Tootfinder

Is it really foss?
Where Projects are Evaluated — To see if they're as free and open source as advertised. The software rights of users are continously (and often opaquely) being eroded by the desire of growth.
This website aims to push back against that by bringing transparency to FOSS software users.
💻 https://isitreallyfoss.com

Ah, yes, scale and market penetration, the two founding pillars of open source.
(Actually, I’m not even being sarcastic. Don’t confuse free software and open source. Open source is open as in “open for business” and “open for enclosure”. Free software is about free as in “freedom”. Very different things, even if, in both cases, the source is readily available.) @…

OpenForum Europe (@OpenForumEurope@mastodon.cloud)
Attached: 1 image @HennaVirkkunen@ec.social-network.europa.eu gave a keynote address, lauding the EU as "the beacon of open source technology". Existing innovation must now be supported to reach scale, ensure financial sustainability and achieve wider market penetration.

Anonymous help:
#OpenSource #FreeSoftware

Remember all that shit with XZ which could have gone wildly wrong since its used in everything?
Well remember to donate again for 2026
https://liberapay.com/Larhzu/

Free Software and Platform Regulation
The impact of the Digital Market Act on Free Software
https://media.ccc.de/v/2025-11-15-free-software-and-platform-regulation

Consider supporting your favorite organization, free-software project, or digital-rights activist. I donate $10 every month to my email provider: https://autisitci.org, avalable at @……

This blog post links to all my #FreeSoftwareAdvent posts which are revolving around tools used in our VFX pipeline.
https://www.comp-fu.com/2025/12/free-software-advent-2025…

This looks nice! Sometimes we get really cool things posted when folks show up at Maker Forums to make their first post, and AxioCNC looks modern and has some potentially really helpful features. 🎉
https://forum.makerforums.info/t/made-a-free-…

Don't trust your family history to the cloud or an online software company. #Ancestris version 13 is out. https://www.ancestris.org/index.html It's free and has some unique tools and reports not foun…

Congratulations, @… and @… for winning the Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit!

IBM reports Q4 revenue up 12% YoY to $19.7B, vs. $19.2B est., and projects 2026 revenue growth and free cash flow above estimates; IBM jumps 8% after hours (Brody Ford/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-28/ib…

As SBOMs slowly progress at the federal level and in enterprises, the rise of AI coding assistants is fueling optimistic—and, some experts argue, “kind of insane”—claims about a future with vulnerability-free software.
Check out my latest CyberScoop piece.
Many thanks to @…, @…

The slow rise of SBOMs meets the rapid advance of AI
Despite progress from CISA and global regulators, SBOM adoption in the private sector remains slow as experts debate if AI-driven coding will improve or undermine software security and transparency.

I'm currently looking for one or more volunteers to maintain the Openmoko USB PID OUI service at https://github.com/openmoko/openmoko-usb-oui as the existing maintainer is no longer available. This is a service providing free USB Product IDs and Ethernet MAC addresses for the

In 2021 I gave a talk about “openness” briefly tracing the history from the Free Software movement, #GNU, and OSS, to open formats like XML and ODF, then to the #FreeCulture and #OpenData movement like

I finally got my first Raspberry Pi, for a totally different usecase, but it certainly won't be the last.
I just discovered that I could build my own MIDI-synth with one:
#RaspberryPi

And here's my wrap up of my list of #freesoftwareadvent entries.
https://www.treblig.org/daveG/advent2025.html
(Although I did wonder about ending on the…

I’ll be at @… next Saturday and Sunday. If you’d like to chat, feel free to find me to talk about:

• MISP
• Open Source Software and Security
• GCVE.eu / Vulnerability-Lookup
• AIL Project and one of the many @…

Well, folks, I'm signing off for this year and taking a few days' vacation. I wish everyone a happy New Year and all the best for 2026! May the coming year be a good one for Linux, open source, and free software and services!
I don't usually express my political views here, but with the orange criminal becoming increasingly erratic and escalating his behavior:
May the spirit of insight enter the minds of responsible politicians in Europe and everywhere outside the Fa…

Rivian launches Universal Hands-Free driving for second-generation R1 EVs, expanding coverage from 135,000 highway miles to 3.5M miles across the US and Canada (Sean O'Kane/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/18/rivian-rolls-out-new-un…

Rivian rolls out new 'Universal Hands-Free' driving feature | TechCrunch
The driver assistance software is available on Rivian's for Gen 2 R1 cars and works on 3.5 million miles of North American roads. But it doesn't slow or stop for traffic lights or stop signs.

