Stefan Sperling @stsp@bsd.network
Posting mostly about tech stuff I'm working on but happy to read and chat about non-tech stuff too. I'm grateful to be learning so much about the world from all of you.
Tech stuff I'm working on currently includes OpenBSD, Apache Subversion, Software Heritage, Game of Trees, @gothub, Dulwich, and Plakar.
Toots get auto-deleted after one month.
I will be hosting a #GameOfTrees version control system tutorial at #EuroBSDCon 2026, with @op as co-host (edit: Turns out Omar cannot make it; Johannes Thyssen Tishman will be co-hosting instead).
This tutorial will be suitable for both #Git experts and complete beginners. The experts will probably spend significant effort temporarily unlearning some things they know, while the beginners will spend moderate effort learning some things they didn't know. Our goal is that both groups will broaden their version control horizons a bit and have fun doing so 
For my company I have put together #gameoftrees and #OpenBSD support packages which cover tasks I have been doing via ad-hoc consulting gigs for years now. And I asked some freelancing friends from the OpenBSD community to share the work with me.
We support deployments of OpenBSD in server and firewall roles via yearly fixed-price contracts. All base system components can be supported.
From our existing client base we know for a fact that there are small and mid-sized businesses out there who run OpenBSD and would benefit from working with us. We want to find more of them.
I will be hosting #OpenBSD and #PF firewall courses at @linuxhotel in the city of Essen, Germany.
OpenBSD: https://www.linuxhotel.de/course/openbsd-de
PF: https://www.linuxhotel.de/course/pf-de
Currently there are no dates set for either course, but it is possible to send Linuxhotel a proposal for the next date.
The target audience are system administrators who would like to learn about OpenBSD and PF in order to use them as part of their network security tool set.
(Do not be afraid to sign up if you do not understand German. While the courses are advertised in German, written course material will be in English and the presentation will be entirely in English if preferred by participants.)
Every fatal firmware error fix depends on one guy on an IRC channel voluntarily and supportively looking up magic fimware error codes and explaining the implications to me. Bus factor: 1
And for some vendors like Qualcomm there is simply nobody to ask questions to. The Linux ath10k/11k/12k driver maintainer stopped years ago and hasn't been replaced as far as I know.
Vendors should never have been allowed to stop providing public documentation for computers they are selling.
We are starting to provide an unrestricted (fair-use) amount of hosted mailing lists with each subscription. See https://gothub.org/lists.html
We want to make use of mailing lists easy for projects which are starting out today, or have to migrate away from a mailing list server which is being shut down.
Our mailing list infrastructure is kept completely separate from our #Git hosting infrastructure. You can use mailing lists without having to use any of our version control features.
You can use your own domain name instead of lists.gothub.org if you want to.
Public lists can be archived. Private mail is only stored on our servers while in transit.
The mailing list server is hosted on #OpenBSD, running on our hardware in #Berlin, Germany.
EuroBSDCon 2026 talks online https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20260916093106
Ori Bernstein - GEFS: The File Shredder of the Future.
https://exquisite.tube/w/3QQimMdswWJxrsPaJtak2u
\o/
If you're invested in there being a Linux distribution that works better with laptops then I will happily make that happen for a mere $1 million a year and you will not be associating your brand with white supremacy in the process please enquire for references and my credentials
This was excellent material prepared by @stsp for the #gameoftrees workshop. It makes so much more sense to me (git makes some habits hard to break). #EuroBSDCon
If person coming at Brussels this week, for example eurobsd 😉, have questions concerning Brussels, do not hesitate to ask.
I can try to help you.
There are forks of the #GameOfTrees version control system popping up merely because of worries that the project might eventually succumb to accepting LLM-generated contributions, then ending up on other people's lists of #noAI LLM-free alternatives.
Fork the code as much as you want, but please don't let your potential users hanging when important issues get fixed upstream, and keep in mind that I don't work with LLMs, have never even once asked an LLM for anything, and I don't intend to start. I don't believe the other developers involved are all as pristine as myself, but I've met most of them in person, do trust them, and have never seen anyone commit code which looked like they didn't write it.
As a community we are losing trust in established projects within the FOSS ecosystem very fast right now. I understand and share many of the concerns about LLMs, but the trend to quickly fork projects out of spite and fear without communication is also worrying. If you maintain a list of recommendations, please ask upstream projects which do not already have an obvious pro-LLM stance before recommending forks with little to no track record, especially when the software in question might handle sensitive data.
