Friend who is not a software person sent me this tweet, which amused me as it did them. They asked if “runk” was real, which I assume not.

But what are some good examples of real ones like this? xz became famous for the hack of course, so i then read a bit about how important this compression algorithm is/was.

    • oldfart@lemm.ee
      0·
      1 month ago

      The curl author writes a lot about his struggles, but he’s also employed to maintain curl, so not really a good example

  • dosse91@lemmy.trippy.pizza
    0·
    1 month ago

    I’d say ffmpeg is a good example, it’s used by almost every piece of software that has to manipulate audio or video (including messaging applications), yet not many people know about its existance.

    • Fred@programming.devEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      And Fabrice Bellard, the original author of ffmpeg, went on to create qemu which pretty much made open-source virtualization possible. Also TCC (even if I don’t think that one is widely used), he established a world record for computing decimals of Pi using a single machine that had ~2000× less FLOPS than the previous record, and so much more…

      • grozzle@lemm.ee
        0·
        1 month ago

        Fabric Bellard’s body of work is fairly strong evidence for time travel having happened already.

        Or just genius.

  • Sparky@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    0·
    1 month ago

    Idk who needs to know this, but in Norwegian “runke” means to jerk off. “runk” is the word you add a prefix to in conjugation to get the different inflections

    • runke - jerk off
    • runker - jerking off
    • runket - jerked off

    Etc…

    • rothaine@beehaw.orgEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      It’s also worth pointing out that this was sued in a copyright lawsuit some time ago. The wikipedia article mentions it, but here’s the slashdot discussion if you want to feel like stepping into a time machine: https://m.slashdot.org/story/158778

      It caused a momentary panic when everyone realized that this thing runs the system clocks for everything everywhere, and if it got taken down by a copyright suit it would be disastrous for, well, everybody.

    • Piece_Maker@feddit.ukEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      Wasn’t there also very recently a whole thing about the single guy who maintains the NTP spec threatened to retire so he could get a “real” job, which caused a gigantic internet-wide panic as pretty much everything we do relies on computer’s clocks being perfectly synced?

      • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 month ago

        Perhaps we’ll move to UTC+10¼, and then move forward 45 minutes in the summer.

        If the day number is a prime, then we’ll go back π hours.

        Hope that will help!

      • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 month ago

        It would make sooo much more sense for the ISO to set something up, and make governments each responsible for keeping it updated, since they’re the ones doing the changing.

        Require all participants to amend their law/regulations, so there’s a note to prompt whoever is in power and changes it next.

        I’m sure some places would still neglect to do it… Haha

    • beveradb@lemm.ee
      0·
      1 month ago

      Eh, bagder is more than “just some guy” to a lot of people! To me he’s kinda been my tech idol for 20 years lol, he also was a core part of building Rockbox (open source firmware for MP3 players) which was the first open source project I got seriously involved in as a kid ☺️

      • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        “Just some guy” doesn’t mean they aren’t amazing. I would argue the opposite. It just means they didn’t use their abilities to become rich and famous like some other assholes. They’re almost certainly more capable than them, not less.

        • andioop@programming.devEnglish
          0·
          1 month ago

          I think that would be a great situation to be in.

          You have created a cool thing a lot of people use, by being good at something. You’ve done something.

          Also, people have no idea who you are. Nobody is digging through your trash, harassing the people you love, taking pictures of you wherever you go including on your bad hair days, etc. You’re just some guy.

    • refalo@programming.dev
      0·
      1 month ago

      curl is most definitely not developed solely by one person though, it has thousands of contributors. in fact, there is so much red tape around curl that you can’t even discuss making a change to it without first writing an RFC and having it approved by a committee.

    • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      1 month ago

      And they still get emails from randos when some program that uses curl doesn’t work (the Readme is top notch).

          • Baku@aussie.zoneEnglish
            0·
            1 month ago

            I feel a bit split about this. Seems it is an actual law, and it kind of makes sense. You probably don’t want random components from unknown people and places in your multi million dollar space equipment. But it feels rather arrogant to just demand such things.

            Is NASA actually a customer? Did they pay for a license to use curl (genuine question - I’m not familiar enough with it to know if enterprises and organisations require a paid license)? Are they planning on becoming a paying customer? Do they make donations to the project? If not, it feels kind of rude to send a demand letter to the lead developer of a free piece of software straight up demanding a formal letter stating where the free software is being developed and maintained (for free), or if outside the USA, that the free software has been tested in the USA. Oh, and a bonus demand that such information be returned within 5 business days (naturally with an implied “or else”, just to really make sure those pesky people maintaining open source software for free really get the memo)

            In any case, why don’t all their scary 3 letter spy agencies go and figure it out on behalf of NASA themselves? It’s open source, they could just like, read the source, test the source, and audit the source themselves. Or fork it and make any modifications they’d like to ensure its safety

            I don’t blame the person sending the emails, obviously, they’re just following orders, but the whole email reads as very entitled and arrogant, assuming NASA don’t provide any compensation to the project and projects maintainers for their use of curl

    • mox@lemmy.sdf.org
      0·
      1 month ago

      Libcurl is at the foundation of almost all networking.

