A podcast about free software, free culture, and making things together
FOSS and Crafts is an interdisciplinary exploration of collaborative creation. We believe that all works (whether digital or traditional in nature) are informed by history as well as one's surrounding culture and community, whether directly or indirectly, and that everyone benefits from the expansion of the commons. We explore such topics as computer programming, craft production, user freedom and agency, especially informed by the principles of the F(L)OSS (Free, Libre, and Open Source Software) and free culture movements.
FOSS and Crafts's usual hosts are Morgan Lemmer-Webber and Christopher Lemmer Webber.
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Episodes and news
- 20: Hygiene for a computing pandemicSun 03 January 2021
Chris and Morgan, driving in the Covid-19 pandemic, reflect on lessons of hygiene and a separation of concerns from the past (seen through the retroactively surprising struggle for handwashing acceptance) while analyzing how to bring safety to today's computing security pandemic via object capability discipline.
- 19: Mallory Knodel on bits and bytes and human rightsThu 17 December 2020
With computing technology becoming integrated with every aspect of our lives, many issues are simultaneously human rights issues and technical issues. Thus, how are organizations concerned with human rights and social justice engaging with technological authorship and policy-making? Mallory Knodel, presently Chief Technology Officer for the Center for Democracy and Technology, explains her work as a Public Interest Technologist. Mallory is also heavily engaged in a wide number of technical standards-making organizations, and explains not only how technical standards are of interest to human rights organizations, but how the origin in work to define human rights overlaps with the emergence of standards-making efforts.
- 18: Sumana Harihareswara on sketching, standup, and maintainershipSun 06 December 2020
We're joined by Sumana Harihareswara, a FOSS advocate yes, but also a person of so many other talents! We talk about sketching, standup comedy, and maintainership for the long life of free software projects. (Did you know you can hire Sumana to help on your FOSS project maintainership btw? Sumana runs Changeset Consulting!) We also talk about representation in the FOSS community within the arts (especially narrative arts), and about learning new skills within "no big deal" contexts.
- 17: Gardening, from seedling to seasonedSat 28 November 2020
We're joined by our friend Tristan to talk about gardening experiences, from newbies (us) to the wise (Tristan and others who are not us). We (Morgan and Chris) have just started seriously gardening this year, and have learned a lot about what works and what doesn't. And it turns out that people who have been doing it for years (such as Tristan) still have a lot of successes but also a lot of failures. But those can be fun too!
- 16: Bassam Kurdali on using Blender for open movie productions and educationThu 12 November 2020
Bassam Kurdali (Fediverse, Twitter) talks about using Blender (a free and open source software suite for making 3d artwork) for open movie projects such as Elephants Dream (the world's first open movie project, which Bassam directed!) and Wires for Empathy, as well as use in teaching it to college students studying animation.
- 15: Scribble and the Open Document FormatThu 05 November 2020
Morgan and Chris talk about the Scribble document authoring format, with Morgan talking about authoring her dissertation in it and Chris talking about writing an OpenDocument Format (sometimes shortened to "ODF" or "ODT") exporter. (That code is now a merge request which will hopefully become part of Scribble itself!)
- 14: Digital Humanities WorkshopsSat 31 October 2020
Morgan and Chris discuss the Digital Humanities workshops they ran introducing non-programmers to Racket and Scribble.
- 13: ActivityPub Conference 2020 with Sebastian LasseThu 15 October 2020
This week we are joined by Sebastian Lasse, author of the Redaktor ActivityPub powered CMS, and co-host of both ActivityPub Conference 2020 and ActivityPub Conference 2019 along with Morgan. Lots of retrospective, especially on the difference between APConf as an online conference in 2020 vs an in person conference in 2019.
- 12: [Theatre] The What Goblins Saga, Chapter 2: Trees, Friends, and StaticThu 08 October 2020
On this episode of FOSS and Crafts Theatre, we continue the What Goblins Saga. The What Goblins saga continues as the characters continue to learn about themselves and their ever-changing environment. If you haven't listened to Chapter 1, maybe stop reading now to avoid spoilers from that episode!
- 11: An Ethics of AgencyThu 01 October 2020
Chris and Morgan discuss an ethical framework Chris has been workshopping for the last few years, "An Ethics of Agency", with the foundation of maximizing agency "for you, for me, for everyone" and minimizing subjection. CW: Note that Chris talks about an incident involving them experiencing suicidal depression at one point.