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My Talk at Microsoft

stallman.org

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Re: My Talk at Microsoft

#231

Post by jacquesm »

PeterStuer wrote: post #157
thomasz wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is way, way, way easier to ensure that you follow a commercial license.

Trying to figure out exactly which production licenses were needed to be in compliance used to be a recurring nightmare back in the day when I did B2B bespoke system rollouts. A licensing guide, not the license itself but the document trying to explain which licenses have to be acquired under which circumstances, could run well over 100 pages. Microsoft had licensing specialists that the channel could call for help,…

And that service only exists as leadgen.

Re: My Talk at Microsoft

#232

Post by jacquesm »

danShumway wrote: post #187
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Javascript in the browser is practically compiled binary software at this point. You can't realistically inspect or edit 99% of what you're running since it's fully minified and obfuscated. And that's even more the case with WASM.

I'm going to push back on this, at least a bit. Maybe I'm atypical because I work with Javascript a lot, but I don't think it's that hard to read minified JS. Modern browsers have a lot of tools to help with that -- you can set breakpoints on DOM manipulations, you can autoformat the code so it's not just a jumble of text -- you can even pause execution and add custom code to functions that can do additional logging…

The fact that i can read quite a few Assembly dialects at the binary level doesn't mean that binary is suddenly equivalent to inspectable source.

Re: My Talk at Microsoft

#233

Post by NullPrefix »

PeterStuer wrote: post #157
thomasz wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is way, way, way easier to ensure that you follow a commercial license.

Trying to figure out exactly which production licenses were needed to be in compliance used to be a recurring nightmare back in the day when I did B2B bespoke system rollouts. A licensing guide, not the license itself but the document trying to explain which licenses have to be acquired under which circumstances, could run well over 100 pages. Microsoft had licensing specialists that the channel could call for help,…

>Microsoft had licensing specialists that the channel could call for help, but if you called them twice or more for the same case you would never get the same answer twice.

Do they preface with a "I'm not a lawyer" disclaimer and claim that anything they say is non binding?

Re: My Talk at Microsoft

#234

Post by NullPrefix »

fortran77 wrote: post #210
longcommonname wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canceling a talk doesn't equate to changing a view.

It means he's an easy mark, and doesn't think things through. I lost any respect I had for him after that, and so did everyone else in the circles I associate with.

Why did he cancel the talk? What were the arguments?

Re: My Talk at Microsoft

#235

Post by qbaqbaqba »

decoyworker wrote: post #36

I'm usually the first to shit on Stallman but I really liked his suggestions here. But hypothetically if Microsoft fully implements all of what RMS suggested would Windows be listed as an approved distro on gnu.org? https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-non-gnu-distros.html https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guideli...

Why not?

Re: My Talk at Microsoft

#236

Post by danShumway »

jacquesm wrote: post #232
danShumway wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to push back on this, at least a bit. Maybe I'm atypical because I work with Javascript a lot, but I don't think it's that hard to read minified JS. Modern browsers have a lot of tools to help with that -- you can set breakpoints on DOM manipulations, you can autoformat the code so it's not just a jumble of text -- you can even pause execution and add custom code to functions that can do additional logging…

The fact that i can read quite a few Assembly dialects at the binary level doesn't mean that binary is suddenly equivalent to inspectable source.

Of course not, that's not something I would ever claim.

But, given a choice between serverside code that you absolutely can't inspect no matter what, and a binary blob that you can read with a bit of extra work, wouldn't you prefer the binary blob?

Where serverside logic is concerned, it doesn't even matter if the underlying code is Open Source. I still can't inspect the instance and tell if it's running the correct code, or what its parameters are.

Re: My Talk at Microsoft

#237

Post by nirui »

steveklabnik wrote: post #99
nirui wrote: post #15

I somehow want to quote this too: > Direct GitHub to promote correct and clear use of licenses and the best use of copyleft (GPL version 3-or-later). I remember when I was very green, that list of licenses on the GitHub repository creation page is very very confusing to me. I don't know which is which and which one I should use, and most importantly, what's the effect of my choice. It could be great if GitHub can imp…

GitHub did make https://choosealicense.com , which is intended to help like this.

Yes, they have also put the link besides that license list.

However, my opinion is, the list better be designed in such way that users don't need to access to another website to understand what they're about to do.

It shouldn't be very hard, some sort of license description would do the work, I think.

Re: My Talk at Microsoft

#238

Post by Iv »

asdfman123 wrote: post #156
Iv wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do believe we are coming in an age where reputation is going to be increasingly important to companies. Those that change their opinions based on the hype and the short term profits are going to only have features and price as sales arguments whereas a company with a strong reputation and clear values will be able to charge a premium. I have no doubt that Microsoft is in the first category, but a company that would…

Microsoft also used to be a company whose growth depended on maintaining the Windows monopoly over the PC market, so everything they did helped underscore that. Now they are trying to compete in the cloud, and the dynamics are different. They know Windows servers aren't going to beat out Linux servers. They need to use honey instead of vinegar to win people over. It's a different company with different revenue stream…

Microsoft has always been very sweet and very competent when it was the underdog. It then seeks to establish dominant and becomes one of the worst players.

In the cloud, it is dwarfed by other companies so it needs to play the OSS game well to win over devs. But I have no reason to think that their main ethos has changed.

Re: My Talk at Microsoft

#240

Post by dwighttk »

ndespres wrote: post #41
dwighttk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making money rather than crucifying a savior?

A reference to the Good Friday Agreement, a pivotal development in the UK/Republic of Ireland peace talks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement

(Thanks)
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