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The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 276. This version includes the following changes:

[ Chris Lamb ] * Also catch RuntimeError when importing PyPDF so that PyPDF or, crucially, its transitive dependencies do not cause diffoscope to traceback at runtime and build time. (Closes: #1078944, reproducible-builds/diffoscope#389) * Factor out a method for stripping ANSI escapes. * Strip ANSI escapes from the output of Procyon. Thanks, Aman Sharma! * Update copyright years.

You find out more by visiting the project homepage.

Building ECM

I’ve added ECM as a dependency and am now using some of its modules. While this introduces the downside of adding an extra dependency, ECM is fairly common across KDE apps, so it’s reasonable to assume that most users will already have it installed on their systems.

The project now uses the KDEInstallDirs6, KDECMakeSettings, and KDECompilerSettings ECM modules, making the default build settings consistent with the rest of KDE software.

I’ve also integrated ECMAddTests, which has greatly simplified the CMakeLists file related to testing.

PImpl

The classes in the library have been refactored to use the PImpl idiom, as suggested by Albert. This improves ABI compatibility and aligns with KDE’s policies regarding binary compatibility issues with C++.

Testing

The testing framework used by the library has been switched from Google Test to Qt Test. Google Test adheres strictly to some Google policies that could potentially be troublesome in the future, such as quickly dropping support for older compilers. Additionally, Qt Test seems to integrate better with KDE’s CI. For instance, Google Test failed to compile on the Android pipeline, but migrating to Qt Test completely resolved this issue without requiring any workarounds.

Mankala

To put MankalaEngine to use, I am developing a GUI, Mankala, which will offer a selection of games from the Mancala family. I’ve already started learning Qt, and developing this will be my primary focus during the remaining weeks of GSoC.

I plan to continue working on this project after GSoC concludes and eventually integrate both Mankala and MankalaEngine into KDE.

A new Craft cache has just been published. The update is already available for KDE's CD, CI will follow in the next hours or days.

Please note that this only applies to the Qt6 cache. The Qt5 cache is in LTS mode since April 2024 and does not recieve major updates anymore.

Changes (highlights)

• Qt 6.7.2
• FFmpeg 7.0.1
• llvm 18.1.8
• boost 1.86.0
• OpenSSL 3.3.1 (for Android too, which was still on 1.1.1v until recently)
• CMake 3.30.0
• Ninja 1.12.1
• Removed qt-installer-framework (Windows)

About KDE Craft

KDE Craft is an open source meta-build system and package manager. It manages dependencies and builds libraries and applications from source on Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD and Android.

Learn more on https://community.kde.org/Craft or join the Matrix room #kde-craft:kde.org

Many folks are on vacation right now, but KDE’s tireless contributors still worked hard to bring you a number of improvements anyway, among them some nice System Settings modernization work and improvements to Wayland color management. You’ll find them mentioned below, along with various other improvements!

Notably, we’re back to only 30 15-minute Plasma bugs — the lowest level since February of this year right before Plasma 6 was launched! Essentially, having regained the level of stability we had at the end of Plasma 5 in only 6 months, we’re super well positioned to drive this even further in the coming months. With Plasma 6 offering both stability and features, who says you can’t have it all?

Notable New Features

Plasma’s weather widget now shows “feels like” temperatures that take into account the heat index (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 6.2.0. Link 1 and link 2):

And yes, I see that the temperature labels in the forecast view are misaligned! We’ll get that fixed. Notable UI Improvements

Landed a redesign of System Settings’ Keyboard page to match other similar modern pages and make things easier to find (Evgeniy Chesnokov, Plasma 6.2.0. Link):

Modernized the UI for System Settings’ Thunderbolt page, which also fixed a text readability bug (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 6.2.0. Link):

Modernized the UI for multiple pages in System Settings that still use QtWidgets, so that they look a bit more like their more modern QML counterparts (Thomas Duckworth, Plasma 6.2.0 and KDE Gear 24.12.0, link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, and link 5):

Discover and its System Tray icon now always agree on whether there are any updates available (Harald Sitter, Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

Weather forecasts from the Environment Canada provider now fit in the System Tray popup at its default size, so you don’t have to enlarge it (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

When you drag an image or other file out of a web browser window and onto the desktop or Dolphin, the drop menu now contains only relevant actions, and with better text and icons (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 6.6. Link 1 and link 2):

Notable Bug Fixes

We accidentally broke SVG wallpaper support in Plasma 6.1.4 with the fixes to Centered placement mode, so now we’ve fixed it again. Sorry about that, everyone! (Marco Martin, Plasma 6.1.5. Link)

