mke @ mke @lemmy.world

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Joined

1 yr. ago

Currently using HB as well and it's really nice. I'd like to try FlorisBoard again in the future, after they've reached some of their milestones. Seems like it'd be even nicer... If only it made such progress. Not complaining, though, I'll wait as long as they need.

Well, that's wonderful to hear!

If you're wondering what sort of issue being careless with licenses can cause, see the (in)famous case of Tivoization. GPL 3 was written partly to solve issues like this.

The Free Software Foundation explicitly forbade tivoization in version 3 of the GNU General Public License.
Wikipedia

Note how issue here is still subjective. Linux stays on GPL 2 and the people in charge are largely uninterested in planning a path forwards, or outright refuse to even consider it.

For a more recent example of how community/contributors and owner/company interest misalignment can make a huge mess, see the consequences of HashiCorp changing the Terraform license from MPL to BUSL. Relevant facts I'd like to note:

• This caused a large split in the community and with HC ("drama").
• This was only possible due to their CLA (Contributor License Agreement) requirement for contributors.
• This eventually resulted in the birth of OpenTofu, a fork of Terraform managed by the Linux Foundation.

Or, for a slightly funny case:

A while back I saw a project on GitHub licensed as CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. The developer was considering writing a guide for contributors, even though I'm pretty sure you can't fork and modify it to open a PR (popular way to offer contributions), because that'd break the ND clause (sharing derivatives). Were people supposed to e-mail patches straight to the developer? Who knows! There are people who are into that, such as some Linux Kernel folks.

And finally, here's what I thought was a very interesting take on what "free" means when talking about software licenses, touching upon obligations, rights and copyleft.

I'm trying to avoid opining too much, even though I can't help it and, really, it's inevitable. I hope these serve as entry points for further research, and that they help you form your own perspective on all this. And if you do happen to end up agreeing with me in the end... well, I obviously won't complain :^)

I might not be the best person to explain this, but I believe you are, in fact, missing a bit of context.

Outside of software spaces the discussion around copyright seems so much more nuanced.

Inside software spaces, specific needs beget specific discussions. They are as nuanced as they need to be.

Did you know Creative Commons themselves recommend against using CC licenses for software?

what is the insistence in the free software community for what seems like total license purity?

The software world, and open source in particular, has historically had a lot of complex and frustrating moments due to licenses and the misaligned interactions of volunteers and companies. This probably leads many people to strongly advocate for what they believe would've helped in the past, and may help in the future.

I even see software engineers arguing that “everyone” should use Apache or MIT and not the other, which is somehow bad for the FOSS community.

I won't get into whether everyone should use Apache or MIT—which aren't considered copyleft, I think—but it's also important to remember that even inside software spaces, people will often hold different and sometimes even conflicting views regarding ethical/ideological matters. They can also be just straight up wrong due to lack of knowledge, experience, misunderstandings, etc. That includes me, by the way!

I hope that helped. I can point more resources later, if you want.

Depends on what you mean by trust. This wasn't made any clearer by reading the article.

"We promise not to do bad things" is not a safe long term contract. If they can change the terms at any moment and retain control, then they can break that promise and that's final.

This is why open source matters. This is why we shouldn't let people try to change the meaning open source. True open source is forever open, it is the author's Ulysses pact.

FUTO keyboard is source available, and that's final, too. Whether it is also "source first" and if that term is worth recognizing at all is a separate and entirely valid discussion. Even the worst incarnation of source available is still generally better than closed source, in my mind.

Can there be a trusted space between open and closed source? Maybe, I don't see why not. Again, define trust, and who's judging. Some people already trust closed source proprietary software, for some reason, while others strongly reject anything that isn't free software—remember, we're not talking about price, here.

I wish FUTO and Rossman all the best, as I do with the free software ecosystem and most of open source. Open source is open source, though, let's not get it twisted.

As far as performance goes, Microsoft did manage to make git work for them later on (...with many contributions upstreamed and homegrown solutions developed—but then, Facebook is the same, isn't it?).

Thought I'd forgotten 'bout this comment, didn'tcha? Sorry to say, I'm very good at restarting old discussions instead of sleeping on time.

I tried looking into this again, and although I'm not sure, I don't think you can. Please do comment if you have any insight on this.

I trimmed down the fat and replaced it with "...", but feel free to open the GH terms of use and read the cited sections yourself.

::: spoiler Wall of terms

A. Definitions

The “Service” refers to the applications, software, products, and services provided by GitHub, including any Beta Previews.

Pretty sure this includes Copilot.

“Content” refers to content featured or displayed through the Website, including without limitation code ...

D. User-Generated Content, 3. Ownership of Content, Right to Post, and License Grants

Because you retain ownership of and responsibility for Your Content, we need you to grant us ... legal permissions, listed in Sections D.4 — D.7. These license grants apply to Your Content. ... You understand that you will not receive any payment for any of the rights granted ... The licenses you grant to us will end when you remove Your Content from our servers, unless other Users have forked it.

(emphasis mine)

4. License Grant to Us

... You grant us ... right to store, archive, parse, and display Your Content, and make incidental copies, as necessary to provide the Service, including improving the Service over time. This license includes the right to do things like ... analyze it on our servers ...

(emphasis mine)

7. Moral Rights

You retain all moral rights to Your Content that you upload, publish, or submit to any part of the Service, including the rights of integrity and attribution. However, you waive these rights and agree not to assert them against us, to enable us to reasonably exercise the rights granted in Section D.4, but not otherwise.

