Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

colatkinson.site

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 407 posts

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#371

Post by saagarjha »

pilif wrote: post #349
adrianN wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a difficult question because it might limit supply of open machines for users who want the freedom to hack their own stuff. I think it's okay to offer computers that are basically Facebook appliances, but there should always be a toggle somewhere that allows people who know what they're doing to do whatever they please.

Macs do have such a toggle. You can boot from the recovery partition, launch the terminal and issue the `csrutil disable` command. This will turn off all the security features that have been added over the years, including the “Catalina Vista” prompts people were complaining about in September. The reason this requires booting from the recovery partition is to make it impossible for malware to flip the switch and to…

> This will turn off all the security features that have been added over the years, including the “Catalina Vista” prompts people were complaining about in September.

I installed it back in June, so my memory might be a bit hazy, but as far as I’m aware SIP doesn’t control TCC.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#372

Post by __d »

DagAgren wrote: post #267
__d wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to forget the many, many places where it has and is succeeding happily. Here's my "get off my lawn" perspective: those developers who remember a world where there was little or no free software (from, say, the mid-1980's, when Sun made the C compiler a for-cost option on SunOS through until commercial Linux distributions), have a visceral understanding of free software that those who came to it later, and (perhap…

By that measure, a lot of FOSS is not a healthy community.

I don't think there's any question that this is true.

There are some efforts to address it (eg. SSL, Mongo, etc), but they're the first "drafts" if you like.

When a majority of the users of free software were programmers themselves, things were quite different to today. The world has changed, but the free software model has not kept pace.

With hindsight, I think the "Open Source" definition can be seen as a turning point, and the issues we have today stem from the decisions to give everyone the use of free software, even those who aren't of the community, or able to contribute in turn.

I don't think that was a bad or wrong decision, but I think that the ramifications are still playing out.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#373

Post by dmitriid »

laughinghan wrote: post #365
dmitriid wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- There are very few sustainable opensource projects. - Of those which are, such as Linux, they are sustainable not because community cares about them (they might or might not) or because community pays for them (they might or might not), but because corporations find enough vested in them to support them (through money and/or people). I highly doubt Linux Foundation is sustainable without corporate sponsors. - If yo…

So...you're not disagreeing with anything I said, you're just trying to educate me on how difficult it is to build sustainable open source projects? Thanks, I'm painfully aware, I have experience maintaining an unsustainable open source project. Or maybe you are trying to disagree with me, in the self-contradictory sentence in which you state that projects like Linux are not sustainable because community cares about…

Yeah, it's quite possible we talk about facets of the same problem, but don't really hear each other :)

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#374

Post by arminiusreturns »

ajconway wrote: post #367
arminiusreturns wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugg. So tired of this misunderstanding of GPL... You can sell GPL software! All BSD/MIT does is allow it to end up tivoized and remove power from the user. GPL is freedom for the user. BSD is freedom for the dev. Not all users are devs, but all devs are users. Users should take precedence.

Ultimately, BSD is less restrictive than GPL. Users won't have any power if they don't have software to use. It just happens that BSD (or similar) licenses are easier to deal with when developing things.

I am open to and find some merit in the argument that users could just fork, etc. Using GPL does seem to favor certain profit models more than others inherently, but non are exclusive, and there have been quite a few GPL success stories money wise out there.

I really like RedHat for this reason. It shows that it is the service and support, and the act of maintaining software, that makes it's money, and their books are open so you can see exactly how it works. A comparable startup/project probably won't get VC'd into a unicorn, but there is plenty of room for growth in the GPL software for sale along with service and support category.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#375

Post by lambda »

cmcd wrote: post #291
lambda wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's been the sole maintainer on the project since 2012 [1] and has never been compensated for it I have to object to that. I work for a company which pays him to build branded versions of FUSE for macOS, and has been doing so for several years. He does reliably ship us new builds, but it has sometimes been a little difficult to get him to respond to feature requests or even patches that we send him. I don't believ…

How long has your company been working with him? It sounds like this change was made two years ago.

For about 3 years.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#376

Post by lambda »

ericd wrote: post #361
lambda wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's been the sole maintainer on the project since 2012 [1] and has never been compensated for it I have to object to that. I work for a company which pays him to build branded versions of FUSE for macOS, and has been doing so for several years. He does reliably ship us new builds, but it has sometimes been a little difficult to get him to respond to feature requests or even patches that we send him. I don't believ…

Sounds like a lot of additional work for him to provide custom builds? Maybe he wants to be paid for the core product development that provides most of the value?

No, the custom builds aren't much more work than the vanilla builds, it's getting the build environment set up in the first place that's a pain, since you have to build against a different SDK for each version of macOS you support; and the custom builds are what he sells to customers, since with a custom build it can be installed and updated independently of the free-as-in-beer version that is used for things like SSHFS and might be updated out from under you in a way that breaks your application. Updating with your application means that you can test each new version and fix any issues or report back to him before shipping it.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#377

Post by cerberusss »

tambourine_man wrote: post #177

I think the issue is lack of user interest. I’ve tried using FUSE for the Mac many times throughout the years, mostly for curl_fs and ssh_fs. Believe it or not, I’m not happy with the FTP alternatives on the Mac. Transmit is beautiful but buggy and lacks features such as general purpose SOCKS proxy. FileZilla is ugly as sin. Cyberduck is neither pretty nor feature packed. Although it got better recently, FUSE for the…

There's also Expandrive.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#378

Post by pjmlp »

laughinghan wrote: post #364
pjmlp wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even close, because those developers are employees from Fortune 500 companies in one way or the other, they are not being paid by other developers paying to use Linux based software as such.

I don't understand. "Not even close to sustainable", you say, then complete the sentence by describing the situation in which Linux has been and continues to be sustainable.

Here is the part you keep ignoring "other developers paying to use Linux based software".

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#379

Post by z3t4 »

72deluxe wrote: post #315
toyg wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was installing everything that was “free” back in 1995. You cannot expect a teenager to be familiar with internet-privacy mantras; it’s actually horrible how we’ve created a situation where these poor kids are forced to learn and self-defend against an onslaught of trackers.

Agree! I can't see it getting any better for 99% of users either - you have to be quite technical. And once DNS over HTTPS is the norm (thanks Google + Microsoft) I literally have no clue what I'm going to do - I won't be able to stop any of the tracking domains requested or "telemetry". It's a nightmare and I think the Internet will be "over" for me at that point. eg. Little Snitch tells me all the outgoing requests…

You can block all IP ranges owned by the tracking companies. Sure many services will stop working.

Some people go vegan, some people go GNU. There are plenty of content to discover beneath the mainstream commercials. There is so much content on the web, and the Internet is not just the web. That I'm sure you can live a happy life, without consuming the services which business model is centered around how many ads, trackers and spyware they can install on your devices.

Re: FUSE for macOS is no longer open source

#380

Post by z3t4 »

oefrha wrote: post #132
kalleboo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't like it you shouldn't have chosen the BSD license in the first place I mean he changed the license away from BSD now, so, that works too.

BSD -> closed source is kind of a nuclear option when other less drastic options exist, but sure.

as I interpret most permissive license's, they say something like "must retain the above copyright notice, and this list of conditions.", which makes it not possible to change the license. But you can always go "closed source", and there's nothing stopping you from charging money (which is why Business likes these permissive license's)
Post reply on HN