Techrights in the Coming Decade: The Software Angle
HAVING just covered patents - a seminal and important topic for us - let's talk about software, but not software patents.
Over the years we developed software tools. Being a coder myself (for nearly 30 years already), I tend to develop small programs and sometimes merely scripts (like prototypes that aren't efficient but take minutes to write, unlike C programs). The larger programs that I developed are difficult to maintain because frameworks like Qt and GTK keep changing. The smaller programs are still useful and I still use programs I wrote over 20 years ago. They don't need rewriting, they still work as before (for the most part).
Some years ago we added a lot of software to Git and then exposed Git through Gemini Protocol. This meant we didn't rely on some bloated "Web" software to enable access to our code. SSH/Git wasn't needed either.
Gemini Protocol has just turned 5 - i.e. roughly the same age as our Git repositories. We're still producing programs that make us more effective as a site (and beyond). People won't find us on GitHub and GitLab and that's okay; we don't strive to adopt what we keep preaching against, including all the Social Control Media nonsense (gamification of pseudo-communication, under the guise of "social" and "media").
Software can be used to do good but also to do harm. We like to think that our software cannot be used to cause harm to anybody. █