I have added the following to the project's README file. Not sure if this counts as a policy. To me it feels more like I'm writing down what should be common sense.
"""
Game of Trees is entirely handwritten and contributions generated by LLMs
will not be accepted. The main author (Stefan Sperling) has successfully
been avoiding LLMs and would prefer to keep it that way, even if/when legal
uncertainties around the copyright status of LLM-generated output settle.
Should you feel a need to ask an LLM questions in order to help you understand
something, try asking us first. If you are truly trying to wrap your head
around something then you will learn from us, and we will learn from you.
We may have some expertise you are lacking, but because we cannot ignore what
we already know, we can be blind to problems you are seeing. Our code and
documentation can likely be improved as a result of communication, even before
you send a first patch.
"""
I will be hosting a #GameOfTrees version control system tutorial at #EuroBSDCon 2026, with @op as co-host (edit: Turns out Omar cannot make it; Johannes Thyssen Tishman will be co-hosting instead).
This tutorial will be suitable for both #Git experts and complete beginners. The experts will probably spend significant effort temporarily unlearning some things they know, while the beginners will spend moderate effort learning some things they didn't know. Our goal is that both groups will broaden their version control horizons a bit and have fun doing so
Git Submodules as a Package Manager
https://nesbitt.io/2026/09/01/git-submodules-as-a-package-manager.html
The software is not the thing. Code is the implementation language of a shared understanding. The shared understanding, between people with wants and needs living in the world, is the thing. That communities can gather around that shared understanding to improve and benefit from it together is the thing.
What is the point of a freely accessible knowledge commons where you can never be sure the knowledge is trustworthy or even real, where you can't drink the water or breathe the air?
Oh really, #Debian?
"AI scrapers break the web, to use this page you'll need JavaScript enabled." -- bugs.debian.org
new blog post!
https://lina.sh/blog/hijacking-e164-arpa
i hijacked some telephone infrastructure of a few islands over the span of multiple months; and accidentally logged information of a few hundreds of thousands of phone calls going to military bases in the process..
it's a really really silly story :P
I really like Simon Harrison's series of blog posts about using #GameOfTrees for simple version control tasks: https://simonh.uk/tags/got/index.html
My own use cases are more complicated than Simon's but it is making me happy to see confirmation of how the UI designed for working on #OpenBSD and related projects is working very well for people with fairly simple needs. That was one of my goals from the very beginning and is a significant differentiator from #Git.
I will be hosting a #GameOfTrees version control system tutorial at #EuroBSDCon 2026, with @op as co-host (edit: Turns out Omar cannot make it; Johannes Thyssen Tishman will be co-hosting instead).
This tutorial will be suitable for both #Git experts and complete beginners. The experts will probably spend significant effort temporarily unlearning some things they know, while the beginners will spend moderate effort learning some things they didn't know. Our goal is that both groups will broaden their version control horizons a bit and have fun doing so
For my company I have put together #gameoftrees and #OpenBSD support packages which cover tasks I have been doing via ad-hoc consulting gigs for years now. And I asked some freelancing friends from the OpenBSD community to share the work with me.
We support deployments of OpenBSD in server and firewall roles via yearly fixed-price contracts. All base system components can be supported.
From our existing client base we know for a fact that there are small and mid-sized businesses out there who run OpenBSD and would benefit from working with us. We want to find more of them.
I will be hosting #OpenBSD and #PF firewall courses at @linuxhotel in the city of Essen, Germany.
OpenBSD: https://www.linuxhotel.de/course/openbsd-de
PF: https://www.linuxhotel.de/course/pf-de
Currently there are no dates set for either course, but it is possible to send Linuxhotel a proposal for the next date.
The target audience are system administrators who would like to learn about OpenBSD and PF in order to use them as part of their network security tool set.
(Do not be afraid to sign up if you do not understand German. While the courses are advertised in German, written course material will be in English and the presentation will be entirely in English if preferred by participants.)
Posting mostly about tech stuff I'm working on but happy to read and chat about non-tech stuff too. I'm grateful to be learning so much about the world from all of you.
Tech stuff I'm working on currently includes OpenBSD, Apache Subversion, Software Heritage, Game of Trees, @gothub, Dulwich, and Plakar.
Toots get auto-deleted after one month.