Fixed a tricky KWin bug that caused copied text to sometimes not be paste-able into XWayland-using apps (David Edmundson, Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

Worked around a Qt issue that was causing some windows on disconnected screens to sometimes not get moved over to one of the remaining screens as expected (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

Addressed a few more edge cases for the bug whereby Plasma’s “Show Alternatives” popup wouldn’t close in certain circumstances, so now it should always close when needed (Niccolò Venerandi, Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

Fixed an issue that caused some symbolic icons in Plasma panels to be colored improperly with mixed light/dark global themes (Nicolas Fella, Frameworks 6.6. Link)

Other bug information of note:

• 3 Very high priority Plasma bugs (same as last week). Current list of bugs
• 30 15-minute Plasma bugs (down from 31 last week). Current list of bugs
• 89 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed over the last week. Full list of bugs

Notable in Performance & Technical

Added support for rendering intents and black point compensation to KWin’s implementation of the Wayland color management protocol, and enabled it by default so apps that also implement support for it can make use of it immediately (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 6.2.0. Link 1, link 2, and link 3)

KWin has gained support for the alpha-modifier Wayland protocol (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

On Wayland, you can now copy to and paste from the system clipboard while in Overview and other KWin effects (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

Qt 6.8 changed how screen scaling affects icons, so we adapted to those changes to prevent icon blurriness everywhere for people already using Qt 6.8 (Nicolas Fella and Kai Uwe Broulik, Frameworks 6.6. Link 1, and link 2)

Human Interface Guidelines

Expanded the Text and Labels page to include some more symbols that should use real unicode glyphs rather than handmade approximations (Emir SARI, link)

Fixed a number of small typos, punctuation, and grammar issues throughout the text (John Veness, link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5)

Tweaked a bunch of text labels in Okular to be HIG-compliant by using real ellipses and unicode symbols (Emir SARI, Okular 24.12.0. Link)

KWin’s “Screen Edge” effect has been renamed to “Highlight Screen Edges and Hot Corners” for HIG-compliance and user-comprehensibility (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

Tweaked the text of Plasma’s critical battery level notifications and System Settings’ unsaved changes dialog to be HIG-compliant and therefore less redundant and more user-friendly (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 6.2.0. Link 1 and link 2)

…And Everything Else

This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org, where you can find more news from other KDE contributors.

How You Can Help

Otherwise, visit https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover other ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite! Or consider donating instead! That helps too.

It's been more than three weeks since the midterm summary, and the project is now nearing completion.

Currently, all the original features of Blinken have been fully implemented in the QML version. The remaining tasks involve UI adjustments, testing, and fixing potential bugs.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on the following:

Integrating Blinken's Logic

The game logic of Blinken is handled by the BlinkenGame class from the original Blinken. The original code design is quite good, with most of the game logic encapsulated in this one class. The separation between the logic and the UI rendering is well done, so all I needed to do was connect the signals from this class in QML.

As for the audio playback in Blinken, the original code used the Phonon library, which is also open-source but does not support Android. Therefore, I replaced it with the QtMultimedia library, which provides cross-platform audio playback functionality.

Android Build for KF6 Applications

Some features of Blinken rely on libraries provided by the KF6 framework, such as KF6I18n and KF6Config. When cross-compiling to the Android platform, it's necessary to use the aarch64-linux versions of these libraries. If these libraries are not available on your system, you will encounter the following errors during compilation:

ld.lld: error: /usr/lib64/libKF6XmlGui.so.6.4.0 is incompatible with aarch64linux ld.lld: error: /usr/lib64/libKF6ConfigWidgets.so.6.4.0 is incompatible with aarch64linux ……

However, the package manager on my Fedora distribution does not provide these versions. Compiling and installing them one by one from source is too cumbersome. On the advice of the community, I used Craft to handle cross-compilation.

For reference, here is the Craft tutorial: Craft - KDE Community Wiki

Important note: If you encounter installation failures, make sure to clear all contents under craft-kde-android before trying again, as leftover files may cause the installation to fail.

When installing, choose the Arm64 target architecture. If there are remnants from a previous failed installation, it may prevent the option to select the ARM64 architecture.

If you encounter issues like "Permission denied," you’ll need to disable SELinux:

sudo apt-get install selinux-utils sudo setenforce 0

Additionally, note that in the virtual machine invent-registry.kde.org/sysadmin/ci-images/android-qt67 provided by the community, the Java version is outdated, preventing the use of Gradle 8.6. You can either manually update the Java version in the docker or use an older version of Gradle.

To use Craft for building applications, you need to write a script called a Blueprint, which describes the libraries your application depends on. These scripts are relatively easy to write, and you can quickly get started by following the community documentation: Craft/Blueprints - KDE Community Wiki.

