Eleventy Becomes, Sigh, Build Awesome

2026-03-11T00:00:00Z

In case you haven’t heard, Eleventy, the excellent static site generator that I use for this very website has been acquired by Font Awesome. As a result, it has been renamed, sigh, Build Awesome. After seeing what happened to Shoelace, I’m apprehensive and very much not looking forward to seeing what features get locked behind a paywall. But beside the enshittification likely to follow, I thought we’d stopped appending “awesome” to everything at roughly the same time bacon memes, curly moustaches, and stomp-clap music went out of style. It seems like I’m not the only one who feels this way either.

While disappointed with this state of affairs, I’m not terribly surprised. Beyond the matter of funding, as W. Evan Sheehan of The Darth Mall put it:

…the vibe of open source in the JavaScript community is a little bit different than what I think of as the broader open source movement. Open source JavaScript projects often feel a little more tied to corporations than Linux, or Python, or NeoVim.

I wholeheartedly agree. There’s a big difference in philosophy between “free software” and “open source,” and many JavaScript projects seem to be firmly in the latter camp.

The choice of the MIT license for Eleventy in the first place speaks volumes—it’s antithetical to the free software movement. The MIT license allows corporations to snatch up free and open source software, insert whatever malicious functionality they please, lock down the source code, and abuse the users they extort with their rent-seeking pricing schemes. On the other hand, code licensed under a strong copyleft license such as the GPL ensures that software always remains free (as in speech). Under a strong copyleft license, anyone can use the software for any purpose. They may study, change, improve, and redistribute it. But unlike permissive licenses such as the MIT license, developers may not strip these rights from users at any point.

The goal of the free software movement is to create a commons of software that anyone is free to use, study, redistribute, and improve so that abusive software ceases to be competitive. In terms of how MIT licensed software helps this cause, it’s a bit like putting a soldier on the battlefield with no armor. They may do some damage, but they’re a cinch to eliminate from the field. At this point, I see MIT licensing as a red flag on all but the very few projects where it makes sense (such as programming languages). When you decide to rely on MIT-licensed software for your day to day activities, you never know when it will be enshittified, put behind a paywall, or EEE’d out of existence.

I’m not saying that these things are going to happen to what we knew and loved as Eleventy. Who knows what the future may bring. But I am saying that this move is certainly not in the spirit of Free / Libre and Open Source Software. I fear that the age-old pattern that befell Standard Notes is going to happen once again here: first attractive new features appear behind a paywall, then old features you relied on get put behind a paywall, using the software without paying is slowly made increasingly difficult, and, before you know it, they pull the ol’ switcheroo on the license (even if they revert from embarrassment later).

At the same time, despite my misgivings, I’m happy that Zach Leatherman is (I assume) going to be properly paid to continue his work on the project. It shouldn’t be so damned hard to make a living while performing a public good. Zach seemed pretty happy about all of this during his appearance on, sigh, Podcast Awesome. He strikes me as someone who really cares about his work, and seems a lovely man, always willing to jump in help someone even when the problem is between the chair and the keyboard (ask me how I know). Zach deserves, at minimum, to be paid a decent salary for his contribution to the world, and I’m thrilled that it seems he’s going to get at least that.

Now I’m tempted to turn this into a screed on funding for FLOSS projects, but better informed people than I have written plenty of those already, so I’ll leave it at this—the fact that NASA, Cern, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Ubuntu, JetBrains, CloudCannon, Netlify, Cloudflare, Shopify, MIT, Stanford, the governments of France, the UK, and the USA, Orange, Red Hat, Just Eat, and others didn’t manage to muster between them a piddling $6,000 per month to pay the developer of a tool they use to publish their websites is disgusting. We might have avoided this situation if they had.

I developed something like a brand loyalty to Eleventy. It’s a scrappy project from a talented developer who has managed to keep it alive and well for eight years. The project has become widely used because it’s excellent: flexible, powerful, fast, and easy to use for web developers who are used to working with JavaScript. I’m sad to see the name go, along with the red balloon, and that scruffy possum. The clean, middle-class replacement with its stupid clothing and fancy green balloon ^[1] can take a hike—I can’t believe they’ve gentrified the damn mascot!

