualified to offer a somewhat neutral or objective perspective on this acquisition....
- It's high time we find alternatives to centralized platforms like Youtube, Patreon and Twitter (27 Jan 2018)
The other day, I was listening to this Linux Unplugged podcast when I realized to what extent we have been locked in by the so-called “platforms” already. Only few days ago, Google started blocking some of Amazon’s videos on Youtube only because Amazon refused to sell Nest Cams and Chromecasts...
- Is Sourceforge.net safe anymore to download software (25 Jun 2015)
You have probably heard about all the recent buzz surrounding the sourceforge.net website hosting adware/malware bundled installers and naive users falling prey to it. In some cases, SF even actively took control of abandoned developer accounts. to bundle their crapware. So, is it safe anymore to go to this site...