Yes I will accept kisses.

Unless you were in BFE, there were options for getting Linux delivered in the mid 90s.

I know I bought a Red hat 4 (not to be confused with RHEL) CD in the late 90s from some mail order thing.

This was actually "fill out a form and mail it". And they offered legit nearly every major distro. I think they even sold printed out copies of HOWTOs.

But it was quite cheap. Iirc it wasn't much more than postage and a small fee to cover time and materials.

And I paid C.O.D.

This wasn't a secret...I think I found the site either from usenet or EFnet #linux... but it wasn't like going to CompUSA.

I also remember seeing Walnut Creek FreeBSD and Slackware CDs at a nearby flea market (Flea@MIT) around then, too. Probably also the computer fairs as well.

there's also the Internet Archive if one's looking for something to donate to :)

I donated couple of times. Aren't they doing really well financially? If they will put the big banner asking for money again I will give again :)

I'm also subscribing local newspaper even though the amount of trackers they have is ridiculous and The Guardian. Good journalism is also very important.

https://servo.org/

New, open source rendering engine. It's our best chance at getting multiplatform, web based apps that don't depend on Apple or Microsoft. Hopefully also new web browser that can be an alternative to Firefox.

support both the website and the OSS software?

Ease of purchase, not having to reenter credentials

Just brainstorming. There's reasons steam has done well.

Thanks!

The scale of penguin beaks, obviously.

There is no such thing as the Whisper protocol, AFAIK.

Signal uses the Signal protocol, formerly known as TextSecure due to Signal being a merge of the earlier (proprietary) projects TextSecure for encrypted messaging and RedPhone for encrypted voice calls.

The two projects were initially started by Whisper Systems, co-founded by Moxie Marlinspike and Stuart Anderson. The name of this company may be the cause of confusion, but the protocol has to my knowledge never been called anything else than TextSecure and subsequently Signal.

Whisper Systems was acqui-hired by Twitter who then open-sourced both projects under the GPL license, after which the Open Whisper Systems organization was created by Moxie to continue development on what later got merged into the Signal project as we see it today.

The protocol uses the Double Ratchet algorithm (a.k.a. Axolotl Ratchet) for cryptographic key exchange, invented specifically for secure messaging and use in Signal (although naturally open source and applicable for oher use cases too).

Wikipedia (understandably) has a nice timeline over the various projects:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3ASignal_timeline.svg

End of nerd snipe transmission, over and out. :-)

I donate at least 1k a year to opensource. There is no shortage of good opensource projects deserving donations; good in the sense of quality and those that fit into my worldview.

I'm a fierce believer in remunerating opensource and of way stronger political opinions. What I won't donate to, is this idea that the US is the only place on the planet where skilled workers exist that can do this type of work. Orgs believing in US execeptionalism are great. Go be exceptional, just without my money. They won't miss it.

I'd have to find their blog post again where they reveal their financials. IIRC it was 50 staff and each was earning half a million or something on average. Maybe I read or remember it wrong but the blog post or comments by Signal staff (maybe even the CEO?) were quite elitist regarding their reasons for hiring US staff or staff living in the US only.

What the true reasons are I dont know. Maybe indeed multinational hiring is just too complicated, who knows, but the way the responses were worded were maybe unfortunate, but at revealing for me.