(This review is a cross-post of one I posted on the furry.engineer mastodon instance. I wanted to cross-post it here so folks here on the Lemmy side of things could see it as well.)

“Lago’s eyes reflected the sickly yellow bursts of sapfire blazing in the distance…” and thus begins the epic second book, Masks of the Miscam, of Joaquin Baldwin’s Noss Saga series. From the start, we are thrown right into the action, where we left off from the end of the first book, Wolf of Withervale. We follow the group as they explore further into the stories and histories that surround the mysterious domes located across the lands of Noss. We see much more of the world too, branching far beyond what was shown in Book I. With this are found new allies and friends, mysterious new civilizations, enemies old and new, and the hint at what is to come in the Noss Saga.

Spoilers

Much like in the first book, the exploration of LGBT themes is heavily present, and even expanded upon. The slowly budding relationship between Lago-Sterjall and Aio-Kulak shows this well, especially with the backdrop of Kulak’s Miscam tribe, the Laatu, not being accepting of same-sex relationships. Nor are they accepting of non-Miscam being in possession of the sacred animal masks, the Silvesh, that Lago and Jiara now hold. We also see an exploration of intersexual “allgender” peoples as well, and how they are handled by the Miscam.

With the exploration of the Laatu Felid tribe of the Miscam, we begin to learn that each tribe has its own way of handling things, and that not all things are acceptable among different Miscam peoples. Upon more expansion and learning of the other Miscam, it becomes apparent that they cannot be universally viewed through rose-tinted glasses. Each tribe has handled things differently, some for the better, some for the worse, some not making it to the present day of the story at all. This depth to the story greatly exceeds what might have been expected from the first book, and greatly increases the richness of the series as a whole, and genuinely makes one desire to learn more about each tribe. In the background of all of this, we see the Red Stag marching his forces ever further towards more Domes and more conquest.

We also learn so much more about the sacred Silvesh masks, and come to learn that Noss itself is far more than just a rocky planet, a point that is going to play a pivotal role in the coming saga. Like the first book, it will strike a strong chord with those that carry Animistic or Shamanistic knowledge, just like its expanding universe of Miscam tribes and their Silvesh animal mask bearers will strike a chord for Therians reading it. It need not even be said that Furries will adore it as well. We see the return of old faces too, such as Banook and Crysta, who all play key roles at pivotal parts of the story. Banook also plays another interesting role in this story, as a background for the conflict Lago-Sterjall feels between his love for the Bear in the far North, and the Laatu prince now with him. This sets up a potential exploration of some polyamorous themes in the story later on as well.

_

With Book II of the Noss Saga, we see how the story is now going to start unfolding before our heroes. What has started as a simple discovery of a strange mask is rapidly turning into a tale well worthy of being called a saga. Joaquin Baldwin has, like with Book I: Wolf of Withervale, expertly crafted a beautifully profound story, rich with storytelling, world building, character design, and more. Each chapter pulls in the reader, leaving them wanting more with each page they read. Masks of the Miscam is a beautiful story, and sets in motion so much more to come. It leaves us all desiring to what know what lies on the path forwards for our heroes of the Noss Saga, and I truly cannot wait to see what is in store for them!

Recently, I was looking into licensing an open-source project I'm creating. My preferred license is the BSD-3, but was given advice that I should seek a license that offers patent protection as well. I saw there is a BSD 2-Clause + Patent option, but not one for the BSD 3-Clause, not that I found through OSI or SPDX. This seems odd to me, because I'm pretty sure the BSD 3-Clause is more commonly used than the BSD 2-Clause. Because of this, I've had to dual license my project as BSD 3-Clause AND BSD 2-Clause+Patent, which is a bit unwieldy, but achieves the same desired results.

This seems like an odd oversight though, I'd be curious if there's a reason the 2-Clause was chosen for the patent protection over the 3-Clause version? I could just add in the patent protection part to the 3-Clause version, but creating arbitrary licenses like that definitely makes me feel a bit... uncomfortable.

Edit: Due to some confusion as to what I meant, I wanted to add some details.

