#Open Source Development

[angelajohnsonstory]

Explore the world of Open Source Software Development and discover how it can transform your business with scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solutions. Learn how Impressico Business Solutions, a leading Open Source Development Company, provides custom, community-driven software to help businesses thrive in today’s digital landscape. Tune in for expert insights and best practices!

[zldfn101]

I proudly present you : an in-development pixel art editor! Largely oriented at tilesets and charsets, Voidsprite supports custom-size grids alongside resize-canvas-by-grid-size and resize-canvas-by-grid-count, alongside numerous (and growing with future update) supported image formats. Please check it out, and leave any suggestions or feedback on the itch.io page! As it is a FOSS project, check it out on github also!

[backmarkerr]

please....can u speak on the conspiracy

So the conspiracy (more like a theory, really) is that Kimi was pushed out of the team starting in 2008 to make way for Fernando, who was more appealing to the big sponsor coming in. Before you click out thinking "Max, that's stupid, no team would throw a championship for a sponsor." I agree! But keep in mind that they didn't throw the championship, they fully expected to win the WDC with Felipe (and almost did) and did in fact win the WCC in 2008 with Felipe and Kimi despite everything. But there were really suspicious things going on. So with that in mind...

It's 2008. Kimi has just won Malaysia, the second race of the season. Three days after his win, there's this:

.

Ok, kinda weird, but whatever. F1 runs on rumours, right? Suggesting that Kimi might retire when he's doing so well is silly. And in the article they seem to be pretty ambivalent over whether it would be Felipe or Kimi to leave.

Fast forward to Spain two races later. Kimi scores his second win of the season and takes the championship lead. The season is shaping up pretty well for the defence of the title, you’d think this would be a good time for him, but again, the story du jour is Ferrari wanting Alonso in Kimi’s seat for 2009.

[x] I guess now we know at least Massa's seat is secure...?

If you’re like me, that sounds stupid. The reigning champion just won the last GP and his contract runs until the end of 2010, so this media narrative makes no sense. Something pretty catastrophic would have to happen for that to ever come to fruition, right?

So anyway, he gets a first row start in Monaco. Great, that's almost a surefire win/points, right? Wrong, he got a drive-through penalty due to the team not fitting the wheels to the car on time before the race start. Not a great race and he ends up outside of the points. Lewis is now ahead in the WDC by 3 points. Not really a disaster, but...

[x] what on earth...

[x] again the talk of retirement.... I mean, it's weird, right?

Zero points in Canada due to being rear-ended in the pitlane, which the team can’t control. Then he’s back to being neck to neck with his teammate and Lewis by the time the British GP is done in early July, with all three drivers on 48 points. Good news, right? Just gotta stay on track and not fuck it up somehow.

[x] sigh... (this one's a little harder to source as it was printed media, but I've seen this exact interview quoted in different pages)

So anyway, they change his front suspension for the next race in Germany. Kimi has always been very sensitive to changes in the car, so he knew something was wrong. Ferrari (via Michael, who was then head of development) say he's just not adapting well to the upgrades. Maybe, sure, but why aren't you bringing upgrades that are geared towards your world champion?

(an interesting remark from Mark Hughes here if you scroll down to the comments, which adds weight to Kimi not being listened to when it came to car development in 2008)

Bar a podium in Hungary, Kimi scores 0 points in 4 out of the next 5 races. It takes until either Monza or Singapore (hello crashgate!) for Ferrari to put his suspension back as it was.

He proceeds to get 3 podiums in the remaining 3 races but it’s not enough to catch up. By Singapore he was already 27 points behind his teammate (reminder this is the old points system) and very much expected to play the supporting role. In the penultimate race in China he very obviously gave up P2 to his teammate:

"I know what the team expects." [x] / [x]

Yet the narrative in the media and from Ferrari themselves is that his motivation is bad and he's not assertive. It was so pervasive that to this day people still parrot it and say he just didn’t care after 2007, despite Kimi always stating he was fully committed and clearly getting annoyed whenever journalists asked about his motivation even years later.

