Kristian @z428@social.tchncs.de

Anyone out here using #tooot as a mastodon client (https://github.com/tooot-app/app/releases)? Seems the project itself is #FLOSS and looks _rather_ polished but there seems just one developer backing it and next to no information about the project available anywhere...?

Interesting: As MS Azure and WSL are spreading around, I see an increased perception and adoption of originally #Linux based tools in environments that were strictly "Microsoft" before. And this way I am more than ever getting to the point where #Linux or #FLOSS itself doesn't solve any social problem (anymore). 😐

Thoroughly hate to admit, but so far, after replacing #StarLeaf and #Slack with Microsoft #Teams all along with sending large parts of the teams to home office, collaboration quality this way has significantly increased, especially talking about features like chat notes or the ability to do live recordings of calls. And it just works, without custom infrastructure, even for mostly untrained people. Once again it pushes #FLOSS and open solutions back in one relevant aspect of day-to-day work. 😟

Going through the strange experience of being torn between supporting #FLOSS and #openstandards on one side and having developers and requirements more and more pushing for #cloudnative on the other. Will be interesting to resolve. #work

Trying to make end users to use #FLOSS on #Android is difficult... Lack of support is one of the reasons we should get fixed rather sooner than later. https://dm.zimmer428.net/2019/05/android-floss-and-end-user-support/

Digitalisierung 101, anno 2019: Die #FLOSS-Community hat bis auf wenige fachspezifische Beispiele (die eher Open-Source als SoftwareLibre sind) einen Innovationsrückstand, von dem ich keine Idee habe, ob er sich jemals wird aufholen lassen. 😟

"Google Live Transcribe could be a big help for people who are deaf or hard of hearing"

... wonder whether there are any #FLOSS solutions able to achieve something similar. Sounds like a very helpful thing yet unfortunately tied to Google systems so far.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/4/18209546/google-live-transcribe-sound-amplifier-accessibility-android-deaf-hard-hearing

Reading through this and the comment actually provides an interesting reflection of virtually everything that's wrong with #FLOSS desktop today. Example https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/31714.html?thread=1166050#cmt1166050 :

"Apple and Microsoft have showed that the way to make progress is to pick something [...] and refine it. Free software makes one thing, and before it's finished throws it out and replaces it with something completely different, and then repeats the cycle. Nothing ever gets refined because nothing *can* be refined."

In theory, #FLOSS is very much into the idea of open standards and interoperability. Looking at all the recent developments in this field, we also need to make sure we don't fall for the usual standardization trap: https://xkcd.com/927/
Just looking at #Matrix vs. #XMPP and #ActivityPub vs. #Diaspora federation. And a few others. At the *very* least, compatibility layers or interfaces always should be baked-in as first class citizens...

As I just had this in my hands for particular reasons:

http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/2/26/the-whatsapp-architecture-facebook-bought-for-19-billion.html

"And since they have a Big Hairy Audacious of Goal of being on every smartphone in the world, which could be as many as 5 billion phones in a few years, they’ll need to make the most of that experience."

All technological aspects aside, *this* is where #FLOSS mostly fails. We lack product thinking. And we lack ambitious visions such as that. Where's that "We want to make Twitter obsolete by 2025" project again?

#followerpower Can anyone recommend a good piece of software for #android to edit and merge multiple audio files into one? #FLOSS preferred, but paid apps are okay as well.

Notes just before breakfast: I really *got* to get thoughts sorted relating to #FLOSS, cloud computing, privacy and innovation. Currently feeling a bit lost between rejecting large platforms for the sake of keeping personal data somehow "safe" - and actually embracing them because, even in the #FLOSS world with all the Unix heritage, we *always* thought it is a good idea to stand on the shoulder of giants rather than re-inventing the whell all over and over again... 😐 Thoughts welcome.

Really confused to see some of the responses to #IBM acquiring #RedHat. If this is likely to really be *that* much of a threat to some #FLOSS software projects, we really should ask ourselves whether we haven't failed already years ago, talking dependency upon particular corporate entities and sustainability, remembering that "not depending upon a particular vendor anymore" was one of the big promises the #FLOSS communities always had written on its flags... 😐

If you're into #FLOSS development and open social networks, I definitely recommend listening to "The Birth of Instagram" on the TechStuff podcast:

https://www.stuffmedia.com/techstuff/the-birth-of-instagram.htm

There's a load of inspiration in this, both about how startup culture in the Silicon Valley works, about how services such as Instagram managed to get as big as they are today, and what kind of ideas drove and still drives them (in terms of features and product idea). Worth checking out.

As I'm pretty much involved with these things nowadays, I wonder how much #devops and #agile methods are adopted by or even relevant to #FLOSS software projects...?