| --- Log opened Wed Apr 10 00:00:20 2024 |
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| 05:28 | <&[R]> | I mean yeah |
| 05:28 | <&[R]> | But not everyone sees it that way |
| 05:29 | <&[R]> | The lack of ownership is becoming a cancer, and reminding people that they can say "fuck no" in more than one way is important |
| 05:31 | <&McMartin> | [[until the LLMs show up and then everyone's the RIAA]] |
| 05:41 | <&[R]> | Reminder that the ludites weren't anti technology. They were anti capitalists using technology to impovrish the working class. |
| 06:03 | < Alek> | this |
| 06:07 | <&McMartin> | I was merely observing that the "copyright is bullshit, you don't need permission to do stuff with things you have access to" is not as uniform an opinion as it was, say, five years ago |
| 06:12 | <&McMartin> | I spent a couple years early in my career being the engineering side of a small company's open-source license compliance team; I have very specific scars and crankery as a result |
| 06:13 | <&McMartin> | I think my favorite was the GPL program that listed a data directory and tried to blindly dlopen() every file within it. |
| 06:17 | < NSGuest22977> | WHat does that method do? |
| 06:18 | <&McMartin> | Loads the file as a DLL |
| 06:18 | <&McMartin> | The GPL's viral nature notionally spreads to files it links against, but specifically disclaims what it calls "mere aggregation" |
| 06:18 | <&McMartin> | This code did nothing but shit on that distinction |
| 06:18 | <&McMartin> | That was a point where I had to call in the *other* half of the team, from Legal |
| 06:19 | <&McMartin> | they actually burst out laughing, and this is the only time I have received legal advice that began with "if they *dare* object..." |
| 06:19 | <&McMartin> | The rights-holders were a much larger company than we were, too. I suspect the real story here is that this was code they'd gotten from an acquisition and that they did not realize entirely what they had |
| 06:20 | <&McMartin> | That code was a nightmare, too, with build scripts that branched based on the username and hardcoded directory paths to specific usernames, etc. |
| 06:20 | <&McMartin> | A few releases later all of that nonsense was cleaned up, from the buildscripts to the dlopen crap, so that was nice, at least |
| 06:21 | <&McMartin> | (I think what the original coders *thought* they were doing was scanning for usable plugins) |
| 06:25 | < NSGuest22977> | And any plugin would have also been forcibly GPL? |
| 06:27 | <&McMartin> | At one point, I received formal legal advice that this almost certainly would not hold up as a claim |
| 06:28 | <&McMartin> | It has not been tested in court, and this is not legal advice nor am I a lawyer, but if I both understood correctly then and remember correctly *now*, the argument was "merely mapping it into your address space does not count as actually linking against it. You have to actually depend on the code somehow." |
| 06:29 | <&McMartin> | Plugins *in general* are a sticky concept for the GPL and tbh the polite thing to do if you are a GPL program is to *not have* a plugin mechanism in the first place |
| 06:31 | <&McMartin> | All I can say in the end is that we rode the ragged edge of what you can get away with on licenses there, and despite them having more lawyers than we had employees, we didn't get smashed flat, so clearly we were in the clear~ |
| 06:32 | <&McMartin> | (But this also means I have a *huge* bias against the current fad of raging about companies making use of open-source software, looting the commons by complying with all the license terms. If you didn't want people to benefit from using your software without you getting a cut, MAYBE DON'T GIVE IT AWAY TO LITERALLY EVERYBODY WITH NO MONETARY STRINGS ATTACHED) |
| 06:33 | <&McMartin> | But also, yeah, this was a pretty non-adversarial case in the end, I think, because the megacorp's changes basically made it *easier* to reliably comply with the GPL on our end |
| 06:56 | <&[R]> | We need a new Affero clearly |
| 07:08 | <&McMartin> | There are several Afferos, and they do not actually address the problem that is making people mad |
| 07:09 | <&McMartin> | The objections nowadays, and this is including, like, from early-FSF-era people who really, _really_ should know better, is not that corporations aren't publishing the changes that they aren't distributing, but that the corporations are using the software at all and it's actually not a net loss for them to do so |
| 07:11 | <&McMartin> | This is baffling in ways that the attacks on IBM for fucking with CentOS a few months back were not |
| 07:13 | <&[R]> | Why's it bad that corperations are using free software? |
| 07:14 | <&McMartin> | Because apparently a lot of people were under the impression that the point of free software was to Smash Capitalism:tm: and they are *extremely* nonplussed that when you grant everyone permission to use a thing, and specifically also permit commercial use, then commercial entities will use this, profit from it, and not pay you for it. |
| 07:14 | <&[R]> | Ah, right |
| 07:15 | <&McMartin> | The "not pay you for it" has produced a *fascinating* maelstrom of arguments in my feeds |
| 07:15 | <&[R]> | Ignoring the amount of engineering work they put into the larger community at all |