Montezemolo at the end of 2008 even 'joked' that "Kimi in the recent races was replaced two or three times by a friend, but next year he'll be back." Basically saying that Kimi wasn't really present, you know? An interesting thing to say when this absent driver scored 18 points in the last 3 races (three consecutive P3s), while the one who was amazing and had the team's full backing scored 20 (P7, P2, P1).

A whole 2 points' difference, maybe someone should hire that "friend"...

So why did they do this?

Well, the theory is that Santander (I promise this isn’t like the dumb Sainztander takes) wanted a Spanish-Brazilian lineup due to financial interests (Spanish bank, big market in South America with a looming IPO in Brazil), so Kimi was basically being pressured out of the team from early 2008 onwards. Like I said at the start, the team weren’t really throwing away 2008, as they expected to win the WCC with both drivers (they did) and Massa to be able to win the WDC, which would of course be beneficial for their new sponsor. And he almost did. Almost.

[x] they're not in charge of driver selection but this specific driver line-up would good for them. (this archived copy of the article is from 2010, but the text makes it clear it's from 2009)

Of course at this point we have to wonder if a team like Ferrari would bow down to a sponsor's demands. I can't tell you what the internal considerations were or how much money was on the line, but it's also not like Santander were telling them to get rid of Kimi for a bad driver, you know? Fernando is a great driver, so from Ferrari's perspective they were just trading a great driver for another great driver who also appealed to this huge sponsor, and an Alonso-Massa line-up would be solid. And with the previous talk that Ferrari and Alonso had already inked a deal in 2008... It's just difficult to believe there isn't a grain of truth here.

So the alleged initial plan of having Alonso in 2009 was foiled when Kimi activated the renewal option in his contract. It was then that he was bought out of his last year (apparently paid for by Santander).

[from the book The Unknown Kimi Raikkonen]

As we can see, by the end Kimi was also fed up with what was going on, especially people pointing the finger at him and at his motivation, and his frustration is very clear in interviews like here at 2.35 and here:

Publicly, Ferrari said they wanted someone more in line with how Michael used to be (ironic since Montezemolo allegedly didn’t like how Michael made the team his), who could communicate with the team and give better feedback (ironic when Todt, Dyer, Stella and others said Kimi was very clear and precise.) Kimi himself has always stated that he wasn’t the issue, that his motivation was never lacking and that the real reason he was pushed out was politics and money.

[x]

[x]

If it had only been the mechanical stuff, I’d be willing to chalk it up to just bad luck and incompetence. Shit happens. But with all the rumours around it even before things went bad on the track and Kimi stating that his work and performance weren't the reason he was let go it becomes impossible for me to think there wasn’t an actual push going on to replace him.

Hell, even famed Ferrari fanboy Sebastian Vettel didn't think it was realistic for Kimi to return to Ferrary in 2014 precisely because Kimi isn't one for "bullshit" and "politics". Why would he choose to say that specifically? And according to Finnish media Kimi’s 2014 Ferrari negotiations included Montezemolo personally apologising to him. Now why would he apologise if they hadn’t done something wrong?

Personally I think Kimi's "certain people did certain things" refers to this. He never trashed anyone and always said he had no ill-feelings. And I believe him. But it doesn't mean nothing happened, lest we forget how well he handled Lotus not paying him.

The thing that really bothers me is that Kimi got the reputation for having low motivation and not caring about what he was doing (I heard that take just last month from an F1 youtuber, how Fernando was hired in 2010 because Kimi had mentally checked out 🙄), when obviously someone who wasn’t motivated and didn’t care would have simply called it quits under these circumstances. Instead he got P3 in the standings in 2008 (I know he’s talented, but he must have been trying at least a little), trained hard to lose enough weight to use KERS in 2009 (why would he do that if he didn’t care) and took the team’s only win that year despite the car being shit. Interestingly, pundits acknowledged his good performance complicated things when it came to Ferrari’s rumoured hiring of Alonso. So imagine how much more complicated things would have been had Kimi done better in 2008?

