I'm considering relicensing my projects to #GPL, going forward. Or — at least these projects that involve more lines of code than the GPL copyright notice takes. Why? Perhaps it's just a matter of growing up to realize how bad corporations are. But the more important question is: why did I use permissive licenses in the first place?
Perhaps it was a matter of good nature, a belief in a "permissive" definition of freedom. I wanted my code to help people. It didn't matter to me if somebody else would make money from it, or use it as a part of proprietary software, as long as the original remained free.
Perhaps it was a matter of simplicity — having a short license that I could understand.
Perhaps it was lack of belief in GPL and its enforcement. Things like nVidia repeatedly working around Linux license, grsecurity going proprietary, Oracle's AGPL-based extortion threats or government after government violating OpenSC license. After all, even if some corporation wanted to infringe on my copyright, what could I do?
But I think it's time to change that. Seeing more and more #OpenSource projects go to shit, I think it's time to make a strong statement. To say "I believe in #FreeSoftware, and to hell with corporate exploitation!"
I'm considering relicensing my projects to #GPL, going forward. Or — at least these projects that involve more lines of code than the GPL copyright notice takes. Why? Perhaps it's just a matter of growing up to realize how bad corporations are. But the more important question is: why did I use permissive licenses in the first place?
@mgorny Yeah enforcement against mega-corporations can't really work at individual level, you'd need a project big enough that some organisations could do the enforcement, but against smaller players, which are far more numerous I've rarely seen cases of violation, more like doing weird shit like a zip file on a random website for AGPL software…
Meanwhile here GPL is a license family I tend to avoid due to it's pretty bad license compatibility, which even today ends up forcing duplicate work. That said for recent projects I'm picking the MPL-2.0 rather than BSD-3-Clause which I used to pick, this way it's balanced between copyleft and reusability, I really wish it could forbid usage in outright proprietary software though.
@mgorny Yeah enforcement against mega-corporations can't really work at individual level, you'd need a project big enough that some organisations could do the enforcement, but against smaller players, which are far more numerous I've rarely seen cases of violation, more like doing weird shit like a zip file on a random website for AGPL software…
Fun stuff: x11-misc/albert used to be licensed #GPL. Then the maintainer decided to arbitrarily make it proprietary with a custom license ("freeware, i.e. proprietary and source available", with a limited right to redistribute binaries for specific Linux distributions). Except that the project has received some pretty large contributions before that, and the authors of these contributions hold the copyright to them. Since the contributions were made under the GPL, they cannot be incorporated into a proprietary project.
On top of everything, the maintainer has *deleted* the issue discussing the license issues, in particular the GPL violation.
Fun stuff: x11-misc/albert used to be licensed #GPL. Then the maintainer decided to arbitrarily make it proprietary with a custom license ("freeware, i.e. proprietary and source available", with a limited right to redistribute binaries for specific Linux distributions). Except that the project has received some pretty large contributions before that, and the authors of these contributions hold the copyright to them. Since the contributions were made under the GPL, they cannot be incorporated into...
I've just merged dist-#kernel eclass changes from Andrew Ammerlaan to #Gentoo. They bring support for "generic UKI" (Unified Kernel Image) kernels. These kernels build a preconfigured "generic" initramfs, then combine it along with the kernel into a single EFI executable.
The change is considered experimental and it will be tested on 6.6.x branch first (either in a future release, or a revbump). It adds a new `generic-uki` flag. If it is disabled (the current default), ebuilds work as usual, install the kernel image and then let installkernel take care of generating initramfs.
When you enable USE=generic-uki, the ebuild will create a generic initramfs, combine it with the kernel into a single UKI executable and install that instead. The postinst phase will afterwards extract the kernel image and initramfs from it, so that (depending on configuration) installkernel can either install the prebuilt UKI executable, the prebuilt initramfs or generate a new one.
We are also going to build our binary kernels in generic-uki configuration. The gentoo-kernel-bin ebuild is going to either install that, or if you disable the flag, extract kernel image from the UKI and install it. On the plus side, this means that we'll eventually be able to provide fully signed kernel images that are suitable for secure boot. On the minus side, this means that the distfiles are going to be larger for everyone.
I've just merged dist-#kernel eclass changes from Andrew Ammerlaan to #Gentoo. They bring support for "generic UKI" (Unified Kernel Image) kernels. These kernels build a preconfigured "generic" initramfs, then combine it along with the kernel into a single EFI executable.
The change is considered experimental and it will be tested on 6.6.x branch first (either in a future release, or a revbump). It adds a new `generic-uki` flag. If it is disabled (the current default), ebuilds work as usual, install...
