Notices by Steven Deobald (deobald@fantastic.earth)

if you've been thinking about running in elections for the gnome foundation's board of directors, this weekend is a good time to post your candidacy. tuesday is the deadline.

i wrote a blurb you might want to read if you're not sure what sitting on the board entails:

https://blogs.gnome.org/steven/2025/05/21/join-the-gnome-board/

hello #gnome folks! if you are interested in supporting @Endof10 (and hopefully you are!), there are now some assets you can use in social media:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Engagement/engagement-assets/-/tree/main/Social%20Media/End%20of%2010

once you have a local repair cafe planned, i strongly recommend getting *out of your bubble* ... people on mastodon know about #endof10, and they're already running linux. or openbsd or haiku or something.

go out into the world. make a tiktok. post to instagram or wherever your great-aunt sees your vacation photos.

this week's #gnome foundation report is late, so it didn't make it into https://thisweek.gnome.org/

but here it is!

https://blogs.gnome.org/steven/2025/05/24/2025-05-23-foundation-report/

hello, #gnome friends! @sri has posted a call for participation in the upcoming @Endof10 campaign. everyone is welcome to help out by joining #endof10-en:kde.org but if you'd specifically like to be on the promo team, reach out to me or @sri on #engagement:gnome.org!

https://blogs.gnome.org/engagement/2025/05/21/call-for-participation/

your periodic reminder that telegram is convenient but wildly insecure, with problematic administration:

https://www.404media.co/telegram-gave-authorities-data-on-more-than-20-000-users/

try signal. it doesn’t suck anymore.

aaaaaaand it's 3:15 in the morning.

but i'm done. #inboxzero

"this week in gnome" has a new website to celebrate it's 200th week!

https://thisweek.gnome.org/

get it in your rss reader. it's gonna be a crazy couple of years ahead and this is a good way to pay attention if you're a details person.

it's global accessibility awareness day and georges stavracas has posted a lovely celebration of all the work that's gone into gnome #a11y so far - and a look to the road ahead:

https://feaneron.com/2025/05/15/in-celebration-of-accessibility/

a lot of work to do but there's also a lot of solid work already underway 💙

gtk accessibility update ... with more to come. :)

https://blog.gtk.org/2025/05/12/an-accessibility-update/

oh wow these ente merch are *insanely* cute.

https://shop.ente.io/

i swear ente will win the photo storage race based on that cute ducky alone

i'll be attending linux app summit this friday + saturday online, if anyone wants to hang out and simul-watch any of the talks with me:

https://linuxappsummit.org/register/

registration is free.

@nikitonsky

color levels, html, add tag, more
target single unit, target all units, target all units in bounds, even more
face all tanks west, all units to muster point, target all but one unit
select all tanks, put html on diagonal (not sure why THAT'S in there)
see horrors, bloody horrors
deselect all units, set attack target for all selected units

this nearly 15-year-old macbook air is still a perfectly good computer but apple forbids upgrades. a colossal waste of electronics, at scale.

#debian installed like a champ. #gnome is delightful. #flatpak is easy and keeps apps up-to-date. everything works perfectly.

i’m just… so grateful. 🙏❤️

i wrote a little thing on optimistic computing.

https://www.deobald.ca/essays/2024-12-09-optimistic-computing/

just kidding, it's not little at all. i'm terrible at edits but i make up for my poor writing skills with nonstop 24 karat ideas

@samebchase @masukomi thanks for sharing this, sam.

fwiw, it’s *really* helpful to avoid using the term “open source” for things which don’t have an open source license attached. the commons clause makes this software “shared source” or “source available” — but it isn’t open source at all, and labelling it that way (even with a caveat) will be quite confusing to folks who use and read that term as it’s intended.

@masukomi @samebchase i don’t, personally. there’s very little difference to me between something licensed apache2, agpl-3, or mpl, as a user.

the difference between something being open source (a term with a strict definition, clearly defined by a single organization) and not-open-source is all that matters, for most usage. developers care about license details. users rarely do.

think of it this way. it’s like saying “vegan (mostly 😉)” with an explanation of why there are eggs in the product later on. with stuff like this, it’s just … a lot easier (and more polite) to use the right words up front.

i know dozens of projects/products go so far as to claim they are open source (without even a wink) these days when they’re not. “everyone else is doing it” isn’t a valid justification, either. it’s one of the few places in the english language where we actually have a clear definition like this. it’s good to use it.

“Of all the languages, I've saved the best for last, which is Ruby. Now here's a language whose syntax evades all attempts at understanding.”

https://justine.lol/lex/