Captain Beyond

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.

Same reason anyone would use a dedicated provider-independent client instead of a proprietary web application locked into a single provider: less vendor lock-in, more local control, and so on.

There is, I believe, a fundamental misunderstanding as to what exactly a site like Stack Overflow is. It’s not a forum; there’s no such thing as “your posts.” It’s more like Wikipedia, as in a collaborative question-and-answer site, or a knowledgebase. Each question and answer can be edited like a mini wiki page. They aren’t “yours” any more than the Wikipedia page you created ten years ago is; you contributed it to the commons, so (at least in theory) you don’t have the right to take it back.

Whether whatever "Open"AI is doing is right is another question, of course. But, I don’t think destroying or poisoning the commons to strike back at it is any helpful either; it feels like “destroying it to save it.”

I would certainly hope so. Stack Overflow content is Creative Commons licensed, so the argument is basically that the GDPR would take precedence over the CC license grant. It’d be scary if GDPR could be weaponized against forks of free software projects in this manner.

Everyone can write a new version of the GPL.

The standard GPL permission statement explicitly clarifies that the license is “as published by the Free Software Foundation” so any later version of the license has to come from the FSF.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

The reason for the “or later” clause is to allow the FSF to update the GPL in response to flaws that are discovered. The “or later” clause is controversial because it effectively allows the FSF to change the licensing terms of any software licensed under such a clause, and so some developers who don’t trust the FSF with this authority omit this clause. Famously, Linux is licensed only under GPLv2 with no or-later option (Linus has been a vocal opponent of GPLv3)

Firstly, Captain Beyond is the name of a band that I’m fond of - although by far not my favorite one, ever.

However, it’s also somewhat aspirational. “Captain” I define as the sort of leader as in the captains of Star Trek, someone who leads by example, who makes-it-so, takes care of their people and their “ship” so-to-speak. Someone who is more of a steward than a boss. Someone who is first and foremost in command of themselves. “Beyond” refers to the aspiration to go further and achieve great things.

As I said it’s more aspirational than anything - I don’t think I do a very good job of living up to that moniker most of the time.

I don’t think the ffmpeg maintainer is complaining that Microsoft is using ffmpeg, rather that they are opening “high priority” bug reports based on customer complaints. This might be a high priority problem for Microsoft but that does not make it so for ffmpeg.

The license allows Microsoft to use ffmpeg but they aren’t entitled to demand free labor from the project. Really, no one is entitled to do so, but Microsoft being a large company who can definitely afford to put money or talent on the problem makes it only that much more egregious.

edit: I would note that asking for help or reporting a bug is usually welcome, the problematic part is demanding help because it’s a high priority issue for YOUR customers.

NFT Bros 🤝 Twitter Artists

Seething about their jpegs being stolen

Not a copypasta, although given the average community member’s understanding of this issue comes from memes and copypastas, maybe it should become one.

That’s at the core of the myth (and thus the myths surrounding the myth) - that the discussion is about “what to call Linux” when in fact it’s always been about separating Linux from the userland that is often paired with it. Linux is Linux, no matter what compiler you use to build it - but the stuff that runs on top of Linux is not Linux.

I guess I’m being called out here, so wall of text incoming.

Linux and GNU are completely separate projects that have no relationship organizationally or technologically. As basic as this is, this is important to understand as the backdrop for “the GNU/Linux issue.”

Linux was started in 1991 as a project to build an operating system, one that is “not as big or professional as GNU.” In practical terms, Linux is just a kernel. It has no terminal, no command line tools, no desktop, no package manager, no web browser. Yet, people speak of it as if it’s a fully featured operating system that contains all of those things, an alternative to Windows or macOS.

GNU was started in 1983 as a project to build an operating system, but as GNU’s own kernel (the Hurd) is in development hell, the userland components (libraries and tools) are generally used with Linux to form a complete operating system, which is referred to as GNU/Linux. The “slash” is meant to signify that it’s a combination of these two projects. Note that, as the GNU project has adopted the Linux-libre variant of Linux, the Hurd is no longer really a priority project.

Of course, you can have Linux without GNU (Android and Alpine are the best examples of this) and you can also run GNU on non-Linux platforms (Debian has a port that runs on the FreeBSD kernel, and the tools themselves run on any Unixy operating system and even Windows). So I don’t really think you can conclude any of these are the “most important part” of the operating system, and it more or less comes down to whatever brand name you feel the most comfortable with.

And, of course, most GNU/Linux operating systems contain much more than GNU and Linux these days. Therefore, I prefer to understand Linux as a family of operating systems (as Wikipedia defines it) and GNU/Linux as a subfamily. The ironic thing is that, from a UX perspective, Linux, the kernel, is probably the least prominent component of the operating system, as it is furthest away from the user interface - but it is most prominent brand name and so gets applied to the whole “ecosystem.”

A lot of Linux fans think an operating system has to have more than Linux to be a “real Linux” operating system, or that it has to be community run or “anti-corporate” or meet some ideological criteria. But, Linus himself has no such ideology, and Linux is a very corporate project. Android is the most widely used Linux operating system. It is as much “real Linux” as Debian is.

The myth of the fictional operating system called Linux naturally leads to other myths, such as the myth of fragmentation. In that sense I feel it’s harmful, but the damage has been done and even the conversation around the myth has its own myths (such as the idea that Stallman wants to “rename Linux” or is jealous of Linux’s popularity, that “Linux should be called GNU/Linux” because “it contains GNU” or because it was built with GNU tools or licensed under the GPL). It’s hard to argue for “calling it GNU/Linux” when people don’t even understand what “it” is, or even what the admittedly convoluted name is supposed to signify. So, for that reason, I don’t think the “battle” is worth fighting anymore.

For the record, though, I refer to my preferred operating system by its own name, GNU Guix System, and make an effort not to center any particular project or brand name when talking about the free software community and ecosystem in general. I don’t characterize myself as a fan or user of Linux, just a free software enthusiast - the fact that all of my preferred operating systems contain Linux is a consequence of the fact that Linux is the most widely used free software kernel, not because of any brand loyalty on my part. Non-Linux operating systems such as the BSD’s should be considered as part of the free operating system family.

The meat carrot is just turkey meat in the shape of a carrot, covered in carrot flavoring made in part from carrot. Yes, one of the ingredients of “meat carrot” is actual carrots.

10+ years of experience in the thing you created 5 years ago, even.

We live in a timeline where desktop apps all run in a browser, whereas mobile websites are all their own apps.

I think you’ll find it is no longer “My Computer” but now “This PC”

It feels like last week we were defending proprietary software, ads, and tracking against those mean old FOSS zealots who actually care about privacy and freedom. Are you saying we care about those things now?

As an end-user I believe I am entitled to the freedom to use, modify, and share the software I use. If your business model is incompatible with my values I won’t support you, simple as. I don’t have any problem monetarily supporting developers but not if they disagree with my principles.

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this exact argument made against ad-blockers, too.

There is no cloud, it’s just someone else’s computer.

I prefer my version of stage 3: I still care about software freedom and advocate for it (as well as related issues like interoperability, privacy, and right to repair) but without being an obnoxious fanboy for “Linux” or talking down to people who still use non-free technology for whatever reason.

Simply caring about an issue doesn’t make one a cultist or zealot, and not caring about anything does not make one enlightened.

I say this as someone who is probably one of the biggest supporters of software-freedom around here, but bullying or shaming people for preferring non-free apps does nothing but incite resentment towards the movement. I value the four freedoms because I think I deserve control of my computing, not because I think it’s my place to dictate what others should value.