FLOSS Weekly

19 Articles

FLOSS Weekly Episode 780: Zoneminder — Better Call Randal

April 23, 2024 by 3 Comments

This week Jonathan Bennett and Aaron Newcomb chat with Isaac Connor about Zoneminder! That’s the project that’s working to store and deliver all the bits from security cameras — but the CCTV world has changed a lot since Zoneminder first started, over 20 years ago. The project is working hard to keep up, with machine learning object detection, WebRTC, and more. Isaac talks a bit about developer burnout, and a case or two over the years where an aggressive contributor seems suspicious in retrospect. And when is the next stable version of Zoneminder coming out, anyway?

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FLOSS Weekly Episode 779: Errata Prevention Specialist

April 17, 2024 by 1 Comment

This week Jonathan Bennett and Dan Lynch sit down with Andy Stewart to talk about Andy’s Ham Radio Linux (AHRL)! It’s the Linux distro designed to give hams the tools they need to work with their radios. What’s it like to run a niche Linux distro? How has Andy managed to keep up with this for over a decade? And what’s the big announcement about the project breaking today?

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FLOSS Weekly Episode 778: OctoPrint — People Are Amazing At Breaking Things

April 10, 2024 by 7 Comments

This week Jonathan Bennett and Katherine Druckman sit down with Gina Häußge to talk OctoPrint! It’s one of our favorite ways to babysit our 3D printers, and the project has come a long way in the last 12 years! It’s a labor of love, primarily led by Gina, who has managed to turn it into a full time job. Listen in to hear that story and more, including how to run an Open Source project without losing your sanity, why plugins are great, and how to avoid adding a special services employee as a co-maintainer!

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FLOSS Weekly Episode 777: Asterisk — Wait, Faxes?

April 3, 2024 by 9 Comments

This week Jonathan Bennett and David Ruggles sit down with Joshua Colp to talk about Asterisk! That’s the Open Source phone system software you already interact with without realizing it. It started as a side project to run the phones for Linux Support Services, and it turned out working on phone systems was more fun than supporting Linux. The project grew, and in the years since has landed at Sangoma, where Joshua holds the title of Asterisk Project Lead.

Asterisk is used in call centers, business phone systems, and telecom appliances around the world. But how does it handle faxes, WebRTC, and stopping spam calls? Just kidding on that last one, still an unsolved problem.

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FLOSS Weekly Episode 776: Dnsmasq, Making The Internet Work Since 1999

March 27, 2024 by 4 Comments

This week Jonathan Bennett and Simon Phipps sit down with Simon Kelley to talk about Dnsmasq! That’s a piece of software that was first built to get a laptop online over LapLink, and now runs on most of the world’s routers and phones. How did we get here, and what does the future of Dnsmasq look like? For now, Dnsmasq has a bus factor of one, which is a bit alarming, given how important it is to keeping all of us online. But the beauty of the project being available under the GPL is that if Simon Kelley walks away, Google, OpenWRT, and other users can fork and continue maintenance as needed. Give the episode a listen to learn more about Dnsmasq, how it’s tied to the Human Genome Project, and more!

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FLOSS Weekly Episode 775: Meshtastic Central

March 20, 2024 by 4 Comments

This week, Jonathan Bennett and Rob Campbell chat with Ben Meadors and Adam McQuilkin to talk about what’s new with Meshtastic! There’s a lot. To start with, your favorite podcast host has gotten roped into doing development for the project. There’s a new Rust client, there’s a way to run the firmware on Linux Native, and there’s a shiny new web-based flasher tool!

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FLOSS Weekly Episode 774: Let’s Get Rusty

March 13, 2024 by 5 Comments

This week, Jonathan Bennett chats with Herbert Wolverson about Rust! Is it really worth the hype? Should you have written that in Rust? What’s up with “if let some” anyways? And what’s the best way to get started with this exciting language? We also cover comparisons with other languages like Ada, what drives us crazy about Cargo, and the fascinating world of kernel development!

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