I’m a software developer with over 40 years experience. Much of it with FOSS.

Your argument in relation to GitHub does not take in the reality of the effort involved with migrating to a different platform, effort that is likely unpaid, has no logistical upside and stalls the development efforts of a project, not to mention breaking every single source code repository link across the wider internet, links that represent publicity and community engagement.

It’s one thing migrating after a service vanishes, it’s an entirely different thing to migrate due to the philosophical differences perceived by the ownership change to Microsoft. In my opinion, chanting FOSS is insufficient as an argument.

I have several projects and clients that use GitHub and while I detest copilot and the enshitification that the new ownership represents, I’m also aware that it’s likely that the sale provides financial security to the continued existence of GitHub.

I think it’s admirable that a project is asking its community if it should stay or move and I wish the developer(s) wrestling with this all the strength and patience in the world to work through it.

I know I’ve struggled with the same considerations and I’m still using GitHub … for now.

Docker is not virtualisation, although it’s a common misconception.

A better way to think of it is a security wrapper around untrusted processes.

You can prove this for yourself by looking at all the processes running in a Docker host while one or more containers are running, you’ll see all the processes listed.

In other words, you don’t need a CPU capable of virtualisation to run Docker.

My “smart” phone is rarely used as a telephone. It’s set to silent, all notifications turned off, blocks unknown numbers, transcribes voicemail and spends most of the day as a window to the world.

I’m not sure what, if anything, a “dumb” phone would add to my life, except more interruption, more administration to keep contacts up to date, and yet another device to charge and maintain.

I live here and that’s pretty much the case. Mind you, this is the first I hear that we’ve agreed to this and I daresay there will be some vigorous discussion among us Sandgropers.

Use a bash command line:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6250698/how-to-decode-url-encoded-string-in-shell

Remember Internet Exploder?

All it takes is a better product.

Firefox is heading in the opposite direction of “better”.

It’s like “sugar free” and “green”, meaningless unless it’s regulated, policed and prosecuted.

As others have said, the best labelling system we currently have is the licence that’s attached to the software.

Mind you, that in and of itself is not sufficient, since the source code needs to come with it, and arguably the ability to actually compile it, neither of which are guaranteed, again more requirements for policing and prosecution.

Also, when I say policing, I’m not talking about the law enforcement community, I’m talking about developers and end users paying attention and calling out breaches.

Whilst contemplating all that, this costs money, something that is in very short supply within the wider open source software community and what little there is, goes to pay for food and lodging for a very very very small group of developers.

Fix funding and you can have all the stickers in the world, in the meantime, nope.

So, somewhat disappointedly … no.

Is it possible that the cars were actually there with the incoming population, but licensed elsewhere?

Incoming tenders with prompt injection in … Three … Two … One.

If I have any credibility with you from 20 years of reporting on rightwing & fascist movements, please listen when I beg you not to celebrate Charlie Kirk getting shot. Leave aside morality: this isn’t a match in dry grass, it’s a torch. We do not want what this could ignite & we would not win.

– Jeff Sharlet

Source: https://bsky.app/profile/jeffsharlet.bsky.social/post/3lyiw5khpqs2l

Tah, I’ve now added my question on Mastodon.

First of all, congratulations.

Second, I have a question.

Based on the link you supplied, SPI is a USA based organisation. How do you expect to protect yourself against the legal lunacy that is currently overrunning the USA?

For example, what if as a member project you are suddenly compelled by a USA court to install a backdoor into your codebase?

It’s easy to ignore such concerns, but governments around the planet are reevaluating their relationship with companies like Microsoft for precisely such reasons, and they have much more money to spend on legal advice than you do.

Excellent.

Unfortunately, I strongly suspect that the depth of the pockets paying for legal fees is likely to determine the outcome, rather than any pesky facts.

Except that this is just not true. If it were, there’d be only one car, one bike, one house, one pair of underpants and one type of food.

Humans love to find something that’s unique, it’s why Starbucks makes a gazillion types of coffee and people choose to buy it there, customised to their level of “uniqueness”, or elsewhere.

There is no one Linux distro and that’s it’s strength.

I’m not a fan of this characterisation of the level of accessibility, but the single largest accessible example of Linux is Android.

After that, most modern TVs run some form of Linux, then there’s embedded Linux in routers and network attached storage devices. IoT hardware is mostly running Linux too, as are most websites and databases for that matter.

In other words, Linux is a hidden operating system that pretty much runs the world without most people ever thinking about it.

If that’s not accessible, then I don’t know what is.

In my opinion, the contributions to open source by Google and Microsoft are insignificant when compared with the sheer volume of software that has, and is being developed by the open source community.

The level of diversity exhibited by the endless variety of Linux distributions is a very good thing. It mirrors a diverse society with many different needs and requirements. This ecosystem provides robustness and flexibility, it gives society resilience against the increasing threats posed by malicious actors and demonstrated stupidity by corporate ICT incompetence that keeps occurring.

The level of compatibility within Linux distributions is breathtaking when you actually start looking at the details, mainly because they’re all running the same kernel. Frankly, I’d like to see more kernel design and development, not less.

More Bazaar, less Cathedral please!

You are conflating the meanings of the word “free”.

The intended freedom for open source software is not related to finance, it’s related to legal rights.

This is fundamentally why open source struggles with a broader acceptance and why corporate interests continue to exploit the open source community.

Ultimately, the notion that software can be developed without money is both absurd and unsustainable.

I’m not blaming you for this common misunderstanding.

In my opinion, Open Source was envisioned as a common good for the benefit of all. This was true for the internet and its governing protocols at birth.

Then the Green Card spam hit Usenet and the commercial potential for the internet became apparent and exploitation began.

There are moves to attempt to put the genie back in the bottle, but the reality is, regardless of licensing, that this is only likely to occur due to people standing up for their rights in a courtroom, something that takes obscene amounts of money.

Having a patent or trademark is meaningless unless you defend them. The same is true for open source licensing.

Drastic levels of change have been attempted by unilaterally making something suddenly closed, but anyone can fork the code at that point and carry on. Anyone dependent on the product can choose to pay the fee for the newly licensed product, or choose to migrate to the fork.

The only thing I can see that might change this is governments deciding that anyone using public funding for any reason is required to make the product open source (or open data). I don’t see this happening (yet) in the vast majority of democracies around the world.

That said, the current USA administration is doing an admirable job at encouraging people to stop trading with them and in the process discovering that there are plenty of open source options for traditional closed source offerings. More and more governments are evaluating open source as a result.

The link between Open Source and money has a long and in my professional opinion troubled history. Driven by the desire to create free, as in unencumbered by special interest, the messaging has been diluted to include free, as in no financial cost. This discrepancy has been exploited by big companies who use this to their advantage and take without giving back.

As a result licencing has been stretched and massaged to combat this exploitation. Several organisations have attempted to find ways of funding this to more and lesser degree.

Many software developers have contributed for decades to this endeavour for free as a way to contribute to society, but ultimately this is not sustainable and more and more developers are getting disillusioned with the whole thing.

Quality is generally speaking much better, despite ignorant commentary from the sidelines. Just look at the quality and level of response to CVE issues as they become known.

I use Linux as my primary desktop and have done so since the turn of the century. I’ve been writing software for over 40 years, much of the last 25 years that has been open source.

There are moves to improve things, Bruce Perens is for example working on some called Post Open.

The alternative, a world run by Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft is not one that’s in the interest of planet Earth and if you look closely, you’ll discover that much of their software stack is based on open source software.

I. Don’t. Have. Words.