I'm definitely aware that licenses such as the Apache 2.0 exist, I just like the BSD licenses for their simpler language (and also don't have that odd state changes clause from Apache 2.0). I'm more so just curious why the choice was made for only the BSD 2-Clause license to gain the Patent Clause, but not the BSD 3-Clause version. That's what I'm not sure about, and why I'm curious about the logic behind this choice. I'm gonna paste in the content of both licenses below, since they are both short and easy to read and understand.

BSD 2-Clause + Patent

>Copyright (c) > >Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: > >1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. >2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. > >Subject to the terms and conditions of this license, each copyright holder and contributor hereby grants to those receiving rights under this license a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except for failure to satisfy the conditions of this license) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer this software, where such license applies only to those patent claims, already acquired or hereafter acquired, licensable by such copyright holder or contributor that are necessarily infringed by: > > (a) their Contribution(s) (the licensed copyrights of copyright holders and non-copyrightable additions of contributors, in source or binary form) alone; or > > (b) combination of their Contribution(s) with the work of authorship to which such Contribution(s) was added by such copyright holder or contributor, if, at the time the Contribution is added, such addition causes such combination to be necessarily infringed. The patent license shall not apply to any other combinations which include the Contribution. >Except as expressly stated above, no rights or licenses from any copyright holder or contributor is granted under this license, whether expressly, by implication, estoppel or otherwise. > >DISCLAIMER > >THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

(Fun Fact: A lead developer on the Rust team said they would have chosen the BSD 2-Clause+Patent license if it existed at the time of them first releasing the Rust programming language. Instead, it's why they chose to dual-license under the MIT and Apache 2.0 instead.)

BSD 3-Clause

>Copyright (c) . > >Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: > >1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. >2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. >3. Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. > >THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

(This review is a cross-post of one I posted on the furry.engineer mastodon instance. I wanted to cross-post it here so folks here on the Lemmy side of things could see it as well.)

“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass...” Wait, that’s not right.

“Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall…” Hmm, not quite.

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” Wait, no that’s not right either…

Ah, here we go! “The grey fox fled through the forest, her paws as quiet as an owl’s shadow...” and thus begins Joaquin Baldwin’s (@joabaldwin@mastodon.social) epic fantasy tale Wolf of Withervale, the first book in his Noss Saga series. In the first book of this already epic series, we find Lago Vaari and his friends, new and old, embark on the start a hero’s journey across the lands of Noss. Learning the secrets of an ancient and powerful mask, they come to discover that far more is at play in their world than any of them had expected. There is no doubt that a reader coming to it will find the story deeply engrossing, and absolutely looking forward to future books within the wider series.

Spoilers

The themes that Joaquin shows are rich in quality and variety, but all contain a very surprising amount of depth and realism as well. Starting off with the more obvious ones, the LGBT themes found in the book are numerous and varied. From showing Lago growing up and discovering his same-sex attraction, to showing how sexuality is handled by the varieties of people across the lands of Noss. In particular, with the character named Banook, we find a very accurate representation of bear culture and attitudes, as it relates to our own world. The irony of this is not lost, given he is an actual bear spirit himself! Further more, with regards to Banook, a depiction of naturism is found that does not always get shown this way in most literature. I am not sure if this was intended or not, but it is quite accurate and a welcome addition to an already rich and warm character. Having Lago explore his sexuality with Banook further adds to the wonderful depth of them both, and the themes presented with them.

Digging deeper, there are themes that run through Wolf of Withervale that will sit very close to the hearts of those that have explored Animism, Shamanism, or Therianism. I am unsure if this was wholly intended by Joaquin, but it means this book will likely hit deeper for many that might be initially expected. It is done so in a more theatrical way, but the themes explored are very real as they relate to our own world. Furries, of course, will find the themes of the book, and the entire series, to be very much so to their liking as well. There are also themes that transcend topics that might not be initially expected, such as cosmology and astronomy (with a friendly topping of in-world astrology too), explorations of spirituality and religion (not just relating to the themes of animism either), archaeology, geology, philosophy, culture, language, and more. This is just a preview of what the book explores, and I expect this list to grow more as the series progresses.

\-

What Joaquin has crafted with the first book of the Noss Saga is absolutely spectacular, nay I think the word beautiful is truly the one way to describe the book in a single term. The world building and lore are spectacular, the themes are as varied as they are deep, rich in meaning and storytelling. The characters, both protagonists and antagonists, are deeply crafted with their own understandings and modus operandi, each adding their own unique thread to the story. Wolf of Withervale is a marvelous foundation for the Noss Saga series, and I can truly say that I cannot wait to see what is in store in the books to come!

