Tootfinder

Is there a directory of software (for consumers and B2B) that is deliberately AI-free?
(Note that I mean user-facing features and data processing; I don’t care here if LLMs were used for development of code.)

Von Free Software Foundation Europe #FSFE @…
🧵 👇
Öffentliche #Verwaltungen dürfen ihre #Software

➡️ Jamulus ‒ Play music online with friends
#bookmarks

I am super tired and frustrated, and I probably shouldn’t say this, but do you know any decent Product/Program Management roles where it’s not all about the senseless push toward AI, and maybe more focused on free/open-source software?
#foss #pm

Lately I've been thinking about how #Gentoo is perceived by people. So often they're stuck in the "ricer" mindset: Gentoo is being built from source, so it must be ZOMG fast. And if it isn't, then what's the point?
If I were to make four points for Gentoo (to stop myself from making more), they would be:
1. Gentoo is independent.
There is no company behind Gentoo. There is no business plan. It's made and maintained by volunteers. Driven by passion and not profit incentive. And we want to keep it that way.
2. Gentoo aims to be secure.
We are maintaining our own infrastructure to reduce the risk of being hijacked. We're securing our distribution channels and mirrors using OpenPGP. We're only using Codeberg (which we really appreciate) and GitHub as mirrors (with OpenPGP commit signatures) and contribution channels. We have a dedicated security team, who works with the developers to keep packages free of vulnerabilities and our users informed.
3. Gentoo is made by humans.
We banned LLM contributions two years ago, and never regretted it. We didn't "wait and see", we took decisive action, and if we got left behind, it's only for the better. Unfortunately, in today's LLM-ridden world we can't stop slop software from being packaged in Gentoo without sacrificing our commitment to keep packages up to date, but we try to keep the worst offenders (like copywashed chardet) at bay.
4. Gentoo supports sustainability.
This may sound ironic when so many of us build everything from source, but we're actually trying to make computing sustainable. Gentoo's source-first nature makes it inherently flexible. We try our best to support a plethora of older and less common hardware. We go against the flow and still try to provide a workable system on hardware that is not supported by Rust or V8. And on top of that, we do our best to provide binary packages for a variety of configurations.
Of course, that's not all. I want Gentoo to be reliable and stable, to be oriented towards privacy by default, to be welcome and respectful.
And all these things ultimately depend on people working on Gentoo, and contributing to Gentoo. We always need more people that share these principles and want to help us achieve them.
What do you appreciate in Gentoo?

Tutti i motivi per abbandonare #GitHub e quali sono le possibili alternative. Il post di @…
Sappiamo che non è un compito facile; GitHub è onnipresente. Grazie al suo marketing efficace, GitHub ha convinto gli sviluppatori di software li…

Zahlungsanbieter Nexi kündigt Free Software Foundation Europe
Die Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) arbeitet mit Spenden durch Unterstützer. Der Zahlungsanbieter Nexi hat nun gekündigt.
https://www.

Yesterday, the article by Frank (@…) and me on open licences for documents, images, audio, video, fonts and hardware was published in @…:

Keep It Free » Linux Magazine
Linux users associate open source licenses with software, but a bevy of licenses are available for documents, images, audio/video, fonts, and hardw...

I've been talking before why money won't solve the burnout problem. But let's for a minute assume that you really wanted to help people maintaining #FreeSoftware by paying them. The problem is that:
1. You have to pay them a living wage.
While all monetary help is appreciated by developers, they need a living wage. Not "that should prevent you from starving to death" but the kind of money that can support a honest (but not lavish) lifestyle: pay the bills, feed your family, cover other living costs such as repairs, clothes, appliances, and let you save enough for future emergencies.
It's simple as that. If you can't do that, they're going to need a dayjob. If they're lucky, it won't collide with their #FLOSS work. If they're not, it will kill them. Or they'll fall somewhere in the middle, slowly burning out until they can neither maintain their projects, nor work.
2. You need to guarantee that the payouts will continue.
People need security. They're not going to stay unemployed, let alone quit their job or turn down a job offer, unless they either have good guaranties or substantial savings (or they're in a really bad shape and wouldn't be able to handle the job anyway). The job market is hell, and people just know that when the payments stop, they may not be able to find a job soon, let alone a good job. Even "passively" looking for a job can burn you out.
So yeah, one-off payments and pinky swears won't do. And it isn't even a matter of whether we can trust you; it's a matter if you'll actually be able to continue paying us. And honestly, I don't really know how to solve that. Perhaps by paying up front, but for how long? Finding a job may take more than a year, finding a good job may be once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
3. It can't end up being a job.
Perhaps most difficult of all, these payments can't really come with explicit obligations. I mean, that's the whole point: you want to support FLOSS, not turn it into a corporate project. You want the maintainer to remain free and enjoy the work. That is unlikely to happen if their livelihood is now dependent on your satisfaction. And even if it isn't, I for example would still feel indebted to whoever's paying me to do FLOSS, even if they really didn't expect anything in return, and would fall into a spiral of guilt-inflicted burnout if I failed to maintain the software satisfactorily.
#OpenSource

