In this episode, I deviate from dictating my blog posts and instead interview a friend of mine, Mark Wyner, to begin a series of episodes on free open source software (FOSS), specifically in this case, the FOSS that provides me a tolerable social media network called Mastodon, which Mark volunteers to help moderate and make a better place for users like me. In this episode, we introduce FOSS, go into some of the more nuanced thoughts we have about the distinctions or lack thereof between "free software" and "open source" software, explain things like the Fediverse, decentralised social networks, Mastodon in particular, and what it's like to be a moderator on an instance of Mastodon. If you have any feedback or want to hear about certain topics more than others, please send me an email at [email protected] or reach out to me on Signal at resl.17.

Mark Wyner's article on what it's like moderating a Mastodon instance can be found here.