FP-Day 2015

Tomorrow I will be giving a talk on visual programming languages at the University of Twente during FP-Day 2015. I will later post my slides and full text here, for your enjoyment. Here’s the abstract for my talk: Visual languages: functional programming in the era of jab and smoosh Abstract: Why are we still typing our Read more »

Demanding Free Software in a business context

People who hire companies or freelance programmers to write code for them should demand a Free Software license. This time not even because of ideology, or the higher goals of Software Freedom. Nope, just because it makes sound business sense and saves a lot of money! There are many non-IT companies who pay other self-employed Read more »

Booting from USB with Grub2

I wanted to check out LiveUSB-OpenBSD, because I’m pondering about switching to OpenBSD for my daily desktop. However, my stubborn laptop acted up again and refused to boot from the USB drive I carefully put OpenBSD on. So I decided to take a trip down search engine lane and see what different ways there are Read more »

GNUstep on Trisquel Taranis

f you are like me and you’re running the excellent Trisquel Taranis you may have noticed that on AMD64 the vanilla GNUstep packages from the repo’s are broken. Ubuntu 10.04 has the same problem and I’ve read that this also occurs with certain Debian installations. Since a life without GNUstep seems pointless or at least very grim I’ve installed everything you need to run and compile GNUstep applications manually. Here I’ll describe the magic incantations I used.

OpenRespect

You may have noticed the heated discussions on Ubuntu and Canonical lately. The decision to move to Unity as the main desktop shell for Ubuntu 11.04 and Canonical insisting on developers assigning their copyright to them hasn’t made them many new friends. Whether you agree with Canonical or not some people seem to speak very Read more »

Advocacy doesn’t work if you tell someone they’re wrong

Generally it isn’t a good idea to offend someone you’re trying to convince. This is sounding almost too obvious, but offending someone we are trying to get to free software is a tactic we often use unconsciously. Instead of getting your point across it will likely lead the other to strengthen or adopt a contrary Read more »

New blog.

Welcome to my blog at FSFE Fellowship Blogs.  I decided to delete my old blog at jellehermsen.nl and redirect the domain to this new place. Being a free software nutter, moving my blog to this place seemed like the next sensible step. I’m not the most diligent blogger, so don’t expect a steady stream of Read more »