To the extent this agreement is not enforceable by applicable law, you grant GitHub the rights we need to use Your Content without attribution and to make reasonable adaptations of Your Content as necessary to render the Website and provide the Service.

(emphasis mine) :::

While there is this option on the GH settings for Copilot:

• Allow GitHub to use my code snippets from the code editor for product improvements

...I find it entirely unclear what, precisely, is being disallowed when this is unchecked. Surrounding text and links are unhelpful.

Also, if I understand the relevant law properly here, many AI companies are likely betting on training being fair use. Your rights, your power to dictate terms in a LICENSE, are thus irrelevant if fair use applies. I lack the background to tell how the COPIED Act, were it to pass, would change this in regard to code, if at all.

Finally, there's that question... do you actually trust companies to follow the rules in good faith?

Very simple, "just works." Great if you want to make a one-time transfer and don't care about syncing files over time.

I love Syncthing, KDE Connect (why is it not Konnect?) and others, but they might be a bit "extra" for this case.

Those were typed, so it obviously doesn't count, duh.

Don't waste you time, energy and emotional capacity trying to earnestly engage with people unwilling to do the same. You will gain nothing. They might gain something, beyond living rent-free in your head. It's a deal neither fair nor healthy.

Should probably apply that to every social media, not just Lemmy.

This feels like something that should be solved by code, not culture. Users shouldn't be inconveniencing others when simply trying to share content with all relevant communities.

Aww buddy, yer not very good at following them unwritten rules, are ya? Dont worry 'bout it too much, let's try that one more time!

Don't ask about the murders.

It was a headshot. What happens next? Who knows.

God gets tired of testing humanity, descends to tell people to persecute billionaires instead of gays.

Microsoft actually loves open source and releases the NTFS driver code under a useful license.

I am happy.

England explodes, or something—I don't make the rules.

Thank you for clarifying, and with a reference, too. That's pretty much what I thought. It's great to have confirmation, though.

I don't think that's the kind of watermark being talked about here, Kol.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology would be called upon to, quoted from the COPIED ACT Summary, facilitate development of guidelines for voluntary, consensus-based standards and for detection of synthetic content, watermarking and content provenance information, including evaluation, testing and cybersecurity protection. I believe we're talking about the unseen, math-y, certification and (I imagine) cryptography kind of digital watermark, not the crappy visual edits made by iFunny and co.

In fact, since it also says:

Prohibits removing, altering, tampering with, or disabling content provenance information, with a limited exception for security research purposes.

The content in question might reach e.g. iFunny already "signed" and they wouldn't be able to remove that.

Of course, I'm saying this without actually fully understanding what fits under covered content (digital representations of copyrighted works). Does my OC on deviantart count as covered content? I think so, but I couldn't tell you for certain. If anyone can help me understand this, please, that'd be really nice.

And finally, as was already said by others, I think this does nothing about all the crap companies already did to artists, since the law can't affect them retroactively. It's not that cool for small artists, since they'll still be abused, except big tech would have the legal monopoly on abuse.

I mean no disrespect by this: did you read the article? I'm genuinely curious how you got the iFunny idea.

You know that it’s not a new concept, right? Just a new word for a specific type of rent seeking that has plagued capitalism forever.

Any pre-existing name for this specific type of rent seeking you'd rather people used instead? For what it's worth, I believe enshittification has its own benefits.

It’s nice to see people learning economics from YA fiction authors, but read some books man

There are better ways to express yourself than this.

Being a YA fiction author does not diminish the worth of one's ideas or their other works. Cory also worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is absolutely a position that, coupled with his many years of studying the digital landscape, gives him a level of insight into it that makes people interested in what he has to say about it, and for good reason. It's not merely about economics.

If you think people could do the subject, themselves, or others better in this regard by consuming better material, you could point a better direction than "read some books"

Yeah, I think you could say that :^)

The most important things to remember about enshittification are the reasons why it happens in the first place and the particular manner in which it does, time and time again. To anyone interested in this topic, consider giving Doctorow's talk a watch. It's great, and explains all of this really well.

Production constraints. Bringing in Maus parts to most tank factories would result in utter chaos as the Tigers and Panthers chased after them for fun.

Enshittification will often involve doing things like this, yes. But as the link itself states, the actual meaning—per Doctorow's original definition—is an entire process, and a little more descriptive. These things are not the same, one is just frequently a symptom of the other.

Sorry if this comes across as pedantic, I'm in a personal quest, of sorts, to protect the original meaning because I think it's too important to lose. To anyone else reading this: please, don't use enshittification when you really only mean "the platform is doing something bad."

For the quoted behavior, I'm a big proponent of "asshole design."

If I was one of your readers, I'd much rather read on your self-hosted blog (bonus points if there's RSS)... But I'm not. Since I'm neither a reader, nor the one who defines what fun means to you, I'm not sure my—and other commenters'—words should have too much bearing in your decision.

I say, do what makes you (and your readers) happiest. Even if medium is by some measure bad, I'd guess it's "only" about as bad as every other closed-up commercial option—I think they all suck. Look into what you actually care about, though, e.g. privacy, then make your own call.

For what it's worth, I agree with people saying medium is almost inexplicably annoying. I consider myself a patient person most of the time, yet nothing kills my interest in an article faster than seeing websites like medium full of dark-patterned cookie banners and popups and newsletters and signups on the other side of a link.

But maybe we're simply the wrong crowd to ask.

I can't imagine any way this is possible without crowdsourced information, and at that point you're just interacting with a community (likely the same one as you already are) through a different interface.

But if such an interface existed, it could be a cool project.