Using KF6 Framework Libraries

Some of the libraries originally used by Blinken are compatible with the Android platform, while others are not. By referring to the API Documentation, you can check which libraries are supported on Android. In Blinken, the following libraries are Android-compatible:

• CoreAddons
• GuiAddons
• I18n
• XmlGui

I needed to use these libraries in the QML version of Blinken.

The KF6 framework provides a convenient internationalization API, and the usage in QML is almost the same as in QWidget, which allowed me to directly reuse Blinken’s original multi-language support, saving a lot of time.

KConfig is used in Blinken to store high score information and settings. For the high scores, I needed to extract the HighScoreManager class from the original HighScoreDialog file, make some modifications, and then create a new high score interface in QML that connects the signals and slots of HighScoreManager. For the settings functionality, it’s as simple as registering a KConfig singleton in QML :

`qmlRegisterSingletonInstance<blinkenSettings>("org.kde.blinken", 1, 0, "BlinkenSettings", blinkenSettings::self());

KF6XmlGui was used in the original Blinken to create the About Blinken Page, About KDE Page, and Handbook Page. Although this library is Android-compatible, it is based on QWidget, while the main interface of Blinken is built with QML. Bringing in QWidget just for these pages didn't seem like a good idea. Luckily, for the Android platform, kirigami-addons provides this functionality. By incorporating it, I also brought in Kirigami, which helps optimize the UI.

After adding new dependencies, it’s important to modify the .kde-ci.yml file to support CI/CD. For more information: Infrastructure/Continuous Integration System - KDE Community Wiki.

If a high-status member of a community that you participate in is accused of misbehavior, you may want to defend them. You may even write a long essay in their defense.

In that essay, it may seem only natural to begin with a lengthy enumeration of the accused’s positive personal qualities. To extol the quality of their career and their contributions to your community. To talk about how nice they are. To be a character witness in the court of public opinion.

If you do this, you are not defending them. You are proving the point. This is exactly how missing stairs come to exist. People don’t get away with bad behavior if they don’t have high status and a good reputation already.

Sometimes, someone with antisocial inclinations seeks out status, in order to facilitate their bad behavior. Sometimes, a good, but, flawed person does a lot of really good work and thereby accidentally ends up with more status than they were expecting to have, and they don’t know how to handle it. In either case, bad behavior may ensue.

If you truly believe that your fave is being accused or punished unjustly, focus on the facts. What, specifically, has been alleged? How are these allegations substantiated? What verifiable evidence exists to the contrary? If you feel that someone is falsely accusing them to ruin their reputation, is there evidence to support your claim that the accusation is false? Ask yourself the question: what information do you have, that is leading to your correct analysis of the situation, that the people making the accusations do not have, which might be leading them into error?

But, also, maybe just… don’t?

The urge to defend someone like this is much more likely to come from a sense of personal grievance than justice. Consider: does it feel like you are being attacked, when your fave has been attacked? Is there a tightness in your chest, heat rising on your cheeks? Do you feel suddenly defensive?

Do you think that defensiveness is likely to lead to you making good, rational decisions about what steps to take next?

Let your heroes face accountability. If they are really worth your admiration, they might accept responsibility and make amends. Or they might fight the accusations with their own real evidence — evidence that you, someone peripheral to their situation, are unlikely to have — and prove the accusations wrong.

They might not want your defense. Even if they feel like they do want it in the moment — they are human too, after all, and facing accountability does not feel good to us humans — is the intensified feeling that they can’t let down their supporters who believe in them likely to make them feel less defensive and panicked?

In either case, your character defense is unlikely to serve them. At best it helps them stay on an ego trip, at worst it muddies the waters and might confuse the collection of facts that would, if considered dispassionately, properly exonerate them.

Do you think you think that I am speaking in generalities but really just talking about one specific recent event?

Wrong!

Just in this last week, I have read 2 different blog posts about 2 completely different people in completely unrelated communities and both of their authors need to read this. But each of those were already of a type, one that I’ve read dozens of instances of in the past.

It is a very human impulse to perceive a threat to someone we think well of, and to try to defend against that threat. But the consequences of someone’s own actions are not a threat you can defend them from.

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-33.

