2w ago

Coordinating a post-Calibre path forward

wandering.shop Cassandra is only carbon now (@xgranade@wandering.shop)

Things are moving really fast, so I went on and created a Codeberg organization for coordinating a post-Calibre path forward for uniting readers and writers in the goal of archiving, organizing, and reading books. https://codeberg.org/rereading DNS is still propagating, but https://rereading.space...

Cassandra Granade writes:

Things are moving really fast, so I went on and created a Codeberg organization for coordinating a post-Calibre path forward for uniting readers and writers in the goal of archiving, organizing, and reading books.
https://codeberg.org/rereading
DNS is still propagating, but https://rereading.space/ should be up soon as well.

21 comments

for anyone coming here to kneejerk defend calibre’s shithead developer because mindless advocacy is the only use you have for open source software:
we don’t give a shit that the LLM crap is optional, it’s still damaging
we don’t give a shit that the LLM crap might run locally, it’s still supporting a system built on mass theft
there’s no such thing as an open source LLM you fucking clown
please enjoy the calibre dev repeatedly stepping on rakes that smack him in the face when multiple computer security professionals showed him 10+(!) severe vulnerabilities in a setuid root mount program nobody asked for that he implemented for frankly fucked personal reasons over the strong objections of his own community
if you use calibre in a server context then none of this is workable, but calibre’s developer only cares about his personal desktop and he wanted slop so fuck what anybody else wants I guess
- please enjoy the calibre dev repeatedly stepping on rakes that smack him in the face when multiple computer security professionals showed him 10+(!) severe vulnerabilities in a setuid root mount program nobody asked for that he implemented for frankly fucked personal reasons over the strong objections of his own community
  I'd heard of these but never looked into it (hadn't needed to), opened now and saw who the bug was reported by. imagine getting that report from that source and then your first answer is to start arguing
  double up that multiple distros going back older than that report have had support for automatic user mount systems (and that calibre could've just used that)... goddamn
  recently I ran into the term "outsider programming" and I really like it as a frame for the kind of inexpert contributors (driveby or otherwise) that you get in a project like calibre, people who just trying to make their own little thing work as best they can - you could look at e.g. the code for the dedrm plugin if you want some examples of this. but then you also get whatever the fuck goyal is doing here, which is ..... far the other way

This was the second fork I heard of, the first being "clbre" ("calibre" without the a and i):
https://github.com/grimthorpe/clbre

I'm out of the loop, apparently.
What happend to Calibre?
- Looks like they’re adding AI features
  https://9to5linux.com/calibre-8-16-open-source-e-book-manager-adds-more-ai-features-bug-fixes
  
  Looks like they are all local open.source ai too. And optional. I'm I missing something? That seems fine.
- https://awful.systems/post/6446337/9636814
- There's some optional AI stuff that people are losing their shit over.
  
  Yeah i don’t get it. Like, my local sushi place started using sawdust as filler in their cooked tuna. I just don’t order the tuna. Plus, sawdust has a neutral taste and has fibre in it. I am very smart btw
  
  off you fuck

I’m mad.
- Is that like "scientist" kind of mad, or "Yosemite Sam" level?
  (Yeah, I'm farking old - get offa my AstroTurf.)
  
  The latter!

there’s no such thing as an open source LLM you fucking clown
I'm driven beyond irrationally mad about this. How can it be called open source when they cannot legally share the sources with you because they're stolen? Watching the OSI wrap their little green keyway around the AI industry is one of the factors that helped deprogram me away from the starry eyed idea I had about FOSS.
- How can it be called open source when they cannot legally share the sources with you because they’re stolen?
  Easy, the people calling it that believe exploiting people and stealing their work is okay

As soon as I heard about the inclusion of AI Tools in Calibre, I nuked my flatpak install of it and got Thorium Reader to act as a stop-gap. I know there are going to be security issues in this latest version of the application because he added optional slop tools...That is one of the major bugbears of any "AI" tool. Fuck AI, can't wait until CEOs and other fools move on to the next grift...

Rereading's also got a blog up now

I like the idea but are you actually willing to maintain a fork? I am asking because looking at the commit logs of calibre it is, for all intents and purposes, a one developer project. With other successful forks it is usually some of the existing developers that create a fork. In this case there doesn't exist much of a developer community, so you should expect that you will continue to maintain this largely by yourself.
- Notice that the post is me quoting someone else.
  
  True, I missed that. In that case my comment should be addressed to Cassandra.

21 comments