open source

»Just the Browser« is a small collection of scripts designed to strip browsers of bloatware.

Lionel Dricot reports in »How Github monopoly is destroying the open source ecosystem« about his experiences with GitHub as a de facto monopolist in the open source ecosystem. Worst: as long as we are not locked out, we offer all our secrets to a country that could arbitrarily decide to attack yours and kidnap your president. I wonder how much Venezuelan sensitive information was in fact stored on Google/Microsoft services and accessed by the US military to prepare their recent strike. ...

In his article »Revealing the Hidden Economics of Open Models in the AI Era« Frank Nagle summarizes the study »The Latent Role of Open Models in the AI Economy«, which he co-authored with Daniel Yue from Georgia Tech. He shows how clearly open AI models are underestimated in the current market. The basis is an unusually extensive dataset on usage, pricing, and performance of various models. ...

Once again, attention is being drawn to the underfunding of open-source projects, especially small software libraries. They’re hard to monetize, yet many companies rely on them. This time the criticism is aimed at Google. The company could do more, but has for many years supported the projects with staff time and funding. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes in »FFmpeg to Google: Fund Us or Stop Sending Bugs« for thenewstack.io ...

Haven’t written about open-source software here in a long time. I want to do that more regularly again. Kicking things off is the graphics editor “Graphite”. Graphite is free software for graphics editing. It supports both vector and raster graphics and is also suitable for creating animations. What sets Graphite apart is its non-destructive workflow: changes can be adjusted at any time without altering the original. Editing is done via a node-based system in which graphical elements are controlled and combined through connections. The project aims to be more than a traditional graphics editor, bringing tools for design, painting, animation, and effects together on one platform. ...