Why We Picked AGPL - ParadeDB

Tags: tech, foss, business

I wish more product companies would pick this license. Going for AGPL with a support and/or double license offering is a strong model in my opinion.

https://blog.paradedb.com/pages/agpl

Fellowship for Maintainers | Sovereign Tech Fund

Tags: tech, foss, economics

Interesting initiative. I’m looking forward to the results of this first pilot.

https://www.sovereigntechfund.de/programs/fellowship

Breaking Up Google

Tags: tech, google, monopoly, law, economics

Of course it sounds complicated to break Google up… but that’s not the point. It’s about avoiding its monopolistic position, the fact that it’s complicated is just another symptom.

https://micro.webology.dev/2024/08/14/breaking-up-google.html

The Dying Web

Tags: tech, google, browser, web, standard

Yes, please let’s increase the market share of non-Chromium based browsers.

https://endler.dev/2024/the-dying-web/

Hacking the Scammers

Tags: tech, security, hacking

Someone was about to get revenge, this gives an interesting exploration.

https://blog.smithsecurity.biz/hacking-the-scammers

‘Sinkclose’ Flaw in Hundreds of Millions of AMD Chips Allows Deep, Virtually Unfixable Infections | WIRED

Tags: tech, cpu, amd, security

Luckily this kind of very low level vulnerabilities are not too common and difficult to exploit. But when they get exploited all things break loose and you can’t trust your hardware anymore.

https://www.wired.com/story/amd-chip-sinkclose-flaw/

Why exploits prefer memory corruption

Tags: tech, security, memory

Interesting take, those bugs are more convenient to exploit. Logic bugs are too specific to easily exploit at scale.

https://pacibsp.github.io/2024/why-exploits-prefer-memory-corruption.html

Some thoughts on OpenSSH 9.8’s PerSourcePenalties feature

Tags: tech, security, ssh

Clearly a new OpenSSH feature to keep an eye on. This should improved security of the server by default. That said, it needs to be a bit more in the wild before knowing how to best tune it.

https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/OpenSSHPerSourcePenaltiesThings

slow TCP connect on Windows

Tags: tech, windows, networking

This is indeed surprising behavior and specific to Windows. If you wonder why TCP connect is slow and you got IPv6 support active this might be why.

https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/08/14/slow-tcp-connect-on-windows/

Recent Performance Improvements in Function Calls in CPython

Tags: tech, python, performance

Interesting dive into some of the performance improvements introduced into recent CPython releases.

https://blog.codingconfessions.com/p/are-function-calls-still-slow-in-python

Approximating sum types in Python with Pydantic

Tags: tech, python, type-systems

Here is an interesting use of Pydantic to properly model inputs.

https://blog.yossarian.net/2024/08/12/Approximating-sum-types-in-Python-with-Pydantic

Reflection-based JSON in C++ at Gigabytes per Second – Daniel Lemire’s blog

Tags: tech, c++, reflection, type-systems, performance

Compile time reflection in C++ will indeed be a big deal.

https://lemire.me/blog/2024/08/13/reflection-based-json-in-c-at-gigabytes-per-second/

High-precision date/time in SQLite

Tags: tech, time, databases, sqlite

Looks like a neat extension which can come in handy.

https://antonz.org/sqlean-time/

PostgreSQL masking and obfuscation tool

Tags: tech, databases, postgresql, tools

Looks like an interesting tool for creating anonymized pre-production environments.

https://greenmask.io/latest/

The fastest way to copy data between Postgres tables

Tags: tech, databases, postgresql

Need to duplicate data in Postgres? Several options are on the table.

https://ongres.com/blog/fastest_way_copy_data_between_postgres_tables/

blocking=render: Why would you do that?!

Tags: tech, web, browser, frontend, html

A new HTML attribute to keep an eye on. I can expect people to abuse it with hard to debug problems in the frontend if you don’t know it is there.

https://csswizardry.com/2024/08/blocking-render-why-whould-you-do-that/

Garbage Collection and Metastability - Marc’s Blog

Tags: tech, garbage-collector, performance, safety, memory

Interesting, it confirms garbage collectors can be the source of unrecoverable performance degradation in request based systems.

https://brooker.co.za/blog/2024/08/14/gc-metastable.html

Good Retry, Bad Retry: An Incident Story

Tags: tech, distributed, failure, recovery

Retries are becoming common place to deal with transient errors. That said, they can be a problem with recovery of longer failures due to amplification. There are options on the table to solve this though.

https://medium.com/yandex/good-retry-bad-retry-an-incident-story-648072d3cee6

The Perils of Future-Coding

Tags: tech, design, complexity, performance

Or why anticipating too much is merely a gamble. You can be lucky, but how often will you be? Also I agree that in such cases the performance will be impacted longer term leading to a death by thousands of paper cuts.

https://www.sebastiansylvan.com/post/the-perils-of-future-coding/

How we deleted 4195 code files in 9 hours - by Anton Zaides

Tags: tech, technical-debt, organization, leadership, funny

I’m not sure the incentives are right… it’s better to clean up as you go. Still some places would benefit from such an event from time to time and even if you clean up as you go missed opportunities happen.