They say Grumpy floats among the stars now.

While I have major apprehensions about where, sigh, Font Awesome is going to take the project, I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see where this goes. In the meantime, let’s all be sure to donate to the FLOSS projects we use, publicly shame corporations who don’t give back to the projects they profit from, and pressure our representatives to fund FLOSS software!

And green is my favorite color, too :[ ↩︎

Underrated Apps - QOwnNotes

2023-08-09T00:00:00Z

QOwnNotes running on EndeavourOS / KDE Plasma

What makes a good note taking app? #

After its author decided to make future versions closed-source, I found myself searching for a replacement for the excellent Notable. Unfortunately, while note-taking applications are a dime a dozen, they’re also common ground for the Notable / Standard Notes style FLOSS bait-and-switch: developers release an outstanding note-taking app, only to make future versions closed-source, or make it inordinately difficult to properly and fully make use of the software without paying for a hosted service. Victim to the former, I set out to find a note-taking app that I felt could not only be trusted to operate in the spirit of FLOSS philosophy, but also met some key criteria:

Native Code

Note-taking apps often use Electron. Rather than running another full-fat web-browser (chromium no less) just to type text, I wanted something lightweight that would integrate well with the look and feel of the rest of my system.

Notes in an open format

There are few things worse that note apps that force you to save your notes in their weird proprietary format, or store your notes into a database somewhere that you can’t see. If I’m writing text, I want my notes saved into normal text files that I can see, change, delete, and move, without relying on my note-taking app.

Markdown support

Given that I often work with static site generators, I have come to treasure Markdown. Beyond the minimal interface that markdown editors offer, Markdown keeps distractions low, allowing you to quickly format your notes without being bogged down in office-suite style toolbars and menus full of formatting buttons and dropdowns.

Enter QOwnNotes #

While, tragically, I rarely see this program mentioned in articles or recommended in forums, QOwnNotes is the only note taking app I’ve managed to find that meets all of the above requirements; written in C++ and QT, it’s zippy, light on resources, and integrates well with your desktop, especially if you’re using KDE Plasma on GNU/Linux. Notes are stored in plain old markdown files, so you can edit them in any text editor, and markdown support is, of course, excellent. As if this weren’t enough to make QOwnNotes a strong contender for a Notable replacement, the app is one of the more flexible note taking programs I’ve ever seen. It has a plugin system with a wealth of additions written by users, the flexible interface can be customized to suit your workflow precisely, and you can select from many built-in editor themes, or even craft your own. QOwnNotes also features integration with Nextcloud and OwnCloud. Best of all, the project is still actively developed and the developer, Patrizio Bekerle, is responsive to GitHub issues (and has the patience of a saint!).

Downsides #

No solution is perfect. When setting up QOwnNotes for the first time, a page in the set-up wizard will notify you that collection of usage data is enabled by default. While the page also details how to disable data collection, this is a departure from the opt-in approach usually taken by FLOSS projects, and is sure to put a dent in more privacy-minded users’ trust in the program. While highly customizable, QOwnNotes is by no means simple to configure. The settings menu is absolutely crammed with options, and default layouts tend to make use of lots of panels and icons. You can absolutely achieve a streamlined interface with QOwnNotes, but don’t expect your ideal setup out of the box without some tweaking. Finally, programs like Syncthing can cause issues while editing notes, interfering with QOwnNotes’ autosave and causing it to occasionally stop working entirely until the note is closed and re-opened. I can’t imagine this would be an issue when using the built-in NextCloud integration, but it’s something to look out for if you prefer to sync your notes with something that doesn’t require a web-server.

In summary #

For me, QOwnNotes checks all the boxes. I would love to see opt-in telemetry, and I do wish that I could simply disable auto-save to avoid conflicts with Syncthing (Please reach out to me if you know how), but I feel that these are minor issues for a native markdown note-taking app. A real diamond in the rough, I cannot overstate how much I appreciate Patrizio’s ongoing efforts on QOwnNotes.