Freesoftwareenjoyer

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's always funny how on Lemmy everything is always capitalism's fault and the solution to every problem is socialism.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

That is just not true. Free Software developers still have the copyright to whatever they make and nobody says that they can't make money - it's free as in freedom, not price. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

I don't understand what fantasies you are talking about. We just want people to have freedom when using computers. Freedom that they deserve and that nobody should be able to take away from them. As a side effect we also get privacy and security and a society that works together to achieve common goals in a way that benefits us all. Those problems affect everyone who uses a computer.

The Free Software movement is 40 years old and it has already changed the world. It benefits everyone, not just technical people. Are you gonna tell me that all users of Firefox, Libre Office, Gimp, Matrix or Signal are only technical people? You are talking to me right now using Free Software and I'm responding to you on my fully Free Software operating system.

Free Software is not a licensing method. Software has to use licenses, because that's how copyright works. It doesn't give users any rights by default. Software should be free (as in freedom - we are not talking about price) by default, but it isn't, so we have to use licenses. The Free Software that we use today was created under capitalism, so I don't see how capitalism prevents us from making useful software and working together on improving it. There are also many developers and companies that sell Free Software (they make commercial programs).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think it's important to have boundaries. If we keep our operating systems fully free, it will be harder for anyone to pressure us to add proprietary components to them. But if our OSes already contain non-free components, it's not that hard to add more. We not only want freedom, we also want to keep it.

It also needs to be clear for the people in our community that our main goal is freedom and getting rid of proprietary software. Convenience is less important.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I didn't say that I'm never going to install any firmware updates. I just don't want to put it in my system if it's proprietary.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

The world won't change itself. If people did nothing 40 years ago, there wouldn't be a Free Software movement.

It sounds like you are not using a fully free distro anyway. Most of the popular distros contain proprietary firmware, so what's the problem?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I am forced to keep proprietary firmware in my OS to use the hardware and that's what you are advocating for. You want everyone to be forced to do that. But I don't want anything proprietary in my system. I see no reason why I should have a proprietary firmware package installed for my GPU to work. The firmware could be just on the device itself and if someone wants to change it, then they can install the package in their OS. But maybe there could also be some other way.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (3 children)

The problem is that people don't care about freedom, security or privacy. If they cared, they would only choose software that gives them those things. They would use Free Software. Even when it's not always convenient.

So the issue here is not capitalism, but non-free proprietary software, because it makes it easy to abuse users. Unfortunately most people haven't even heard of Free Software. They don't realise that they deserve certain rights when using computers. I think if more people were familiar with the Free Software movement, they would think differently and they would demand freedom. Not all Lemmy users have heard of Free Software, but many of us understand that freedom is important. So we use it, even though it's not convenient and the UI sucks.

We are capable of competing with corporations and often making better software that them, but that's not enough. If people don't understand the issues we are trying to solve, they will just use whatever new shiny app that comes out next. That's why some Twitter users migrated to Bluesky and Threads. They don't understand that after a while they will be abused the same way as before.

Even if we make Matrix way better, Discord users will still use Discord, because to them everything is fine and there is no reason to switch. Learning to use something new is always inconvenient. I doubt that all Windows users are unable to switch to GNU/Linux. They just don't think it's worth the effort, because to them there is nothing wrong. Being spied on and restricted is ok as long as all their proprietary games work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (9 children)

You don't know what the proprietary update contains. It can be a security fix, but also a backdoor. People can decide on their own if they want to update, but I see no reason why I must be forced to have proprietary stuff in my system. I want a fully libre distro. I can't switch to one, because I would have to give up on using AMD GPUs, because people like you say that this is fine.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That's not certain and them getting absolute power also isn't.

So to me it sounds a bit like the arguments that they like to use. Like:

if we accept immigrants, they will slowly replace us and destroy the country

Technically maybe that could happen, but there are many other things that could also happen and that you are failing to consider.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago

// TODO: fix this code

 

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 found two apps that seem to be violating the AGPL license. They both use the AGPL-licensed lemmy-js-client library, which means the apps themselves should also use the same license (which is the whole purpose of Copyleft). But they aren't. I don't know if Lemmy developers and contributors are aware of this.

The apps:

https://github.com/ando818/lemmy-ui-svelte - Apache license

https://github.com/aeharding/wefwef - MIT license

What should we do about this as a community? I informed one of the app's developers about this and it doesn't seem like they care. I wonder if some of the proprietary apps that are being developed right now also rely on this library.

view more: next ›