Hi c/digitalart, I would like to propose an art competition for the community.

I got the idea when thinking about what I should do with my graphic tablet I bought a little over two years ago, but never use. I bought it thinking I would finally get into grease pencil in Blender and start drawing again. Turns out I just kept defaulting to mouse and keyboard cause that's what I had been doing the last ten years in Blender. Anyway, I have used it maybe 4 times and I think it could do more use in somebody else's creative hands. I first though of selling it, but then I got the idea that I could donate it as a price in an art competition instead. So yeah, now I'm here writing this post. If this community think it would be a fun activity, then there would be a graphic tablet in the pot.

If we want to do this, I need a few things from you as a community; your opinions on the format/rules, volunteers for a jury, and participation.

Art competition format proposal

Format

Once the competition is started participants will have one month to finish their piece. Then there will be a 24h submission window were everyone participating will post their respective artwork with the name of their piece and "SUBMISSION" in the title.

There will be one week between announcement date and competition start date, to give everyone time know of its existence.

The prize will be a XP-Pen Artist 15.6 graphic tablet with a 15.6" screen. (Used only a few times, but is in pristine condition and with original packaging and default accessories eg. glove, pen, cables and adapter.)

Competition Rules

1. The artwork needs to be at least 512x512 pixels.

2. It has to be made with FOSS applications, eg. GIMP, InkScape, Krita, Blender etc.

3. It can not be completely abstract (must include identifiable subject matter, eg. not just random shapes or gradients)

4. No AI-generated content. (This includes enhancements or assistance in creation or post-processing. )

5. Can't be pornografic (Artistical nudity is allowed, just remember tag)

6. Has to follow community rules of /c/digitalart

7. Artworks must be grounded in a clear artistic intention. The artist should have a specific, articulatable feeling or concept they aim to convey through the piece.
   While intentionality is a prerequisite for art, all creative endeavours are a journey and it can take unexpected turns. The artwork should, however, reflect purposeful artistic choices
   Note: the observer is not required to experience or recognise the artist's intended feeling.

   (This rule is intended to encourage deliberate creative thinking, and is aspirational rather than evaluative)

8. If you have the same, or equivalent drawing tablet and win perhaps consider donating it to someone who can't afford one. (un-enforcable rule)

Voting:

Once the 24h submission window is closed, there will be 48h for users to vote on the submissions.

Judging:

Top 5 contributions by number of up-votes will be judged by a group of jurors consisting of a group of 5-9 community members(that are not themselves participating in the competition).

The jury panel should write a short judgment, motivating their decision on the winning piece.

Judging criteria:

• Artistic expression

• Composition

• Skill/craft within the medium/tool

• Originality

• Audience impact (comment responses, discussions)

In case of a draw:
Community moderators will act as vote-tally referee in case of a draw.

They are all over the garden.

I actually made 12 friends, all goats. But this girl was special. She enjoyed cuddles and I'm going to call her Goatrudth.

These goats are actually working they are used to keep the undergrowth from taking over a historical juniper forest. Historically farmers had animals grazing the hills here. Creating a unique landscape. The fence is to keep wolfs out and of course to keep them from wondering off.

Edit: had misspelled juniper as uniper

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/46782285

So yesterday I pulled out my old "luggable" IBM 5155 because I wanted to know if I could use it as a Terminal for a terminal.

I have previously successfully connected a Psion 5mx over a null modem to a Raspberry Pie. Figured it would be cool to see if I can get it working on this behemoth as well. I have DOS 3.3 on a 5.25" floppy and another with some supplementary software for DOS 3.3. And wow, not a lot of software included. CTTY won't let me set Baud rate, parity och bit size. So it just freezes, and the CONNECT application doesn't throw up errors either but just sort of is there, regardless of settings.

Anyway will in the future get my self a carrier card for a CF -to-IDE so I can throw DOS 6.6 and PROCOMM on it and see if that gets me anywhere. Unless any of you folks have any tips or scathing criticism on my lack of knowledge of DOS.

So yesterday I pulled out my old "luggable" IBM 5155 because I wanted to know if I could use it as a Terminal for a terminal.

I have previously successfully connected a Psion 5mx over a null modem to a Raspberry Pie. Figured it would be cool to see if I can get it working on this behemoth as well. I have DOS 3.3 on a 5.25" floppy and another with some supplementary software for DOS 3.3. And wow, not a lot of software included. CTTY won't let me set Baud rate, parity och bit size. So it just freezes, and the CONNECT application doesn't throw up errors either but just sort of is there, regardless of settings.

Anyway will in the future get my self a carrier card for a CF -to-IDE so I can throw DOS 6.6 and PROCOMM on it and see if that gets me anywhere. Unless any of you folks have any tips or scathing criticism on my lack of knowledge of DOS.

This is an 80s Olivetti I found in a thrift store and purchased for 10€. Its fully functioning and a pure joy to write on. Just listen to that daisywheel slapping that paper.

By chance I stubmled on this Olivetti ETP 92 in a thrift store, got it for 10€. Now I need some help, as far as I can tell this typewriter is functionally the same as the Olivetti ETP 55, from pictures and descriptions. But I can't really find any information about the ETP 92. Is it some regional naming or is it an oddity or just so not interesting enough to have much information online? Any one here know anything about this novel machine. It works perfectly and I have replacement ribbons on the way already, hopefully they fit.

Found out today when one of my cards was greyed out and I logged out and in again to reload my cards. Good thing I always have one of my physical cards with me, otherwise I would have had to construct some form of sail on my car to get home. As far as I know that was the last European, at least Swedish Wallet app that wasn't one of the tech giants Wallets. It was a good run but I'm back to plastic cards I guess. Really hoping for a European alternative to master card/visa will be revealed soon and with a digital wallet to go with it. If I'm wrong here and there is a EU based Wallet compatible with /e/OS, Android please let me know.

A very leading question and probably a stupid one to ask on Lemmy.

Perhaps some of you might have seen me around before, or seen a glimpse of one of my creative projects as you scrolled through All/New. I am nowhere near as prolific with my posting on Lemmy as some of you. But I'm here lurking daily.

Don't think we don't notice you! Your herculean efforts to keep this corner of the internet alive is pivotal to the success and continued existence of the fediverse.

Posting my creative projects on the fediverse was how I got started with Lemmy when I was looking for a new home once I finally took the leap to leave the corporate platforms and their insidious algorithms.

Around five months ago there was a post about The free software foundation announcing a librephone initiative. I wrote a comment expressing some of my feelings and thoughts about the European citizens highly restricted options to participate in our digital society, and I was surprised by the huge amount of ⭡ I received. It caused me to take pause, and a seed was planted. Around the same time I had begun working on a long argumentative text in opposition to CC2(Chat Controll 2), when it made one of its million rounds in the EU parliament calendar, which I then sent to all "my" representatives, and some others. The seed was now germinating. I also realised when reading through all the proposed legislation in the CC2 bill, that there was two huge gaping loopholes written into the proposition that would essentially make it toothless. Namely, open source peer-to-peer software falling out side of its scope and the definition of organisation was so broad, that all of Lemmy could just decide that we are a non-profit organisation(some minor bureaucratic filings required) and all members would be exempt as long as the communication was within the "organisation". The sprout now broke the soil. We shouldn't be reactive we should be as aggressively active, as the organisations that are lobbying against our digital rights. We should organise... I want to organise!

