Notices by Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)

Found a neat thing: https://opensourcegardens.info/technologies.en.html

#OpenSource #gardening #permaculture

@madeindex Not yet. I decided to leave off the blog for now, I can add that later if I decide I need it. Just static pages at the moment.

Finally going to go and make myself a proper personal website. Nothing fancy, just the basics. Anyone have any suggestions or advice for me? I think I'm going to stick to basic HTML and the like as much as possible.

Anyone seen: https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/movement/

And have anything to say about them? I think they look vaguely positive, but I haven't looked them over in detail yet.

And to cap it off with, something inspirational: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43ipHRTkvWM

@lightspill Mmm, I have mixed feelings. Wouldn't mind having, like, stages of UI or something? So it starts out simple, and then there's a config option to ratchet up complexity? Which itself adds complexity, but, so it goes. XD

Additionally, on the subject as a whole, many of the things I outlined are pretty hard to do at a major scale, but I think there's a lot of potential to start chipping away at them in little bits and pieces, and take things from there. If you have special experience in some manner of coding, say profiling and optimization, or infosec, for example, maybe offer that publicly as a resource for FOSS development?

Going to go ahead and publicly offer my skills for OSS development! I don't think I can take over as primary maintainer for anything, but I can do some quantity of coding volunteering or even tutoring. If you have OSS you need help with, or want me to offer what tutoring I can on a coding subject to further your development on an OSS project, feel free to contact me! I will describe my limited qualifications below.

I have been coding in various languages for almost two decades now, albeit entirely as an amateur. I've been using Linux as my sole operating system for a bit over a decade, and have significant experience in Java and GDScript, and more limited experience in C++, Python, Lisp, HTML, CSS, Javascript, and GLSL. I have worked on websites, developed games, developed mods, and generally just poked around with all sorts of things.

At the current time, most of my experience is using Godot Engine. If you have an OSS project and you need some help with it, go ahead and contact me! I'd like to stick to no more than 5 hours of work per week or so, but I am willing to work for free, so long as it's an open source project. I am also willing to offer tutoring, if you develop an OSS project and want guidance on one of the topis outlined above.

@alcinnz And you need to make sure they're able to communicate and coordinate, which adds it's own requirements in terms of skills and time, on top of the actual software development.

And of course, none of these will effectively motivate people if the work is too heavy, so it needs to be kept light enough it's not a prohibitive burden. Spreading it out over multiple people could certainly help, though obviously that presents its own challenge?

All of these are things that can be provided in greater or lesser extent, based on how we structure things - if you want people to be motivated by the sense of a job well done, then you need to make sure they can tell how important the job is and how good they're doing at it. If you want them to be motivated by the opportunity to develop skills, then you need to make sure they actually get that opportunity, same for connecting with others, etc.

I will also note, we probably can't rely on funding for the bulk of our efforts - which means that FLOSS work needs to be worth doing even without funding. This means it needs to be light enough work that it doesn't burn out volunteers, and it needs to provide some other reward. The sense of a job well done, the opportunity to learn new skills, the opportunity to connect with others and make a difference, etc, etc.

@alcinnz IMO, FLOSS is one of our best bets for defeating capitalism, or at least for laying the groundwork. So, we'll need to figure out some other way to fund it.

The one alternative to government funding I can see is individual contribution, with lots of individuals putting, like, at least a couple percentage points of their incomes into funding. If you could get even a tiny percentage of people to do that, it would be enough to fund all of FLOSS, even with the higher standards I desire, but it's probably too much to ask. :/

We're also going to need some level of accountability and oversight beyond the individual organizations. Which will, itself, need to be overseen and accounted for. I think overall transparency goes a long ways in this direction, and having a distributed system of oversight with different orgs that can check each other will be the way forwards? It's not a small question though.

Better yet, working to found new FLOSS orgs, and to better connect with other existing orgs. Even something small, like founding a dedicated FLOSS org for profiling and optimization, can make a difference - especially if that org then actively seeks out other orgs to connect with and offer it's services to, and works to actively improve the ecosystem.

I suppose one way to get started on this kind of thing, is for existing FLOSS orgs to try and work not just on their particular projects, but to support the ecosystem as a whole? That's not a small thing to ask, but there are ways to get started - actively working to train new FLOSS devs, or to increase the skills of their devs, for example.

I suppose one problem with government funding is that as soon as a line item shows up in a government budget, there are people looking to cut it and discredit the very idea, regardless of what it is or why it's there. I have no idea what to do about that. I suppose that tendency really needs to be combated in general? It's a real problem though, and not just for FLOSS. :/