namark @namark@qoto.org
Joined Jan 2020
I don't see the analogy. You might be a bit out of context. Do the offices offer the full range of Starbucks coffee? Do they offer it to general public in quantities that can satiate the demand? Is drinking coffee in an office that you are not invited to the accepted norm in society?
Now if Starbucks offered their full range of products and services either free or paid, that would be an analogy fitting the context here.
copyright
Information is valuable. The lack of exclusivity is what makes it immoral to sell. Trade is based on fair exchange. You can argue semantic nuances as much as you want, but that is how an average person sees it, and if you break the rules of exchange you are abusing that person.
To elaborate a bit on why something like GPL will not be necessary if copyright is abolished, and why the problem is not as separate as it seems.
Classic free software argument is on this is "you would not hide source without malicious purpose, there is no other incentive". The only argument that was able to stand any kind of ground against that is "I want to protect my copyright". If copyright goes, closed source goes with it, by common sense or common sense turned into law if necessary (but I don't think it would be necessary).
@byllgrim@mastodon.xyz I think "can" here is meant more like "may"... that's English for you... though no there is at least one other language that does that... but also at least one other language that doesn't...
If that's not what got you, then maybe it's the implied notion that while crime is always possible, one should not normalize and legalize what one considers criminal.
@LogicalDash@cybre.space
I'm curious if you are speculating or sharing personal experience. Are you and artist or know artists that benefit from copyright?
In my limited experience there are two general groups of artists: those with established fan base, that would support them regardless, and those without, who mostly earn money by providing service(creating art for a client) or selling physical art (not selling digital art). Because of this I'm under the impression that abolishing copyright will not hurt most artist much, even less so if it is just weakened, which is the negotiation point of the OP.
I'm not sure what's robotic there or even complicated. I didn't say the are galaxy brained I said they are not stupid. If you have the option to buy something or just download for free, and there is provably no difference between the two, you don't need to be a calculating machine to make that choice. If you want to support the devs do that through the "empathy and reason" that you indeed possess, but not through some perverted illusion of shopping you are addicted to (I'm looking at you, me!).
I don't see the connection between reliable updates and selling binaries, quite the opposite, those fit better in the warranty model/idea. I don't care if you need to update the binaries or whatever else, I just need it to work and be fit for its intended purpose. Otherwise, what? All it takes for you to charge me another $75, is declare the project discontinued and rename/reskin/repackage it?
The idea of just selling binaries goes against what you originally posted, and I think you should stand your ground and don't give in on that front: one can't sell "thin air", and such practices should not be normalized.
No that will not work. If people can get something for free they will, cause they are not stupid, so the only way that will work is if there is something legal(buildyright?) or physical(computing power) preventing building software. If you say yes to that it will be abused.
Warranty on binaries is the answer and that has been known. For example GPL specifically allows adding warranty for that exact purpose. People need to start taking software more seriously (like cars, home appliances or other engineering products) and prefer/demand warranty. There should be international standards and regulation in place. Low quality, obscure and buggy software should not be accepted as the norm.
namark
boosted
Another one, from last year's LibrePlanet: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/who-s-afraid-of-spectre-and-meltdown/
@kragen@nerdculture.de
I think that concern is also addressed by my suggestion of a transparent build/training process by a trusted entity or community, and such backdoors or otherwise unwanted behavior is exactly why you can't consider a neural network(the extreme case of "my data is my code") source code.
What I meant by forensics, where small(statistically insignificant) differences might matter, is something like "there has been an incident that destroyed the entire system, and we need to figure out whether it was the AI's fault or not, by exactly recreating the situation". While perhaps a valid concern, it's not relevant in context of software freedom.
@MutoShack@functional.cafe one hundred two and ten?
Yes, it seems that's the only way to improve the situation - raise awareness and educate people about the importance of free software. I guess the best neutral ground for such a revolution are indeed governments, schools, universities, non profit organization and such, that are not tied up in "business".
@freedcreative@merveilles.town
@alcinnz @freedcreative@merveilles.town
I think it's not just an appeal it's a phenomenon that you can't ignore. Most people simply don't have anything to say about certain aspects of software development that arguably use up most of the resources/investments, so your business model already is targeting a minority, which will be roughly divided into two groups:
1. those who know precisely what they want from the developers,
2. those who only have some vague ideas, which might even be detrimental
Group 1 is likely already in the industry, and they would often like to view this more like "hiring a developer" than just "having a say". They would also be interested in keeping certain key developments(if not all) proprietary for the benefit of their business (this is where GPL kicks in to protect the community, but that's beside the point). They would also not be interested in group 2 being involved, because it makes things complicated, and also they are potential future clients.