Anyway, this is long, but if you want something longer then I definitely recommend this post here. You might not agree completely with the original authors (there are parts where I wish there was more info), but I think they offer a lot of good research and information regarding the overall situation back in 2008/2009, and it's a good jump-off point for your own research.

But yeah. 2008 could have been everything. Or at least better.

[bynux]

/* Filename: Discipline.scala */ for (i <- 1 to 1000) { println( f"$i%4d: I will not use code to cheat." ); } // >:3

[hephaestuscrew]

Thinking about the protective way Clara tells Fleet not to go into DeVries' dangerous-looking training set-up, and about how when Septimus mentions Fleet's friend Fleet's immediate assumption is that he must mean Clara, and about "This is Miss Clara Entwhistle, my partner - in business, my business partner." / "I'm also his friend, but he doesn't like to say it.", and about how Fleet rarely smiles but he smiles to himself at Clara having a good idea (and Clara notices the change in his expression), and about how Clara is trying to work out Fleet's birthday through a process of elimination, and about how Fleet tries twice to shut down the conversation with Frances Byrne that's making Clara uncomfortable, and about how panicked and angry he sounds after realising she's been poisoned...

[tuxpaint]

Working on a crescent-drawing tool for Tux Paint

[heart-ghost-studyblr]

Some screen sharing of challenging backend Java code that I was testing, although it was quite basic, to be honest.

Additionally, my notebook contained a pretty basic code base for a producer class that I wrote by hand. I want to become very skilled in creating Java classes based on the producer-consumer pattern using Kafka.

[praxis-app]

We’re excited to introduce Vibe Checks for the Praxis website, inspired by the process we’ve developed in our Discord server. With this new feature in place, new members will be able to answer a list of community decided questions, ensuring a safe and respectful environment for all who join the website.

Here’s how it works: Vibe checkers, selected by the community, read over the answers and engage with new members in their respective questionnaire tickets, which are automatically generated upon joining. If enough vibe checkers vote in favor of verifying a new member, they are automatically verified and receive a welcome notification.

With Vibe Checks implemented, we're now able to safely share invite links to the website far outside our Discord server. Whether you're a longtime community member or a newcomer looking to contribute, we welcome you to join us in this early round of testing and QA.

Join the project: https://praxis-app.org/i/4efdc9de

[meliohy]

Game concept

Create your avatar

Customize your room

Chat with other players

Explore rooms

I need help with this project! I'm not looking for specific skills but for people who can help me refine the concept

More details under the cut

Provisory concept details:

Plateform: Web

Style: Isometric pixel art

Type: Multiplayer, virtual world

Game engine: Godot

I made the images from this post with 32x32px tiles but I think the game might be better in 64x64px

This is just the beginning of the project, all of these might change when we refine the concept

I'll create a discord for the project if I can find some people interested enough to help me with the concept. If I do I'll post about it on this account but if you want me to send you the link directly send me a message!

[tea-cat-arts]

I'm willing to at least hear out most of the "xyz plot point is heavily tied to abc cultural context" brands of posts but the "wwx isn't meant to be read as morally gray" and "the western fandom made up Sizhui being wangxian's son" brands of post make me feel like my cultural ignorance is being used to gaslight me

[catboy-official]

It is imperative that every single indie developer move towards owning as much of what they make as possible and as quickly as possible.

If you draw for a living and use something like Photoshop, if Adobe decides to completely upend it's business model tomorrow, you can always just import your work into another program. Learning a new workflow always kinda sucks but the only real hurdle is that learning curve.

If you make a game in Unity or Unreal however, your art is now inexorably linked to a company whose main goal will always and forever be maximization of stock holder returns.

No matter how much work you put into it, they will forever own a portion of what you make and will make decisions you disagree with using that ownership. That is a certainty precisely because they definitionally are not loyal to the people who use their products.

Unity may or may not reverse it's decision to shoot itself in the foot, but even if it does that's besides the point. This decision didn't just come from no where and happen for no reason, something like this always was and always will be an inevitability.