By far one of the best Reddit apps available for Android has been adapted to now work with Lemmy! It's still in Beta, but it's absolutely worth checking out if you haven't yet. It's Free and Open-Source too! Development also seems to be coming along quickly as well, already talk of getting it listed to F-Droid.

Infinity for Lemmy community: https://pawb.social/c/infinityforlemmy@lemdro.id

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/1473025 > https://very.bignutty.xyz/notes/9hf13it1ced3b2za

This seems like it may be the root cause of the recent server issues, I had to guess. Probably a lot of federation issues if the .ml domains went down all at once. Probably why it's not that smart to use a domain owned by a (nominally) hostile foreign government, just saying...

Wow, ok! For anyone looking for a better Lemmy app, for both desktop and mobile, Liftoff seems to be a fantastic choice! Definitely already better than Jerboa is, despite some in-development quirks to be worked around temporarily.

If your "subscribed" feed is broken, set it to the subscribed feed for your instance, instead of "everything" and it should work as expected.

Check it out, it's quite good looking!

Now that Pawb.Social has forked Lemmy, I thought it would be appropriate to go ahead and compile a list of changes or additions that have been suggested, or that have been spotted by others or myself. This is hardly a comprehensive list, and down below will be two comments by me, one for changes to back-end changes or additions and one for the front-end suggestions as well.

---

> ##### A quick note before I start

One important thing I do want to stress is that any changes or additions made should not render our fork incompatible with other Lemmy instances, the apps that allows for easy usage of Lemmy (Jerboa, Thunder, etc), nor cause issues for interacting with, or interactions from, the rest of the Fediverse. To take a quote from Linux Kernel development: Don't Break Userspace!

Now, let me specify for any who aren't in the know about the differences between back-end and -front-end are:

• Front-end: focuses on the user interface, designing the visual elements, and ultimately the UI elements that a user will interact with on the web page.

• Back-end: deals with the server-side functionality, handling data processing, storage, and communication with databases and external systems (The rest of the Fediverse) using server-side programming languages and frameworks. For Lemmy, this is done with the Rust language.

---

Now, with that summary done, here is a (still WiP) list of changes:

> ### Back-end

• Addition: Individual community blocking (as opposed to the current instance and user-only blocking).
• Addition: Ability to follow entire instance (or at least follow all communities on an instance).
• Addition: Allow for individuals to block instances and communities, instead of requiring instance-wide action to block them.
• Addition: Give instance admins better moderation tools (hashed IP address, etc. Needs to be GDPR compliant)
• Change: Better support for automatically linking other communities (and instances) back to your primary instance for easier following and interaction.
• Change: Better cross-compatibility between Lemmy and the Mastodon/Pleroma side of the Fediverse.
• Change: Better cross-compatibility with KBin.
• More to come

> ### Back-end & Front-end (For things that will require changes on both ends to function properly)

• Addition: Post flaring - To allow for better post management, sorting, viewing, and moderation.
• Addition: Ability to sort communities into groups (similar to multireddit).
• Addition: 2FA during login/sensitive actions like password changes.
• Addition: Mark servers and people as “friends” so they display a marker by their name elsewhere.
• Addition: Better nsfw post handling, more specific viewing settings, etc.
• Addition: Adding notes to users (for moderation purposes)

> ### Front-end

• Addition: Add more themes/theming support to the UI.
• Addition: Add better support for widescreen displays.
• Addition: Ability to pick a default sorting method (perhaps per community).
• Change: Refresh and organize some of the UI elements for Lemmy (somethings are just a bit outdated looking...).
• Change: Alter donation button at the top to point to the donation portal for the/an instance (this should be the default tbh, the prominent button shouldn't direct to the Lemmy devs to begin with...)
• Change: Move all information about Lemmy and the Lemmy devs to one, out of the way location, potentially as a citation in the footer.
• Change: Add link pointing to the GitHub fork for Pawb.Social
• More to come.

Please see below for the two threads to add your own thoughts or comments on things you want added, changed, or even removed. All comments and thoughts are welcomed!> ability to sort communities into groups (similar to multireddit).