BaumGeist

I have 2 lenovos (ideapad and yoga) and a pinebook. I'm happy with all of them, though I'm happiest with the pinebook and yoga's impressive battery lives

While I'm not gonna argue the merits of GPL—it is technically restricting modification, even if there is no practical difference for those only interested in adding/removing functionality—I disagree with the assessment that using the GPL causes harm to the users.

The reasoning seems to be that a 3rd party's refusal to use the software because of the license, and suvsequent use of a shittier product is somehow the (hypothetical GPL-using) OpenSSH dev's fault.

The problem is that accepting the premise that the devs are responsible for what people who choose to not use their software do entails that they are then responsible for everyone who uses any type of software tangentially related to OpenSSH's functionality. It also means that it's their fault for whatever consequences of using the licenses they currently do, which inevitably drive some people away for various reasons. It also means any potential license (or even lack thereof) is open to the same criticism.

How does it restrict modifying the software?

I couldn't find any primary source on OpenSSH's licenses, but wikipedia says "BSD, ISC, Public Domain."

Both BSD and ISC explicitly grant permissions to modify the software (and redistribute the modified software), and Public Domain means no rights reserved whatsoever, so the mailing list user's points aren't relevant to any of the Four Freedoms (aka the Sacred Texts).

Without access to the source email: it looks like it's a debate about using copyleft licensing instead of BSD/ISC, which is sometimes considered the Fifth Freedom. If you want an argument about that, I'm happy to do so (later), but it isn't a valid reason for saying some piece of software fails to meet the definition of Free Software.

Did you mean

Is that related to the gpl advocates who criticize BSD/MIT/ISC license and laugh at FreeBSD for letting Apple do something (I can’t remember what)?

I'm not trying to be a grammar nazi, I just want to make sure I'm interpreting you correctly and not putting words in your mouth.

Afaik, BSD and MIT licenses qualify as Free Software licenses. I could be wrong; I am not a lawyer, nor am I Richard Stallman.

As for your first question:

Can you explain more?

@[email protected] did a good summary of the distinction, so I will expand on m$'s role:

By most Free Software advocates' accounts, the rise of the term "Open Source" was a deliberate move to make proprietary software less of a bitter pill for us radical digital anarchists: "look, our code is ~Open~ and ~Transparent~ (but you still can't reproduce or modify it, even if you buy a license)." At the same time, Open Source advocates argued that this was the "Shoe-In-The-Door" for Free Software into the corporate/capitalist landscape—it's not, because it doesn't actually advocate any of Free Software's Four Essential Freedoms (Five, if you consider Copyleft to be essential, as I do).

So basically the corporate world took the concept of Free Software, which was starting to be a threat to their businesses, sanitized it of any actual freedom, and sold it back to devs and users as some kind of magnanimous gesture that they were letting us look (but not touch) the code they wrote. Open Source.

M$ has been essential in this shift. Perusing their github, they make it clear that they're willing to toss projects onto the pile, but make sure as hell to keep the Freedom from infecting any of their larger, popular software (e.g. Office, Visual Studio, Windows). And in return, they get access to whatever code you host on their service, assuming they can interpret vague phrasing in their Privacy Policy loosely enough.

After beginning to wrap my head around atomic immutable OSes, I can't believe they're not the standard for most servers. i can't believe Debian doesn't have an official atomic and immutable version yet, seems exactly like the kind of stability they aim for

aside from leaving them behind

Why are we conforming to fit the software's needs instead of vice-versa? Fuck the devs who can't be assed to make it work for proton at the least. This isn't my job, I'm not being paid to use software that goes against my values. There's tens of thousands of games out there and I'm gonna let myself get so hung up on the few hundred that don't work that i just go back to m$?

Fuck. That. They deserve to get left behind. No piece of media is worth compronising on my values to consume.

Not to mention that self-hosting/federation comes with a million small headaches.

If the devs are paid, do you want to pay them to work on the project or work on maintaining a contact infrastructure?

If they aren't paid, do you want them using what little free time they have working on the app or working on maintaining a communications network?

If it's someone else's forum/matrix/chat server, are you okay with 1. a third party having access to your communications and 2. being able to force a comms blackout for any reason whatsoever?

Or would you rather they use their time and money focusing on finding a provider who meets every need of the project AND every user?

They tried to destroy linux and free/libre software, and when that didn't work, they started cornering the market and pushing for a move from "Free" to "Open Source." They also support SaaS model, and have made it next to impossible to get a new computer without their mediocre OS. On top of that, their OS is full of spyware, and is starting to become adware too.

But that all pales in comparison to the fact that you do not own your own OS: you can run Microsoft's OS, but you can't modify it or share it.

Oh, and this falls more in the realm of personal preference, but the deliberate lack of customizability is a real pain in the ass.

4/10 OS, only slightly better at disguising its capitalist greed than Apple.

Good lawd, these are the basic tenants of networking. I’m so sad people are unfamiliar.

https://xkcd.com/1053/

I never said there was a right choice, and I do not like people putting words in my mouth only to attack a strawman.

That’s something fascists do, and I refuse to converse further with someone who supports genocide.

I never said there was a right choice, and I do not like people putting words in my mouth only to attack a strawman.

That's something fascists do, and I refuse to converse further with someone who supports genocide.