The #Enclosure feedback loop or how LLMs sabotage existing programming practices by privatizing a public good:
“[…]something has been taken from the public. Not just the training data, but the public forums and practices that created this training data in the first place. […] LLM companies are now selling back to us something that used to be available for free.”

I was looking at the @… OpenSSF annual report and wondering which kind of open source they use for their publishing.
Maybe one day, open source foundations will actually use open and free software.
#opensource

We're thrilled to have Software Freedom Conservancy as a Network Sponsor at SCaLE 23x! Your dedication to promoting free and open source software makes a difference. See you in Pasadena, March 5-8, 2026! 🎉 Check them out: https://sfconservancy.org/

bought a jabra to give ears and mouth to home assistant and after a remarkable amount of cursing I got it working.
It's amazing considering that this whole stack is basically a caesar salad of free software

RE: https://alpaca.gold/@Jeremiah/115582068879659968
European Commission actively engaged with FOSS - free and open source software - to build different, read non-US, digital ecosystem 🧵

Governments should use FOSS whenever possible, and that should extend to fonts as well: https://www.gnu.org/software/freefont/articles/Why_Free_Fonts.html

Yesterday I installed some OpenSource Software on my Laptop. As it also has a donation page, I donated 5€.
Since a couple of years I try to donate whenever I install OpenSource Software. Something between 5€-15€. Especially in the age of "Free"Apps that are bloated with Ads, I want to honor when a software comes just as is with a friendly hint to a donation page.
(I really try to avoid resetting my machines as this always comes with a couple of donations...)

Suchst Du nach einer funktionierenden local-only kostenlosen #Diktier-Lösung auf dem #Mac?
#diktat

A look at outlets in Belgium and France that are prioritizing independence from Big Tech and opting for open source or in-house software (Owen Huchon/Columbia Journalism Review)
https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/editorial-independence-means-technologic…

Editorial independence means technological independence.
From Google to Microsoft, European newsrooms often rely on tools built in Silicon Valley. Some are trying to break free, turning to open-source alternatives or home-grown solutions.

Is Apple going Adobe?
Say it isn't so!
Update:
It looks like they have gone to subscription model to access the “Pro” apps (FCP, Motion, Logic, Mainstage, Compressor, Pixelmator)
But the original “iWork" apps are still free. Pages, Keynote, Numbers (and by extension iMovie though it is not included in the "Creator Studio” presumably because it ships with every Mac)
That said... and yes... this is how they get you… the annual subscription for everything is "only” $180/yr or $18/mo plus Family Sharing privleges.
That goes down to $40/yr and $4/mo if you do the Educational license, but no family provisions.
#AppleCreatorStudio #Subscription #OwnAThing #Apple #Adobe #Software

Worked on some more #Gentoo global #jobserver goodies today.
Firstly, Portage jobserver support patch: #PyTest jobs will also be counted towards total job count.
Again, it's not a perfect solution, but it works reasonably. The plugin still starts -n jobs as specified by the arguments, but it acquired job tokens prior to executing every test, therefore delaying actual testing until tokens are available. It doesn't seem to cause noticeable overhead either.

We’re still meeting tonight, like we usually do. Visit the Luma link for details! https://luma.com/l4fe2xvh

I just went to my Gototags, my old #NFC tag vendor hardware/software & their tools are trying to charge people "PER ENCODED TAG" now.
There's tons of tools that encode tags for free. Thankfully, I have their old unlimited use NFC encoding tools so eff that but is anyone else actually doing this?