So I started researching what was required to start a non-profit organisation, what you are allowed to do, what grants such an organisation might be able to apply for, how non-profits can earn revenue, how this revenue is allowed to be used while retaining the non-profit status. (Not to leach, but to sustain the organisation) what is required if the organisation were to take on salaried employees, etc.

Not long after this, the EU-Commission opened an Open call for Feedback on Open Source Software. So I figured this would be a great opportunity for me to dip my toes into the world of public consultation responses or submissions.

Since my late teens I have been a proponent of open source and digital rights and freedoms for individuals. My proselytising though, has been almost exclusively happening in the interpersonal sphere. To the annoyance of my friends. But now I was about to do it publicly, my apprehension turned into weeks of research and debates while writing my response. This research turned into a 3000 word argumentative paper( also posted here on Lemmy for the interested and gives a lot of insight on where I stand on the issue of sovereignty and OSS). All while I was still working on a Non-profit organisations Bylaws/constitution along with Policy documentation and a vision and strategy document. One big thing I took away from this research and reflection was that citizen/consumer digital rights, even if enshrined into law, will be impossible to uphold without digital sovereignty.

I might be slaughtering the English words for these documents. But it's in essence; The Bylaws are the legally binding document that outlines what we will do, how we will aim to do it, and our core mission. The Policy describes the internal structure, ethics, and operational guidelines. Vision and Strategy outlines where we are aiming to go.

What now?

Well I need driven individuals that share my passion for OSS(FOSS) , democratic values, EU- resilience and digital sovereignty. I have deliberately refrained from trying to stack the board with friends/personal contacts, because I don't want this to be just my project, my mission.

As of now it(Working name exists, but that's not important right now.) is a non-entity because the Bylaws need to be voted on by a board of at least 5 individuals.

What would be the core mission of this organisation?

• I envision it to be an organisation that actively lobbies for citizen digital rights and digital sovereignty.

• An organisation that on its own and in collaboration with like minded organisations engage in Educating the public and build awareness around digital rights and sovereignty(we have a word for this in Swedish that is so much more fitting -opinionsbildande).

• Actively engages in projects that seeks to address digital exclusion.

• Promotes OSS/FOSS solutions and consults about their implementations and advantages/benefits.

• Lobby for platform independent FOSS alternatives to access crucial governmental/banking services.

The list of priorities is extensive but.. with a little luck I have conveyed enough for those interested, to join my mission.

This is still early days, so no homepage yet, no social media handles. What I have created is a Fluxer.app Community for those interested in participating. https://fluxer.gg/Nf9hGtQq The Fluxer community is meant as a stepping stone, a place to start.

And for those few of you who has followed me for my creative content and has been wondering why I haven't updated in a while, this is what has kept me from working on creative projects.

//FoliumCreations

A short I wrote on the train on my way to work today. Enjoy it, continue it, or let it inspire.

The fog laid thick across the landscape, like oppressive, almost opaque walls constantly just out of reach. The trees lining the footpath, barely visible like silent grey monoliths in the low light. As dusk slowly transitioned towards night, the forest had fallen into complete silence, the crackling of gravel now uncomfortably loud. With every step forward the cold and damp of his surroundings seeped in through the openings between his layers of clothing, his fingers aching under the weight of the bag he had been carrying for what felt like an eternity. Now forced to constantly shift it from hand to hand his arms weak from the exertion. Small shivers in his neck gradually migrated across his torso and grew in intensity. As the fog around him progressively lost what transparency it had to the darkness of the night his determined stride turned into a slight limp to compensate for the fatigue in his arms and lower back. With the absence of visual impressions the aching in his body stole the majority of his mind's attention, making every step almost unbearable. He had to stop, he had made most of the journey already, he did not have very far left to go. But he just needed a short rest. He put down the bag next to him and slowly stretched out his back, pain dissipating from his spine now that the weight of the bag was no longer pulling it unevenly down. As he massaged and blew on his burning hands, he could hear footsteps in the distance; they grew louder and louder. A faint flicker of light gradually appeared in the distance dancing like a firefly lost in the darkness.

Hur kan man envisas med att göra på samma sätt var enda gång och förvänta sig andra resultat?

Ett uttryck jag en gång hörde från en äldre gubbe gör sig till minnes.

" Det där hade ju till och med en tjackpundare med röven full av krita kunnat räkna ut " - okänd gubbe 2010

At the time of writing this, Fluxer does not yet support streaming a game, application, or your screen with audio on Linux. This is a workaround that can be used in the meanwhile. At first glance this guide might seem lengthy, but it's actually only about 3 steps required for this workaround, the rest is explanations and sub steps to help guide those unfamiliar with audio interfaces and routing audio.

Note: This workaround requires installing a tool through the Linux terminal, although this package is available in Debian, Arch and fedora based repositories, this guide will use the Debian command apt for installation.

What we are aiming to achieve is sharing audio from a game or an application along with our mic input with others in a call. We will do this by using an application called qpwgraph. Which is a Graph manager for Pipewire. It will let us "route" inputs and outputs of different audio sources with a graphical interface. While this requires some manual labor whenever we want to stream audio while in a call, it is by far the simplest method I have found to substitute the "Sharing Audio" feature.

Note: If your system is not using Pipewire, QjackCtl is an alternative but it also requires installing the API Jackd.

First we need to install qpwgraph, so lets open up a terminal. Then type the following command into the terminal:

	sudo apt install qpwgraph

Once installed we can open the application either through our application menu or typing qpwgraph into the terminal.

What, and how many, audio interfaces you see when you first open up qpwgraph depends entirely on your hardware and system setup. Because of this, I will try and explain how you identify what is an input and what is an output source. I recommend that all software capturing or playing audio is closed when first starting qpwgraph, because then only your hardware interfaces and sources should be listed. Once you start an application that either plays or captures audio it will immediately show up in the graph editor as nodes.

Tip: You can move around the nodes to get a better more manageable view if needed.

There are different types of nodes, we have input nodes, output nodes and nodes that have both input and output. Some interfaces have multiple nodes such as most sound card. If the only sound card on your computer is the integrated speakers, headphone jack and internal mic, which is standard for most laptops, it will most likely be represented by three different nodes with differently named Input/outputs. With Capture FL, FR being the input node for your mic and Playback FL, FR being your speakers, FL and FR being your front Left and Right channels.

Note: These Input/output connection points are color coded, with green being the color for standard audio.

If we now start an application that plays audio such as Spotify, we will get an entirely new node in our graph editor called Spotify. This node will have its Output FL, FR connected to the Playback FL, FR of your "output-interface" node.

