Drew DeVault
Free software developer; maintainer of sway, wlroots, aerc and scdoc, and founder of the SourceHut (sr.ht) software forge.
Drew DeVault did not write this page. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
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What they believe
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Copyleft licences impose obligations rather than restrictions, and it is from those obligations on the powerful that software freedom comes.
Copyleft does not impose restrictions, but it does impose obligations. The obligations exist to guarantee rights to the users of the software – in other words, to ensure freedoms.
drewdevault.comSaid 19 Apr 2024This on korrents
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Free software is meant to be exploited commercially, and the licence’s terms are the whole of what a company owes in return.
Free software is designed to be used commercially, but you have to do it correctly. This is a resource which is made available to companies who want to exploit it, but they must do so according to the terms of the licenses.
drewdevault.comSaid 18 Dec 2021This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 12 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
Copyleft licences impose obligations rather than restrictions, and it is from those obligations on the powerful that software freedom comes.
Copyleft does not impose restrictions, but it does impose obligations. The obligations exist to guarantee rights to the users of the software – in other words, to ensure freedoms.
Copyleft licenses are not “restrictive” Said 19 Apr 2024
No free or open source licence may restrict what the software is used for, however objectionable the use.
No such restrictions are found in free or open source software licenses, be they permissive or copyleft – all FOSS licenses permit the use of the software for any purpose without restriction.
Copyleft licenses are not “restrictive” Said 19 Apr 2024
Free software is meant to be exploited commercially, and the licence’s terms are the whole of what a company owes in return.
Free software is designed to be used commercially, but you have to do it correctly. This is a resource which is made available to companies who want to exploit it, but they must do so according to the terms of the licenses.
On commercial forks of FOSS projects Said 18 Dec 2021
Show 9 more
Adding a dependency is a serious commitment requiring an audit and continued re-auditing, and the usual practice of not doing so is reckless.
Adding a dependency is a serious decision which requires consensus within the team, an audit of the new dependency, an understanding of its health and long-term prospects, and an ongoing commitment to re-audit them and be prepared to change course as necessary.
I will pay you cash to delete your npm module Said 16 Nov 2021
Making a living from your own open source means running it as a business and acquiring business skills, not waiting to be funded.
And yes, you are building a business. You need to start thinking of your project as a business and of yourself as a business owner.
A few ways to make money in FOSS Said 20 Nov 2020
Venture capital is the wrong money for an open source business, because its constraints make it hard to stay true to the mission.
The fast route — venture capital funded — is going to impose constraints on your business that will ultimately make it difficult to remain true to your open-source mission.
A few ways to make money in FOSS Said 20 Nov 2020
Handing stewardship of Redis to a company whose goal is extracting profit was a mistake for the project
Everyone who has contributed to the now-proprietary Redis modules has had their hard work stolen and sold by RedisLabs under a proprietary license.
The Commons Clause will destroy open source Said 22 Aug 2018
Maintainers of widely used open source software are not adequately funded, and that is a real and unsolved problem.
What should we do about open source maintainers not getting the funding they need? It’s a very real problem, and one Kevin has explicitly asked us to talk about before we criticise his solution to it.
The Commons Clause will destroy open source Said 22 Aug 2018
The Commons Clause does not solve open source’s funding problem; it is a framework for turning open source software into proprietary software.
But the Commons Clause doesn’t present a solution for supporting open source software. It presents a framework for turning open source software into proprietary software.
The Commons Clause will destroy open source Said 22 Aug 2018
A contributor licence agreement exists so the company can relicense volunteers’ work, and should neither be signed nor asked for.
I do not sign CLAs and I think they’re a harmful practice for this very reason. Asking a contributor to sign them is a slap in the face to the good will which led them to make a contribution in the first place.
The Commons Clause will destroy open source Said 22 Aug 2018
A few hundred dollars a month is nothing to a company and transformative to a project, so engineers should be the ones asking their employers to pay it.
