Notices by Neil Brown (neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk)

I appreciate that this is going to upset some people, and I thought I was too shy to say it, but I prefer #BlueSky over #Mastodon:

Here's why:

https://neilzone.co.uk/bluesky_over_mastodon.html

People are putting details of my Microsoft Word files on public forums.

I've been docxed.

Did you know that an increasing number of popular, often cross-platform, Free and Open Source Software projects have accounts in the Fediverse? Including:

@gnome: desktop environment

@EvolutionGnome: PIM client, in which I spend much of my working life

@cryptomator: tool for encrypting directories before syncing them

@GIMP: image editor

@Krita: drawing program

#FOSS #FreeSoftware #Linux

Net zero.

I've been looking at what I could do to get my business to "net zero", and it seems that, since we use relatively little energy - it's me, at home most of the time, with some computers, and a very occasional train journey or drive - I could achieve "net zero" by paying a couple of hundred pounds a year to a place which plants trees.

I like trees (I live in the countryside), but that doesn't feel quite right - is merely "netting off" carbon emissions enough?!

Helpful advice welcome.

@fishidwardrobe My whole post was formatted in Markdown, and I'm keen to see what the reaction is.

I an absolutely fine with it, when non-rendered!

@Moon @fishidwardrobe

Do you have a link to the patch(es), please?

@smallcircles I guess we can’t have it both ways? If we want copyright limited enough so that we can write our own, FOSS, alternatives to existing software, or make use of common / open interfaces and standards / protocols, it must hold true that commercial orgs can do exactly the same in respect of successful FOSS projects, I’d have thought.

@smallcircles Indeed. Like all(?) FOSS licences, it is limited by the scope of underlying copyright law. Want to do something which isn’t restricted by copyright? No need to worry about the licensing terms. Overall, I think that’s a good thing, and I’d like to see many more limits on copyright, but that would also have the effect of making it easier for (some) commercial orgs too.

I like GNU AGPL, but it is not a magic shield.

"Detangle gives you AI-generated summaries of your legal docs so you can actually understand them."

I might be biased, but if your own lawyer doesn't explain your own legal docs to you, such that you're left not understanding what you've just paid for, the solution is not an AI tool but a better lawyer...

https://detangle.ai/

#AI #lawyers

#FreeSoftwareAdvent: all my Free software suggestion posts in one place.

From 1 December 2022, I thought it would be fun to do one post per day about a piece of Free / open source software, that I value.

Here's the combined list:

https://neilzone.co.uk/2022/12/freesoftwareadvent-all-my-free-software-suggestion-posts-in-one-place

#FreeSoftware #OpenSource #Linux

"Next year, 2023, will be my thirtieth year of Linux on the desktop, and the thirtieth year of being told it’s not possible to use Linux on the desktop, or to only use Linux on the desktop. Some of the people telling me this weren’t born when I started using Linux on the desktop."

https://blog.liw.fi/posts/2022/goalposts/ by @liw

#Linux #YearOfTheLinuxDesktop