Dan Brown

Image of Dan Brown

Hello! I'm Dan, a UK based full stack web developer with a love of open source software. Most of my free time is spent working on BookStack, playing video-games or getting distracted by one of many hobbies like 3D printing.

I primarily develop in PHP using Laravel, with VueJS being my front-end framework of choice, but I also dabble in Go, NodeJS, TypeScript and Android development.

Random Side Activities

Latest Blog Posts

Date Post
2026-05-16 3D Printing Parts for my Greenhouse, Round 2
2026-05-10 Great Devices: Nexus 7 2013
2026-05-03 R36S Console RetroArch Stuck Menu Issue
2026-05-02 April 2026: What I've Been Working On
2026-05-01 Basic OpenCode Sandboxing with Docker
2026-04-27 Games Played in 2025
2026-04-01 March 2026: What I've Been Working On
2026-03-04 Shivam Mathur's "node-docker" Images are Awesome for PHP CI
2026-03-02 February 2026: What I've Been Working On
2026-02-26 Your BookStackApp project was assigned as a project for my Software Architecture course
2026-02-22 My Sovol SV08 3D Printer Setup in 2026
2026-01-31 January 2026: What I've Been Working On
2026-01-13 Epson Printer: The administrator password you entered was not recognized
2026-01-05 Pressure to Follow Process
2026-01-05 Online Shopping Email Notifications
2026-01-03 My HomeLab Setup in 2026
2025-09-20 Linux Label Printing with the Phomemo D30
2025-09-18 Reporting to the CMA: Google Android Developer Verification
2025-09-16 OPNsense & Dnsmasq: Responding with specific DNS servers
2025-08-20 An Impromptu Introduction to ZFS Drive Replacement at 1am
2025-07-02 Experience with UK Medical Cannabis for Ankylosing Spondylitis
2025-04-25 Copyright Takedown for Linking to the "State of Open Source" Report
2025-04-04 No, Gumroad Did Not Become Open Source Today
2025-03-24 Scripting Monitors (KDE on Fedora)
2025-01-27 Amber flags in Open Source & Self-Hosted Projects
2025-01-07 LLMs are Directing Open Source Licensing
2024-12-31 Games Played in 2024
2024-10-24 Beware of Poison in the Source
2024-10-02 Common Misconceptions of the AGPL
2024-07-29 Adapting GitHub action PHPUnit tests for Codeberg/Forgejo
2024-07-02 Lessons from the Allotment
2024-06-04 Futo, Please don't attempt to create your own Open Source Definition
2024-03-05 Material You (Dynamic/Adaptive) Colors in Legacy Android Apps
2024-01-19 Scripting Monitors (Gnome & Wayland on Fedora)
2024-01-08 Retaining a Greenhouse Roof with 3d Printing
2023-12-24 Games Played in 2023
2023-12-12 Lessons From Growing Food Indoors
2023-11-15 Why the Distinction Between "Open Source" and "Source Available" is Important
2023-08-31 Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 Timelapse
2023-08-03 Removing the Rear Seats on a Volvo C30

Projects

BookStack

An easy-to-use and free platform for sharing documentation.

Laravel MySQL TypeScript PHP

Is it really FOSS?

Evaluating the actual FOSS status of projects.

Astro Licensing

RSS

A simple twitter-feed-style RSS aggregator.

Laravel SQLite Tailwind PHP Vue.js

Mailbag

A system for managing batch sends to subscriber lists.

Laravel SQLite Tailwind PHP

Wirestat

A basic HTTP/JSON based monitoring system.

Golang JSON Linux

Thermocouples

An app for viewing and calculating thermocouple info.

Android Java Material Design

Retherm

An app to convert between RTD resistance and temperature.

Android Java Thermal Calculation

More

More projects can be found on my Codeberg profile.

