Captain Beyond @ beyond @linkage.ds8.zone

Caretaker of Sunhillow/DS8.ZONE. Free (Libre) Software enthusiast and promo

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4 yr. ago

It is abnormal for a free software project to have an EULA (i.e. a contract that one must agree to in order to install and use the software). This particular EULA does not seem to be as onerous as most but it may still place substantial restrictions on use.

The acceptable use policy, for example, covers much more than just crime (including a prohibition on "graphic depictions of sexuality or violence"). However, it also specifically refers to "Mozilla services" so one could argue that it doesn't apply to normal usage of Firefox; however, the Firefox EULA also specifically claims it does. Is Firefox itself a Mozilla service? I would assume not under the usually understood definition of such, but it's not really clarified.

It's far easier to use something unburdened by an EULA, so I'm typing this from Librewolf.

Both of these appear to be proprietary, not actually free (libre).

Per the comment on this issue, the flatpak does indeed contain a proprietary build of Bruno. It is also - despite being unverified - an official package.

It should be noted that Heliboard does not "have glide typing" but rather it supports loading the proprietary Google swype library.

This article is clearly about beans, not onions.

Sure if your hardware works to your satisfaction with it. The only way to know is to try it yourself. You can test it with a Trisquel liveusb.

I run my instance so I am perfectly happy with the level of censorship.

Said instance is narrowly focused on free software and free culture issues, so unrelated politics would be off-topic. That said there is a fairly bog standard code of conduct prohibiting bigotry, nazism and the like.

The situation has been resolved.

https://github.com/orgs/organicmaps/discussions/9837#discussioncomment-11568667

Codium is fine and technically FOSS although it’s association with Microsoft taints it for anyone who still hates MS from the bad old days.

"New" Microsoft isn't really any better, and although Codium itself is perfectly fine (Electron notwithstanding) many of Microsoft's extensions only work with/are only licensed for the official VSCode build and include proprietary parts.

One of my professors said you don’t need an IDE, the Linux system already is a development environment.

Considering "the Linux system" is literally anything you throw on top of the kernel called Linux, it can be a development environment or anything you want it to be. But I think part of the appeal of an IDE is how all the parts integrate (the "I" in "IDE") so a bunch of packages thrown together might not provide the same cohesive feeling.

Supposedly the version on Github releases doesn't have the Google libraries.

https://github.com/eszdman/PhotonCamera/issues/109

Still, I would wait until this app is in F-Droid before considering it. It includes some other libraries of unknown source.

https://github.com/eszdman/PhotonCamera/issues/46

This - cathedral style development absolutely is a valid way to create free software and I don't believe Eric S. Raymond (the guy who, I believe, coined the term) claimed otherwise, only that the bazaar model was "better." Maintaining a bazaar style project is work, and it's work that easily leads to burnout. We should normalize the idea that you don't need to commit to being an "open source maintainer" to release a free software project; it should be enough to just release the source code (with or without binaries).

It should be noted that this is not the source code to the application itself, but rather a backend server used by the application. The application proper remains under a free software license.

However, the fact that this server (which as far as I know is a required dependency of the application) was kept secret (albeit under a free software license) is troubling, and I don't understand how Alexander can justify removing this license given he is not the sole contributor to this repository. It's also strange that he reprimanded Roman for "making decisions alone" when the decision to remove the license was made by Alexander alone.

Why does it need to be proprietary?

From my point of view switching from a proprietary application to a free application is always a gain. You can't control what other people use, but you can take steps to reclaim your own freedom and control.

It's unfortunate there's no way to use RCS from a free application, though.

But they told me I can just not connect it to the internet and it'll be just like any dumb device.

Eventually these things will come with modems built in so you can't even do that.

I have never used /e/ but I do not have a positive impression of it. From what I can tell it's just LineageOS but with microG (with Google registration turned on by default) and some "app store" thing (which tells you what proprietary applications are "good"), tied to their cloud (it's okay because it's not Google you see) and with a proprietary map app with a "good privacy policy."

Privacy policies are not a substitute for free software licenses and any organization suggesting they are is not reputable in my opinion.

Ironically a Linux-derived OS.

Nothing ironic about it. There's nothing mystical about Linux, it's just a kernel. The guy who made it says he doesn't care about anything but code.

Personally, I only care about the code. When I say maybe there are people who worry about walled gardens and cloud providers who take ownership of your data, I am not one of those people. That's not what I actually care about. That's not what I do. What I do is code. What I care about is code.

If you trust the client that is encrypting and uploading the file - which runs on your computer and thus can be audited, modified, or even entirely replaced by you. You do not need to trust that the server (which ideally is also free software, but in practice is a black box you don't have any visibility into) is sending you trustworthy code.

I don't know if grouping disparate projects under the "community" label has any worthwhile benefit. Given the label is meant to classify related operating systems, the label should provide an accurate description of the basis of the system. A simpler solution would be to just say GNU/Linux is a subcategory of Linux (and maybe even sub-sub-categorize by package manager or init system or whatever makes the most sense). Similarly, I think Android and its derivatives are worthy of being its own classification of Linux operating system (as long as you don't try to claim "it's not real Linux" or whatever).

With regards to software compatibility, I think it's rather the other way around - software written for "Linux" usually works on any POSIX operating system, and sometimes even Windows. Unless you're talking about binary compatibility, which is meaningless in the Linux space anyway.