Indeed, I think these kind of automated checks are much more helpful than telling people they have to "test" test their backup. If a backup software doesn't do that automatically and reports if there's something off it's not good software or user experience.
With component-based solutions like Mailu, the junk/non-junk categorization you do in your mail client (via folders, not flags) indeed does inform the training of the spam filter used on incoming mail.
I can confirm that the online process for deleting an account still does not work! Gets into an endless loop sending repeated validation emails. (Firefox with all blockers disabled.)
Thanks for the shout out, Manu! I'll also plug an all-in one Borg + borgmatic Docker image (https://hub.docker.com/r/b3vis/borgmatic/) that I've used to backup to both BorgBase and rsync.net.
A bunch of this resonates with me, having spent many years in climate tech as well. I laughed at the part about selling a pilot to a utility in three months though. That's like super lightning speed in this industry.
That's the old way of doing things. And I've been there. Do I want Tomato Shibby.. or will this other weird ROM work better? Hmm, the home page isn't in English on this one. And this other fork was last released March 2011..
No more of that. Today, buy a router OpenWrt supports and just install the official images and get on with your life.
While this is pretty ingenious, and "solving" open source funding is a noble goal, there's a pretty practical impediment to GitRoyalty working in the real world: For new or existing projects, a big draw of open source is the on-boarding process.. You can download, install, and start playing with a library or application to see if it meets your needs with almost zero friction. And that's a big part of the selection process for any new project.
But with GitRoyalty, you can't even install the software to see if you want to use it or take a dependency on it.. without at minimum ponying up a credit card and signing up for a free trial.
My take is that this roadblock will turn away new users in sufficient numbers that it'll hurt projects with this paywall in place. Users will leave in droves for competing projects with less install friction. Not because they don't believe in paying, but because they don't know if they want to pay yet.
The projects that can afford to turn away users like this are the well-known ones with big-name maintainers, corporate sponsors, and thousands of GitHub stars. But these also happen to be the projects least in need of funding.
As difficult as it is to implement, a better place for a paywall would be after the user has installed the software, evaluated it, and decided to roll it out in production. That would bring the payment closer to the point of value, and also keep the on-boarding friction nice and low.
> without at minimum ponying up a credit card and signing up for a free trial
You're right, there's a bit more friction before you can install and use a project, but I think if a user gives enough value to a certain open source project then that friction shouldn't be enough to deter them from using it altogether.
It's also worth mentioning that once you input credit card information and connect your paypal account, you never have to do it again for future subscriptions. You just go to a payment page, hit 'Subscribe' and install the package, all in a matter of seconds.
Yup, totally understood about the second subscription. The challenge is getting that first subscription though, when a particular user hasn't yet signed up for (or even heard of) the service. At that point, it's a fair amount of friction from where I'm sitting.
I can see how it seems that way (that self-publishing gets authors noticed by publishers), but it's actually pretty rare that it works out that way for any given writer. As I understand it, publishers generally don't look favorably upon a self-published author.. unless we're talking pre-published Andy Weir level numbers.
