The Free and Open Source Developers European Meeting (FOSDEM) is one of the world’s largest annual gatherings for free software advocates (like myself) and developers to share and discuss our work. Because the meeting was virtual this year (in response to the pandemic), I was blessed with the opportunity to participate by pre-recording a presentation. […]
One month ago, I launched the GitHub repository awesome-theology. I intend Awesome Theology to be a new contribution to the Awesome project. Awesome is a parent system by which “awesome lists about all kinds of interesting topics” are made and maintained by persons who are engaged in those topics. The Awesome Manifesto specifies that an […]
The Learning Management System (LMS) Brightspace Desire2Learn (D2L) was one of a number of popular software tools that I condemned in my free software manifesto for Catholic institutions. Ideally, nobody would use non-free, closed source institutional spyware, including D2L. In addition to the litany of ideological and security-related problems that come with D2L, it also […]
Historical theologians and GNU/Linux geeks both crave order where order is hard to find. Legacy file types and minor conflicting precedents in the tradition cause chaos to fall as acid rain on the continents in which each group’s members work. One drop of order brings sweet, albeit temporary, relief—whether it be a coherent summary of […]
As weeks of social distancing have dragged into months, good cheer has become scarce. Spending quality time with someone outside of one’s household has not been a (responsible) possibility for too long. Even face-to-face interactions with extended family have been replaced by video calls. With people trying to manage a host of potential daily problems—unemployment […]
Until recently, my favorite GNU/Linux distribution was Manjaro, which is based on Arch Linux. Manjaro is to Arch as Ubuntu is to Debian—an overhaul of the parent distribution that is intended to be intuitive for (nearly) all users and immediately functional on (nearly) all desktop systems. Manjaro with i3wm—my first tiling window manager—remains my OS […]
Immediately before what could have been the greatest battle of the Star Wars franchise (if not for poor dialogue and the bizarre setting of Mustafar)—the long-awaited first duel between Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and his former apprentice who had just turned to the Dark Side and pledged his subservience to Darth Sidious—there is a perplexing exchange: […]
Although I cannot endorse the hostile tone of the folks who participate in the Suckless project (“Software that Sucks Less” inasmuch as it is both free and open source and as minimal as possible while functioning as intended), I am grateful for their work. Like many GNU/Linux aficionados, I use the “Stuff that rocks” list […]
Faculty and administrators at Catholic institutions have a responsibility—perhaps, I dare suggest, a moral imperative—to employ free and open source software. That responsibility becomes particularly clear during a time when we are all involved in remote instruction as a temporary means of survival. At this moment, we have a unique opportunity to reevaluate our software choices. Let us not allow that opportunity to be wasted. Moving forward, we ought to use only free and open source software.
Since the goal of making Scripture available in an array of formats is widespread, it is unsurprising that Christian free and open source software developers have blessed us with various command line interface (CLI) Bibles for GNU/Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. The three that I use regularly are grb, vul, and kjv, which show […]