Let's say we want to stream the music playing from Spotify while talking and sharing our screen in Fluxer, all we have to do is to also route the output from Spotify to the Input FL, FR of Fluxer. Some apps can't handle multiple sources being routed to the same Input channels, and require setting up virtual audio devices that act as a middle man. Fortunately, Fluxer can handle this.

If you open Fluxer, it will show up in qpwgraph as Chromium, this is expected since its a webapp. All we need to do now is to click the output connections on Spotify and connect them to the input connections on the Chromium node.

If you want to break the connection between two nodes simply select it by left clicking the green line connecting the two and then right click and choose disconnect.

Reference image below using an external sound card connected as default input device, and Spotify connected to both standard output and Fluxer input along with external sound card on the same channels

This same operation can be performed for any app that plays sound, and qpwgraph will remember routes even if apps are closed and then opened again.

Note: Two things to remember; You will need to manually cut connections if you want to stop streaming audio along with your voice, and the other parties in your call will not be able to adjust the volume ratio between your mic and what ever audio you have routed to the Fluxer input. This is because it is now the same audio source in Fluxer so you will have to adjust the levels on your end.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/44314509

I have been in the process of writing some help guides, and one of my friends graciously lent me his Steam Deck so that I could verify that Fluxer would work on it as well. And I'm happy to say it does. Although I did not plan on just posting a Fluxer Help-Article on Lemmy, I figured while waiting on the Fluxer team to start accepting pull requests and me getting done with my guides, someone might be looking for step-by-step instructions for their Steam Deck. So here it is. Feedback and discussion is of course welcome.

---

In this Help Article we will guide you step-by-step through the process of installing and integrating Fluxer into your application menu on the Steam Deck. Although not required, access to an external physical keyboard is recommended.

The Steam Deck is running a custom version on Linux that is based on Arch, and the CPU architecture is x86-64. This means we could either use the AppImage(x64) option or the tar.gz(x64) option from the download drop-down on https://fluxer.app/downloads

Since integrating the AppImage into the application menu requires additional steps such as manually retrieving the icon .png file this guide will focus on the installation process for the tar.gz.

Before we explain how to install Fluxer from the tar.gz file, let's take a moment and go through what a tar.gz file is. tar.gz are actually two abbreviations put together. "tar" from Tape Archive (sometimes referred to as a tarball) which is an archive file format and the "gz" at the end is short for Gzip(which in of itself is short for Gnu Zip) and it is a compression format. When combined you get an archive that is neatly packed in one file that is now also take up less space.

- Okay, why was that important to start off with?

Well, since it is a compressed archive, that means we can't just double click it and hope it will do much more than perhaps open the preinstalled unarchiver on our system. The fact is, a tar.gz file does not necessarily even have to contain any executable, even if it is an application. In this case with the Fluxer - tar.gz it does contain a executable.

Note: The steps outlined in this help article will primarily be performed using the terminal. The keyboard shortcut to open the terminal is "Ctrl + Alt + T" or you can open it from the application menu under the "system" category and it is referred to as "console".

Installing Fluxer

Let's begin by entering desktop mode on the Steam Deck. Long press the power button on the top of the Steam Deck, this should make a menu appear, from that menu choose "switch to desktop".

Then open the web browser and download the tar.gz(x64) from https://fluxer.app/download.

Once downloaded navigate to your download folder through the terminal by typing the following command:

cd ~/Downloads

Where Downloads is either the default download location, or the folder you chose to save the tar.gz file.

Tip: You can press "tab" on your keyboard to complete the file/directory name. If there are multiple files/directories with the same beginning of the filename it won't auto complete. But if you press tab again, it will show you all possibilities with the same beginning. This is referred to as "Tab Complete".

Now it is time to extract our tar.gz we can do this by using the tar command. Type the following command into the terminal:

tar -xzf fluxer-stable-0.0.8-x64.tar.gz

Tip: The options x, z, f stand for extract, decompress gzip, and specify the file. "Specify the file" might seem a bit cryptic, but remember tar is as old as tape drives. In essence the "f" option just says, what comes next is the filename.

You could run Fluxer here and now, cd into the directory we just extracted and then type the following command in the terminal:

./fluxer

But lets install it properly. Because right now, Fluxer only works if you navigate to its folder and run it manually from the terminal. If we move it to a standard system location and create a desktop entry, we will integrate it with your system. This means Fluxer will appear in your application menu, and you can launch it like any other installed program.

Note: make sure you are located inside the fluxer-stable-0.0.8-x64 folder for the next step. Use the cd command followed by the folder name if needed.

Next we need to create two directories, copy the Fluxer files and make a symbolic link to the executable that can later be used by the application menu to launch Fluxer.

Type the following commands into the terminal:

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/fluxer cp -r * ~/.local/share/fluxer/ mkdir -p ~/.local/bin ln -s ~/.local/share/fluxer/fluxer ~/.local/bin/fluxer

Each line followed by return or enter.

Now that the Fluxer has been installed we want to have it appear in our application menu, to achieve this we need to let the system know where to find it. Lets begin by creating a .desktop file with the Nano editor in the terminal.

Type the following command into the terminal:

nano ~/.local/share/applications/fluxer.desktop

Write the following into the file.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Fluxer
Exec=/home/USERNAME/.local/share/fluxer/fluxer
Icon=/home/USERNAME/.local/share/fluxer/resources/512x512.png
Type=Application
Categories=Network;Chat;

Note: Change "USERNAME" to your username

Once done; press Ctrl + O to write out (functionally the same as Save), then Ctrl + X to exit Nano.

And now lets validate the .desktop file, by typing the following command into the terminal:

desktop-file-validate ~/.local/share/applications/fluxer.desktop

If this returns no errors we can continue and make our .desktop file executable

Type the following command into the terminal:

chmod +x ~/.local/share/applications/fluxer.desktop

And lastly lets update the desktop database. Type the following command into the terminal:

update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications/

You will now be able to access Fluxer through your application menu and it will sit in the correct category.

Note: Fluxer will not run properly if added to your steam library as a non steam game on the Steam Deck and launched from within game mode. - This is no longer true

Edit: After some troubleshooting I realized that there seemed to be an issue with the sandboxing and steam wanting to run the app in 32-bit environment.

Solution: All that should be required to solve the situation is to add env -u LD_PRELOAD %command% to the launch option in properties for Fluxer in steam. I did how ever first try and fix the sandboxing issue so if for you the issue persists after adding the launch options. cd into ~/.local/share/fluxer and run the following two commands in the terminal:

sudo chown root:root chrome-sandbox
sudo chmod 4755 chrome-sandbox

I have been in the process of writing some help guides, and one of my friends graciously lent me his Steam Deck so that I could verify that Fluxer would work on it as well. And I'm happy to say it does. Although I did not plan on just posting a Fluxer Help-Article on Lemmy, I figured while waiting on the Fluxer team to start accepting pull requests and me getting done with my guides, someone might be looking for step-by-step instructions for their Steam Deck. So here it is. Feedback and discussion is of course welcome.

