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Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

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Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#401
post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, however stuff like CentOS prove how people go out of their way to avoid paying, and how they get pissed off when that option goes away. I should also note that nowadays Red-Hat belongs to IBM, so there are other forms of funding beyond support contracts for Red-Hat enterprise.

CentOS was popular, but Red Hat still made billions of dollars in revenue.

Not enough, hence why it was acquired and eventually killed, regardless of how Red-Hat might justify their decision.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#402
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the movement, location and actions occurs at the server, the effect of fake lag would just harm the player doing it. It would not make the character stutter for everyone else, as from the server perspective the player would just be standing still.

Yes, the player will look like they are teleporting around, but they will still be able to kill you. No, it doesn't harm the player doing it because client side they are still moving around.

There is a misunderstanding here over how server side vs client side movement work. I will illustrate this with an example:

With Client side movement, Player A sends in even intervals their location to the server. Let say they move right for 3 unit of time, the location get updated from 0:0, 0:1, 0:2. The server then relay the information to Player B.

With Server side movement, Player A tells the server they want to move to the right. The server create a path over time, 0:0, 0:1, 0:2, ... and continuously sends this to player B.

Let now add a fake lag with client side movement. In the first case the we see Player A send locations like 0:0, 0:1, -, -, -, 0:5. The server sends this to player B. If Player B fired a gun at 0:2 at the third interval they might miss because player A is not there. The server might extrapolate an virtual path between 0:1 and 0:5, but that depend on game logic.

Lets now add a fake lag with server side movement. Player A tells the server that they want to move right. After 2 units they add a 3 unit lag, and finally sends tells the server a stop command. The server would construct the following path: 0:0 (start moving player A), 0:1, 0:2, 0:3, 0:4, 0:5 (halt moving Player A). If Player B fired a gun at 0:2 at the third interval, the server see that player A is at that location and will mark a hit.

This is why server side movement isn't vulnerable to fake lag. The server has the full game state and thus know at any point where all player are and what they are doing, and if the client lag then it simply mean that their input gets delayed. Server side movement is however vulnerable to real lag, as between any action there might be a delay and thus events might not occur at the server when players want it to occur. Server side movement is also slightly more vulnerable to ddos attacks if players can identify the IP address of other players.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#403
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the movement, location and actions occurs at the server, the effect of fake lag would just harm the player doing it. It would not make the character stutter for everyone else, as from the server perspective the player would just be standing still.

Yes, the player will look like they are teleporting around, but they will still be able to kill you. No, it doesn't harm the player doing it because client side they are still moving around.

Depends on how it is implemented. If the server-side version is the truth, only the player doing it suffers. For example, player lags for a second. In that second, the server extrapolates their new position based on last velocity, heading, input, etc. Someone kills them at that extrapolated position. When the client resyncs they suddenly die.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#404
post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should people pay for FOSS? Isn't entire point it being free, developed for personal use and shared?

If people don't pay for FOSS, how do you expect developers who develop FOSS to feed their families? The "free" in "Free and Open Source Software" is free as in speech, not free as in beer. We'd like to think that decision to charge or not charge for the product is orthogonal to the decision to make the source code available. In practice there is some interrelation. But FOSS was never "you can't charge for it."

Do it as hobby in their free time? Maybe work in some other field producing actual physical things during day and then in evenings spend hour or two tinkering with free software? Just like any hobbying artist?

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

40 years later, trying to get something running on a modern Mac is painful Right click on app, select ‘open’. If you get a prompt warning about an unknown developer, pick the option to run the app anyway. Getting angry about a prompt that you only ever see once (it won’t prompt you again) seems extreme.

Have you tried getting a command-line program to build and run on an M1 Mac lately? Yeah, it works most of the time. But when it doesn’t, e.g. due to some post-build script that massages the binary after signing it, it brings you a world of pain.

That's not a cryptographic signature.

Use codesign -s - path to binary to recompute the checksum.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#406
post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What needs to be explained is why throwing technology at power generation problems, economic problems, healthcare problems, or warfare problems is seemingly ok, but social problems are a no-go zone.