"Switching engines is extremely difficult though, especially mid development"

It is, yes. Most of the time I would say it isn't even possible when taking things like cost of rewriting most if not all the games code, the technological differences between engines and familiarity with current tools into account.

BUT that's the point. The difficulty of switching engines means you inevitably get stuck in the technology you've used the most, this perpetuates the cycle where every indie dev uses Unity because every indie dev uses Unity. And because everyone just uses Unity, other engines struggle to break through and become widely adopted. Which is what leads to entire sections of the industry to become beholden to a single mismanaged corporation.

There isn't going to be a single answer of what to switch to that every single person can take, it will be different for every case. That decision might end up being to stay with Unity because you really have no choice, but even if it is you HAVE to at least ask yourself the question of whether or not using a new engine is a possibility.

The big open source one everyone just kinda defaults to recommending is Godot these days. I've personally done a few game jams with it and it's pretty good for that, I don't really know how good it handles larger projects but there are also other options out there if you dig just a little bit.

[magz]

Reminder for artists and riggers with interest in Live2D:

Live2D Juku, Live2D's official Live2D Cubism youtube course, free until November 30, 2023.

Original is in Japanese, with english caption available.

(translated audio)

[Live2D Juku playlist link]

Check description of video for more resource.

[riddle-on-the-milk-carton]

FlipaClip premiumed it’s shit now it’s a fucking supcription service, I got the one time payment before the switch but my friends didn’t so it just grinds my fucking gears

Something is genuinely want to do if I had any knowledge on organization or app design is to put together a team of programmers/app-maker-people and make like an entirely free free animation/art program that has all the stuff but with tutorials and a simplified layout

Idk how realistic it could be but we could get money from kofi/patreon stuff maybe and like I’d want to optimize it as much as possible too and be accessible on as many different softwares like I’d want this shit to run on a CALCULATOR/j

Again it’s just a bit of a silly idea that may not be achievable at all I don’t know anything about programming but a guy can dream

Though any programmers/app designers here I’d really like to hear your thoughts/critiques please as long as they remain in good faith and respectful!

[theeclecticlibrary]

One of the most intimidating and also scariest facts I've been coming to terms with is how true that one xkcd comic is about how many people & libraries are reliant on some package that has been thanklessly maintained by one person in Nebraska since 2003.

In an entirely unrelated discovery, I learned today that tmux (you know, that one terminal multiplexer that is used by god knows how many people) is functionally maintained & developed by one dude, Nicholas Marriott, who was the original creator of the program back in 2007. There is a contribution guide, and he does have a list of recommended issues to work on. So, if you're looking for an open source project to contribute to, and you use tmux, consider :)

[kitkatcodes]

How to dip your 🦶 into Open Source

Contributing to Open Source projects can be a valuable experience for beginner programmers. It can help you learn new skills, build your portfolio, make connections, make a difference, and gain recognition for your work.

But... how do I start? Well here's an option to get you started ☟

Google's Summer of Code (GSoC) is an online mentorship program that matches beginner contributors to open source software development with mentors from open source projects ❋

GSoC takes place every year mid January with registration to be a contributor usually opening around mid March. Unfortunately for this year (2023) the application deadline is tomorrow シ (April 4)

However! There are so many open source projects available this year so I highly encourage you to try to apply even if its past April 4 you might get lucky 🍀

The key to getting accepted by an org is to interact with their developer community and keep in contact with the orgs mentors. This is why I believe even if they application period has ended if you join the orgs online communication app and involve yourself in the community and keep sharing your skills and expertise with them you will still have a good chance of being able to join!

Best of luck! (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ

(even if it doesn't work out this year there will always be the next and the next and the next... I recommend checking out the archive for how the previous years went to better prepare yourself to jump on this opportunity next year!!)

[tuxpaint]

Experimenting with a new "Fill" option -- eraser fill! A flood-fill that reveals the background (rather than filling with a solid color).