I was looking for my dishwasher manual. I noticed next to the manual, a link that said "Free Open Source Software". Curious, I clicked on it, and it's a long list of licenses and copyright information that is used in the dishwasher. Ctrl-F, and sure enough - my name's on the list.
I feel like I should have gotten a discount on the dishwasher, or at the very least access to its firmware source code! 🤠

⭐ "Crisis engineering, digital resilience, and free software" | @… | @…

📌 Pinned Post
I'm an anarcho-syndicalist non-binary person who uses they/them pronouns, is bisexual, from Bergen, Norway, and whose posts automatically delete after seven days regardless of likes or boosts, because I have autism and say random shit sometimes.
I talk allot about free software, and I use Secureblue, GrapheneOS and Debian as part of my software setup. I also spend a lot of time experimenting with Linux, especially Debian Testing/Sid, GNOME, and KDE.
As an …

According to the US copyright office, copyright doesn't extend to purely AI-generated material.
I'm not sure if vibe coding can count as 'purely AI-generated', but it's an annoying thought that e.g. GPL code can be turned into uncopyrightable code via the AI meat grinder.
I also keep returning to the question also of whether vibe-coded edits to GPLd free software projects counts as 'source code'. If it's unreadable to both the vibe-coder and origina…

Reminder: under GPL/AGPL, “Corresponding Source” includes everything needed to build and modify the work. That means AI prompts, generated scripts, and config files as well. Don’t leave them out.
"The "Corresponding Source" for a work in object code form means all the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to control those activities."

While I maybe a Linux Penguin, It's worth pointing out there are plenty of other free OSs which share many of the user space parts (e.g. the desktop) - and some very different; So, give FreeBSD a go once in a while, Then there are things like FreeDOS, embedded OSs, and ReactOS which can run Windows software, or lots of other things to play with. Give some a go:

The FreeBSD Project
FreeBSD is an operating system used to power modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms.

I don’t know if this is a sick burn (by a FOSDEM organiser spilling the truth about FOSDEM) or an own goal.
🤷‍♂️ https://pleroma.debian.social/objects/f49df30a-d65e-4195-833d-29b7481b3aba

Crosslisted article(s) found for cs.LG. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.LG/new
[2/3]:
- Sharp Structure-Agnostic Lower Bounds for General Functional Estimation
Jikai Jin, Vasilis Syrgkanis
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17341 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_statML_bot/115762312049963700
- Timely Information Updating for Mobile Devices Without and With ML Advice
Yu-Pin Hsu, Yi-Hsuan Tseng
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17381 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csNI_bot/115762180316858485
- SWE-Bench : A Framework for the Scalable Generation of Software Engineering Benchmarks from Open...
Wang, Ramalho, Celestino, Pham, Liu, Sinha, Portillo, Osunwa, Maduekwe
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17419 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csSE_bot/115762487015279852
- Perfect reconstruction of sparse signals using nonconvexity control and one-step RSB message passing
Xiaosi Gu, Ayaka Sakata, Tomoyuki Obuchi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17426 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_statML_bot/115762346108219997
- MULTIAQUA: A multimodal maritime dataset and robust training strategies for multimodal semantic s...
Jon Muhovi\v{c}, Janez Per\v{s}
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17450 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCV_bot/115762717053353674
- When Data Quality Issues Collide: A Large-Scale Empirical Study of Co-Occurring Data Quality Issu...
Emmanuel Charleson Dapaah, Jens Grabowski
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17460 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csSE_bot/115762500123147574
- Behavioural Effects of Agentic Messaging: A Case Study on a Financial Service Application
Olivier Jeunen, Schaun Wheeler
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17462 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csIR_bot/115762430673347625
- Linear Attention for Joint Power Optimization and User-Centric Clustering in Cell-Free Networks
Irched Chafaa, Giacomo Bacci, Luca Sanguinetti
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17466 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_eessSY_bot/115762336277179643
- Translating the Rashomon Effect to Sequential Decision-Making Tasks
Dennis Gross, J{\o}rn Eirik Betten, Helge Spieker
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17470 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csAI_bot/115762556506696539
- Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers for Nonlinear Matrix Decompositions
Atharva Awari, Nicolas Gillis, Arnaud Vandaele
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17473 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_eessSP_bot/115762580078964235
- TwinSegNet: A Digital Twin-Enabled Federated Learning Framework for Brain Tumor Analysis
Almustapha A. Wakili, Adamu Hussaini, Abubakar A. Musa, Woosub Jung, Wei Yu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17488 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCV_bot/115762726884307901
- Resource-efficient medical image classification for edge devices
Mahsa Lavaei, Zahra Abadi, Salar Beigzad, Alireza Maleki
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17515 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_eessIV_bot/115762459510336799
- PathBench-MIL: A Comprehensive AutoML and Benchmarking Framework for Multiple Instance Learning i...
Brussee, Valkema, Weijer, Doeleman, Schrader, Kers
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17517 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCV_bot/115762741957639051
- HydroGym: A Reinforcement Learning Platform for Fluid Dynamics
Christian Lagemann, et al.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17534 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_physicsfludyn_bot/115762391350754768
- When De-noising Hurts: A Systematic Study of Speech Enhancement Effects on Modern Medical ASR Sys...
Chondhekar, Murukuri, Vasani, Goyal, Badami, Rana, SN, Pandia, Katiyar, Jagadeesh, Gulati
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17562 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csSD_bot/115762423443170715
- Enabling Disaggregated Multi-Stage MLLM Inference via GPU-Internal Scheduling and Resource Sharing
Lingxiao Zhao, Haoran Zhou, Yuezhi Che, Dazhao Cheng
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17574 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csDC_bot/115762425409322293
- SkinGenBench: Generative Model and Preprocessing Effects for Synthetic Dermoscopic Augmentation i...
N. A. Adarsh Pritam, Jeba Shiney O, Sanyam Jain
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17585 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_eessIV_bot/115762479150695610
- MAD-OOD: A Deep Learning Cluster-Driven Framework for an Out-of-Distribution Malware Detection an...
Tosin Ige, Christopher Kiekintveld, Aritran Piplai, Asif Rahman, Olukunle Kolade, Sasidhar Kunapuli
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17594 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCR_bot/115762509298207765
- Confidence-Credibility Aware Weighted Ensembles of Small LLMs Outperform Large LLMs in Emotion De...
Menna Elgabry, Ali Hamdi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17630 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCL_bot/115762575512981257
- Generative Multi-Objective Bayesian Optimization with Scalable Batch Evaluations for Sample-Effic...
Madhav R. Muthyala, Farshud Sorourifar, Tianhong Tan, You Peng, Joel A. Paulson
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17659 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_statML_bot/115762554519447500
toXiv_bot_toot

