Linux, Open Source & Unrelated Topics - writinghttps://pbarker.dev/2023-04-10T00:00:00+00:00Syndication2023-04-10T00:00:00+00:002023-04-10T00:00:00+00:00Paul Barkertag:pbarker.dev,2023-04-10:/posts/2023-04-10/syndication/<p class="first last">Inspired by <a class="reference external" href="https://pluralistic.net/">Cory Doctorow</a>, I've been thinking
about the IndieWeb idea of <a class="reference external" href="https://pluralistic.net/">POSSE</a> (Publish on
your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) and how to extend the reach of my blog
posts. So I'm trying something new and syndicating blog posts to <a class="reference external" href="https://dev.to/">dev.to</a>, a mid-sized social media site for software developers.</p>
<!-- Copyright (c) 2023 Paul Barker <paul@pbarker.dev>
SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-NC-4.0 -->
<p>Inspired by <a class="reference external" href="https://pluralistic.net/">Cory Doctorow</a>, I've been thinking
about the IndieWeb idea of <a class="reference external" href="https://pluralistic.net/">POSSE</a> (Publish on your
Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) and how to extend the reach of my blog posts. So
I'm trying something new and syndicating blog posts to <a class="reference external" href="https://dev.to/">dev.to</a>, a mid-sized social media site for software developers.</p>
<p>dev.to makes this quite nice with native support a "canonical URL" for posts
originally published elsewhere. It's also pretty easy to repost existing content
to since it supports Markdown (my posts are written in reStructuredText for my
website but can be easily converted to Markdown using <a class="reference external" href="https://pandoc.org/">pandoc</a>) and future posts can be automatically shared to dev.to
via an RSS feed.</p>
<p>Existing posts on dev.to is variable in quality, and there are <a class="reference external" href="https://dev.to/samuelfaure/is-dev-to-victim-of-its-own-success-1ioj">multiple</a> <a class="reference external" href="https://wagslane.dev/posts/collapsing-quality-of-devto/">posts</a> criticising the
platform for low-quality blogspam, but I don't think that's a reason to avoid
posting to the platform (as long as it's not the exclusive home to your posts).
My goal here is to extend the reach of my writing, not to gain some sort of
prestige-by-association from the sites where I syndicate my posts, so the
presence of blogspam on dev.to doesn't put me off from sharing my posts there.
And blogspam is sadly a fact of life on any platform that's easy to post to.</p>
<p>It's also worth noting that I've considered and rejected syndicating my posts to
Medium due to their monetisation & obnoxious popups, and SubStack due to their
<a class="reference external" href="https://gen.medium.com/substack-is-not-a-neutral-platform-8fc5bdf8e5f2">problematic hosting of TERFs</a>.</p>
<p>So, assuming I don't find any reason to cancel this experiment, you'll be able
to read my writing at <a class="reference external" href="https://dev.to/pbarker">dev.to/pbarker</a> as well as
<a class="reference external" href="https://social.afront.org/@pbarker">on Mastodon</a> and here on my website.</p>
Content Licensing2023-02-07T00:00:00+00:002023-02-07T00:00:00+00:00Paul Barkertag:pbarker.dev,2023-02-07:/posts/2023-02-07/content-licensing/<p class="first last">For my photography and writing I'm now using the
<a class="reference external" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (CC-BY-NC 4.0)</a> license. I'll
continue to release software under open source licenses.</p>
<!-- Copyright (c) 2023 Paul Barker <paul@pbarker.dev>
SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-NC-4.0 -->
<p>At the start of 2023 I had a bit of a re-think on how I should license the
writing and photographs which I publish to the internet.</p>
<p>There are well established benefits for allowing free commercial use of free and
open source software. But I don't see that the same benefits exist for allowing
free commercial re-use of stories, articles, photos, music, painting, etc. These
things typically have one primary author or group of authors and it's rare to
get significant free contributions (or even want significant contributions) from
companies that want to use your work.</p>
<p>In open source software, we have a mixed history of companies exploiting the
commons and companies contributing back to the commons. For more "artistic"
works, the history seems to be exclusively of companies exploiting the commons.</p>
<p>For these reasons, I'm now allowing only non-commercial use of my photography
and writing by default. In particular, I'm using the
<a class="reference external" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (CC-BY-NC 4.0)</a> license.</p>
<p>I'm open to selling commercial re-use licenses for my photos and articles if any
company does express interest. I'm also open to contributing content to existing
projects under other licenses which do allow commercial use where there is a
clear benefit to the commons.</p>
<p>For software projects, I'll continue to use and recommend open source licenses.
My preference is for the <a class="reference external" href="https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0">Apache 2.0</a> license for source code and the
<a class="reference external" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY 4.0)</a> license for documentation.</p>