      That’s not remotely true, but it is nevertheless outstanding work and very much deserving of recognition and support.

  • Codex@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 month ago

    I think this probably applies…

    So Thief: The Dark Project (1999) and Thief 2: The Metal Age (2000), are a couple of classic stealth FPS games, proto-immersive-sims, and still some of my all time favorite games. They both use the Dark Engine, an in-house engine from the now defunt Looking Glass Studios, which also powered System Shock 2.

    In 2010, the source code to a System Shock 2 port (for the dreamcast or ps2 iirc…) leaked online, and on 2012 someone used that code to create NewDark and TFix, patches to make these old games work on modern computers (and some bugfixes, support for HD, etc).

    There are still updates regularly released for it too!

    I must emphasize that these games are still sold on Steam, GOG, etc and this patch is essentially required for them to work. And these are hardly the only games like this, just the ones most personal to me. Retrogaming is built on the backs of unsung individual heroes who backwards-engineer, hack, patch, and mod their favorite games to keep them running for everyone long after the publishers have died or abandoned their work.

    • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.netEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines had a patch for it that made it way more stable (and also added back in a bunch of cut content).

      Way back, my partner played Watchdogs at launch and the stuttering was awful, and it was basically unplayable. Some random person made a patch that fixed most of the problems and made the game look closer to what it did at E3.

      Random nerds on the internet are my favourite people

        • blusterydayve26@midwest.socialEnglish
          0·
          1 month ago

          “Yeah, the load times are shit, but they aren’t shit enough to tell some intern to spend two months figuring out what’s going on.”

          “What about when some nerd fixes it in a week and embarrasses us when he shows how it was caused by the addition of the shop?”

          “We’ll fucking sue, that’s what.”

          “What if we just paid him the bug bounty instead?”

          “Fine, no need to Streisand this time, I guess.”

          Rockstar being actual rockstars in their response :D

    • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      There’s also Arx Libertatis for Arx Fatalis. Arkane (yes, that Arkane) released the source code for the game. This is a new engine and patch that is basically required. Even if you could play the game on a modern computer (you can’t really) you wouldn’t want to play without this patch. It does things like making drawing the runes for casting spells more reliable. (For those not aware, you drew runes on your screen and combined them to create spells. You didn’t just press a fireball button. You had to figure out what spells combined to make a fireball, and then draw it.)

      If you like ImSims or Arkane games, I highly recommend Arx Fatalis. No one has done magic like it since. To be fair, it was one of the slowest and most cumbersome ways to do magic, but it did actually feel like you were part of it. You could cast spells before you learned them if you had the rune and guessed the combination (they all make sense). There were even some spells never told in game that you were expected to figure out. Cheats were even activated using the system, by drawing a certain combination of runes. It’s all very cool, and I wish we would get a second modern version of the idea.

      • SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml
        0·
        1 month ago

        making drawing the runes for casting spells more reliable

        Huh…guess I might actually be able to give it a proper go then. I couldn’t ever play more than 2-3 30min sessions every few years as I’d get so so so very frustrated with trying to draw runes.

        • PapstJL4U@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          1 month ago

          The OG solution was to use stretched 4:3/resolution, nyt Arx Libertatis allows easy casting with modern resolution.

  • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
    0·
    1 month ago

    core-js (whose maintainer is also a bit picky about and probably doesn’t understand the OSS process) Phil Katz, the guy who invented .zip. To this day, every .zip file contains his initials in hexadecmial. His story is incredibly interesting.

    • Electric@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 month ago

      Oh dear, that post from the core-js guy made my blood boil. He’s been taken advantage of by the whole world.

    • Pyro@programming.dev
      0·
      1 month ago

      The core-js story always makes me sad. Sure, he’s developing an open source project and no one HAS to pay him. But the meager amount of donations and the tons of hate he receives isn’t justifiable either.

      • Thomrade@lemm.ee
        0·
        1 month ago

        I had seen the hate before and foolishly just assumed he was deserving of it. Its a horrible situation he’s in and he is being cast in a bad light because he reached out for help.

      • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
        0·
        1 month ago

        It’s especially sadder when a substantial amount of the donations vanished when Open Collective and others stopped operating to Russians.