In this Help Article we will guide you step-by-step through the process of installing and integrating Fluxer into your application menu on the Steam Deck. Although not required, access to an external physical keyboard is recommended.

The Steam Deck is running a custom version on Linux that is based on Arch, and the CPU architecture is x86-64. This means we could either use the AppImage(x64) option or the tar.gz(x64) option from the download drop-down on https://fluxer.app/downloads

Since integrating the AppImage into the application menu requires additional steps such as manually retrieving the icon .png file this guide will focus on the installation process for the tar.gz.

Before we explain how to install Fluxer from the tar.gz file, let's take a moment and go through what a tar.gz file is. tar.gz are actually two abbreviations put together. "tar" from Tape Archive (sometimes referred to as a tarball) which is an archive file format and the "gz" at the end is short for Gzip(which in of itself is short for Gnu Zip) and it is a compression format. When combined you get an archive that is neatly packed in one file that is now also take up less space.

- Okay, why was that important to start off with?

Well, since it is a compressed archive, that means we can't just double click it and hope it will do much more than perhaps open the preinstalled unarchiver on our system. The fact is, a tar.gz file does not necessarily even have to contain any executable, even if it is an application. In this case with the Fluxer - tar.gz it does contain a executable.

Note: The steps outlined in this help article will primarily be performed using the terminal. The keyboard shortcut to open the terminal is "Ctrl + Alt + T" or you can open it from the application menu under the "system" category and it is referred to as "console".

Installing Fluxer

Let's begin by entering desktop mode on the Steam Deck. Long press the power button on the top of the Steam Deck, this should make a menu appear, from that menu choose "switch to desktop".

Then open the web browser and download the tar.gz(x64) from https://fluxer.app/download.

Once downloaded navigate to your download folder through the terminal by typing the following command:

cd ~/Downloads

Where Downloads is either the default download location, or the folder you chose to save the tar.gz file.

Tip: You can press "tab" on your keyboard to complete the file/directory name. If there are multiple files/directories with the same beginning of the filename it won't auto complete. But if you press tab again, it will show you all possibilities with the same beginning. This is referred to as "Tab Complete".

Now it is time to extract our tar.gz we can do this by using the tar command. Type the following command into the terminal:

tar -xzf fluxer-stable-0.0.8-x64.tar.gz

Tip: The options x, z, f stand for extract, decompress gzip, and specify the file. "Specify the file" might seem a bit cryptic, but remember tar is as old as tape drives. In essence the "f" option just says, what comes next is the filename.

You could run Fluxer here and now, cd into the directory we just extracted and then type the following command in the terminal:

./fluxer

But lets install it properly. Because right now, Fluxer only works if you navigate to its folder and run it manually from the terminal. If we move it to a standard system location and create a desktop entry, we will integrate it with your system. This means Fluxer will appear in your application menu, and you can launch it like any other installed program.

Note: make sure you are located inside the fluxer-stable-0.0.8-x64 folder for the next step. Use the cd command followed by the folder name if needed.

Next we need to create two directories, copy the Fluxer files and make a symbolic link to the executable that can later be used by the application menu to launch Fluxer.

Type the following commands into the terminal:

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/fluxer
cp -r * ~/.local/share/fluxer/
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
ln -s ~/.local/share/fluxer/fluxer ~/.local/bin/fluxer

Each line followed by return or enter.

Now that the Fluxer has been installed we want to have it appear in our application menu, to achieve this we need to let the system know where to find it. Lets begin by creating a .desktop file with the Nano editor in the terminal.

Type the following command into the terminal:

nano ~/.local/share/applications/fluxer.desktop

Write the following into the file.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Fluxer
Exec=/home/USERNAME/.local/share/fluxer/fluxer
Icon=/home/USERNAME/.local/share/fluxer/resources/512x512.png
Type=Application
Categories=Network;Chat;

Note: Change "USERNAME" to your username

Once done; press Ctrl + O to write out (functionally the same as Save), then Ctrl + X to exit Nano.

And now lets validate the .desktop file, by typing the following command into the terminal:

desktop-file-validate ~/.local/share/applications/fluxer.desktop

If this returns no errors we can continue and make our .desktop file executable

Type the following command into the terminal:

chmod +x ~/.local/share/applications/fluxer.desktop

And lastly lets update the desktop database. Type the following command into the terminal:

update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications/

You will now be able to access Fluxer through your application menu and it will sit in the correct category.

Note: Fluxer will not run properly if added to your steam library as a non steam game on the Steam Deck and launched from within game mode. - This is no longer true

Edit: After some troubleshooting I realized that there seemed to be an issue with the sandboxing and steam wanting to run the app in 32-bit environment.

Solution: All that should be required to solve the situation is to add env -u LD_PRELOAD %command% to the launch option in properties for Fluxer in steam. I did how ever first try and fix the sandboxing issue so if for you the issue persists after adding the launch options. cd into ~/.local/share/fluxer and run the following two commands in the terminal:

sudo chown root:root chrome-sandbox
sudo chmod 4755 chrome-sandbox

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/42619499

So, the response I wrote to the European Open Digital Ecosystems call for evidence turned out to be about five times longer than the character limit for the feedback prompt. However, there was also an option to submit .odt and .pdf files, so I was able to submit my response in full.

The response took weeks to write, with many of the points thoroughly discussed and explored before being put into writing. I decided to post it here as well because it is an important topic to discuss. As with any exploration of a topic, some nuance is inevitably lost, despite my efforts to be precise while trying to encompass the entire digital chain.

I also had help from a co-writer to finish the response because I got the flu with three days left before the deadline and was basically bedridden until today. Also, if you haven’t shared your thoughts yet, you still have until midnight today.

