🇳🇱
licenses is moving towards MIT and Apache like licenses and we are seeing GPL like licenses being abolished slowly.
@freemo Ah yes, of course, the freedom to abuse other peoples rights is very important to uphold.
If you throw a breadcrumb in a pond, the biggest and strongest fish is going to get it, and become bigger and stronger.
If you throw money on the street the "toughest" gang on the block is going to get it and get "tougher".
In a world that is clearly and obviously dominated by proprietary software monopolies "I don't care, let anyone do what they want" is equivalent to "I love megacorps owning everyone left and right!".
GPL is not a license that grants you freedom in heaven, it's a license that fight for your freedom in hell.
@namark Why would i care if the biggest and strongest take advantage of my software, let them. Doesnt prevent the little guys from using it too so I'm happy.
If I release software it is for EVERYONE, I'm not classist it isnt for just a select few who qualify by a specific financial status.
@freemo Consider this.
You release you wonderful piece of software for anyone to do anything they want with it. Mr. Monopolist comes along, sees some merit in it, throws their huge team of developers/marketers at it and produces a proprietary product based on it, that from users perspective, your original, oh so free, project can never hope to compete with. No matter how hard you(or the community) strive to keep up, you are always behind Mr. Monopolist, cause you give away all you work, while they just laugh at you and continue to dominate the market.
After some time even the knowledgeable little guy can't freely use your software anymore, unless they are willing to use ancient software/hardware, cause the whole ecosystem surrounding it is proprietary.
OSS is a way for monopolistic mega corporations to keep FOSS under control and make sure they are always ahead.
@namark Except that not really how it ever plays out.
Big old company steals it, makes it proprietary, most of the users I actually care about (linux users and open source contributors)dont care they continue to work on the project anyway. In fact The likely result is an **increase** in developers who contribute not a decrease.
I still get to use the software as does the rest of the world, AND there is an increase in contribution and my project grows faster.
Looks like the company coming and snatching it up only helped my position and did nothing to hurt it. Again, why do I care if they want to add to my project and sell them, great, hope they have some wonderful results.
@freemo Not playing out that way, would be the OSS project beating the proprietary alternative that is based on it: BSD beating mac on desktop, linux beating android on mobile, llvm beating nvidia's cuda compiler, etc.
What you are saying, is that it plays out exactly as I described, but you just don't care, because you are not a user you are a developer, and you are interested in development and not usage.
I would assume you also don't care about the fact that majority computing devices used by general public don't work at all without proprietary firmware, and don't work well without proprietary software.
@namark Yea I mostly dont care about that. I use linux, my phones and my software are all compatible with my needs, they continue to draw plenty of developers. Yea I'm perfectly fine with aall that, in fact its what I WANT, to see the economy thrive by the use of these techs as much as the open-source community itself. I am quite excited when i see it adopted into proprietary tech, it means we are succeeding at our goals.
@freemo If your needs include to be surveilled and prevented from using your devices it doesn't suit the owner of proprietary software/firmware on it, then I can't argue.
Can't wait for all the new and exciting developments in proprietary software, like police robots patrolling the streets running "microsoft windows utopian edition"!
@namark If they want to offer me their service for my data thats their right. Depending on the data its a trade im usualy more than ok to make. If not I can either not use the serivce or in some cases get a paid alternative. But regardless of if I use it or not I'm still happy to see it help the economy.
I have plenty of open source I can still use if i dont want surveillance and am willing to run my own hardware. So yes, absolutely my uses are still satisfied.
Plenty of issues in temrs of laws and freedoms worth addressing, none of that has proprietary software to blame. Proper rules regarding our freedom is an issue governments need to get on, not a need to abolish closed source however.
@freemo With firmware they are free to not offer you anything and still surveil you and control you device through network. You can't do anything about that on most modern hardware. You don't have an alternative unless you are capable of manufacturing your own hardware.
There are some limited options like old dekstop hardware(librebooted thinkpads) or expensive server hardware(Raptor engineering Talos II). But these can't satiate the market.
With software, they are free to not offer you anything and surveil or control your device to the extend that the software allows(display driver can OCR and censor text for example). Alternatives exist but are usually not competitive(forever behind, and sometimes even happy about it as you demonstrated).
You argument about rules is equivalent of saying "we don't need to list the ingredients on food products as long as there is a rule that there is no poison in them. Also the producer of the food is free to demand you to not open the packaging before consumption, and is also free to poison you if you do. Governments and law bending megacorps decide what's poison".
@namark Also i heard the whole food ingredient argument before, it isnt exactly fitting. It is more like:
"People should be free to decide if they want to eat food that doesnt list its ingredients or not"
@freemo Starving people are not free to decide what they eat. All you arguments work in perfect society where free software is the accepted norm, while you live in society where proprietary is the norm.
@namark Starving people cant afford open-hardware either, moot point
@freemo umm... bending analogy?
In the case of food people are starving for food.
In case of open hardware people are "starving" for open hardware not food.
Are you going to argue, that only essentials are food and shelter, and if you have that you need nothing else in life?
@namark Never made any claim about what was essential. You are really stretching to put words in my mouth to argue a point
@freemo I didn't say you claimed that, I asked if you're going to claim that, because that's the only way forward I see for your argument(this branch of it).
