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The OBS Project is threatening Fedora Linux with legal action

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Re: The OBS Project is threatening Fedora Linux with legal action

#161

Post by akdev1l »

thayne wrote: post #128
rincebrain wrote: post #42

This seems like a flashback to the xscreensaver fights with Debian of yore, given that the entire fight seems to distill to "OBS is shipping EOL Qt because of unfixed regressions in newer Qt, Fedora views shipping EOL Qt as unjustifiable neglect and repackaged it with newer Qt, which, as described, breaks things." [1] For those who don't have that in their context - jwz got very upset at people reporting bugs against…

> Fedora views shipping EOL Qt as unjustifiable neglect That's rich, coming from a project very closely tied to Gtk, which has a history of massive breaking changes, and outright removing functionality, leading to many projects continuing to use older versions of gtk for a very long time.

How is fedora “closely tied to Gtk” in any way that it isn’t also “closely tied to Qt”?

Fedora KDE is literally release blocking and has been approved for promotion to be on the same level as Fedora Workstation.

Re: The OBS Project is threatening Fedora Linux with legal action

#162

Post by nindalf »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #113
rincebrain wrote: post #42

This seems like a flashback to the xscreensaver fights with Debian of yore, given that the entire fight seems to distill to "OBS is shipping EOL Qt because of unfixed regressions in newer Qt, Fedora views shipping EOL Qt as unjustifiable neglect and repackaged it with newer Qt, which, as described, breaks things." [1] For those who don't have that in their context - jwz got very upset at people reporting bugs against…

> Debian doesn't just ship upstream updates every 30 minutes. This grossly understates the problem. The debian xscreensaver package was years old, and contained bugs related to screen locking which were an actual security issue. Your comment is in very poor taste.

People who actually use Debian and similar distros will disagree. In their view there’s nothing wrong with shipping older, patched versions of open sourced software. The license says they can do it!

So they grossly understate the problem, make it seem like it’s the person authoring the software at fault or the one who’s being unreasonable.

They’re quick to tell you how great the maintainers are, how much effort they put in for free but they don’t share that same love for the author of the package. You know, the person who actually wrote the software. They don’t acknowledge that without the author they’d have no software to begin with, and that providing support to older versions of software is a cost to the author. Not just older, but possibly broken in subtle ways because of the patches applied on top. The author still gets all the blame and all the support requests for changes they didn’t make.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to run old, stable software. No one questions that their distro is “the most stable”. That they cannot or will not see the costs of doing so on the author is a shortcoming, but there’s no solving that.

Re: The OBS Project is threatening Fedora Linux with legal action

#163

Post by yoavm »

poulpy123 wrote: post #159

The state of software distribution on Linux has always been catastrophic and it's an incredible miracle that Linux was able to enjoy the success it had despite this

Are you using Linux? I cannot think about an operating system in which it's so easy and safe to install software on. I use Arch BTW.

Re: The OBS Project is threatening Fedora Linux with legal action

#164

Post by mattl »

layer8 wrote: post #75
rincebrain wrote: post #42

This seems like a flashback to the xscreensaver fights with Debian of yore, given that the entire fight seems to distill to "OBS is shipping EOL Qt because of unfixed regressions in newer Qt, Fedora views shipping EOL Qt as unjustifiable neglect and repackaged it with newer Qt, which, as described, breaks things." [1] For those who don't have that in their context - jwz got very upset at people reporting bugs against…

This doesn’t seem similar at all. Debian didn’t break xscreensaver, they merely shipped a two-year old version at some point, in line with their stable releases. This is unlike how Fedora apparently broke their own OBS repackage.

I love Debian but the version of xscreensaver was old and if there were security issues unpatched and getting the blame sent to jwz, that’s not right.

Re: The OBS Project is threatening Fedora Linux with legal action

#165

Post by Mashimo »

akerl_ wrote: post #32
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not the right to distribute with an intact trademark. No open source license provides that right. If the Blender Foundation one day decided that only the Windows and Mac App Stores can distribute Blender, yes, Linux distributions would be forced to use a different name.

Is there legal precedent for that claim?