---

There are great obstacles to widespread adoption of open source and its subsequent thriving in the EU and its market. Further details on these will be explained later in the key objectives section. But before we look at what we could or should do, let’s briefly look at the consumer’s place and options in a European open digital ecosystem. Because, in a sense, open source is already thriving in the EU, as well as the rest of the world. Every server, router, and cloud service does either in full, or in major part, run on open source software, protocols, and/or code. Because all the major players have realized that they all gain from sharing and contributing to it. Their finished product isn’t necessarily open source, but its foundation is built, or rests, on it. With the end consumer, the choices and options are often only surface level, and I’m using consumer here because not all who interact with software or services are “users”. We, the consumers, are often forced to interact with applications, services, and systems out of necessity rather than choice. Participation in digital society today is, in practice, compulsory rather than optional. This will, if it hasn't already, lead to a process in which an individual must sequentially accept non-negotiable contractual constraints imposed by multiple independent corporations, often across jurisdictions. In order to perform a mandatory (or because the alternative would effectively “soft-lock” the individual out of the system) civic or economic function, each acceptance irreversibly alters the individual’s legal rights in practice. This creates what can be described as compelled rights violating dependency chain. While we have very strong and clear legislation, such as COUNCIL DIRECTIVE 93/13/EEC ^1^, enacted to mitigate these types of EULAs within the EU , the risk is, however, still present for the individual consumer due to the resource disparity. Having citizens forced into accepting EULAs with entities outside of the EU in order to participate in our society, solely because the alternative is non-existent, creates this rights-violating dependency chain that perpetuates those same actors monopolistic standing, which in turn, hampers the EU’s security, sovereignty, resilience, and prosperity, as well as very competent internal players. If, at any point in the chain, consumers must consent to waiving their rights to their data and usage analytics in order to participate as functioning members of society, then such “consent” is fictional. Let me pose this simple question: What options does the average citizen have to partake in our digital society, and what services are they required to interact with to remain functioning members, or to access services to sustain them (medical, civic duties, social security, taxes, etc.)? Once identified, focus should be placed on ensuring viable European open source options, not reliant on external (ergo non-EU) services, are available for EU consumers and citizens. This will require implementing open source systems throughout our public sectors, all the way down to the consumer platforms. This would shore up our citizens digital rights, while ensuring robust cybersecurity audits are possible through all links in the chain. Re-tooling agencies with open source alternatives is not the largest hurdle to European digital sovereignty, resilience, and security. It’s a large hurdle, and challenges awaiting us in this space should not be underestimated. However, the largest and most important hurdle is consumer adoption of open source alternatives and EU-based alternatives. Because consumer adoption requires allure. The alternative supplied can’t just be the better option on paper. Plenty of failed products throughout history have been the objectively better options when viewed as a whole, but had too much friction for individual consumers to adopt. The friction that hinders adoption of an alternative or new product can be everything from price to ease of use, ecosystem, availability, compatibility, or even current adoption rate. All of these friction points can of course be mitigated with various means. But to effectively mitigate these frictions to adoption, they must be considered early and influence how and where we put our efforts. For us to be able to take full advantage of a European push for open source, Directive 2001/29/EC Article 6 needs to be revised, firstly to ensure digital sovereignty and avoid externally imposed artificial digital scarcity during European build-up and re-tooling. An advantageous economic side-effect of this would be domestic actors being able to take advantage of the new market opportunity created, offering open source EU alternatives for EU consumers seeking service, support, and software alternatives to devices they already own from external hardware suppliers. On 2022-05-05, Deutsche Welle reported that John Deere remotely disabled farm equipment stolen from Ukraine ^2^. If the American-owned market leaders in farm equipment in Europe were to be pressured by their government to disable equipment owned by European farmers, it would be disastrous for us. It is imperative that we have secured the tools to counteract such a scenario, to avoid finding us in a situation where we are forced to reactively scramble to un-brick ~14 Billion EUR worth of combined harvesters. This is not to mention the massive security risk posed by extraterritorial legal exposure, namely the CLOUD Act.

POINTS FROM FEEDBACK INITIATIVE

Key objectives include: - continuing development and ensuring appropriate visibility of EU high-quality and secure open-source solutions and demonstrating their added value;

EU should not try to reinvent the wheel. There are plenty of established open-source projects that could either in full or in major part be deployed as is. For consumer desktop platforms there are OS-distributions like Debian and Redhat that are not only the base for many variations Linux but also very matured and established. On the mobile platform the options are fewer and unfortunately only two end consumer viable options. Although Android OpenSource Project - AOSP might at first glance seem like the best option to fork and create a EU driven version of (there are some forks of AOSP already trying to realize this). The fact that we are missing a third viable option for end consumers hampers competition, agility, and consumer choice. The reasonable choice here would be to support a mobile mainline Linux distribution such as Sailfish OS, which today struggles with adoption due to lack of software availability within the ecosystem, and are forced to maintain a compatibility layer to offer end user functionality.

The same would hold true for public entities, and agency's within EU, one way to ensure the same solutions aren't invented by multiple independent actors, thereby not taking advantage of the cost savings, faster development, and interoperability that comes from utilising open-source software ^3, could be by setting up public sector domain interest groups. These public sector domain groups main purpose could be to evaluate and formulate requirement assessments and guide development for their interest group. They could also collaborate with each other on projects or questions that are relevant for multiple areas.

- addressing issues of deployment, usability, software supply chain security and governance, maintenance of code and project sustainability to ensure take-up and upscaling;

Complete adoption of open source within the public sector would, de facto, create favourable conditions to govern and ensure the security of the software supply chain, while at the same time enabling agile and stable maintenance of code. This is due to the intrinsic nature of open source; it can be forked, audited, and contributed to by anyone, thus mitigating the risk of software being suddenly abandoned or left unsupported because the corporation owning the software dropping support due to profitability concerns or going out of business. While in the short term the cost of migration might be higher than the current rolling costs of maintaining closed-source solutions, in the long term open-source solutions will be the cost-effective option, especially when these solutions can be reused and modified freely. Thus, the cost becomes balanced across the market rather than requiring the same entry toll for every purchaser of the same closed-source platform.

Vendor lock-ins are by far the largest hurdle for the public sector(goverment agencies) and European corporations.

- supporting emerging open-source business and sustainability models for open-source companies and foundations, including by developing public-private partnerships;

While this might be outside the scope of this feedback initiative, we within the EU need to collectively be able to assign certain EU-owned corporations, producers, manufacturers, or service providers as “strategic” and prohibit them from being sold off to investors or actors outside of the EU. The recent loss of Arduino as a strategic European corporation, after the Qualcomm purchase, is a perfect example of this. This left the EU without a key strategic internal integrated chip designer and manufacturer. This void needs to be filled for both civilian and, by extension, military sectors. One way EU could support open-source businesses could be a EU-driven co-op consisting of public entities from all member states that acts as a producer and/or customer of open source software solutions and open source hardware components. This co-op entity could also act as one part of the strategy to along side public sector domain interest groups to promote and support emerging businesses, companies, and foundations by extending grants, offering bounty programs, and purchasing solutions, products, and services from internal actors. Monopsony is not new to industries or sectors of our economies that are of strategic value, and while European open source development does not necessarily have to be fed by one entity, certain projects could very well require it, and we should not dismiss it as an option for strategic resources, be they microcontrollers, integrated systems, or management services. One other benefit of such a co-op would be the negotiating power it would wield when purchasing contracts for hardware solutions not available internally on behalf of the member states and their institutions, imposing EU-aligned values and policies on corporations by acting as the gatekeeper to a very substantial market. This co-op could also help different public sector domain interest groups balance costs by identifying aligned needs across the market or shared code base. Another option for a large-scale solution to to the public-private partnership development could consist of setting up alternative revenue models for new and emerging actors. By setting up tiered based on offerings scale, from simple-to-receive models with short-term proof of work and deliverables, to harder and more stringent approval procedures for large-scale projects with long time frames before results can be presented. Examples of this for simpler, lower-tier projects could be an agency hosting a Codeberg/Git repository for their custom implementation of Open HRMS ^4^ and asking for added functionality from outside contributors with a bounty, granting the bounty to the author of the pull request that gets committed. The previously mentioned public sector domain interest groups could also make use of this co-op entity’s market position to set up contracts, based on their requirement assessments, with internal actors for projects that require specialist competencies or integration normally outside of their scope.

