rwwmike

It was definitely a major thing. But in this discussion, the main points we even focused on about the characteristics of open source when defining it were the same as the FSF:

"When we call software “free,” we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes."

The bigger part of the "how we got here" was actually that GitHub ended up creating this ecosystem where collaboration was so open and easier to use to a larger population that we ran into an unintended consequence: maintainers being overwhelmed.

The overall history was intentionally a very quick, broad brush stroke to move into the points that pertained to someone feeling like they had to close their project to contributions.

> I realise that this is intentionally a very highly-compressed version of history, but

Author here. As you say, it's a highly-compressed version of history. Getting into the finer points of the evolution of open source wouldn't really have had any bearing on the rest of the article.

For Anton Mirgorodchenko, a Ukrainian refugee born with cerebral palsy, supported eye tracking hardware is too expensive, and speech-to-text isn’t an option—it doesn’t understand him. Instead, he uses a physical keyboard, despite his disability.

“Do you know how to type parentheses with one finger?” he asks. “Holding down shift with your nose.”

That hasn’t stopped him. He’s worked as a freelance developer since earning his Master’s degree in Computer Maintenance and Networks in 2012, and recently, he started exploring how to use ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot to better communicate and write code. Our emails provided a particular delight, as he likely realized a similar point—not long ago, our communication would be improbable, if not nearly impossible.

“Just imagine: I'm responding to you in Ukrainian and omitting about 60% of the letters from the words, but ChatGPT understands what I am saying and provides an answer in English,” he wrote in an email. He offered an example of how he composed a sentence.

Mirgorodchenko: h m n s Antn, m f ukr. im dev w cplsy.

ChatGPT: I think you are trying to say: "Hi, my name is Anton. I'm from Ukraine. I'm a developer with cerebral palsy.

Ahh, good call. They're both on there now.

Thanks, I really enjoyed writing it!

And yeah, as I talked to everyone for the article, it really seemed that minimalism was relative to where you were, and could often show up these days in using managed services. Such is the power of the cloud, right?

I didn't go there, but I think lots of things like serverless and edge workers and stuff like that could fit into this discussion as well.

I dunno, do you?

Thanks for the much-more-useful explanation here. I thought the question was a complaint about verbing a name, not being unfamiliar.

Author here. I really enjoyed diving into this topic and interviewing people. Minimalism in technology has a long history, and it's as important today as it's ever been. A favorite quote from the story, from Carson Gross, who made htmx:

“I might encourage minimalism in web development, but only because there's this incredibly complicated piece of software called a browser that has all this infrastructure baked into it that we can sit on top of. We can take advantage of that complexity and the abstraction it provides in a simple way, rather than putting a lot of complexity on top of that,” says Gross. “A lot of JavaScript projects take a browser and heap a bunch of incredibly complicated software on top without taking advantage of the infrastructure that the browser has sitting there.”

Author here. Yep, someone's name, verb-ified. I fully get the pet peeve against this sorta thing, but we went there nonetheless. :)

The distinction 3taps makes is that it doesn't scrape content from Craigslist but from search results from google and bing.

The whitepages case is exactly the one EFF's attorney Kurt Opsahl referred to when I spoke to him about copyright law and facts.

Oh yeah. For when you really want to turn "hitting Techmeme" into a game. :)

Don't forget the leaderboard...

http://www.crunchbase.com/bloggerboard/tech/authors

Agreed. I still hand type most URLs and weird ones I use bookmarks for...but it's more and more rare that I hand type anything more than the basic domain...anything with an actual URL structure I navigate to...

I wrote it after the session, actually...which I was unable to attend because I went to the damn press briefing. Alas. I didn't find out until later when speaking with someone from Google and they told me all about it. Alas, I didn't know about the last minute change...and was annoyed I couldn't be at that session. :)

Wait, which for words? Does craiggers just blow craigslist? Is it a vile headline when you remove the 4 words? Just curious. ;)

I like it. Let things move organically.

Thanks Jud. I'll email you now. :)

BTW - Here are some stories from earlier this year for context:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_puts_the_smack_... http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_kills_the_api_w...

I thought that I had asked them about that part. Hmmm.

Oh, and I'm Mike. My email is mike@readwriteweb.com if you don't want to just comment here. If you are willing to be quoted for a story, I'll need to know your full name and position/job title/company, what have you. :)

(Yeah, totally not worth it.)

Would you, really? I think that Google has to do something to get into the ring on this one. Facebook bought Beluga. Google's just gonna stand by and do nothing?

Never used BBM, but have been pretty happy with both Beluga and GroupMe...though I'd say GroupMe is the one to go with, as Beluga got bought by Facebook.

Actually curious on this point - is there an app for jailbroken iPhones to see what data is being sent out from your phone? A simple way? Packet sniffer with your phone's IP?

How do you mean?

Okay, so these "sensors" come down to a lot of things. The compass, the accelerometer, the camera, the microphone, bluetooth, wifi. And the tech here is both about location as well as proximity. And actually, looking in my phone settings, it appears that Color uses GPS too. It's on in the location services part of settings on the iPhone.

I think the big takeaway is that it doesn't rely on it and it uses all of these signals to provide a far more accurate sense of location and accuracy. And I have to say, I'm not sure what about using more data points to get a more accurate reading would set off B.S. sensors.

He actually offered no defense. I decided not to focus on the interface/user experience because everyone else did. He pretty much compared it to a venue that opened before it was ready. I decided to question them about the tech, because that seemed to be the part nobody was really discussing and I figured maybe all this money was because there was some interesting tech at its core. I think there is.

I have plenty of Texan friends on Facebook that have either lived here or visited. The point is still the same, really - this seems to make it easy to poll your friends for information. Quora is more about getting a community-approved answer.

I just moved to San Francisco not too long ago. Maybe I don't want to know about the best Mexican food in SF from someone from SF, maybe I want the opinion of my Texan pals, who share a similar taste in Mexican food....cuz damnit, I want that certain type of salsa (or something).

Of course, on the Internet, we are always in danger of ending up in an echo chamber.

And besides, there's still Yelp. And Foodspotting. And every other one of those apps out there to get outside my friends' opinions. I just think this makes it easier than ever to get friends' feedback.

Only thing I wonder is, will FB prioritize these entries? Because seeking friends' opinions on FB always seems to get answers from people you weren't looking for answers from.