https://zaidesanton.substack.com/p/organizing-the-best-cleanathon-your

Stop Team Topologies. Reevaluating Team Topologies

Tags: tech, organization

Surprisingly, I bumped into this article as I’m wrapping up reading the Team Topologies book. This highlight fairly well some of the concerns I have with it and where it shines. I think it’s right to turn to the principles it’s built on rather than use the model it proposes as a blueprint.

https://martyoo.medium.com/stop-team-topologies-fd954ea26eca

How to build a strategy

Tags: business, organization, management, strategy

It’s bloody hard to build a strategy. This article is full of good wisdom to make one. This won’t make it really easier, but at least you won’t start in the wrong direction and will be able to know if what you produce is any good.

https://www.cultivatedmanagement.com/how-to-build-a-strategy/

Anime girl breaking the fourth wall

Tags: tech, blender, 3d, funny

Funny short video, I guess it has also some tutorial value to know what you can do with Blender? (and no, you can’t break the fourth wall with it)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTi_-HGtsDY

Bye for now!

Here's what I've been working on for my LocalGov Drupal contributions this week. Thanks to Big Blue Door for sponsoring the time to work on these.

We're excited to announce that "Drupal CMS" will be the official name for the product developed by the Drupal Starshot Initiative.

The name "Drupal CMS" was chosen after user testing with both newcomers and experienced users. This name consistently scored highest across all tested groups, including marketers unfamiliar with Drupal.

Participants appreciated the clarity it brings:

Having the words CMS in the name will make it clear what the product is. People would know that Drupal was a content management system by the nature of its name, rather than having to ask what Drupal is. I'm a designer familiar with the industry, so the term CMS or content management system is the term or phrase that describes this product most accurately in my opinion. I think it is important to have CMS in the title.

The name "Drupal Starshot" will remain an internal code name until the first release of Drupal CMS, after which it will most likely be retired.

Imagine a world where installing Drupal instantly offers a creative experience that allows you to build and style pages right out of the box, without any need for additional modules or configuration.

The introduction of Drupal's Layout Builder in 2018 was an important milestone toward this vision, but it was just the first step. Layout Builder provides site builders with a powerful drag-and-drop interface for creating and arranging content within customizable layouts.

Despite its success, there is a clear and pressing need to improve the existing Layout Builder. The numerous community-developed modules enhancing Layout Builder highlight the need for a more comprehensive solution.

That is why at DrupalCon Lille last year, I was excited to announce the "Next Generation Page Builder" initiative, aimed at improving and expanding the Layout Builder to provide a truly intuitive, out-of-the-box page-building experience.

Since announcing the 'Next Generation Page Builder', led by Lauri Eskola (Acquia), a Drupal Core Committer, we've done extensive research and planning.

Inspired by user feedback, we decided to make two changes. First, we decided to broaden our focus: not only will we improve the page-building features of Layout Builder, we will also integrate basic theming capabilities, enabling users to style their pages effortlessly without having to edit Twig files. Second, reflecting on this wider scope, we renamed the initiative from 'Next Generation Page Builder' to 'Experience Builder'.

In recent months, we explored several options for how to create such an Experience Builder, including accelerating development of the Layout Builder, switching to Gutenberg, adopting Paragraphs, or using the newly open-sourced Plasmic.

After thorough analysis and discussions with key stakeholders, including Automattic's Gutenberg team, the Drupal Core Committers decided the best approach is to expand the Layout Builder while also incorporating the best elements of Paragraphs.

Looking to the future, I hope the Experience Builder becomes the preferred Drupal tool for layout design, page building, and basic theming. Our main goal is to create a tool that site builders love, with an amazing out-of-the-box experience. By integrating key features from Paragraphs, we also aim to create a unified solution that reduces fragmentation, accelerates innovation, and ensures Drupal remains at the forefront of site building.

Our future success hinges on expanding Drupal's usability to a wider audience. Our CMS capabilities are often better than our competitors', but aren't always as user friendly. In the Drupal 7 era, Drupal was the OG (Original Great) of low-code but today we are being outpaced by competitors in terms of ease of use. Without user experience improvements, we'll lose ground. The Experience Builder initiative is all about introducing more people to the power of Drupal.

I feel strongly that a unified Experience Builder is one of the most important initiatives we can undertake right now.

Developing an Experience Builder is a big task that will require substantial effort, extensive collaboration, and significant expertise in user experience and design. As Drupal Core Committers, we are driven by a sense of urgency to advance this initiative. We are committed to moving quickly and iterating rapidly, but to succeed, we also need your support. There will be many opportunities for the community to collaborate and contribute to this initiative.