| 07:15 | <&McMartin> | In the positive sense, for once, to the extent that I actually have no firm opinion on that at this time |
| 07:16 | <&[R]> | I'm with the FSF on this, all software should be free software |
| 07:16 | <&McMartin> | https://www.softwaremaxims.com/blog/not-a-supplier becomes newly relevant there, and it still has my favorite single line regarding the way most open-source works |
| 07:17 | <&McMartin> | The FSF is *where a bunch of the wait-why-isn't-capitalism-be-smashed takes are coming from* |
| 07:17 | <&McMartin> | *being-smashed |
| 07:17 | <&[R]> | I understand that people might be doing FOSS stuff for other reasons, but IMO Freedom One should be manditory |
| 07:17 | <&[R]> | Fair |
| 07:18 | <&[R]> | Their older writing is where my take is from :p |
| 07:18 | <&McMartin> | ... wait. Are we counting off of different indexes? |
| 07:18 | <&McMartin> | I know "the freedom to run the software, for any purpose" as being Freedom Zero |
| 07:18 | <&[R]> | Correct |
| 07:19 | <&[R]> | Freedom One is the freedom to modify the software as the end user |
| 07:19 | <&McMartin> | so, uh, which one is One then >_> |
| 07:19 | <&McMartin> | Ah |
| 07:19 | <&McMartin> | tbh in practice that one ends up being more fundamental |
| 07:19 | <&[R]> | Hmm? |
| 07:19 | <&McMartin> | Freedom Zero can and, indeed, often must, be abridged, but it is not the authors who are doing it. |
| 07:20 | <&McMartin> | The extremely boring example that was actually relevant 20 years ago being "If I write a wireless driver, I cannot actually grant you the right to violate FCC broadcast-interference regulations, nor is it a problem that I cannot do this" |
| 07:24 | <&McMartin> | I disagree with you on the implied claim that Tivoization is bad, though; consider it leftover bitterness from the advent of the Internet Of Things |
| 07:25 | <&McMartin> | "Anything that's got a microcontroller in it should be usable as a general-purpose computer" is a maxim that I think has been discredited now |
| 07:26 | <&McMartin> | https://www.softwaremaxims.com/blog/open-source-hobbyists-turf is the latest convenient shot-across-the-bow on this discussion though |
| 07:26 | <&McMartin> | It's not the one that was most relevant to *me* but that one was an extremely inconvenient Mastodon thread~ |
| 07:26 | <&McMartin> | https://mastodon.gamedev.place/deck/@rygorous/1121862759015095 |
| 07:26 | <&McMartin> | https://mastodon.gamedev.place/deck/@rygorous/112186275901509504 rather |
| 07:32 | <&[R]> | I think you're conflating things when you're mixing GPC and tivolization |
| 07:33 | <&[R]> | Excercising Freedom One on an IoT device can be as simple as preventing it from being a brick because the backing service died |
| 07:33 | <&McMartin> | It can |
| 07:34 | <&[R]> | It can also be as extreme as "this is a computer, I want to use it as a computer" |
| 07:34 | <&McMartin> | The side argument is "why should the state permit you to do this, if permitting it also allows a lot of things that neither it nor anyone else wants" |
| 07:34 | <&[R]> | ewaste |
| 07:35 | <&McMartin> | continent-spanning botnets |
| 07:36 | <&[R]> | Preventing users from being able to make use of the software on their routers hasn't stopped that from happening |
| 07:36 | <&[R]> | It' |
| 07:36 | <&[R]> | It's a net negative |
| 07:36 | <&McMartin> | My position is that this is not an argument that will be decided by the tech workers |
| 07:37 | <&McMartin> | Except in their capacities as lobbyists and/or expert witnesses |
| 07:38 | <&[R]> | *shrug* |
| 07:39 | <&[R]> | I'm not a fan of defeatism |
| 07:39 | <&McMartin> | This isn't defeatism |
| 07:40 | <&McMartin> | It's, if anything, a critique of tactics |
| 07:40 | <&McMartin> | But also, like |
| 07:41 | <&McMartin> | Good luck getting a law passed that outlaws shrinkwrap software or binary-only distribution |
| 07:41 | <&McMartin> | It is, to put it extremely mildly, *not self-evident* that software artifacts should be excluded from royalty-like arrangements as a category |
| 07:43 | <&McMartin> | And the FSF never, imo, found a convincing argument for any of this, retreating into literal schoolyard taunts as actual corporate uptake started happening under the principles of people they to this day consider not merely rivals but enemies |
| 07:43 | <&[R]> | Fair |
| 07:45 | <&McMartin> | (But also, yeah, I am hardly neutral here. I *went* to Berkeley, source of said rivals and enemies. My personal interactions with the FSF were so awful they were my initial impetus to learn Vim. etc.) |
| 07:46 | <&McMartin> | Lessig more or less had the GPL well-characterized before he lost his mind twice. |
| 07:46 | <&McMartin> | The rule of thumb that the GPL is what you use when you want a software artifact to be uncontrollable and the permissive licenses are what you use if you want a piece of software to become Part Of The Infrastructure has still held up pretty well |
| 07:47 | | * [R] points to Linux |
| 07:48 | | * McMartin points at TCP/IP |
| 07:48 | <&McMartin> | Linux is the "uncontrollable artifact" here |
| 07:49 | <&McMartin> | One can also point at Apache, for the permissive system that nevertheless remains firmly within the commons, yes. It's a rule of thumb, not an iron rule |
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| --- Log closed Thu Apr 11 00:00:21 2024 |