A $250/mo recurring donation to would be a drop in the bucket of most businesses, but a major boon to any open source project, with which the business will almost certainly see tangible value-add as a result.
The Commons Clause will destroy open source Said 22 Aug 2018
One-off donations buy nothing; only recurring donations, spread across enough people that no single donor matters, can fund sustained work.
I like to say “one-time donations buy pizza, but recurring donations buy sustainable FOSS development”.
The path to sustainably working on FOSS full-time Said 24 Feb 2018
Beliefs others hold too
Maintainers of widely used open source software are not adequately funded, and that is a real and unsolved problem. 3 hold this
What should we do about open source maintainers not getting the funding they need? It’s a very real problem, and one Kevin has explicitly asked us to talk about before we criticise his solution to it.
The Commons Clause will destroy open source Said 22 Aug 2018
Handing stewardship of Redis to a company whose goal is extracting profit was a mistake for the project 2 hold this
Everyone who has contributed to the now-proprietary Redis modules has had their hard work stolen and sold by RedisLabs under a proprietary license.
The Commons Clause will destroy open source Said 22 Aug 2018
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 10 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Uses sway
My desktop environment, naturally, is sway, built fresh from the master branch daily.
usesthis.com 17 Jan 2019
their own
Uses qutebrowser
My shell is fish, but I'm only using that until mrsh is ready. My web browser is qutebrowser.
usesthis.com 17 Jan 2019
Uses Fish
My shell is fish, but I'm only using that until mrsh is ready.
usesthis.com 17 Jan 2019
Show 7 more
Uses mutt
My text editor is vim. My IRC client is WeeChat and my email client is mutt.
usesthis.com 17 Jan 2019
Uses WeeChat
My text editor is vim. My IRC client is WeeChat and my email client is mutt.
usesthis.com 17 Jan 2019
Uses Vim
My text editor is vim. My IRC client is WeeChat and my email client is mutt.
usesthis.com 17 Jan 2019
Loved ThinkPad X200
I also travel with one of two ThinkPad X200's, which is my favorite laptop model - it still holds up after over 10 years.
usesthis.com 17 Jan 2019
Uses Arch Linux
My workstation runs Arch Linux, but don't take that as an endorsement.
usesthis.com 17 Jan 2019
Uses Alpine Linux
My laptops generally run Alpine Linux or 9front (you can take that as an endorsement), or MINIX or OpenBSD.
usesthis.com 17 Jan 2019
Recommends 9front
My laptops generally run Alpine Linux or 9front (you can take that as an endorsement), or MINIX or OpenBSD.
usesthis.com 17 Jan 2019
Where they publish
Blog drewdevault.com His blog on free software, privacy and the social effects of technology.
Recent
- Why is Hacker News like that? 23 Sept 2026 Hacker News (aka HN) is a link aggregator where “hackers”1 gather to discuss technology, politics, and anything which “good hackers would find interesting”. HN is a means by which its host, prominent startup incubator Y…
- AI in Linux 23 Jul 2026 The role of AI tools (LLMs, mainly) in Linux is under discussion, or it was, until Linus Torvalds “put his foot down” in support of the use of AI in Linux kernel development. I can identify two major ways in which AI is…
- The circus freaks of open source 5 Jun 2026 The masterwork of Terry A. Davis is his eclectic operating system, TempleOS, which he worked on until his tragic death in 2018. In terms of technical excellence, TempleOS rates well in some respects and poorly in others…
Show 17 more
- Vim Classic 8.3.0 released 2 Jun 2026 Following up on my earlier announcement that I was forking Vim, I’m happy to announce the first release of my fork today: Vim Classic 8.3.0. I have written a release announcement for vim-classic.org, which you can read…
- New blog design 20 May 2026 I redesigned my blog! I decided to put some more personality into it this time, after over a decade of the minimalist style. This short post is just an excuse to show up in your feed reader so you can go look at it. Che…
- Add an LLM policy for rust-lang/rust 15 May 2026 No comment on this PR may mention the following topics: Long-term social or economic impact of LLMs The environmental impact of LLMs Anything to do with the copyright status of LLM output Moral judgements about people w…