For more information, please check Lauri's latest blog post on the topic. Additionally, I will discuss this further in my upcoming DrupalCon Portland keynote in a few weeks.

Here's what I've been working on for my Drupal contributions this week. Thanks to Code Enigma for sponsoring the time to work on these.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is running a blog series to introduce some of the people who have been actively involved in the Open Source AI Definition (OSAID) co-design process. The co-design methodology allows for the integration of diverging perspectives into one just, cohesive and feasible standard. Support and contribution from a significant and broad group of stakeholders is imperative to the Open Source process and is proven to bring diverse issues to light, deliver swift outputs and garner community buy-in.

This series features the voices of the volunteers who have helped shape and are shaping the Definition.

Meet Mark Collier

What’s your background related to Open Source and AI?

I’ve worked in Open Source most of my career, over 20 years, and have found it to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, drivers of economic opportunity. It creates new markets and gives people all over the world access to not only use but to influence the direction of technologies. I started the OpenStack project and then the OpenStack Foundation, and later the Open Infrastructure Foundation. With members of our foundation from over 180 countries, I’ve seen firsthand how Open Source is the most efficient way to drive innovation. You get to crowdsource ideas from people all over the world, that are not just in one company or just in one country. We’ve certainly seen that with infrastructure in the cloud computing/edge computing era. AI is the next generation wave, with people investing literally trillions of dollars in building infrastructure, both physical and the software being written around it. This is another opportunity to embrace Open Source as a path to innovation. 

Open Source drives the fastest adoption of new technologies and gives the most people an opportunity to both influence it and benefit economically from it, all over the world. I want to see that pattern repeat in this next era of AI.

What motivated you to join this co-design process to define Open Source AI?

I’m concerned about the potential of there not being credible Open Source alternatives to the big proprietary players in this massive next wave of technology. It will be a bad thing for humanity if we can only get state-of-the-art AI from two or three massive players in one or two countries. In the same way we don’t want to see just one cloud provider or one software vendor, we don’t want any sort of monopoly or oligopoly in AI; That really slows innovation. I wanted to be part of this co-design process because it’s actually not trivial to apply the concept of Open Source to AI. We can carry over the principles and freedoms that underlie Open Source software, like the freedom to use it without restriction and the ability to modify it for different use cases, but an AI system is not just software. A whole debate has been stirred up about whether data needs to be released and published under an Open Source friendly license to be considered Open Source AI. That’s just one consideration of many that I wanted to contribute to. 

We have a very impressive group of people with a lot of diverse backgrounds and opinions working on this. I wanted to be part of the process not because I have the answers, but because I have some perspective and I can learn from all the others. We need to reach a consensus on this because if we don’t, the meaning of Open Source in the AI era will get watered down or potentially just lost all together, which affects all of Open Source and all of technology. 

Can you describe your experience participating in this process? What did you most enjoy about it and what were some of the challenges you faced?

The process started as a mailing list of sorts and evolved to more of an online discussion forum. Although it hasn’t always been easy for me to follow along, the folks at OSI that have been shepherding the process have done an excellent job summarizing the threads and bringing key topics to the top. Discussions are happening rapidly in the forum, but also in the press. There are new models released nearly every day it seems, and the bar for what are called Open Source models is causing a lot of noise. It’s a challenge for anybody to keep up but overall I think it’s been a good process.

Why do you think AI should be Open Source?

The more important a technology is to the future of the economy and the more a technology impacts our daily lives, the more critical it is that it be Open Source. For economic and participation reasons, but also for security. We have seen time and time again that transparency and openness breeds better security. With more mysterious and complex technologies such as AI, Open Source offers the transparency to help us understand the decisions the technology is making. There have been a number of large players who have been lobbying for more regulation, making it more difficult to have Open Source AI, and I think that shows a very clear conflict of interest. 

There is legislation out there that, if it gets passed, poses a real danger to not just Open Source AI, but Open Source in general. We have a real opportunity but also a real risk of there being conscious concentrations of power if state-of-the-art AI doesn’t fit a standard definition of Open Source. Open Source AI continues to be neck and neck with the proprietary models, which makes me optimistic.

Has your personal definition of Open Source AI changed along the way? What new perspectives or ideas did you encounter while participating in the co-design process?

My personal definition of Open Source AI is not set in stone even having been through this process for over a year. Things are moving so quickly, I think we need to be careful that perfect doesn’t become the enemy of good. Time is of the essence as the mainstream media and the tech press report on models that are trained on billions of dollars worth of hardware, claiming to be Open Source when they clearly are not. I’ve become more willing to compromise on an imperfect definition so we can come to a consensus sooner.

