/Open Source

Lessons Learned From My 10 Year Open Source Project

- Steve Micallef tl;dr: (1) Writing open source software can be very rewarding in ways you can’t predict e.g gratitude from users, improvement as an engineer, etc... (2) Be in it for the long haul. "If you are consistently working on improving the project, it will get noticed and used over the flash-in-a-pan software that appears and eventually gets abandoned." (3) Ship it and ship regularly. And more. 

featured in #291

Open Source Maintainer Pulls The Plug On Npm Packages Colors And Faker, Now What?

- Liran Tal tl;dr: "The open source maintainer of the wildly popular npm package colors intentionally introduced an offending commit that adds an infinite loop to the source code. The infinite loop is triggered and executed immediately upon initialization of the package’s source code, and would result in a DoS."

featured in #281

"Open Source" Is Broken

- Christine Dodrill tl;dr: The recent vulnerability discovered in log4j2 is a "perfect microcosm of all of the major ecosystem problems with "Open Source." It is "a culture of taking from open source without giving anything back." This software is used by the largest of companies while the maintainer of log4j2 describes his work as "a spare time passion project," with a total of 3 people funding it prior to the vulnerability being discovered. Christine believes it's an obligation for companies to donate in return for using OS software.

featured in #276

The Coming Firmware Revolution (Video)

- Bryan Cantrill tl;dr: "Firmware is software that's just harder to get to." Bryan outlines major industry trends, the end of Moore's Law and introduces us to Wright's Law, which states that the more you manufacture something i.e. a CPU, the cheaper its cost, and the underlying impact this law will have on firmware. 

featured in #269

An Unbelievable Demo

- Brendan Gregg tl;dr: Brendan was a consultant at Sun Microsystems and author of multiple Dtrace applications. Sun Microsystems, the original publishers of DTrace, introduced him to an "expert who was on a world tour demonstrating Sun's new DTrace-based product." When Brendan saw the product, he realized it was his own work being presented back to him.

featured in #232

10 Years Of Open-Source Visualization

- Mike Bostock tl;dr: " A handful of observations" celebrating D3's anniversary (1)"Teaching is the most impactful aspect of tool building." (2) Supporting the tool is a great mechanism for feedback. (3) Bells and whistles are costly, and more.

featured in #226

Introducing Open Web Docs

- Robert Nyman tl;dr: "A collective project designed to support a community of technical writers around strategic creation and long-term maintenance of web platform technology documentation that is open and inclusive for all."

featured in #222

Doubling Down On Open, Part II

- Shay Banon tl;dr: Elastic will move the "code of Elasticsearch and Kibana to be dual licensed under SSPL and the Elastic License, giving users the choice of which license to apply."

featured in #222

Open Source Has A Funding Problem

- James Turner tl;dr: "Relying on volunteers to maintain every open source project isn't long term sustainable. Funding open source projects could keep development moving, but would that funding be raised and who would pay for it?"

featured in #221

Standing Up For Developers: Youtube-dl Is Back

- Abby Vollmer tl;dr: "We share developers’ frustration with this takedown—especially since this project has many legitimate purposes." Github outlines how they're changing their review process moving forward.

featured in #215