Group 2, in addition to being harder to deal with, will likely not be able to offset group 1 in investments, at least as long as proprietary software remains a huge revenue generator.
Because of all of this, your project will be more successful if you favor group 1.
I see, I guess I'm missing the context where "just ship the source" was suggested as solution to shipping software. We have been shipping binaries around already, along with source code. Could do it better of course.
Otherwise, my (possibly off topic as well?) point was, that in my opinion, in practice, under AGPL, as a node in a p2p network, you don't have to provide binaries or config files with sensitive information in them, unless this sensitive information is miraculously central to the source code of the program and its effects can be observed by others on the network.
@kragen@nerdculture.de
As far as I know you also can not guarantee that it does what you want it to do (or anything at all), outside of statistics, so if it's slightly different but still covers the same percentage of cases does it really matter for software freedom? I guess it might matter for forensics, but that's beside the point.
Can you just randomly stumble upon a substantially better neural network? There has got to be a method even to that madness, it can't just be purely random brute force. I would not accept our AI overlord if it's nicknamed "jackpot"!
Sure it is impractical if you try to do it on every node of the p2p network, but if you have any kind of trust mechanism in place, the network can collaboratively build it for everyone, and distribute it in that built/trained state(along with all the tools, which I guess they would have anyway as they took part in the process). Software freedom does not imply isolation, and this is true in much more general sense. As an individual I might not care if you provide me with source code to build something myself as long as you provide it to my trusted dev team(be that local independent organization, government organization, international organization or my homies on darknet) that can do it for me personally if I can afford it, or for the community they maintain/support which I'm a part of. A collective will always have this kind of advantages over an individual.
Not being physically able to build it on your own is not a reason to consider what is essentially machine code - source code.
Another similar case would be renting a supercomputer that's running free software. Same exact software with same exact settings might take several lifetimes to yield any results on my own machine, it is for all practical purposes impossible to use, but that doesn't mean that it violates freedom 0.
I would be surprised if AGPL does not accomodate things like that.
@cwebber@octodon.social
@emacsen
I'm but a measly c++ guy, all the lisp examples make no sense to me, so obviously I fail too see any kind of fundamental problem here with copyleft, p2p, and the "code = data" thingie.
Yes, if the photograph of a birthmark on your butt that you embedded in the software is a central and irreplaceable part of an algorithm that objectively changes/enhances the software as observed by the rest of the p2p network, then I'm afraid it is only ethical to share that piece of personal information. However otherwise, if it is not so essential, in the version that you share you can replace it with any other image. Nobody sensible will have a problem with that, and nobody malicious will be able to prove that you did that, without braking the law or a Kafkaesque court siding with their demands. That said I'm not a lawyer and I would not claim that the wording in the license is perfect in this regard.
Definitely a practical consideration if such a replacement is difficult in your language or paradigm of choice, but not a fundamental issue I think.
Taking this to extreme you arrive at neural networks, as in "I've trained a neural network that filters emails for me but it also spews out my home address if you ask it nicely". I think it is obvious that neural networks are not source code as far as software freedom is concerned, only the training tools are. The difficulty of training is a separate issue, that is solved/mitigated by decentralization.
@philipwhite
I think there is a contradiction between "superficial enough" and "matters a lot", though I wouldn't argue against improving modularity of any project.
I think the debates like const and let will still happen, both between various syntax devs, and the language devs over the "officially endorser syntax".
I'm not familiar with VB.NET, but quick search revealed "C# is case sensitive while Visual Basic .NET is not", which means the tool will need to be able to come up with new readable identifiers... stop thinking about this, I don't want to lose my job ._.
@philipwhite but the whole point is readability right? If the equivalent code in A is readable, then there is little point in using B. If it is not readable, then the original B should be in the tree for everyone's benefit. If your peers/colleagues consider your preferred syntax illegible, no tool can help you I'm afraid. All you can do is preach.
Unless of course it's some super AI that can transform the code back and forth, while maintaining readability(tunable to anyone's liking), but at that point you'd be mostly deprecated, wouldn't you?
@cantinto
Then do not listen?
Natural languages are a complete mess, it's hard enough to communicate with them and focusing on the pointless cruft is not helping. From that point of view, people who take offense in misused pronouns are the same as people who deliberately misuse pronouns to offend, and both are in the same league as those who otherwise eagerly ignore such things as context, circumstance or intent (which I guess can be summarized in one word as meaning) to suit their needs.
namark
boosted