Social Feed

Posts from @danb@fosstodon.org

2026-05-17

Updated DanB/RSS with a new grid view, and smaller docker image:

codeberg.org/danb/rss#readme

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2026-05-16

More parts I've designed and 3D printed for my allotment greenhouse:

danb.me/blog/greenhouse-3d-pri

»

2026-05-10

A look back at one of my favorite pieces of tech: The 2013 Nexus 7

danb.me/blog/nexus-7-2013/

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2026-05-02

Been a bit more productive in April. Here's what I've been working on:

danb.me/blog/2026-apr-work/

»

2026-04-28

The body is round

Back view of a fluffy tabby cat sitting on the floor lookup up watching the TV. His body is very spherical
»

2026-04-27

A bit late, but couldn't sleep so wrote up the games I played last year:

danb.me/blog/games-in-2025/

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2026-04-15

The cal.com project announced they're going closed source, with the reason stated that open source is risky due to AI vulnerability scanning 🤔

Like with mass firings, I think we'll see other VC-backed "Commercial Open Source" projects use AI as an excuse and opportunity to close their code now that AI is reducing the cost to entry for competitors, and for bypassing licensing or limitations in open core.

The licensing for cal.com was always questionable anyway:

isitreallyfoss.com/projects/ca

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2026-04-01

March was a bit of a low productivity month. Mainly focused on BookStack releases and patches. Hoping April will be much more productive.

danb.me/blog/2026-march-work/

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2026-03-30

OnlyOffice is getting upset that they've been forked, after they attempted to set sketchy license additions to prevent forks:

onlyoffice.com/blog/2026/03/on

I explain their questionable license, including a conversation I had with their legal manager, on isitreallyfoss:

isitreallyfoss.com/projects/on

I hope Euro-Office succeeds to provide a FOSS-friendly alternative, will need a lot of effort though to continue a project like that, especially if OnlyOffice play nasty.

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2026-03-21

It's treat time!

A fluffy tabby cat chomping on a treat, with funny scronchy faces, featuring his big white whiskers and big tiger fangs
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2026-03-05

Looks like I need to update my blog preview image generator to handle escaped quotes though 😅

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2026-03-05

Yesterday I found that choosing the right container image for CI can really help with speed and efficiency:

danb.me/blog/awesome-node-dock

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2026-03-04

Wonderful, now folks are using "AI Agents" to take my details from GitHub for spamming.

This was scummy enough when done direct by humans.

github.com/chainstream-io/dex-

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2026-03-03

Gotta clean the beans!

A fluffy tabby cat sitting, with his back foot stretched up to mouth, and his tounge sticking out mid-lick while he cleans his fluffy toes with a focused narrow-eyed look
»

2026-03-02

What I've been working on in Feb:

- BookStack: security patches, new community and next release.
- DanB/RSS: Reduced docker image size & fixed path handling.
- Started contributing to Debian wiki.
- Three new functional 3D models on Printables.
- Two new blogposts.
- isitreallyfoss: 4 new projects and a new homepage section.

danb.me/blog/2026-feb-work/

»

2026-02-26

An example of how some university tutors appear to assign open source projects to students without permission, leading to awkward situations for maintainers:

danb.me/blog/your-project-was-

»

2026-02-22

Details about my current 3d printer setup, including all the mods made:

danb.me/blog/sv08-setup/

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2026-02-21

Curled up and comfy this

Fluffy tabby cat curled up on his side, with a curled paw slightly hiding his face, but a thin green eye is peering out. His lighter belly fluff is showing a bit, with his very fluffy tail blocking part of the foreground
»

2026-02-18

Added a few more projects to isitreallyfoss today, with the most interesting being Netdata.

Their open source offering may be a fair bit more limited than what their website and marketing would infer:

isitreallyfoss.com/projects/ne

»

2026-02-15

Too sleepy, missed

A fluffy tabby cat laying on a white cushion, with his hair a bit wild and sleepy look on his face
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Guestbook

Live Guestbook

Time Message
02:45:41 I was once a web developer like you but my keyboard started fighting back one day and we lost trust in eachother. One day i will get revenge.
02:47:56 I hate green.
02:50:11 Your website is the best thing on the internet! I can't get enough of it!
02:52:26 Hi, searching for local singles in the area. Anyone there?
02:54:41 When I was a young lad we used to write HTML on paper airplanes and get the local seagulls to take them to France
02:56:56 I'm selling my fridge on Facebook Marketplace if anyone wants it. Great for pickles!