Hackers' Pub

Syntax	Description	Examples
`"` keyword `"`	Finds the string within quotes, including spaces. Case-insensitive. (Escape quotes inside with `\"`)	`"Hackers' Pub"`
`from:` handle	Finds content written by the specified user.	`from:hongminhee` `from:hongminhee@hollo.social`
`lang:` ISO 639-1	Finds content written in the specified language.	`lang:en`
`#` tag	Finds content with the specified tag. Case-insensitive.	`#HackersPub`
condition condition	Finds content that satisfies both conditions on either side of the space (logical AND).	`"Hackers' Pub" lang:en`
condition `OR` condition	Finds content that satisfies at least one of the conditions on either side of the OR operator (logical OR).	`#HackersPub OR "Hackers' Pub" lang:en`
`(` condition `)`	Combines the operators within the parentheses first.	`(#HackersPub OR "Hackers' Pub" OR "Hackers Pub") lang:en`

Arne Babenhauserheide @ArneBab@rollenspiel.social

6/2/2025, 7:36:12 PM

Public

@davidrevoy regarding Wayland pains:¹ I think that is a cultural problem in many Free Software communities: "someone else has to fix the mess I made".

I’ve also been warning about this for years. But it’s hard:

https://www.draketo.de/software/volatile-infrastructure

That even you haven’t gotten through to people is harsh.

Where it hit me the worst is with Lilypond dependencies. We narrowly avoided a fallout between different communities there and I now regularly remind people to keep it in mind.
¹ https://www.davidrevoy.com/article1030/debian-12-kde-plasma-2024-install-guide#1-wayland

There’s the core tenet: do not make your software volatile — Wayland makes other software volatile: after an update, things are broken. And complex tools are the ones most likely to get broken.

I had hoped that we learned from the Python 3 debacle: it took over a decade for Python 3 to become widely adopted and even today there are many specialist tools that require Python 2.

Yes, those tools are not well-maintained, but they work. They solve real problems.

Some small migrations are usually done by distributions who then upstream their changes, but that’s it. This is a strength.

Regular breaking changes to the infrastructure threaten that.

We cannot stand on the shoulders of giants if we constantly break old tools.

Arne Babenhauserheide @ArneBab@rollenspiel.social

6/2/2025, 7:37:55 PM

Public

@davidrevoy I wish I could get that "volatile infrastructure" article printed and put into every Free Software conference. The PDF already exists for that:

https://www.draketo.de/software/volatile-infrastructure.pdf

/cc @sovtechfundSovereign Tech Agency
#freesoftware #maintenance

First page of the PDF:

Volatile Infrastructure is worse than volatile applications

We cannot stand on the shoulders of giants if we constantly break old tools

In the past years, I’ve seen infrastructure getting broken again and again, with the damage rippling through all tools that used it. The next coming breakage will be from Wayland, a replacement for Xorg. It promises to be better suited for some uses and more secure and faster. And it may be, but it is yet another in a line of breaking infrastructure changes that expect existing programs to adapt to The New Way Of Doing Things™, and the ones that do not follow get semi-broken.

I stayed mostly silent on this for a long time, hoping that people would figure out how to get it right without disrupting other tools, because the ones writing wayland are actually those most competent in display servers, but I now see the same philosophy at work that already caused so much other breakage, so I decided to write.

That philosophy is: someone else has to clean up the mess I made.

With the expectation that if the work required is not too big, people will do so.

But that’s a false assumption, because many useful free software tools are mostly unmaintained. And this is no weakness: in Free Software we are able to create things that last and build upon the work of those before us, because it continues to last without constant maintenance work.

If you have a fediverse account, you can quote this note from your own instance. Search https://rollenspiel.social/users/ArneBab/statuses/114615456607020349 on your instance and quote it. (Note that quoting is not supported in Mastodon.)