https://blogs.damiendye.uk/en/tags/opensource/ Recent content in Opensource on Damien Dye's Blog Hugo en-GB Wed, 30 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0100 https://blogs.damiendye.uk/en/netbox/what-is-netbox/ Wed, 30 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0100 https://blogs.damiendye.uk/en/netbox/what-is-netbox/ A walk through NetBox 4.7.2 with a real rack in it: the elevation, the cable trace, the IPAM tree, and a cabinet reporting 90.7% power at 28.6% space. Then setup, the order you fill it in, per-customer access, config contexts, plugins, custom objects, validation rules, driving it from Ansible, and the fork that produced Nautobot. https://blogs.damiendye.uk/en/random/is-your-msp-lying-to-you-part1/ Fri, 28 Aug 2026 18:00:00 +0100 https://blogs.damiendye.uk/en/random/is-your-msp-lying-to-you-part1/ Part 1 of 3. Some MSPs lie; most never have to, because the vendors whose products they recommend pay them and nobody must tell you. The tells that you are being sold to rather than engineered for: the free fix refused, requirements never written down, one option on the shortlist, no open source line, and the addresses you rent forever. https://blogs.damiendye.uk/en/ceph/who-actually-writes-and-uses-ceph/ Thu, 27 Aug 2026 13:00:00 +0100 https://blogs.damiendye.uk/en/ceph/who-actually-writes-and-uses-ceph/ I counted every commit to Ceph's main branch for the last ten years, traced every maintainer to the company that employs them, and gathered the public deployments. 69,613 commits, 1,718 people, 478 organisations, and a project that has outlived most of the companies that built it. https://blogs.damiendye.uk/en/random/technology-you-rent/ Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0100 https://blogs.damiendye.uk/en/random/technology-you-rent/ Part 1 of 8. Twenty years back you bought software and the copy was yours. Now you rent it, and the supplier sets the terms. This post walks through how that happened, one step at a time, and why every step made it harder to pack up and go elsewhere. Plain language, short lines. https://blogs.damiendye.uk/en/random/who-pays-for-the-software/ Tue, 25 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0100 https://blogs.damiendye.uk/en/random/who-pays-for-the-software/ Part 3 of 8. The first two posts looked at what dependency costs you; this one at who else foots the bill. Open source was fought for about 15 years, then taken up, and much of it is now kept going by people paid nowt for it. And how the firms that build software get bought, borrowed against and stripped of what other folk built. https://blogs.damiendye.uk/en/random/choice-coming-back/ Tue, 25 Aug 2026 05:00:00 +0100 https://blogs.damiendye.uk/en/random/choice-coming-back/ Part 8 of 8. Since 2025 the European answer has turned from plans into things you can actually install. Office suites, payment systems and new rules are all real now. This post covers what has landed, what is honestly still years off, and 3 questions to work out where you stand. Plain language.