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The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

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Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#141

Post by TeMPOraL »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #107
dehrmann wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they've put a lot of pressure to change the default license for new projects from (A/L)GPL to ASL How have they put pressure? I've written some libraries personally and licensed them under the Apache or BSD license because I want it to be helpful for anyone who needs it. I'm really not concerned if they make money off it or not or if they contribute back. If you're talking larger projects, a lot of the big, recent…

> I've written some libraries personally and licensed them under the Apache or BSD license because I want it to be helpful for anyone who needs it. I'm really not concerned if they make money off it or not or if they contribute back. It's not about getting contributions back, but ensuring that everyone who needs it can use it includes end users.

Indeed. Permissive licenses are about protecting the rights of developers; free software licenses are about protecting the rights of end users.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#142

Post by karinlee »

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Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#143

Post by TeMPOraL »

massysett wrote: post #52
city41 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember in the 90s people all thought Stallman was crazy. And by people I mean developers, Linux users, people on usenet, etc. We all appreciated his contributions but at the end of the day just figured he was wearing a tin foil hat.

I didn’t think he was wearing a tinfoil hat. I agreed with RMS back then insofar as he saw things like TPM coming. However, he did not understand then and still does not understand that by using any device as complex as a computer, the user must trust _somebody_. His free software ideals lead him to think that if the user can read the source and modify it, he can trust it. But this is true of no one, regardless of hi…

Software freedom isn't about every user being capable of evaluating and modifying software they run by themselves. It may have started this way, back in the times where end users were also competent at working with computers. The point is that end users can delegate trust on their own.

It's the same idea as with Right to Repair - the movement isn't expecting everyone to learn how to use a soldering iron and a chip programmer; is to allow local communities to have their own specialists capable of repairing hardware. Similarly, with free software, my mother isn't going to look or modify the code herself, but she may ask me to help with it. Or a different neighbourhood tech whiz, who may even take payment for the service.

Software freedom is in part enabling local markets to work.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#144

Post by arvinsim »

konjin wrote: post #31
robotresearcher wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By no means all people. He became very well known in the tech community in the 90s because a significant number of people were interested in what he was saying. He won the MacArthur award in 1990.

People don't want to listen to Stallman because he talks about motivations. The number of times I've had people downvote me for pointing out all organizations will act to maximize profit regardless the cost to others is extraordinary. It doesn't matter if it's google, mozilla, microsoft or the fsf.

Curious as to why you left our Apple and Amazon.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#145

Post by fsflover »

Shared404 wrote: post #32
fsflover wrote: post #13

Some companies fight on the side of users in this war. Check out https://puri.sm/products/ for an example (happy user).

Some other interesting companies: https://starlabs.systems/ https://system76.com/ https://www.pine64.org/ Most of these are probably well known to those who frequent HN, but just in case I'll mention them.

https://thinkpenguin.com/

https://minifree.org/

https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en

But the first company (Purism) specifically attempts to change the industry, they state it as one of their goals: https://puri.sm/learn/why-purism-computers-are-better-than-p....

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#146

Post by dane-pgp »

tenuousemphasis wrote: post #134
giantDinosaur wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat misleading to claim that 'one user' would be all there is auditing software. It's not 'one user' that audits your Linux distribution. Can something be snuck in that nobody notices into the source? Of course. But it's incredibly disingenuous to claim that because one user cannot audit all the software running on their machine that we should abandon the concept of auditable software in general and accept corpo…

You're missing the point. How do you verify that the bootloader or OS running on your hardware is the same as what the community verified? Hashes? How do you know the hash checking software is genuine without a TPM?

How do you know the TPM is correctly validating the hash checking software unless you built the TPM firmware yourself?

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#147

Post by playing_colours »

mschuster91 wrote: post #50
samatman wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to do a lot better than UBI for FOSS to keep advancing. A caste of code monks who forgo a comfortable life to write free software from their Mom's basement, or a cabin in the woods, isn't nearly good enough. Might not be able to pay out a quarter million a year like the FAAAM crew does, but we need a bunch of jobs paying half that to write and maintain open source. If it isn't competitive with the other optio…

Two things: 1) you'd still budget 125k a man-year? Why? That's only needed for devs in SV, NYC, London and other places with mad rent, besides - all you're gonna get in these places are fresh university grads and hipsters, not seasoned people with actual experience that tells them to not use a two months old JS framework for something that is supposed to live long. 2) Why limit it to USA? Other countries have decent…

60k, even in EUR (about 71k USD) will not give you quality in Germany. A senior developer in Berlin is about EUR 85k, and may go up to 120k for strong tech leads.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#148

Post by rubidium »

Aeolun wrote: post #112
samatman wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to do a lot better than UBI for FOSS to keep advancing. A caste of code monks who forgo a comfortable life to write free software from their Mom's basement, or a cabin in the woods, isn't nearly good enough. Might not be able to pay out a quarter million a year like the FAAAM crew does, but we need a bunch of jobs paying half that to write and maintain open source. If it isn't competitive with the other optio…

Half a FAANG salary to write open source sounds pretty good.

Ha. Yea of course it does, it’s still a better salary than most of people in the richest countries on earth make.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#149

Post by romanoderoma »

saagarjha wrote: post #132
geofft wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They created a new business model for a new type of open source software. It doesn't do anything for all the existing types of open source software. Nobody is going to turn glibc into a blockchain.

That's just a sign of glibc being stuck in the wrong millennium more than anything else. Add a couple functions to create ERC20 tokens and add the EVM as a supported architecture and I'm sure that can change. It's high time to remove those unsafe APIs like strcpy and printf that cause CVEs all the time and refocus effort on things that actually matter.

Yeah like add features nobody uses for real and remove functions that will break thousands of programs used by millions of people

That is thinking in the future, I'm sure of it

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#150

Post by simonh »

mdale wrote: post #130
jariel wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The natural cost of information is the marginal cost of copying." Wow, no, this is a fundamental misunderstanding right at the core of the issue. The 'cost' is that of 'creating and developing'- and FYI it's not 'information' - in most cases it's 'creative works' not some kind of 'discovered knowledge'. MS Windows is a 'Developed and supported Product' - not 'Information'. In much the same way it only costs $2 to 'm…

Every home likely has five to six linux OS running locally; routers, TVs, phones, refrigerators, video doorbell etc.

Yes, but the fact that those run Linux as against anything else is providing extremely tiny amounts of value.
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