HortusFox v5.8 released

I'm proud to announce the new version 5.8 of HortusFox. Along with this release, there have been some other changes made that I want to address here as well.



Code changes

In terms of code commits, I resolved 12 issues from the current milestone. These have mostly been improvements and fixes. I want to have a bit more time for the planned plugin feature, so I decided to implement it in a different version. As you know, I don't want to have too large milestones, hence I went with 12 issues in the current one.

Here is the changelog:

Added tech stack section in README to give credits to used packages (#455)
Added markdown for plant details notes (#497)
Fixed that custom plant attributes weren't taken into account when cloning plants (#503)
Fixed that an initially generated cronjob password contained invalid characters (#510)
Fixed that exporting a backup failed in case any of the locations weren't assigned a preview image (#513)
Added a list of console commands to project README (#517)
Changed allowed request methods for cronjobs (#518)
Removed associations with any big tech corporations (#519)
Ecosia image search for returned plant names using the plant recognition feature (#520)
Improve generating hyperlinks for Ecosia image search (#523)
Prevent execution of arbitrary script files in the /public directory (#524)
Increment version number across various files (#525)





Forum launched

HortusFox is a FOSS project that yearns for digital sovereignty. Hence I decided to deprecate the discord community server. Originally I got inspired by Dan Brown, the creator of BookStack, who actually did the same and I followed them along here, as I agree with his reasoning here. I personally decided to replace the discord server with a self-hosted forum. Remember how it used to be? A software project used to have - along with the code hosting - a website, documentation and a forum. This just worked. It gave people the opportunity to engage with each other. A forum is searchable, even from the outside, using a search engine. This just doesn't work with discord as it's closed by nature. Also, I don't want the community depend on big tech corporate decisions (and discord made some controverse ones recently), so switching to a forum gives the community more control and autonomy. The forum is now officially live, and links to discord have been removed from the project scope. Additionally, I removed any bluesky link, as I don't see a purpose in using such kind of platform anymore. If I want to post news, I can just do this on my blog and/or the forum. I also felt that I don't have a "real community" on bluesky, so naturally my posts are mostly liked/reposted by bots. Recent new followers were also bots. I feel like spending time there is kinda useless. This is not a fault of Bluesky, as it's way better than other services (twitter/x, threads, mastodon, etc). But still, I think these platforms have outlived themselves.




Trivia

Other than these news, there have been some things going on that you might find concerning and/or funny as well. For instance, a GenAI bot spammed multiple repositories with unsolicided security reports, which were entirely garbage. I reported that bot, but it's still engaging in its spammy endeavors. Another bot posted garbage text contents as issues on another repo. Reported that as well, still the bot is live. I also got 15 suggestions for HortusFox merged into one issue from someone who had a little too much attitude, but it was funny to point out his flaws in their proposal. Needless to say that I closed the issue and marked it as invalid/wontfix. In any case, I have disabled PR feature on GitHub for HortusFox, as I still don't want any GenAI generated code in my project. This will remain so until I managed to find a solution on how to verify AI was not used in the PR process. 




Mental health awareness and mastodon

I recently checked out a few mastodon instances (once again), but I finally decided to NOT make an account. I like the UI, I like that it's federated, and the software just works. Sure, there are some bugs here and there, but nothing bothering. My main problem however is that mastodon instances claim to be inclusive and protect minorities / vulnerable groups. But if you browse hashtags on NPD, you see blatant ableism against pwNPD. It's even worse than any other social media platform of that type I've seen. It seems like inclusion and awareness is not something they deem valuable for people suffering from NPD. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a recognized mental health condition, like any others such as anxiety disorders, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorders, eating disorders and whatnot. But yeah, the stigma towards pwNPD is still high. As a pwNPD, I don't want to support any platform that can't reflect on these double standards while promoting themselves as inclusive. 



If you like HortusFox, I'd really appreciate a donation, or even a sponsorship on GitHub. 💚
Also I'd be very happy if you star the repository on GitHub. ✨


 GitHub Sponsoring
 Buy Me a Coffee


➡️View the release:
https://github.com/danielbrendel/hortusfox-web/releases/tag/v5.8

🌐Visit the HortusFox Homepage
https://www.hortusfox.com/

💬Join the new forum
https://forum.hortusfox.com