471–480 of 501 posts
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I don't think that's the fault of the license, its the fault of the world going in a less free direction.
That doesn't really add up. The core problem of GPL is that it's viral and takes away freedom from downstream developers in favor of upstream freedom.
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>> As you do, I find the discourse around tech to be a pit of dismissiveness, avoidance, denial, resignation, and learned-helplessness. Do you think this is why people are abandoning the GPL license in favor of MIT/BSD? Something about the fight the GPL aims to win being a hopeless fantasy? In the face of the sentiment you and OP express, I'd think GPL usage would be widespread.
I don't use the GPL (and never have) because, like another poster said, it is less free. When I put work out there for someone to do what they wish with it, I don't think I should then say "oh unless you do xyz, I don't approve of that". That strikes me as hypocritical, and so I don't do it. I don't harp on anyone who uses the GPL, they gotta do what they think is right. But for me, the GPL was never a good choice fo…
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"Yes, you need to be careful when you integrate GPL and LGPL code into your proprietary code base, and in some cases you just cannot do it. But so what? You are not entitled to use of that code. If you can't use it because of its license, then that's life: move on and find something else that you can use, or write it yourself." Yeah, apparently people moved on and the GPL is loosing significance.
Is it, though? I really don't think it has. There's still plenty of GPL-licensed software out there; most of the software I run on my laptop is still GPL, for example (the main notable exception being Firefox). I think perhaps there's just a lot more open source out there these days than there was 10 years ago. A good amount of it was started by or sponsored by corporations, and sadly those types of entities are less…
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> I get angry about not being able to do anything about anything. And this is my way of trying to do something about it. It's the best I can do. This attitude is gold, and it's what changes the whole world. What you said about the misery of "news" resonates with me. In psyops we call it "sapping". Propaganda designed to demoralise, dispirit and corrode resistance used to come from our enemies . The classic example wa…
It’s unfortunate that the message discussing enemies was flagged. Maybe it needed to be said in a better way? The US government is undeniably often working against the best interests of its citizens. Corporations, corporate news, and advertisers are also working against our best interests. Im not sure any mindful and reasonable person would refute this. However I will be charitable in saying that I don’t think they’r…
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This! Making >> Not Making, always. You make, you learn, perhaps one day you will make something better, perhaps not — but at least you've been building something. Ignore the armchair critics, criticizing is so much easier than building.
it might be easier, but that doesn't mean all criticism should be ignored. In the spirit of cliched reductive "feel good" statements of this whole comment section, ignoring criticism is also easier than building something that ends up to be extremely subpar.
The only sane option is to build for yourself, you can't win trying to please that crowd.
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I don’t follow the news at all because it’s 99% biased garbage and frequently not true and pollutes the mind. My life and mental health is significantly better for this. Nothing I read in the news would change how I vote, which is basically the best reason anyone could give for watching it.
You can afford not reading news only if you live in a democratic country with a stable economy, far from any conflict zones. In other parts of the world, you would miss information that you need for your survival.
Rumors (I did not check rust syntax specifications) say rust syntax lost itself like c++ (and what is happening with latest C syntax additions from ISO).
Is this true?
Because, personally, I am not interested in a browser written with a beyond sanity complex language syntax. I would have prefered a web engine written in plain and simple C (without the latest tantrums from ISO). Without bazillions of deps, SDK included.
That said, a modern web engine, beyond a javascript engine (for instance quickjs), is tens of millions of lines of code (Big Tech made sure Small Tech could not reasonably follow).
In the end, in my opinion, the most reasonable option is to go noscript/basic (x)html where it does a good enough job, bridges with super simple protocols you can navigate to with URIs (for instance irc://... mailto://...), and really in the worst case scenario a semantically optimized network protocol (the leanest possible) with a rich GUI client (for instance sliding maps, even though you can browse maps ok with a noscript/basic (x)html browsers).
"Writing a browser" (from scratch) at this point basically means you are implementing a type of portable operating-system-in-a-box (the web platform) and that it will be compatible with whatever Google decides to add to theirs. The browser is so comprehensive in functionality and APIs, and such a challenge to keep up with Google's constant churn of new features and total dominance, that not even Microsoft could do it…
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To me the logical conclusion of what you write is not to write yet-another-web-browser, because browsers are rotten to the core by terrible protocol designs, terrible specifications, politics, greed etc. Browsers did not spontaneously start to degrade, it's what the key actors at different times did that made it happen. The only hope, IMO, is to build something much more sane that cannot be abused. Something like Gop…
I remember first seeing Gemini a while ago, and thought, "cool project, but I probably won't ever use it". And I haven't. If I'd want to build a browser, I want there to be a lot of content for me out there already for me to browse. It's funny, because I think designing a new protocol and markup language, and then building both server and client software for it, and then actually convincing millions of people to use…
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Isn't that kind of the point? The purpose of GPL and Free Software (which it has actually had resounding success in) is to develop a free commons which will stay free and not be exploited. It's not for you to exploit to make a buck, and if that excludes your project, that's fine. There are lots of things I would never consider free-licensing, but I think people badly miss the point of free software because they are s…
It's not for you to exploit to make a buck Of course it is... That’s what Google does, that’s what all companies who are large enough to know how to work around the GPL do. Every company who uses it on their own servers without telling you, or even compiles and distributes it hoping that no one notices, does. And when they do, they sometimes contribute resources back to the project, which helps it to thrive. The GPL…
Do you really think it's fine and good for Google to take work explicitly intended by its authors to preserve free computing and work around the licensing to make money without preserving the intent and purpose of its license?
Shaming would be much stronger. I even pointed out that participating in it is totally elective and I personally would not in many cases.
Framing it in terms of your own cost/benefit is missing the point, though, and there is a meaningful and valuable purpose to it outside of maximizing your personal benefit in the moment of choosing a particular library.