Hello! I'm Dan, a UK based full stack web developer with a love of open source software. Most of my free time is spent working on BookStack, playing video-games or getting distracted by one of many hobbies like 3D printing.
I primarily develop in PHP using Laravel, with VueJS being my front-end framework of choice, but I also dabble in Go, NodeJS, TypeScript and Android development.
Latest Blog Posts |
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An easy-to-use and free platform for sharing documentation.
Evaluating the actual FOSS status of projects.
A simple twitter-feed-style RSS aggregator.
A system for managing batch sends to subscriber lists.
A basic HTTP/JSON based monitoring system.
An app for viewing and calculating thermocouple info.
An app to convert between RTD resistance and temperature.
More projects can be found on my Codeberg profile.
Updated DanB/RSS with a new grid view, and smaller docker image:
More parts I've designed and 3D printed for my allotment greenhouse:
A look back at one of my favorite pieces of tech: The 2013 Nexus 7
Been a bit more productive in April. Here's what I've been working on:
The body is round
A bit late, but couldn't sleep so wrote up the games I played last year:
The cal.com project announced they're going closed source, with the reason stated that open source is risky due to AI vulnerability scanning 🤔
Like with mass firings, I think we'll see other VC-backed "Commercial Open Source" projects use AI as an excuse and opportunity to close their code now that AI is reducing the cost to entry for competitors, and for bypassing licensing or limitations in open core.
The licensing for cal.com was always questionable anyway:
March was a bit of a low productivity month. Mainly focused on BookStack releases and patches. Hoping April will be much more productive.
OnlyOffice is getting upset that they've been forked, after they attempted to set sketchy license additions to prevent forks:
I explain their questionable license, including a conversation I had with their legal manager, on isitreallyfoss:
https://isitreallyfoss.com/projects/onlyoffice/
I hope Euro-Office succeeds to provide a FOSS-friendly alternative, will need a lot of effort though to continue a project like that, especially if OnlyOffice play nasty.
Looks like I need to update my blog preview image generator to handle escaped quotes though 😅
Wonderful, now folks are using "AI Agents" to take my details from GitHub for spamming.
This was scummy enough when done direct by humans.
Gotta clean the beans!
What I've been working on in Feb:
- BookStack: security patches, new community and next release.
- DanB/RSS: Reduced docker image size & fixed path handling.
- Started contributing to Debian wiki.
- Three new functional 3D models on Printables.
- Two new blogposts.
- isitreallyfoss: 4 new projects and a new homepage section.
An example of how some university tutors appear to assign open source projects to students without permission, leading to awkward situations for maintainers:
Details about my current 3d printer setup, including all the mods made:
Added a few more projects to isitreallyfoss today, with the most interesting being Netdata.
Their open source offering may be a fair bit more limited than what their website and marketing would infer:
| Time | Message |
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| 02:29:34 | I love how your website blends nostalgia with modern technology. It's the perfect combination! |
| 02:31:49 | Consider me hooked. I was supposed to be doing something productive but here I am instead. |
| 02:34:04 | !! Vote Count Binface for 2030 !! |
| 02:36:19 | The images are all blurry and pixelated. Did someone screenshot these from a CRT monitor? |
| 02:38:34 | Good luck finding anything on this site. The whole thing is organised by someone who clearly hates their visitors. |
| 02:40:49 | Resizing my browser window breaks half the layout. This isn't 2010 anymore, make it responsive. |
