I imagine there was a time when this wasn’t obscure, but I’m guessing people today don’t remember Caldera OpenLinux. That was the first Linux distro I installed/used. A guy from church gave his copy.
Caldera eventually became SCO. But I’m pretty sure I was using Caldera OpenLinux before the whole Novell patent suit thing.
Nope. Lots of stuff commonly believed by Christians isn’t from the Bible. (Though sometimes they’ll do a lot of mental gymnastics to assert that what they believe is from “the only reasonable interpretation” of the Bible.)
Just a few other things commonly believed by Christians not (or at least only dubiously) from the Bible:
This meme is 6 steps ahead of all of us.
We’re playing tic-tac-toe and this meme is playing 4-dimensional strategema.
Plus, fuck them for putting another Microsoft logo on keyboards.
I agree with your post except for the implication that the American voters and/or civics teachers are at fault. The way voting works in the U.S., it’s just not possible to vote our way out of this mess.
A left-leaning voter voting third party is just half a vote for Trump. There’s zero chance of a remotely left-leaning third party winning the presidency.
(I say “left-leaning”, but the U.S.'s “left-leaning” is what the rest of the world would call “conservative” at best.)
And you have to pay for it.
This might be the first time these words have appeared in this configuration on this community.
Aside from what everyone else has said, also:
My new-year’s wish is for the AI bubble to pop as soon as possible.
I think for the Trump supporter delusion to work, it generally has to include the assumption that they’re in the majority. “The Silent Majority™” and all that. Which is probably part of why they get so butthurt when a public figure tells them to go fuck themselves.
You know how when your coworker leaves their desk and forgets to lock their computer, you change their desktop wallpaper to Oompa Loompas or whatever?
This is the new that.
This talk says “[Free Software] is generally everywhere and a lot of these smart devices that you buy off the shelf most likely is running some sort of free software but most people would never know that. Generally it’s not indicated anywhere that it’s running any type of free software. There’s no written offer for sources which is sadly the most popular… the written offer for source code seems to be the most popular way that they go about distributing the software but generally they don’t follow up with it or what they distribute is not really that.”
This article mentions that “I’ve been on a mission in recent months to establish just how common and mundane GPL violations are. Since 21 August 2009, I’ve been finding one new GPL violating company per day (on average) and I am still on target to find one per day for 365 days straight.”
I’ve got a robot vacuum cleaner that runs the Linux kernel and Busybox but came with no written offer for source code. (Per the article above, I’ll refrain from naming and shaming the company.) I might go look at the documents that came with my smart phone a little later and see if I can find any written offers for source.
So perhaps, if the GPL is “not enough”, the solution might be more GPL.
Love this.
I need to look into the Best Buy case you’re referencing.
But I doubt think you’re right that violation of the terms of the GPL is such a rare thing. Aside from people who just don’t use technology much at all, I’d imagine most folks have multiple devices sold in ways that violated the GPL and with no plans for GPL compliance (and no knowledge that they needed a plan for GPL compliance.)
At least that’s how most of the content on the Software Freedom Conservancy’s YouTube channel makes it sound.
Ok, yeah. I think I misinterpreted the bit of your post that I quoted.
About Google, it’s not necessarily Google who manufactured your phone. It is if you have a Pixel, but it might be Samsung or LG or ZTE phone or whatever. And it’s not necessarily them who sold you your phone. It might be T-Mobile or Mint Mobile or AT&T. Whoever conveyed GPL’d code in object form (as the GPL puts it “embodied in, a physical product”) has the responsibility of ensuring you can get from them the source of all GPL’d code on your device. Including all derivative works and modifications.
Derivative works includes kernel modules. Which includes device drivers for, say, 5G modems and fingerprint readers. And those are the kinds of things (aside maybe from tivoization) that are the biggest hurtles for making a fully free firmware for a given device.
So, yes, I mean the kernel and derivative works of the kernel like drivers. And of course anything else on the device that is GPL’d.
Plus, the GPL also includes what is necessary to compile and install GPL’d code as part of the source code. Some of the implications are pretty cool. See this article by Bradley Kuhn of the Software Freedom Conservancy for more info.
I think if companies did comply with all this, FOSS could benefit ordinary users who don’t even know what FOSS is a lot more than it does now.
BSD which iOS is based on was always designed to make this a possibility, but the GPL was not.
Can you elaborate on this? I would have said exactly the opposite. That the GPL’s copyleft scheme and requirement of providing source code was very intentionally meant to be a way to prevent big corporations from taking advantage of users via software. I’ll admit that vision hasn’t born the fruit (that I’d’ve said) it was intended to. But wasn’t the intention there?
Meanwhile, BSD doesn’t have any provisions intended to keep some big company from distributing compiled binaries sans source code with lots of antifeatures added.
The terms of the GPL specifically require that you be able to specifically demand all source code of any GPL’d code on your smartphone (or smart TV or toaster or garage door opener or whatever) so that you can build at least the GPL parts of the firmware for your own devices. If the courts would just back that up, you would be able to recompile all the GPL’d parts of your smartphone’s firmware and run that on your phone. That was the intention of the GPL. And the terms of the GPL have been used to bear fruit in that direction. OpenWRT wouldn’t exist if Free Software advocates didn’t threaten legal action if… who was it… Broadcom?.. didn’t comply with the GPL and release its source code.
There is still Tivoization to contend with. (Locked bootloaders, basically.) Some (like Bradley Kuhn) think the GPL’s terms are sufficient to prevent that from being a problem already.
So, Open Source was already kindof the capitalistic fork of the Free Software movement. And it feels like Parens’ vision of Post-Open Source is about how to marry it more to “the market.” If it’s not clear from what I’ve said already, I’m not a fan of that specific aspect of it.
It is a problem that big companies reguarly violate the terms of the GPL. I hope good things come out of SFC v. Visio that give the GPL’s requirements of distributing source code with compiled code more teeth, but we’ll have to see. I do think the courts agreeing to interpret the GPL (at least in some cases) as a contract rather than as a license is a good thing. It was a gutsy move on the SFC’s legal department’s part, but the case shows more promise now that they’d made it than it did previously. Perhaps a GPLv4 that better deals with being interpreted as a contract is in order.
Though, I worry that what Parens has in mind for new licenses doesn’t address what I’d want to see from the Open Source movement and will ultimately move (Post-)Open Source in the wrong direction.
Specifically what I want from FOSS licenses is to be able to (and to have assurance that others have the option to) write and distribute software with assurances that no one’s going to use it to restrict users’ rights down the line. The GPL has historically been imperfect at that. The AGPL is better. But the GPL has always been explicit about requiring companies to distribute source code with binaries. What we need is that but with teeth in the form of some combination of court precedent and more effective legalese.
If current licenses have the problem that big companies just ignore the terms set out in the license, I wouldn’t imagine making a new sort of license with different terms like “big companies have to pay to get the benefit of using Pots-Open Source software” is really going to work.
All that said, I’m glad to hear discussion about the future of FOSS. I’m worried about where FOSS is now and where it’s going and am glad to see more strategic thinking.
Considering eating a meal of just those four ingredients just to spite OP.
Oh jeez. I forgot about that. I had that running on my DS back in the day from a GBA flashcart with a big-ass CompactFlash card sticking out the bottom. Good times.