Very interesting @… talk about risk misalignment for EU policy regarding digital sovereignty and free and open source software. It's a policy problem, not a technical problem!
I also really like the general bit of wisdom at the end:
"If we want to move somebody, [we must] first understand them. And this means standing where they stand, and not wh…

FOSDEM 2026 - The Missing Level: Why EU Open Source Fails Locally

Open source isn’t free. We’re just not paying for it: Who maintains the maintainers?
A lot of things don’t add up in the world of software. The skills gap remains stubbornly wide, with IT and data skills the hardest to recruit for five consecutive years. Yet, at the same time, entry level roles are declining as employers redeploy existing employees rather than hiring new ones.
🧑‍💻

Open source isn’t free. We’re just not paying for it
A lot of things don’t add up in the world of software. The skills gap remains stubbornly wide, with IT and data skills the hardest ...

I knew it was this way but it's really hitting me today how much the Open Source movement and copyright maximalism supplanted the idea of free software, and again how much the Free Software movement turned from a close ideological cousin of the remix and open culture movement into a culture of legalism. At the same time, copyright law itself has been extended to be near-immortal copyrights rather than brief monopolies to spur creation by enabling profit from creating works.

Ich bin ja so ne Ökobilanztrulla, und hab noch irgendwo ne uralte Version von Ecoinvent. Aus Kostengründen nie erneuert, weil für die paar Hobbyanwendungen meinerseits völlig über das Ziel hinaus schiessend.
Mit etwas Verspätung festgestellt: Muss ja gar nicht mehr sein! OpenLCA nutze ich als Software eh schon. Und das BAFU bietet mir dazu jetzt noch die Inventardaten.
https://www.openlca.org/exciting-release-of-bafu-2025-a-free-database/

Just downloaded the latest version of @… and planning on putting together a tutorial on how to get a radio show online with just a computer and free (libra, open source) software. #radio #radioshow

https://www.computing.co.uk/analysis/2026/open-source-isn-t-free-we-re-just-not-paying-for-it?utm_source=mastodon_org&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=Apr_opensource…

Open source isn’t free. We’re just not paying for it
A lot of things don’t add up in the world of software. The skills gap remains stubbornly wide, with IT and data skills the hardest ...

Einige der zuletzt hier besonders häufig geteilten #News:
Zahlungsanbieter Nexi kündigt Free Software Foundation Europe

Open-Source-Tools, die wir lieben | Digitalcourage
https://digitalcourage.de/blog/2026/i-love-free-software-day
"Freie Software ist aus unserem Alltag nicht wegzudenken. Anlässlich des „I ♥ Free Software Day“ möchten wir die Arbeit der überwiegend ehrenamtl…

Open-Source-Tools, die wir lieben | Digitalcourage
Freie Software ist aus unserem Alltag nicht wegzudenken. Anlässlich des „I ♥ Free Software Day“ möchten wir die Arbeit der überwiegend ehrenamtlichen

#Awesome #Selfhosted
https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted…

It feels obvious that llm's have no place in free and open source software. Apparently it isn't, at least not to everyone. I recently became interested in exploring the scope of the problem after finding out that both Vim and Neovim not only don't have policies banning llm contribution, but already contain fairly significant amounts of llm generated code.