What do you think the primary benefit will be once there is a clear definition of Open Source AI?

All the reasons people love Open Source are inherently the same reasons why people are very tempted to put an Open Source label on their AI; trust, transparency, they can modify it and build their business on it, and the license won’t be changed. Once we finalize and ratify the definition, we can start broadly using it in practice. This will bring some clarity to the market again. We need to be able to point to something very clear and documented if we’re going to challenge a technology that has been labeled Open Source AI. Legal departments of big companies working on massive AI tools and workloads want to know that their license isn’t going to be pulled out from under them. If the definition upholds the key freedoms people expect from Open Source, it will lead to faster adoption by all.  

What do you think are the next steps for the community involved in Open Source AI?

I think Stefano from the OSI has done a wonderful job of trying to hit the conference circuit to share and collect feedback, and virtual participation in the process is still key to keeping it inclusive. I think the next step is building awareness in the press about the definition and market testing it. It’s an iterative process from there. 

How to get involved

The OSAID co-design process is open to everyone interested in collaborating. There are many ways to get involved:

• Join the working groups: be part of a team to evaluate various models against the OSAID.
• Join the forum: support and comment on the drafts, record your approval or concerns to new and existing threads.
• Comment on the latest draft: provide feedback on the latest draft document directly.
• Follow the weekly recaps: subscribe to our newsletter and blog to be kept up-to-date.
• Join the town hall meetings: participate in the online public town hall meetings to learn more and ask questions.
• Join the workshops and scheduled conferences: meet the OSI and other participants at in-person events around the world.

Let's meet at Drupal Starshot Initiative sessions at DrupalCon Barcelona! Check out this rundown of what you can look forward to at the event and buy your ticket before the regular prices end midnight on Monday August 19!

https://www.drupal.org/about/starshot/blog/lets-meet-at-drupal-starshot-initiative-sessions-at-drupalcon-barcelona

The ambitious Drupal Starshot Initiative aims to build the new default download of Drupal, called Drupal CMS. Dries Buytaert announced it at DrupalCon Portland 2024. DrupalCon Barcelona provides a midway checkpoint in how far the teams got with the goals and the program will be packed with opportunities to get information and join the initiative.

Dries will provide an overall update in his Driesnote on Tuesday. This is a must see session! But the event will provide ample opportunities to get to know how each component is going. The following sessions are highly suggested.

A cornerstone of the experience is UI based installation of functionality. This is powered by the Recipes feature, which supports packages of functionality and configuration. Martin Anderson-Clutz and Mark Casias will present the Drupal Recipes Initiative Update. Recipes and other functionality are installed with Project Browser. Get insights into progress on that at Project Browser: making Starshot's in-browser feature composition a reality with Chris Wells and Leslie Glynn.

Automatic software installs and updates could be dangerous if the sources are not validated properly. Composer creator Nils Adermann teams up with Tim Lehnen and Christopher Gervais to explain solutions to this problem that will make Drupal project installation secure in Supply Chain Security in Drupal and Composer.

Drupal CMS will ship with Gin as the default administration team. Sascha Eggenberger will update us in Gin Admin Theme - Road to stable. But there is a lot more to figure out about the admin UI. Jen Witkowski and Stephanie Ganzer will provide insight into The Admin UI Redesign Process so we can see what more is to come.

In some cases, involving targeted AI solutions results in much faster user benefits compared to redesigning user interfaces. James Abrahams and Marcus Johansson will showcase AI innovation in Using Drupal’s AI module to power your Drupal websites and potential plans for Starshot.

Much anticipated and also much newer is the Experience Builder Initiative which aims to provide a modern experience building tool for Drupal and is planned to eventually ship with Drupal CMS as well. Lauri Eskola will update us on progress and future goals.

In Building the future of Drupal: 11, 12 and Starshot Gábor Hojtsy and Tim Plunkett will show how the different software packages are connected and build on top of each other, providing a closer look at the technologies used and processes followed.

It is not enough to make the software easier to build with, we also aim to make it easier to try. Drupal.org will have an in-browser trial experience to make Drupal easier to explore. Matt Glaman will provide a peek at the technology powering this in The Web APIs powering the Starshot trial experience.

Functionality to be built for Drupal CMS are divided in Starshot Initiative Tracks that are exploring options and building recipes to provide key features to users. The Drupal Initiative Leads keynote will explore how these tracks approached their areas, the research they did and the results they came up with.