- promoting best practice and encouraging the public sector, specialised business sectors and large customers to contribute to and adopt open source;

If the EU mandates that all internal government systems, as well as public-facing portals and platforms, are open source, it would create significant opportunities for existing and potential internal actors to support and maintain these systems. Cross-integration between sectors would also be greatly simplified, since the code would not be hidden behind a veil of secrecy and prohibition. One agency's internal development work could be applied or modified by another. Both development and code audits would become essentially collectivized and distributed across all sectors and actors, lowering costs and simplifying integration and policy alignment, with the added benefit of creating a more accessible environment for future startups and the formation of new agencies, foundations, etc.

- supporting market integration, especially with legacy systems and policy alignment

With a Fund or Fork methodology, meaning that the EU could support open-source projects both internal and external that we deem useful or strategic, with the added benefit of being able to have influence on these same projects policy alignments, by financially secure development. While still maintaining control over governance by having the option to fork, if the project deviates or strays to far from EU policies and values.

Another area were we the EU should put effort is our digital civilian defence, with alternative network stacks such as reticulum ^5^ to ensure functional communication and continued civil operation during emergencies affecting our infrastructure.

1. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the EU open-source sector? What are the main barriers that hamper (i) adoption and maintenance of high-quality and secure open source;

Vendor lock-in for the largest service providers. Both public institutions and private companies are stuck in ecosystems provided by a few vendors. This relates to both operating systems for desktops and mobile devices with the accompanying software, but mainly through the interconnectedness of cloud services provided by these vendors. Much of the digital infrastructure of European companies is run on hardware provided by a handful of non EU-providers. These vendors provide whole, interconnected ecosystems with everything from identity providers, “serverless”, catalog-services for authorization, virtual networking, storage, security, secrets management. Although these services are provided by multiple vendors it is not trivial to move between them, unless the infrastructure was specifically designed for to be multi cloud. Even then multi-cloud setups mainly focus on switching between a few of these vendors. Since these vendors provide specific interfaces, terminology and technology, experience with one vendor does not directly translate between them, further increasing the risk for vendor lock in. There are many open source alternatives to the specific services that are provided by these vendors, however none provide a full, realistic alternative with the full range of services, technology, and flexibility of these vendors. While there are mature open source cloud solutions, there needs to be services that can provide this capability the same type of robustness, support and ease of use as the non- EU Competitors. Further more EU needs to support projects to be able to migrate the infrastructure that has already been built for other cloud vendors. These kinds of projects could focus on converting IaC (infrastructure as code, for example OpenTofu now that Terraform is no longer open source) from vendor specific to Open Source Cloud services. While it is possible to use LLM- based text generators for this, a robust, well tested, trustworthy solution is needed, as well as a European one. Besides the conversion of the infrastructure specification, projects that aide in migration of blob-, and secret-storage. By encouraging these European cloud providers to use open source cloud infrastructure, it will also ease the adoption of private cloud and hybrid cloud solutions as these will use the same technology.

(ii) and sustainable contributions to open-source communities?

EU could identify critical or important open source projects and support them by either providing funding directly, or by committing developer time.

1. What is the added value of open source for the public and private sectors? Please provide concrete examples, including the factors (such as cost, risk, lock-in, security, innovation, among others) that are most important to assess the added value.

Having much of EU’s private and public infrastructure hosted and controlled in potentia by non EU vendors is that in the event of geopolitical conflict, that infrastructure is made unavailable, temporarily or permanently, resulting in capital loss, loss of revenue, and loss of vital services for parts or most of the European market. While this scenario may seem unlikely due to the negative consequences it would have for the global market, including the potential adversary, the parable of the frog and the scorpion comes to mind with increasing frequency since 2016, and as such it might be advisable to avoid it be possible in the first place.

Encouraging organisations in the European public sector to not only use open source, but also to actively publish internally developed tools as open source would provide an opportunity for other organisations, on EU, national, and regional to benefit from that work and to contribute to it. Many of EU’s institutions are engaged in similar tasks in their respective domains, and most of their needs will be identical, while not all. Therefore encouraging these projects to adopt modular architectures, designed for such cooperation, with for example a common core functionality and organisational specific modules, would ease the adoption and development of effective tools, while harnessing the competence that is found across the continent.

1. What concrete measures and actions may be taken at EU level to support the development and growth of the EU open-source sector and contribute to the EU’s technological sovereignty and cybersecurity agenda?

Support the creation of EU based full stack, open source cloud service providers that can realistically compete with the non-EU competitors.

Encourage public organisations to cooperate with each other within their domains to produce the tools they need based on a common core, and to open source the tools they have already created.

Support and fund security research into public open source projects and security mitigation projects. Identify critical open source projects, such as those underpinning other infrastructure, basic functionalities, or those with very large market share and fund security research and security mitigation projects to support those projects.

1. What technology areas should be prioritised and why?

Cloud Infrastructure, Operating systems for consumer devices and governmental services.

1. In what sectors could an increased use of open source lead to increased competitiveness and cyber resilience?

Supporting interoperability between different cloud technologies to ease movement between vendors, even open source European ones, will create incentives for those EU vendors to compete on quality of service rather than another lock-in, and fostering healthy competition in the market.

1: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A01993L0013-20111212

2: https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-how-farm-vehicles-stolen-by-russia-were-remotely-disabled/a-61691839

3: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/research/measuring-economic-value-of-os

4: https://github.com/CybroOdoo/OpenHRMS

5: https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum

So, the response I wrote to the European Open Digital Ecosystems call for evidence turned out to be about five times longer than the character limit for the feedback prompt. However, there was also an option to submit .odt and .pdf files, so I was able to submit my response in full.

The response took weeks to write, with many of the points thoroughly discussed and explored before being put into writing. I decided to post it here as well because it is an important topic to discuss. As with any exploration of a topic, some nuance is inevitably lost, despite my efforts to be precise while trying to encompass the entire digital chain.

I also had help from a co-writer to finish the response because I got the flu with three days left before the deadline and was basically bedridden until today. Also, if you haven’t shared your thoughts yet, you still have until midnight today.