Because using technology to solve social problems leads to restraining people's personal freedom, choices, and expression in a much more direct manner than other domains of problem solving. Furthermore, this restraint tends to impact people unevenly. As ineffective as the government may or may not be, at least the goal is for all people to be considered equal in the eyes of the law. With technology the power lives wi…

The inequality issue exists as well with Covid vaccines and with weapons — other applications of technology, so societal problems are not standing alone there. The unequal access to nuclear weapons is... a good thing I guess? What still needs to be explained is why throwing technology at power generation problems, economic problems, healthcare problems, or warfare problems is seemingly ok regardless of inequality, but social problems are a no-go zone.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#407
post #362
post #230

> Now, more free games? It doesn't satisfy an urgent practical need, obviously... But the crucial thing is, free ones might make it easier for some people to say, 'Let's move off this non-free thing, and play a game that is free. So we can have the same pleasure, but without paying freedom as the price.'“ i'm sorry but i just can't read this without laughing. what does stallman think gamers are like? i can only imagi…

you laugh until you get old and the games of your youth do not work anymore because of missing libraries on linux, if there was a linux port. i am missing my unreal tournament days and would even pay money, if one would build an opensource clone where i could load the original maps of Unreal tournament and UT2004 into the game like with Command & Conquer: Red alert. (UT2004 crashes randomly on linux and it's always a…

I get my Unreal Tournament and Quake Arena kicks from Xonotic. The online community is small, but every day there's at least one DM server with some extremely good players in it.

Edit: the maps are different, but yesterday I joined a server that had one of the Quake Arena maps on it.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#408
post #399
post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, as has been a point of discussion here for the last several years, the SaaS services themselves are often as much "leeches" as the users when it comes to open source.

Might happen, however my point was about the SaaS that are from the authors themselves.

Ah, in the case of developer originated SaaS, then sure, doing a SaaS offering rather than donationware might lead to more income for the developer, but I don't think that free software is alone in this - plenty of proprietary software that would once have had fixed boxed releases is now subscription or SaaS based too.

Recurring income is a stronger business model, nobody's denying that, but that doesn't mean it's an improvement for the user or that those producing software with a goal of financial gain would have just released standalone open source software if only free software licenses had been more sympathetic to their needs. Rather, I think if SaaS did not exist, if their first goal is revenue, many of these groups would have just released straight up proprietary software.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, I'm not an expert and this might be entirely unfeasible but I can totally imagine some kind of trusted execution environment that cross checks specific instructions at the API level when the client communicates with the server using some kind of trusted operation (backed by cryptography). There are already VMs that are used to run trusted instructions on a target (read: client) machine and regardless of you kn…

A cheat would just look at the detection code and be sure it doesn't violate what the anticheat is checking for. >Having it open increases the amount of people who have eyes on the code and contribute to the code and finds exploits to patch, etc. If your detection is to collect the names of the open windows on a computer to check for a cheat's name and then send the anticheat server the hash of the binary that opened…

Nothing you said has anything to do with security nor preventing cheating. If that's the sorry state of modern anti-cheat then it makes sense why TF2 is still plagued by incredibly obvious sniper bots.

Detecting cheating by window names? Who is getting paid writing this crap?

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#410
post #227
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even people who don't care in the slightest about free software think anticheat is detestable. [[Citation Needed]]. Trying to play a multiplayer game that doesn't implement effective anticheat is miserable. The arms race is unfortunate but 100% understandable, and I wouldn't play any game that doesn't implement some form of it.

This is due to how multiplayer in modern games is orchestrated. In the old days, you would play multiplayer with your friends and their friends on a private server or some kind of community server where cheaters could quickly be recognized and banned by the admins. Now this communal way of playing online games is largely gone and replaced by match making which makes multiplayer basically the same as playing against c…

More and more it feels like one of the central problems of the modern technical is how to effectively scale trust.

Anti-piracy: trying to address the lack or abuse of trust while scaling the sale of products because technology has radically reduced "manufacture" and distribution costs.

Anti-cheat: trying to address the lack of abuse of trust while scaling game coordination because tech. has made massive interconnectivity possible

Anti-cryptography: trying to address the lack or abuse of trust while scaling communication tools.

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