Free Software

Canvas community: [email protected]

So you can run a local AI assistant with ollama.

https://ollama.com/

Ollama isn't a complete software and you will need a front end such as oterm or openwebUI.

Keep in mind that ollama has models under various licenses. I would use models under a free license such as Mistral, Mixtral llama2 and Llava. (Lava next uses llama3 which isn't under a free license)

Keep away from models such as llama3 and Gemma as they are under a non free license.

You also can fine tune a model but you will need a significant amount of compute.

[email protected]

This is a community to discuss and to get support for Samba and related projects

So I have noticed that we have problem in the Android development space. We have a library of free apps on F-droid and other places which is great but I have noticed that we do not seem to have a free up to date build of the Android SDK. I do not know why but we should look to change that.

Historically there were builds from Beuc. However, those builds are no longer available. There are builds from Replicant android but those are built from code that is from 2013. We are right now lacking publicly available premade builds. I believe you can still build from source but the documentation to do that is all a bit dated so it would be a challenge.

I wanted to create this post as we need to create awareness about free software issues. We all take F-droid for granted but creating ethical apps is hard. The SDK is just one piece of a large puzzle.

Recently I have been playing around with ollama and some of the models. With OpenwebUI+ollama you can have a free software self hosted LLM for personal or professional use.

However, when I was browsing some of the models I couldn't help but notice that some of the licenses were contrary to free software. The free software models seem to be mostly licensed under Apache but models like Google Gemmi are under a custom license that restricts what you can do among other things. This seems like the opposite of free software and free software ideas.

What I think needs to happen is that we need to come up with some free LLM licensing for the community. This would also allow companies to publish free models with some certainty about the legality.

The other question is what actually counts as "source code" for a LLM. For copy left licensing the idea is that anyone can edit and distribute the sources but for a language model the source is not really clear.

What do you guys think? Let's get a discussion going as like it or not, LLMs are here to stay.

As the mod of this community I'm trying to figure out the future of how I want this community to work. Some of you may of noticed that I have created a new set of rules for this community. I tried to be fairly laid back but I explicitly prohibited a few things in order to keep this community on topic and out of liability. I don't believe any of the new policies to be controversial but if you disagree with them please comment and let me know.

As for the future of the community I would like to try and get some more activity and discussion. I'm thinking about organizing a Q&A with someone in the community but I don't know who people would be interested in. This is all tentative so I'm not making any commitments. If you have any ideas comment below.

As for the free software wiki, it didn't get a lot of comments so I assume there is not a lot of interest. It would be a lot more work for me so I don't feel particularly motivated to start it. In all fairness there is a lot of information about free software online so maybe there is no need for a wiki.

To sum it all up I am pretty happy with how this community is slowly growing but I think we have lots of room for potential. I created the rules as a fallback for controversy and I've only had to remove one post so far.

* Linux on Chromebooks may not be fully Libre

So I am thinking about creating a free software wiki that's is a central source for information relating to free software. It would also cover things like Linux, self hosting and free software in different industries and use cases.

I'm still thinking about how this could work but I've came to the conclusion that the wiki would need the following:

• It would need to easy to contribute to without too much knowledge
• It should cover individual software programs as well as more general topics
• There should be templates for the different types of pages
• A sources and further reading list needs to be at the bottom of each page. Information in the wiki should have at least one outside source to keep the information factual
• when a person creates a page they should have real world experience with that software or topic
• There should be a heading called concerns or something similar where potential moral or technical downsides can be listed
• It shouldn't be persuasive or written to change opinions
• It should be in English at least to start
• It should have content about other non-free operating systems and how to make them a little more free

Things that need to be figured out:

• The software or service
• the domain
• content organization (by operating system?)

What's your thoughts on this? I would be interested to know

Today we have even more good reading material for the weekend - best enjoyed in the sun ☀️🌦️ : On #ILoveFreeSoftware-Day last Wednesday, the research project REGALE_EU interviewed researchers Bruno Raffin from Inria and Frederico Tesser from CINECA on the topic - it's really exciting. Read in, enjoy it: https://regale-project.eu/?p=576

#freesoftware, #opensourcesoftware, #opensience, #IT4science, #discoverLRZ

@[email protected] , @fsfe , @[email protected] , @opensourcenet @opensourcefeed

I found this post about an "open-source" coding assistant called Tabby: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/13830988

I can't comment there, because I guess my instance is defederated from them. But I've noticed something in the license that made me think it might be proprietary software:

This software and associated documentation files (the "Software") may only be used in production, if you (and any entity that you represent) have agreed to, and are in compliance with, the Tabby Subscription Terms of Service, available at https://tabby.tabbyml.com/terms (the “Enterprise Terms”), or other agreement governing the use of the Software, as agreed by you and TabbyML, and otherwise have a valid Tabby Enterprise license for the correct number of user seats. Subject to the foregoing sentence, you are free to modify this Software and publish patches to the Software. You agree that TabbyML and/or its licensors (as applicable) retain all right, title and interest in and to all such modifications and/or patches, and all such modifications and/or patches may only be used, copied, modified, displayed, distributed, or otherwise exploited with a valid Tabby Enterprise license for the correct number of user seats. Notwithstanding the foregoing, you may copy and modify the Software for development and testing purposes, without requiring a subscription. You agree that Tabby and/or its licensors (as applicable) retain all right, title and interest in and to all such modifications. You are not granted any other rights beyond what is expressly stated herein. Subject to the foregoing, it is forbidden to copy, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell the Software.

https://github.com/TabbyML/tabby/blob/main/ee/LICENSE

What do you think? It seems to me that this is a huge restriction on user's 4 essential freedoms.

I recently contacted Onn to get the source code for the Onn 4k TV box. We will see how long it takes me to get the code. The last contact I received was the support person telling me that the device is out of support even though it was released less than a year ago.

I already contacted the FSF and SFC so we'll see where we go from here. What experiences have you had with getting GPL source code?