These were only the sessions, there will be even more discussions (BoFs) and working groups (in the contribution room) that you can join. It is not too late to buy your DrupalCon Barcelona ticket, the regular ticket pricing ends at the end of August 19th. Buy your ticket now and see you there!

As part of The DropTimes&#039; &quot;Meet the Candidate&quot; campaign, Will Huggins shares his vision for driving strategic change within the Drupal community. In this exclusive interview, the CEO of Zoocha discusses his plans to enhance the Drupal Certified Partner community, improve non-code contributions, and position Drupal to compete effectively with major commercial software solutions. Discover how Will aims to help Drupal reach its full potential in the 2024 Board Election.

What are the best practices for organizing data analysis projects in Python? What are the advantages of a more package-centric approach to data science? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder's Weekly articles and projects.

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

In this quiz, you’ll test your understanding of Web Scraping with Scrapy and MongoDB.

By working through this quiz, you’ll revisit how to set up a Scrapy project, build a functional web scraper, extract data from websites using selectors, store scraped data in a MongoDB database, and test and debug your Scrapy web scraper.

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

A new maintenance release of RcppEigen is now on CRAN, and will go to Debian shortly as usual. Eigen is a C++ template library for linear algebra: matrices, vectors, numerical solvers, and related algorithms.

A very recent change in the development version of R (aka “r-devel”) expanded the set of declared BLAS and LAPACK functions (and I tooted approvingly about it as well). It turns out that the xerbla() declaration there (which, as usual for R and as discussed in Writing R Extensions, defines the new optional character length entry for a char vector) conflicts with one in the blas.h header in Eigen upsetting the compilation of just one reverse-dependency. So CRAN, as they so often (and quietly) do in these cases, gave us a friendly and concise heads-up and asked for a change so we complied, did the usual reverse-dependency check of the other 400+ packages using RcppEigen and produced the new release which was injected into the repository during the current summer break.

The complete NEWS file entry follows.

Changes in RcppEigen version 0.3.4.0.1 (2024-08-14)

• Conditionally comment-out xerbla in blas.h as it is now providedd by R-devel albeit with FC_LEN_T (per a CRAN request)

• Minor package updates (continuous integration, badges)

Courtesy of CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for the most recent release.

If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can sponsor me at GitHub.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

Docker

Docker is an open-source software that helps us to run the container or which provides us with a containerized platform. In simple, Docker is very famous and widely used.

WordPress

WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) that makes it easy to create and manage a website. It is the most popular CMS in the world. Millions of business owners, bloggers, and publishers use WordPress daily to maintain their online presence.

As the expression goes, "Time flies when you are having fun", meaning you do not normally account for the passage of time when you are distracted and enjoying yourself. The expression is a well established English idiom, though today for a moment the Debian Project pauses to reflect on that expression.

It has been 31 years now that we have been around.

It has been 31 amazing years of fun and amazement in watching the world around us grow and ourselves grow into the world.

Let us tell you, we have had a great time in doing so.

We have been invited to nearly every continent and country for over 25 Debian Developer Conferences, we have contributed to the sciences with our Blends[1] distributions; we have not given up on or discounted aged hardware with Long Term Support (LTS)[2]; we have encouraged and sponsored diversity with our Outreach Programs[3]. We have contributed to exploration of this lovely planet and the vast vacuum of space[4] (where no one hears Developers scream).

There is more to what we have done but from a cursory glance, we seem to have done it all.

But we never noticed it.

Time does fly or "escape irretrievably"[5] when having a good time and making progress, though our pause at this moment is that we have also had a few moments of honest self-evaluation and reflection. Over the years the project has lost some significant loved ones who were dear to us - you may have called them Developers while we called them Friends, we called them Mentors, we hurt, we grieved, and in their memories we keep moving forward.

The course of the project has seen a few tragedies, has seen heated discourse in the public domain, has addressed and weathered concerns, and has still continually grown.

And we did that in the public sphere, because at the core this is an open project. Our code is public, our bugs and failings are public, our communications are public, our meetings are public, and our love of FLOSS is most definitely public.

And now more that ever the Debian Project realizes that the "we" that is sprinkled throughout this letter is just another way of saying: "you". You, the user, contributor, sponsor, developer, maintainer, bug squasher; all of you make the WE that is Debian. So what are WE waiting for? Lets celebrate!

Join the worldwide celebration or find an event local to you by visiting our DebianDay events page[6] - see you there!

[1] https://www.debian.org/blends

[2] https://wiki.debian.org/LTS

[3] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Outreach

[4] https://bits.debian.org/2017/04/unknown-parallel-universe-uses-debian.html

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempus_fugit

[6] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianDay/2024