There are great obstacles to widespread adoption of open source and its subsequent thriving in the EU and its market. Further details on these will be explained later in the key objectives section. But before we look at what we could or should do, let’s briefly look at the consumer’s place and options in a European open digital ecosystem. Because, in a sense, open source is already thriving in the EU, as well as the rest of the world. Every server, router, and cloud service does either in full, or in major part, run on open source software, protocols, and/or code. Because all the major players have realized that they all gain from sharing and contributing to it. Their finished product isn’t necessarily open source, but its foundation is built, or rests, on it. With the end consumer, the choices and options are often only surface level, and I’m using consumer here because not all who interact with software or services are “users”. We, the consumers, are often forced to interact with applications, services, and systems out of necessity rather than choice. Participation in digital society today is, in practice, compulsory rather than optional. This will, if it hasn't already, lead to a process in which an individual must sequentially accept non-negotiable contractual constraints imposed by multiple independent corporations, often across jurisdictions. In order to perform a mandatory (or because the alternative would effectively “soft-lock” the individual out of the system) civic or economic function, each acceptance irreversibly alters the individual’s legal rights in practice. This creates what can be described as compelled rights violating dependency chain. While we have very strong and clear legislation, such as COUNCIL DIRECTIVE 93/13/EEC ^1^, enacted to mitigate these types of EULAs within the EU , the risk is, however, still present for the individual consumer due to the resource disparity. Having citizens forced into accepting EULAs with entities outside of the EU in order to participate in our society, solely because the alternative is non-existent, creates this rights-violating dependency chain that perpetuates those same actors monopolistic standing, which in turn, hampers the EU’s security, sovereignty, resilience, and prosperity, as well as very competent internal players. If, at any point in the chain, consumers must consent to waiving their rights to their data and usage analytics in order to participate as functioning members of society, then such “consent” is fictional. Let me pose this simple question: What options does the average citizen have to partake in our digital society, and what services are they required to interact with to remain functioning members, or to access services to sustain them (medical, civic duties, social security, taxes, etc.)? Once identified, focus should be placed on ensuring viable European open source options, not reliant on external (ergo non-EU) services, are available for EU consumers and citizens. This will require implementing open source systems throughout our public sectors, all the way down to the consumer platforms. This would shore up our citizens digital rights, while ensuring robust cybersecurity audits are possible through all links in the chain. Re-tooling agencies with open source alternatives is not the largest hurdle to European digital sovereignty, resilience, and security. It’s a large hurdle, and challenges awaiting us in this space should not be underestimated. However, the largest and most important hurdle is consumer adoption of open source alternatives and EU-based alternatives. Because consumer adoption requires allure. The alternative supplied can’t just be the better option on paper. Plenty of failed products throughout history have been the objectively better options when viewed as a whole, but had too much friction for individual consumers to adopt. The friction that hinders adoption of an alternative or new product can be everything from price to ease of use, ecosystem, availability, compatibility, or even current adoption rate. All of these friction points can of course be mitigated with various means. But to effectively mitigate these frictions to adoption, they must be considered early and influence how and where we put our efforts. For us to be able to take full advantage of a European push for open source, Directive 2001/29/EC Article 6 needs to be revised, firstly to ensure digital sovereignty and avoid externally imposed artificial digital scarcity during European build-up and re-tooling. An advantageous economic side-effect of this would be domestic actors being able to take advantage of the new market opportunity created, offering open source EU alternatives for EU consumers seeking service, support, and software alternatives to devices they already own from external hardware suppliers. On 2022-05-05, Deutsche Welle reported that John Deere remotely disabled farm equipment stolen from Ukraine ^2^. If the American-owned market leaders in farm equipment in Europe were to be pressured by their government to disable equipment owned by European farmers, it would be disastrous for us. It is imperative that we have secured the tools to counteract such a scenario, to avoid finding us in a situation where we are forced to reactively scramble to un-brick ~14 Billion EUR worth of combined harvesters. This is not to mention the massive security risk posed by extraterritorial legal exposure, namely the CLOUD Act.

POINTS FROM FEEDBACK INITIATIVE

Key objectives include: - continuing development and ensuring appropriate visibility of EU high-quality and secure open-source solutions and demonstrating their added value;

EU should not try to reinvent the wheel. There are plenty of established open-source projects that could either in full or in major part be deployed as is. For consumer desktop platforms there are OS-distributions like Debian and Redhat that are not only the base for many variations Linux but also very matured and established. On the mobile platform the options are fewer and unfortunately only two end consumer viable options. Although Android OpenSource Project - AOSP might at first glance seem like the best option to fork and create a EU driven version of (there are some forks of AOSP already trying to realize this). The fact that we are missing a third viable option for end consumers hampers competition, agility, and consumer choice. The reasonable choice here would be to support a mobile mainline Linux distribution such as Sailfish OS, which today struggles with adoption due to lack of software availability within the ecosystem, and are forced to maintain a compatibility layer to offer end user functionality.

The same would hold true for public entities, and agency's within EU, one way to ensure the same solutions aren't invented by multiple independent actors, thereby not taking advantage of the cost savings, faster development, and interoperability that comes from utilising open-source software ^3, could be by setting up public sector domain interest groups. These public sector domain groups main purpose could be to evaluate and formulate requirement assessments and guide development for their interest group. They could also collaborate with each other on projects or questions that are relevant for multiple areas.

- addressing issues of deployment, usability, software supply chain security and governance, maintenance of code and project sustainability to ensure take-up and upscaling;

Complete adoption of open source within the public sector would, de facto, create favourable conditions to govern and ensure the security of the software supply chain, while at the same time enabling agile and stable maintenance of code. This is due to the intrinsic nature of open source; it can be forked, audited, and contributed to by anyone, thus mitigating the risk of software being suddenly abandoned or left unsupported because the corporation owning the software dropping support due to profitability concerns or going out of business. While in the short term the cost of migration might be higher than the current rolling costs of maintaining closed-source solutions, in the long term open-source solutions will be the cost-effective option, especially when these solutions can be reused and modified freely. Thus, the cost becomes balanced across the market rather than requiring the same entry toll for every purchaser of the same closed-source platform.

Vendor lock-ins are by far the largest hurdle for the public sector(goverment agencies) and European corporations.

- supporting emerging open-source business and sustainability models for open-source companies and foundations, including by developing public-private partnerships;

While this might be outside the scope of this feedback initiative, we within the EU need to collectively be able to assign certain EU-owned corporations, producers, manufacturers, or service providers as “strategic” and prohibit them from being sold off to investors or actors outside of the EU. The recent loss of Arduino as a strategic European corporation, after the Qualcomm purchase, is a perfect example of this. This left the EU without a key strategic internal integrated chip designer and manufacturer. This void needs to be filled for both civilian and, by extension, military sectors. One way EU could support open-source businesses could be a EU-driven co-op consisting of public entities from all member states that acts as a producer and/or customer of open source software solutions and open source hardware components. This co-op entity could also act as one part of the strategy to along side public sector domain interest groups to promote and support emerging businesses, companies, and foundations by extending grants, offering bounty programs, and purchasing solutions, products, and services from internal actors. Monopsony is not new to industries or sectors of our economies that are of strategic value, and while European open source development does not necessarily have to be fed by one entity, certain projects could very well require it, and we should not dismiss it as an option for strategic resources, be they microcontrollers, integrated systems, or management services. One other benefit of such a co-op would be the negotiating power it would wield when purchasing contracts for hardware solutions not available internally on behalf of the member states and their institutions, imposing EU-aligned values and policies on corporations by acting as the gatekeeper to a very substantial market. This co-op could also help different public sector domain interest groups balance costs by identifying aligned needs across the market or shared code base. Another option for a large-scale solution to to the public-private partnership development could consist of setting up alternative revenue models for new and emerging actors. By setting up tiered based on offerings scale, from simple-to-receive models with short-term proof of work and deliverables, to harder and more stringent approval procedures for large-scale projects with long time frames before results can be presented. Examples of this for simpler, lower-tier projects could be an agency hosting a Codeberg/Git repository for their custom implementation of Open HRMS ^4^ and asking for added functionality from outside contributors with a bounty, granting the bounty to the author of the pull request that gets committed. The previously mentioned public sector domain interest groups could also make use of this co-op entity’s market position to set up contracts, based on their requirement assessments, with internal actors for projects that require specialist competencies or integration normally outside of their scope.

