Cover Photo (cropped) by Vinay Tryambake

In my last post I decided I would leave GitHub for freer libre pastures.

I plan to work on federation, distributing the code to multiple hosts that align better with the ideals of free (libre) open source software. For awhile I'll continue to federate to GitHub, but I'm not sure how long it will last. GitHub's Copilot product is toxic to open source.

But before all that I have to pick the first host to move projects to, and that will be SourceHut.

I've been reading the blog of the founder, and his views on many things, but particularly on open source tools and development, are the same as mine.

Given that I have an opportunity to rebuild my online coding persona, I want to do it carefully.

Rebrand myself

First I have long used what I consider an enterprisey handle on platforms related to code: pboling. In my rebirth, I am galtzo, the handle I have long used on non-coding platforms. It is Mongolian for "crazy". Given that sanity is concerned with the viewpoint of the majority, in many ways I am "crazy". The highest compliment I can receive is that of an "iconoclast", which necessarily pits me against any who hold tightly to sacred icons, whether that be $$$, irrational dogmas, or anything else that is unnaturally holy.

New ideas

I am going to look ever more earnestly into new technologies, well beyond the scope of what I have done in the past.

Things I want to discover:

• Low tech alternatives
• Local-first computing
• Gemini protocol
• Hypercore P2P protocol
• Distributed and Federated resources of the Fediverse

Steps

1. Create a new email address, to use exclusively for my FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) efforts: floss@galtzo.com
2. Create a new PGP key for the new email address, and use it to register my new SourceHut account.
3. Pay for SourceHut. Supporting independent FLOSS tools is important.
4. Import a library from GitHub... (which one first?)

This post will be updated as I build out.

UPDATE!!

Because it is so simple, I am first migrating some major projects to GitLab, and I'll do SourceHut once those migrations are complete. On GitLab I already had an account, and will continue with the same old handle there, pboling.
Distributed source code is great! I did pay for SourceHut, even though I haven't used it much yet.