Whoa, Veritasium has made a video about Free Software (what I call #Libre software). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoag03mSuXQ - naturally there're also dark 'hackers' (I prefer 'crac…

DMA: FSFE beklagt Apples Blockade bei Interoperabilitäts-Anträgen
Die Free Software Foundation wirft Apple vor, entgegen der DMA-Vorgaben den Zugang zu iOS-Schnittstellen zu erschweren und so Interoperabilität zu behindern.

CaDoodle - Free Offline CAD Software | Tinkercad Alternative for Education
#bookmarks

me in 2021 considering Drew to be too much of a free software purist but deciding to use sourcehut anyways
me now and where sourcehut and codeberg are the two best slop-free git hosters

Hardware Freedom Day is coming up, though it lands on a Saturday. We meet on Mondays, so we’ll celebrate on April 20th! (Is there anything else special about that day?) Our event, which takes place at our usual venue, Victory Cafe (440 Bloor St. W. here in Toronto), is listed on @…’s website:

So many people don't understand how good the AGPLv3 license is designed. The latest piece from Bradley M. Kühn of the @… is a piece of art to explain the great mechanisms within the license to avoid crappy exception around a well-designed free software license.

Maybe I'm just getting old and sappy and still free software-pilled, but this was a beautiful. https://prl-prg.github.io/tomas-kalibera.html
[edit: To be clear, I did not know the man.]

It really is time to see if the Free Software Foundation has any mettle I guess or if they're just too busy eating toe cheese.

RE: https://dice.camp/@realms/116459545804565917
I'd argue that "AI"-based development creates a bigger attack surface on closed source/proprietary software than open source software:
1. It's more likely that internal software development uses LLMs as they're most affordable to companies; leaving them more vulnerable to prompt injection and other types of attacks targeting LLM use.
2. It's more likely that internal commits aren't vetted as much (or even purely vibe-coded) as ones in open source projects.
3. It's more likely that attacks on open source projects are discovered quicker.
Also a reminder that the "Mythos" thing—like all the other doomerist things coming out of "AI" companies—is a marketing stunt to get Anthropic free press coverage.

Still using `npm init -y`?
May I introduce you to `npm init --init-type=module --init-license=AGPL-3.0-only -y`?
:awesome:👍 Free software license (makes “open” as in ”open for business” folks squirm)
:awesome:👍 ES modules (because it’s 2026)
#nodeJS #npm

This is an excellent video from #veritasium touches in the history of free software, #compression #algorithms and the dangers of supply chain attacks in open source projects.
How One Ha…

I love #Thunderbird but I can‘t believe how stuck in the past it seems. No conversation view (a slow plugin exists), no warning for emails that have a sender outside your company (not even a plugin?), no warning when you’re addressing somebody outside your org, no way to define which address books should not be used to auto-complete.
I know it’s free software and I don’t donate every ti…

Brilliant stealth signal method bypassing blackouts in Iran -- great piece about 'Toosheh' and how it works: #Iran

Damals, als die iX noch eine Sonderpublikation der c't war: #vintagecomputing

iX - c't Spezial 4 : Jürgen Seeger : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Bürokommunikation: UNIX kommtThemen:schnelle 386er: GTI 325, Sun 386iDOS unter UNIXSoftware macht Software: CASE68030-Workstation Apollo DN3500Forschung:...

from my link log —
Dorking: how to find anything on the web.
https://www.alec.fyi/dorking-how-to-find-anything-on-the-internet.html
saved 2020-08-11

Keep Android Open https://keepandroidopen.org/
"You, the consumer, purchased your Android device believing in Google’s promise that it was an open computing platform and that you could run whatever software you choose on it. Instead, as of September 2026, they will be non-consensually pushing an update…

RE: https://social.medienzentrum.rocks/@mzffm/116068864299971074
Genau das Thema des 'I love free software' Tags.
'Free' übrigens wie 'Frei' in Freiheit. Nicht kostenlos. 😃

Am 5. Mai gibt es wieder ein lokales "Free Software Foundation Europe"-Treffen in Wien! Komm vorbei, wenn dich die gesellschaftlichen und politischen Aspekte von Freier Software/Open Source Software interessieren und du dich mit anderen austauschen möchtest!
Wann?
Dienstag, 5. Mai 2026
Ab 18:30 Uhr gemütliches Ankommen
Um 19:00 Uhr Start
Wo?
Im @…

