your source for Game Z
I woke up to a huge gut punch this morning: Bram Moolenaar, legendary author of the Vim text editor, has passed away. Given the occasion, I want to express some thoughts regarding both Bram and his software. Without his work, I'm not sure I would be the same person.
It seems that the systemd debate has made its way to Alpine Linux, and naturally that gets people out of the woodwork to bang their drum about it again. The irony's not lost, either. It's really tiring to see people complain about politics, in a software movement that's entirely about the politics of software to begin with. Have you guys forgotten why we're here? Are you more open source instead of free software? That's still a political statement; one of practicality and reduced costs.
I came home today and strolled my usual Web haunts before diving into the Underground, and stumbled across a piece by GNOME developer jwestman, titled Platforms, Compatibility, and the Future of the Free Desktop. In it, he advocates for GNOME (and by extension XDG) to become the platform that "everyone can work on together". Isn't it funny that the kind of people that suggest this are always talking about the platforms, software, or APIs that they have control over? Does this person not understand why people choose other software, or choose to create something different? Do they not understand the risks present when the vast majority of your userbase is on one or two platforms and a 0-day is found?