That’s not what they said. Free software can be paid for, either via users or via subsidies. Nobody in this thread suggested that developers starve.

To be pragmatic here are ways free software can be monetized :

• get a salary from a company or institution that relies on free software
• ask for donations via e.g. https://liberapay.com/ or Patreon or OpenCollective
• get money per project via CrowdFunding platforms e.g. KickStarter or for hardware https://www.crowdsupply.com/
• get subsidies directly, e.g. NLNet (International, no need to be European), or https://www.sovereign.tech/programs/fund or by being part of a consortium, e.g. public/private partnerships on a theme e.g. https://www.ciiic.nl/en/calls/learning-communities

I professionally do both, namely I get paid to develop free software but I also pay free software developers, e.g. https://gcompris.net/ via their https://www.patreon.com/animtim . I also until recently worked in a public institution and was paid to write free software.

I think it is important not to conflate free software with free of cost and indeed free of production. Free software developers, like me, need to pay their bills but that does NOT have to be opposed to your freedom in using and modifying that software. By implying a false dichotomy by software being either proprietary or funded somehow you are in fact sadly promoting proprietary software, please do not do that.

Sousveillance

home automation server that doesn’t connect to the internet?

Well if uses wireless connectivity with either range broader than your place or is connected to a device that is itself online it can still be a risk. Sure it’s very VERY specific but scanning techniques also improve.

I agree with everything you wrote but I’m not sure how it helps clarify what I said earlier. So… I think we agree?

On your final point I think the big difference between then (before LLMs) and now is that until recently a very demanding PR, in the sense that the person asking for the merge would have a good idea yet didn’t really get something about the project and thus needed a lot of guidance, it was seen as an investment. It was a risky bet, maybe that person would just leave after a lengthy discussion, maybe they’d move to their own project, etc… but a bit like with a young intern, the person from the project managing that PR was betting that it was worth spending time on it. They were maybe hoping to get some code they themselves didn’t have the expertise on (say some very specific optimization for very specific hardware they didn’t have) or that this new person would one day soon become a more involved contributor. So there was an understanding that yes it would be a challenging process but both parties would benefit from it.

Now I believe the situation has changed. The code submitted might actually be good, maybe not. It will though always, on the surface, look plausible because that’s exactly what LLM have been trained for, for code or otherwise, to “look” realistic in their context.

So… I would argue that it’s this dynamic that has change, from the hope of onboarding a new person on a project to a 1-shot gamble.

IMHO what it shows isn’t what the author tries to show, namely that there is an overwhelming swarm of bits, but rather that those bots are just not good enough even for a bot enthusiast. They are literally making money from that “all-in-one AI workspace. Chat - MCP - Gateway” and yet they want to “let me prioritize PRs raised by humans” … but why? Why do that in the first place? If bots/LLMs/agents/GenAI genuinely worked they would not care if it was made or not by humans, it would just be quality submission to share.

Also IMHO this is showing another problem that most AI enthusiasts are into : not having a proper API.

This repository is actually NOT a code repository. It’s a collaborative list. It’s not code for software. It’s basically a spreadsheet one can read and, after review, append on. They are hijacking Github because it’s popular but this is NOT a normal use case.

So… yes it’s quite interesting to know but IMHO it shows more shortcomings rather than what the title claims.

Some contributions to Kwin

Link please

If you

• need discoverability, or
• don’t need anything composable

then sure GUIs are great.

And rightfully so. They might not know much about Linux itself BUT they did dare try and for that they deserve recognition.

Back to LFS.

I feel seen.

So… I’m definitely cheering up for the lady in red.

Why? Am I an elitist asshole doing his best to sound smart?

Well yes, definitely BUT I also appreciate the power of the command line. The CLI isn’t “cool” because of the cryptic command, no the CLI is cool because :

• ls (list files)
• ls *.txt (list all files ending with the .txt extension)
• ls *.txt | wc -l (count how of them are)
• etc

and the “etc” is the FUNDAMENTAL part! Namely that no matter how smart the GUI developer is, they can’t predict how it is going to be used when done with OTHER tools. That’s the true power of the CLI. So yes if you stick to a single command, the CLI is unnecessarily cryptic but as soon as you start to combine commands, nothing comes close to it.

power outrage

New fear unlocked.

The plain n8n app is very capable of doing a ton of stuff.

Sorry if I’m a bit slow but what does it actually do? I skimmed through “automations” earlier this morning and I mostly found paid-for GenAI related stuff.

Thanks I’ll dig deeper. I guess I do want something like n8n but ideally :

• no AI
• self hosted FLOSS services first, if possibly only (can just be filters like F-Droid has)
• no need for no-code / low-code, code is great

which makes me wonder what they do provide, e.g. is it mostly indexing existing plugins and then some scaffolding for non coders?

Do you have a specific use case for two containers that you want to talk to each other?

Sure, for example once a Jitsi Meet meeting ends (more than 1 person in a room in, everybody gone), save the chat log to CopyParty e.g. WebDAV push to /meetingname_date.txt would be enough to be useful. It’s something we tend to do manually on a regular basis.

road map of what you are trying to accomplish before hand, and run it by the dev teams.

Yes no rush and I can code so I would be able to test before suggesting anything.

As I’m thinking about it, I wonder if your solution might be automation?

I don’t touch AI but I do think conventions, e.g. not “just” an API but SWAGGER, specific filesystem on mountpoints, etc could facilitate this.

Indeed and for PeerTube for example it has an API, cf https://docs.joinpeertube.org/api-rest-reference.html which I did use. It also provides SWAGGER so that could facilitate integration with others services also providing APIs. I was starting to think that the meta service could have read only public only token generated for each new service and provide a SWAGGER endpoint to facilitate using the API of more than 1 service.

Thanks, that’s indeed exactly the kind of thing I’m looking for “The authentication glue you need.” but even more generalized than that, e.g. just “the glue you need.” not solely for authentication.

Edit: to clarify and coming back after leaving few other comments, the 1 thing authentik has is that it is a cross-service need, namely nearly all services do need authentication AND, probably consequence of that, there are conventions and standards already in place, e.g. SAML, OAuth2/OIDC, LDAP, Auth0. So that makes everything much easier.

most of my services are an island to themselves

same

and I like it that way.

… well that’s the part I’m challenging. I was thinking like this but I’m wondering if that could be improved.

PS: I use ntfy and like it, that was just an example.

Yes I can relate to the process.

Any further interoperability is luck based.

Unfortunately I can relate to that, hence the question here :D

Thanks, are you saying there is a mechanism in place, e.g. does YunoHost suggests plugins or integrations for services it manages?