@namark There are other essentials than food and water, yes
@freemo Ah, I see, so solely open hardware isn't essential then. Today maybe it isn't. When the "microsoft windows utopia edition" robots start patrolling the streets it will suddenly become essential. The hope is by that time free software will become the norm. The anti-copyleft OSS movement is doing nothing but hindering that, by saying what essentially amounts to "proprietary software rules the (software) world, and that's ok, it should be free to do it".
@namark In reality those microsoft robots will likely crash every few minutes and be so slow and buggy that my linux robot that I built myself will easily outpower them.
@freemo :D sorry, can't help but to argue even with a joke:
put aside, that in real reality your linux robot will be superior to microsoft's in every way, except the most essential - being able to utilize it's own hardware to the full potential (assuming no proprietary drivers); it will also be running on intel firmware that would be hardcoded to override the kernel and submit to any microsoft robot, which will of course be protected from being overwritten with state of the art cryptography.
@namark Except that linux does run on proprietary hardware all the time and I specifically buy either open or at least reverse angineered hardware. Linux fully leverages every piece of hardware I buy, because I buy hardware to ensure it can. Still not a problem. Dont like proprietary hardware, then dont buy it.
@freemo Assuming you mean "does NOT run on proprietary", what do you mean by "all the time"? Like, you hope that the firmware steps down after the boot process?
I'm sorry to disappoint(if not you personally, than maybe some people reading) but unless you're solely running IBM power9 (or some 10+ year old librebooted system) your linux is running at the mercy of internet connected proprietary firmware, that has full(read/write) access to all your RAM at the very least. The operation of this firmware is undetectable by the kernel and its integrity is guaranteed by a digital signature, at all times. It itself can also be updated remotely, given necessary cryptographic keys. But not to worry, Intel/AMD promises you they're not gonna do anything bad with it. Wait did I say bad? I meant "unlawful".
And again the "don't like it don't buy it" argument doesn't work, because the market is dominated. For some people, even today, it's a requirement. "You need this time tracking software to do your job, and it only runs on recent enough x86" or "x86 has better software support than power9, so if we want to stay competitive we must use it" or even more twisted ways to control the market, with leverage point always being proprietary software.
@freemo Ah, I see, that's clear. It runs, but still, at least in the case of the CPU, it runs at the mercy of proprietary firmware (not just the hardware designs). Whether hardware design itself has backdoors is a different question, but we're not even at the stage of discussing that, cause it has clear software/firmware backdoors that everyone is totally ok with.
@namark Fact remains it runs on proprietary hardware and I have the option to buy open hardware if i prefer anyway.
@freemo On most hardware it doesn't run without proprietary software/firmware, so if what you mean that it does run by itself, fully OSS, you are wrong.
Reagarding open hardware, my whole point was most people don't have that option. The options that are there are "barely there"(most of the time thanks to people who are very much in favour of copyleft in hardware/software) and only for select few who have the luxury to pay premium and disregard the software ecosystem around them.
@namark No I mean simply that it runs, I mean what I say.
@freemo Sure, I was just trying to understand how is that relevant. Just by itself... hmm, like:
"Yay! linux is not banned on firmware level!" ??
"Even though for most hardware it can be, even retroactively!!" ??
"Yay! Someone is pointing a gun at me, but it's totally ok, cause they didn't pull the trigger yet!" ??
"If they shoot me, I'll make sure to get myself some body armour" ??
@namark It shows a few things depending on which firmware or instance we are talking about
1) The firmware has been reverse engineered
2) the firmware was kept private but the specs on how to talk to it were provided
3) you need to download and use proprietary software to use it.
In my case #3 doesnt apply, I use all open source #1 shows my earlier comment that the superior open-source engineers will often win out anyway. #2 demonstrates my comment of vote with your wallet, because clearly the current market gives enough pressure to allow for #2 to occur in these cases.
Either way im good.
@freemo I see, that's not what I was referring to. What you say was true maybe a decade ago, when hardware vendors were kind of behind the curve.
Let me re-explain:
Today any CPU comes with another tiny invisible CPU inside it, that is in charge of starting up the system, or controlling it remotely(this is disclosed by the way, nobody is trying to hide it, it is there to remotely control the system). This tiny CPU is controlled by reprogrammable software. This software is usually proprietary. Certain important parts of it are usually not just proprietary but are protected from being reprogrammed, or in any way tempered with by a cryptographic key/signature, owned by the vendor. This software is perfectly happy to boot linux kernel today, but also perfectly capable to refuse to boot the any specific kernel, or temper with operation of the kernel at any time, remotely. You can't reverse engineer this, unless you find a vulnerability in their cryptography.
Even disregarding that:
1) Reverse engineered firmware/software is rarely superior to contemporary proprietary version. It only wins out for old hardware.
2) I don't see the point. Certain interface will need to be provided, if the hardware is to be used. It's the bare minimum to market the product. It's simply a result of hardware vendor being a separate company from the software vendor. If they were the same, there would be no spec. Also there is no way to guarantee that the published spec is even the full spec. People have found instructions in CPUs that were not documented/disclosed publicly.
3) I'm happy that you can afford to avoid this(again disregarding the CPU firmware), most people today can't. They didn't choose not to, they simply can't. For them it's proprietary software or being a hermit-hobo.
@namark No I meant "does run"..