Firefox on Debian was called IceWeasel because they wanted the right to change to code if needed.

Re: The OBS Project is threatening Fedora Linux with legal action

#166

Post by mattl »

thomasfedb wrote: post #152
bigiain wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty obvious it wasn't malice that led them to not respond quickly. So stupidity then. Seems legit.

That’s a poor faith comment. I’m a Fedora packager (not for this package). Like many others I have an unrelated day job. If there’s an upstream complaint I might get to it this weekend, maybe next. If I’m busy for a few weeks that doesn’t make me stupid. Have had my share of “discussions” with upstream who want the latest version packaged when this might not be completely in line with our guidelines. Not an uncommon…

Thanks for being a packager for Fedora. I appreciate your work. About to start playing with Fedora again on my Steam Deck.

Re: The OBS Project is threatening Fedora Linux with legal action

#167

Post by mattl »

mook wrote: post #130
pridkett wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that Netscape used to have “about:jwz” as an Easter egg URL and he was influential in open sourcing Netscape…

Didn't any unknown about: string just lead to somebody's wwwhome with simple URL rewriting? At least, with some versions?

No there was a pretty small but interesting list of people in the source code.

https://www.jwz.org/doc/about-jwz.html

Re: The OBS Project is threatening Fedora Linux with legal action

#168

Post by nindalf »

thomasfedb wrote: post #152
bigiain wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty obvious it wasn't malice that led them to not respond quickly. So stupidity then. Seems legit.

That’s a poor faith comment. I’m a Fedora packager (not for this package). Like many others I have an unrelated day job. If there’s an upstream complaint I might get to it this weekend, maybe next. If I’m busy for a few weeks that doesn’t make me stupid. Have had my share of “discussions” with upstream who want the latest version packaged when this might not be completely in line with our guidelines. Not an uncommon…

Yeah it’s not fair to expect volunteers to show up on weekdays, I agree with you.

But equally, I don’t think it’s fair that packagers want to have it both ways. Packagers want to make subtle, possibly breaking changes to software they didn’t author. The end users feel the pain and complain to the author. The author has no control over the situation, and they’re feeling the pain during the working week.

So the packager has been instrumental in creating the problem with the patch, and when requested to do something about it, turns around and says “buddy I do this for free, I’ll get to it over the weekend, maybe.” Sure, but the author is feeling the pain right now.

Again, it’s nice that you’re volunteering your time for others. But it would be good if you acknowledged that the costs of packaging aren’t borne entirely by packagers. Authors bear part of the cost when they get blamed for broken software.

Re: The OBS Project is threatening Fedora Linux with legal action

#169

Post by nativeit »

alexjplant wrote: post #107
walrus01 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can hate jwz as much as you want but the fact remains that probably 95% of ycombinator funded startups couldn't exist without making extensive use of the gpl, bsd, Apache and similar licensed software produced by a lot of open source curmudgeons and greybeards. Many of whom share his same opinion on VCs and late stage capitalism.

> You can hate jwz as much as you want I don't hate him and didn't write anything of the sort. I've never met him. He might as well be the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny as fas as I'm concerned. > the fact remains that probably 95% of ycombinator funded startups couldn't exist without making extensive use of the gpl, bsd, Apache and similar licensed software produced by a lot of open source curmudgeons and greybeard…

It's a shitty move, I'll grant you, but it's also clearly a form of protest, and acts of protest are by-design intended to make the public uncomfortable in some way. As far as this kind of thing goes, I personally find it mildly amusing, mildly offensive, and mildly clever. I think the internet is more interesting for people like jwz doing things like this. Not necessarily "trolling," because this--for all its crude imagery and sardonic language--it's a very clever way to continuously raise awareness toward a larger issue they have taken with society. I was just motivated to read a pair of blog posts from 13-years ago, ones that required additional effort to access, and considered jwz's perspective on VCs and a hyper-aggressive work culture...for anyone who's ever attempted to publish any kind of content? That's kind of impressive.

Not that I would seek to deny your valid annoyance and offense. It's a non-consensual scrotum in a teacup. I personally would have gone a different direction, I get why that would raise someone's hackles.

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