- promoting best practice and encouraging the public sector, specialised business sectors and large customers to contribute to and adopt open source;

If the EU mandates that all internal government systems, as well as public-facing portals and platforms, are open source, it would create significant opportunities for existing and potential internal actors to support and maintain these systems. Cross-integration between sectors would also be greatly simplified, since the code would not be hidden behind a veil of secrecy and prohibition. One agency's internal development work could be applied or modified by another. Both development and code audits would become essentially collectivized and distributed across all sectors and actors, lowering costs and simplifying integration and policy alignment, with the added benefit of creating a more accessible environment for future startups and the formation of new agencies, foundations, etc.

- supporting market integration, especially with legacy systems and policy alignment

With a Fund or Fork methodology, meaning that the EU could support open-source projects both internal and external that we deem useful or strategic, with the added benefit of being able to have influence on these same projects policy alignments, by financially secure development. While still maintaining control over governance by having the option to fork, if the project deviates or strays to far from EU policies and values.

Another area were we the EU should put effort is our digital civilian defence, with alternative network stacks such as reticulum ^5^ to ensure functional communication and continued civil operation during emergencies affecting our infrastructure.

1. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the EU open-source sector? What are the main barriers that hamper (i) adoption and maintenance of high-quality and secure open source;

Vendor lock-in for the largest service providers. Both public institutions and private companies are stuck in ecosystems provided by a few vendors. This relates to both operating systems for desktops and mobile devices with the accompanying software, but mainly through the interconnectedness of cloud services provided by these vendors. Much of the digital infrastructure of European companies is run on hardware provided by a handful of non EU-providers. These vendors provide whole, interconnected ecosystems with everything from identity providers, “serverless”, catalog-services for authorization, virtual networking, storage, security, secrets management. Although these services are provided by multiple vendors it is not trivial to move between them, unless the infrastructure was specifically designed for to be multi cloud. Even then multi-cloud setups mainly focus on switching between a few of these vendors. Since these vendors provide specific interfaces, terminology and technology, experience with one vendor does not directly translate between them, further increasing the risk for vendor lock in. There are many open source alternatives to the specific services that are provided by these vendors, however none provide a full, realistic alternative with the full range of services, technology, and flexibility of these vendors. While there are mature open source cloud solutions, there needs to be services that can provide this capability the same type of robustness, support and ease of use as the non- EU Competitors. Further more EU needs to support projects to be able to migrate the infrastructure that has already been built for other cloud vendors. These kinds of projects could focus on converting IaC (infrastructure as code, for example OpenTofu now that Terraform is no longer open source) from vendor specific to Open Source Cloud services. While it is possible to use LLM- based text generators for this, a robust, well tested, trustworthy solution is needed, as well as a European one. Besides the conversion of the infrastructure specification, projects that aide in migration of blob-, and secret-storage. By encouraging these European cloud providers to use open source cloud infrastructure, it will also ease the adoption of private cloud and hybrid cloud solutions as these will use the same technology.

(ii) and sustainable contributions to open-source communities?

EU could identify critical or important open source projects and support them by either providing funding directly, or by committing developer time.

1. What is the added value of open source for the public and private sectors? Please provide concrete examples, including the factors (such as cost, risk, lock-in, security, innovation, among others) that are most important to assess the added value.

Having much of EU’s private and public infrastructure hosted and controlled in potentia by non EU vendors is that in the event of geopolitical conflict, that infrastructure is made unavailable, temporarily or permanently, resulting in capital loss, loss of revenue, and loss of vital services for parts or most of the European market. While this scenario may seem unlikely due to the negative consequences it would have for the global market, including the potential adversary, the parable of the frog and the scorpion comes to mind with increasing frequency since 2016, and as such it might be advisable to avoid it be possible in the first place.

Encouraging organisations in the European public sector to not only use open source, but also to actively publish internally developed tools as open source would provide an opportunity for other organisations, on EU, national, and regional to benefit from that work and to contribute to it. Many of EU’s institutions are engaged in similar tasks in their respective domains, and most of their needs will be identical, while not all. Therefore encouraging these projects to adopt modular architectures, designed for such cooperation, with for example a common core functionality and organisational specific modules, would ease the adoption and development of effective tools, while harnessing the competence that is found across the continent.

1. What concrete measures and actions may be taken at EU level to support the development and growth of the EU open-source sector and contribute to the EU’s technological sovereignty and cybersecurity agenda?

Support the creation of EU based full stack, open source cloud service providers that can realistically compete with the non-EU competitors.

Encourage public organisations to cooperate with each other within their domains to produce the tools they need based on a common core, and to open source the tools they have already created.

Support and fund security research into public open source projects and security mitigation projects. Identify critical open source projects, such as those underpinning other infrastructure, basic functionalities, or those with very large market share and fund security research and security mitigation projects to support those projects.

1. What technology areas should be prioritised and why?

Cloud Infrastructure, Operating systems for consumer devices and governmental services.

1. In what sectors could an increased use of open source lead to increased competitiveness and cyber resilience?

Supporting interoperability between different cloud technologies to ease movement between vendors, even open source European ones, will create incentives for those EU vendors to compete on quality of service rather than another lock-in, and fostering healthy competition in the market.

1: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A01993L0013-20111212

2: https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-how-farm-vehicles-stolen-by-russia-were-remotely-disabled/a-61691839

3: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/research/measuring-economic-value-of-os

4: https://github.com/CybroOdoo/OpenHRMS

5: https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum

A sketch/schematic I drew up awhile ago, while taking measurements for a project I've now been working on a couple of months. Inspired by this community.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40421305

It took me way longer than I wanted to to post this video, but I finally got around to cutting up and editing the live streams. Hope you all enjoy. More is on the way, But sometimes life and work gets in the way of the hobbies.

And please let me know if you find my behavior spammy, or to self promoting.

/ Folium Creations

It took me way longer than I wanted to to post this video, but I finally got around to cutting up and editing the live streams. Hope you all enjoy. More is on the way, But sometimes life and work gets in the way of the hobbies.

And please let me know if you find my behavior spammy, or to self promoting.

/ Folium Creations

Edit: Fixade titeln. Hade glömt kommatecken.