- I can't cancel GitHub Copilot 1 May 2026 Back when Copilot first came out, I immediately disliked it. But I decided to give it a fair shake and tried to evaulate it in good faith. I wasn’t interested in paying for it, but they had a form for FOSS community mem…
- Addressing the harassment 21 Apr 2026 Kiwi Farms is a web forum that facilitates the discussion and harassment of online figures and communities. Their targets are often subject to organized group trolling and stalking, as well as doxing and real-life haras…
- Rewrote my blog with Zine 19 Apr 2026 15 years ago, on December 11th, 2010, at the bold age of 17, I wrote my first blog post on the wonders of the Windows Phone 7 on Blogspot. I started blogging as a kid at the behest of a family friend at Microsoft, who p…
- tar: a slop-free alternative to rsync 28 Mar 2026 So apparently rsync is slop now. When I heard, I wanted to drop a quick note on my blog to give an alternative: tar. It doesn’t do everything that rsync does, in particular identifying and skipping up-to-date files, but…
- A eulogy for Vim 25 Mar 2026 Vim is important to me. I’m using it to write the words you’re reading right now. In fact, almost every word I have ever committed to posterity, through this blog, in my code, all of the docs I’ve written, emails I’ve s…
- The cults of TDD and GenAI 29 Jan 2026 I’ve gotten a lot of flack throughout my career over my disdain towards test-driven development (TDD). I have met a lot of people who swear by it! And, I have also met a lot of people who insisted that I adopt it, too,…
- Redesigning my microkernel from the ground up 12 Jan 2026 As you may recall, circa 2022-2023 I was working on a microkernel written in Hare named Helios. Helios was largely inspired by and modelled after the design of seL4 and was my first major foray into modern OS developmen…
- OpenAI employees… are you okay? 8 Nov 2025 You might have seen an article making the rounds this week, about a young man who ended his life after ChatGPT encouraged him to do so. The chat logs are really upsetting. Someone two degrees removed from me took their…
- What's up with FUTO? 22 Oct 2025 Some time ago, I noticed some new organization called FUTO popping up here and there. I’m always interested in seeing new organizations that fund open source popping up, and seeing as they claim several notable projects…
- Cloudflare bankrolls fascists 24 Sept 2025 US politics has been pretty fascist lately. The state is filling up concentration camps, engaging in mass state violence against people on the basis of racialized traits, deporting them to random countries without any r…
- A better future for JavaScript that won't happen 17 Sept 2025 In the wake of the largest supply-chain attack in history, the JavaScript community could have a moment of reckoning and decide: never again. As the panic and shame subsides, after compromised developers finish re-provi…
- Embedding Wren in Hare 20 Aug 2025 I’ve been on the lookout for a scripting language which can be neatly embedded into Hare programs. Perhaps the obvious candidate is Lua – but I’m not particularly enthusiastic about it. When I was evaluating the landsca…
- What's new with Himitsu 0.9? 8 Aug 2025 Last week, Armin and I worked together on the latest release of Himitsu, a “secret storage manager” for Linux. I haven’t blogged about Himitsu since I announced it three years ago, and I thought it would be nice to give…
- Just speak the truth 30 Jun 2025 Today, we’re looking at two case studies in how to respond when reactionaries appear in your free software community. Exhibit A It is a technical decision. The technical reason is that the security team does not have th…
Link verified 5 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
Elsewhere ~sircmpwn on sr.ht His code on the SourceHut forge he founded.
Link verified 5 Sept 2026.
About the English under a post
Some people here publish in a language other than English. Where they do, this site shows a machine translation beneath the post, in this typeface — the site's own, not theirs.
The post itself is never changed, moved or hidden: what is set in the serif above is exactly what the person published, and it is what to quote them on. A translation can be wrong in ways that matter, especially about tone.
Only the post's own words are translated. A quoted post, a linked article and a belief on korrents.com are left in their original language.