Small business owners: You didn’t start your small business to have an opportunity to do bookkeeping or accounting. If you've lost control of your accounting, turn to someone with 20 years experience in risk management & accounting/payroll software.
https://www.awjbookkeeping.com/

@… There are at least two other options: VMWare Workstation Pro and KVM/QEMU. Both are free and I've tried them, as well as VirtualBox. VMWare isn't a nice company, but so far I'm happiest with WorkStation Pro. I use the VM to run Windows 11 to sync my Kobo Reader and iPhone and also to run Dragon speech recognition software. I found that WorkStationPro was bes…

i know it is hardly the worst thing Mozilla has done to the community but after the SpreadFirefox campaign (an early "high profile" #Drupal site!) driven by a huge swath of the Free/Libre and Open Source Software community lo so many years ago it feels like a punch in the face to not have a single mention of ditching Windows entirely as an option on the Firefox page about Microsoft ending W…

stupid question:
What is the actual obstacle to being able to run Linux on a cellphone (i.e., and be able to use it as a cellphone)?
Is there some crucial interop spec that's being kept proprietary/secret?
Or is it there some particular software component that's encumbered by patents and so there can't be a free version of it?
Some weird licensing structure that the operating companies have been able to enforce (and the EU hasn't gotten around to say…

an attack on free software maintainers... https://glama.ai/blog/2026-03-19-open-source-has-a-bot-problem

RE: https://mastodon.social/@fsfe/116204774021832197
When reading the newsletter, I remember why I wrote

We found the cyber Amish :
#ai #cyberamish

Open Slopware
“Free/Open Source Software tainted by LLM developers/developed by genAI boosters, along with alternatives.”
#AI

open-slopware
Free/Open Source Software tainted by LLM developers/developed by genAI boosters, along with alternatives. Fork of the repo by @gen-ai-transparency after its deletion.

I've been playing around with GNU Octave in the terminal while taking my Linear algebra course. So far it's run everything I've thrown at it in Matlab syntax without question, and it's really been helpful grinding through assignments.
Yet another reminder of how awesome Free Software is, what a perfect match it is for academic use and what a terrible shame it is that almost no universities take advantage of such resources, always seeming to prefer proprietary crap.

So.. I have a theory that burned-out coders prefer AI coding agents. Because at the point of burn-out (and beyond), you just stop giving a fuck. You might still like and enjoy your craft, but when it comes to your job (whether that's proprietary or free software), you just want to get through the day and get it done. And if an LLM helps you accomplish that, regardless of ethics or maintainability or boring button-mashing, so be it.

Slides for my @… presentation about Free Software:
https://codeberg.org/totientfunction/PyCon-Austria-2026

PyCon-Austria-2026
Slides for my PyCon Austria 2026 presentation

One of my VR Lighthouses died last month. These things are gyroscopically spinning 24 hours a day for, what, a decade now? Nearly.
No wonder. Mostly the industry seems to be settling on using head-mounted cameras rather than sweeping infra-red beams and receptors on the head anyway.
It is true that lighthouses give accurate positioning, but means I can't easily take the headset next door, say. Or to a party.
So inside-out, as they call it, is fine for the headset now and mostly okay for the hand-controllers.
But it offers no solution at all for the foot-trackers and hip-tracker that I need for puppetting the characters in the #vr #slimeVR #trackers

New on #blog: "Money isn’t going to solve the #burnout problem"
"""
The xz-utils backdoor situation brought the problem of FLOSS maintained burnout into the daylight. This in turn lead to numerous discussion on how to solve the problem, and the recurring theme was funding maintenance work.
While I’m definitely not opposed to giving people money for their FLOSS work, if you think that throwing some bucks will actually solve the problem, and especially if you think that you can just throw them once and then forget, I have bad news for you: it won’t. Surely, money is a big part of the problem, but it’s not the only reason people are getting burned out. It’s a systemic problem, and it’s in need of systemic solution, and that’s involves a lot of hard work undo everything that’s happened in the last, say, 20 years.
But let’s start at the beginning and ask the important question: why do people make free software?
"""
#FreeSoftware #OpenSource #AI #NoAI #LLM #NoLLM #Gentoo