Coding agents could make free software matter again

Post by mghackerlady » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 7:09 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #309

mghackerlady wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw, AIX and to a far lesser extent Solaris still exist. I'm not exactly sure why people are using them (AIX I can maybe understand because "no one got fired for buying IBM" or whatever but there really isn't any excuse to be running Solaris nowadays since ZFS runs on Linux and and 2 of the BSD based systems and oracle seems desperate to let it die)

Solaris in SPARC is the only production UNIX with hardware memory tagging. Something that some security conscious folks care about.

Post by fragmede » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 7:55 PM UTC

advael wrote: post #298

Akronymus wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I am. I genuinly am just a layperson trying to look at what the law would say, so everything is speculation.

If true that would seem to invalidate the entire GPL, but even by that logic, a website (such as chatGPT) distributes javascript that runs the code, and programs like claude code also do so. Again, if you can slip the GPL's requirements through indirection like having your application go phone home to your server to go get the infringing parts, the GPL would essentially unenforceable in... most contexts

Post by input_sh » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 8:38 PM UTC

ronsor wrote: post #312

input_sh wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem like the type of person that will believe anything as long as someone cites a case without looking into it. Bartz v Anthropic only looked at books, and there was still a 1.5 billion settlement that Anthropic paid out because it got those books from LibGen / Anna's Archive, and the ruling also said that the data has to be acquired "legitimately". Whether data acquired from a licence that specifically forbids…

Have you actually read the text of the GPL? > This License acknowledges your rights of fair use or other equivalent, as provided by copyright law. It is legitimate to acquire GPL software. The requirements of the license only occur if you're distributing the work AND fair use does not apply. Training certainly doesn't count as distribution, so the buck passes to inference, which leaves us dealing with substantial sim…

Post by anthk » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 10:08 PM UTC

anilgulecha wrote: post #130

FOSS is dead - long live, FOSS. FOSS came up around the core idea of liberating software for hardware, and later on was sustained by the idea of a commodity of commons we can build on. But with LLMs we have alternative pathways/enablement for the freedoms: Freedom 0 (Run): LLMs troubleshoot environments and guide installations, making software executable for anyone. Freedom 1 (Study/Change): make modifications, inclu…

Post by dzhiurgis » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 10:39 PM UTC

latexr wrote: post #179

627467 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was made redundant recently "due to AI" (questionable) and it feels like my works in some way contributed to my redundancy where my works contributed to the profits made by these AI megacorps while I am left a victim. I think anyone here can understand and even share that feeling. And I agree with your "questionable" - its just the lame HR excuse du jour. My 2c: - AI megacorps aren't the only ones gaining, we all…

> AI megacorps aren't the only ones gaining, we all are. No, no we are not. > the leverage you have to build and ship today is higher than it was five years ago. I don’t want more “leverage to build and ship”, I want to live in a world where people aren’t so disconnected from reality and so lonely they have romantic relationships with a chat window; where they don’t turn off their brains and accept any wrong informat…