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50: The Spritely Institute

50: The Spritely Institute

FOSS and Crafts · FOSS and Crafts

August 21, 2022Explicit

Show Notes

<p><a href="https://spritely.institute"><img src="/static/images/blog/2022-08-12_The-Spritely-Institute_Mascot-nobg2-scaled.png" alt="Spritely Institute's goblin character holding up the Spritely Institute flask" /></a></p><p>The <a href="https://spritely.institute/">Spritely Institute</a> (of which Christine is CTO) just <a href="https://spritely.institute/news/ffdw-support-announcement.html">announced its multi-year grant</a> by the <a href="https://www.ffdweb.org/">Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web</a> and gave a <a href="https://spritely.institute/news/blast-off-spritely-institutes-tech-tour.html">tour of its current tech</a>! This is a big moment that's been in the works for a while, as Spritely moves hands towards real stewardship by a <a href="https://spritely.institute/news/spritely-institute-501c3-approval.html">real nonprofit</a>!</p><p>Also also! The video recording of the Lisp/Scheme workshop (based on <a href="https://spritely.institute/static/papers/scheme-primer.html">A Scheme Primer</a>) is released! <em>Unlock Lisp / Scheme's magic: beginner to Scheme-written-in-Scheme in one hour!</em> (<a href="https://share.tube/w/gdtnuipKbbVdR2u1murL4t">PeerTube</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDROSL-gGOo">YouTube</a>, )</p><p><strong>Links:</strong></p><ul><li><p><a href="https://spritely.institute">Spritely Networked Communities Institute</a></p><ul><li><p><a href="https://spritely.institute/news/ffdw-support-announcement.html">FFDW funding announcement</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://spritely.institute/news/blast-off-spritely-institutes-tech-tour.html">Tech tour</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://spritely.institute/donate/">Donate to the Spritely Institute</a>!</p></li></ul></li><li><p>FOSS &amp; Crafts episodes about Spritely:</p><ul><li><p>The <a href="https://fossandcrafts.org/episodes/9-what-is-spritely.html">What is Spritely</a> episode, where Morgan says &quot;get in the car Christine you need to talk about your project&quot;, is the first time Christine laid out the broader (early) plans for Spritely in depth! (In that sense, FOSS &amp; Crafts has been here for much of Spritely's journey, as many of our listeners know!)</p></li><li><p><a href="https://fossandcrafts.org/episodes/38-spritely-updates-november-2021.html">Spritely Updates! (November 2021)</a></p></li><li><p>Less directly, <a href="https://fossandcrafts.org/episodes/46-mark-miller-on-distributed-objects-part-1.html">Mark S. Miller on Distributed Objects, Part 1</a> talks about much of the tech that informs Spritely's design!</p></li><li><p><a href="https://spritely.institute/jobs/">Spritely Institute's jobs page</a> which will have jobs posted on it like, real soon now</p></li><li><p>Spritely Institute is also the org that published <a href="https://spritely.institute/static/papers/scheme-primer.html">A Scheme Primer</a>, which we've talked about before</p></li></ul></li><li><p><a href="http://faif.us">Free as in Freedom</a> has talked about how the IRS has been more cautious about granting nonprofit status to FOSS orgs in <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2014/sep/23/0x4E/">Episode 0x4E (IRS Refusal Redux)</a></p></li><li><p>Some background about Randy Farmer (Spritely Institute's Executive Director):</p><ul><li><p>Randy co-founded <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game)">Lucasfilm's Habitat</a>, the world's first graphical massively multiplayer virtual world, which ran on the Commodore 64 in 1985 (!!!)</p><ul><li><p>Revival over at <a href="http://neohabitat.org">neohabitat.org</a></p></li><li><p>See the hilarious <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVpulhO3jyc">marketing video</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://web.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/Virtual_Worlds/LucasfilmHabitat.html">The Lessons of Lucasfilms Habitat</a> is one of the most cited papers about virtual community designs of all times, and still holds up today</p></li></ul></li><li><p>Electric Communities Habitat was Habitat's followup.</p><ul><li><p>Hard to find information on, but here's a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNiePoNiyvE">Randy demo'ing the system from 1997</a>!</p></li><li><p>The <a href="http://erights.org/">E Programming Language</a>, on which much of Spritely is designed, came from EC Habitat. See <a href="https://fossandcrafts.org/episodes/46-mark-miller-on-distributed-objects-part-1.html">Mark S. Miller on Distributed Objects, Part 1</a> for more on that (and hey, when are we getting out part 2?)</p></li></ul></li><li><p>Randy co-hosts a podcast called <a href="https://socialmediaclarity.libsyn.com/">Social Media Clarity</a> which has some interesting episodes.</p></li></ul></li><li><p>See also Spritely Institute's brilliant engineer Jessica Tallon <a href="https://spritelyproject.org/news/interview-with-jessica-tallon.html">writing about her experiences</a> and especially her <a href="https://spritelyproject.org/news/pebble-bank.html">pebble bank design</a>!</p></li></ul>