Maybe we do something right in freeciv development, as reviews in sourceforge still show 5.0 stars out of 5 (38x5, 2x4, no lesser scores) https://sourceforge.net/projects/freeciv/reviews/

MERCER ISLAND SCHOOL BOARD
Wow, you really do have to watch the downballot races. Mercer Island School Board has two (2) candidates (O'Callahan is and Gaspar) that are *both* software CTOs touting their "AI" credentials. Gaspar explicitly wants "free AI classes".
Here's a hint: The only "AI classes" that kids need are ones that teach them how to TURN ALL OF THAT SHIT OFF, and learn to think and write in their own words, not Chat-GPT'…

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says his new superintelligence team will build "frontier-grade research capability" and Microsoft needs AI self-sufficiency (Ashley Stewart/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-

OpenAI used to prevent Microsoft pursuing AGI. Now, the software giant is free to compete, Mustafa Suleyman says.
A renegotiated deal lets Microsoft independently pursue artificial general intelligence. Suleyman is seizing the moment.

We’re still meeting tonight, like we usually do. Visit the Luma link for details! https://luma.com/l4fe2xvh

so i just learned, that #RocketChat although #free #software (#MIT), does have an

Rocket.Chat/ee/packages/presence/src/Presence.ts at develop · RocketChat/Rocket.Chat
The Secure CommsOS™ for mission-critical operations - RocketChat/Rocket.Chat

Gnucash is a nice simple Gtk/GUI accountancy program; I've used it to keep track of my spending, income, credit cards etc for well over a decade; it does simple double-entry stuff and also has some more advanced stuff for generating reports and small businesses.
https://www.gnucash.org/

Free Accounting Software | GnuCash
GnuCash is personal and small-business financial-accounting software, freely licensed under the GNU GPL and available for GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows.

#FreeSoftwareAdvent
A piece of free software I rely on at work is #Dokuwiki: https://www.dokuwiki.org
…

Oh. Its proprietary!?
#browser #firefox #vivaldi #mozilla

Tech Pizza Monday is on, as usual, tomorrow starting at 6 PM, at the usual place, Victory Cafe at 440 Bloor St. W. #techmeetup https://luma.com/h9neb30z