Am I missing something or does #ActivityPub basically provide no way to send "none of the options" as an answer to a multiple choice poll? In other words, you have to add a "none of the above" as an explicit option, one that can be selected along with other options, effectively creating a contradictory answer?
I am in somewhat urgent need of new employment / contract. The recent months have been really hard on me. I have been diagnosed with diabetes, I have engaged in two bad work contracts that left me scarred, and on top of that I'm facing personal issues.
At this point, I really need to start over, and start low — with a job that's friendly to people in the spectrum, fully remote, with flexible schedule, up to 20 hours a week, no calls. I need a lot of time for my everyday walks that both keeps my diabetes at bay and serve as my coping mechanism.
I don't need much but I really need to get around 400 EUR a month to cover obligatory fees (and therefore not get even more depressed over losing money by working). I'm located in Poland, so I'd prefer employers from the EU.
All my recent experience is in open source. Primarily I'm a #Gentoo developer, and I'd love to extend that into paid employment. I have worked as a software developer. I have very good command of C (and reasonably good of the readable parts of C++) and Python. I'm interested in learning Rust. However, for minor tasks I can usually deal with existing code in pretty much any reasonable programming language.
I'm a backend kind of guy; I'm probably not capable of doing frontend stuff in a way appealing to neurotypical customers. I'm good with VCS-es (particularly git), build systems, testing, mocking, packaging, QA, accessibility, portability — stuff average programmers don't necessarily enjoy.
At this point, I'd strongly prefer tasks that aren't very demanding and have a good chance of success, so that I could rebuild my self-esteem.
I am in somewhat urgent need of new employment / contract. The recent months have been really hard on me. I have been diagnosed with diabetes, I have engaged in two bad work contracts that left me scarred, and on top of that I'm facing personal issues.
At this point, I really need to start over, and start low — with a job that's friendly to people in the spectrum, fully remote, with flexible schedule, up to 20 hours a week, no calls. I need a lot of time for my everyday walks that both keeps my diabetes...
@mgorny The company I work at is making an effort to offer a good work environment for a neurodiverse team. Fully remote is also an option, as is part-time.
However, I'm afraid the only positions we are actively looking for right now are an experienced game dev coder and a senior technical artists...
I'm using the proprietary #mySugr Android app to sync the data from my glucometer (and I'd love to replace it with something open source). One of the app's features is giving points for data input. Enter blood sugar, you get points, enter carbs, points, enter insulin doses, points, tag, points. You get the idea.
Now, insulin doses are split into meal and correction doses. Both grant points separately.
Effectively, this means that if you repeatedly suffer from elevated blood sugars and need to correct them, you get more points than if you're well in range. Makes sense, right?
I'm using the proprietary #mySugr Android app to sync the data from my glucometer (and I'd love to replace it with something open source). One of the app's features is giving points for data input. Enter blood sugar, you get points, enter carbs, points, enter insulin doses, points, tag, points. You get the idea.
Today's random set of thoughts, messages and labels:
"Ohmy, the ugly one is riding today! (ED72ac)" "no peeing" "cash register malfunction" "We offer advice on growing potatoes" "Budzyń - Chodzież. Rolling stock malfunction on train no. 84103/2 (PKP INTERCITY Spółka Akcyjna ), relation Ustka - Bielsko-Biała Główna. Train traffic suspended. We apologize for the disruption." "So hot, can't sit." "Door malfunction" "Train in 9 minutes, and at red [traffic light]" "Inside the train the AC is cooling but inside the toilet it's heating."
Today's random set of thoughts, messages and labels:
"Ohmy, the ugly one is riding today! (ED72ac)" "no peeing" "cash register malfunction" "We offer advice on growing potatoes" "Budzyń - Chodzież. Rolling stock malfunction on train no. 84103/2 (PKP INTERCITY Spółka Akcyjna ), relation Ustka - Bielsko-Biała Główna. Train traffic suspended. We apologize for the disruption." "So hot, can't sit." "Door malfunction" "Train in 9 minutes, and at red [traffic light]" "Inside the train the AC is cooling but inside...
Do you remember the good old days when corporations made shitty programs that didn't follow standards, and we could complain that they're shitty and don't follow standards?
Nowadays corporations make standards shitty instead, and we are forced to make shitty programs to follow them.
Isn't it nice when you broke shit, and people are no longer complaining but are actively providing solutions and helping each other on the bug, then you lock the bug, so they stop bothering you, and tell them to F off to discord instead?
The problem with "my project" attitude is when you no longer care about stuff working for your users, refuse to support #Python 3.12 because of some proprietary CI not providing it and then close the bug as "completed", even though nothing was fixed.
@mgorny He thanked you for the warning and told you he doesn't have the time to fix this. Seems totally fair no?
Agree on the 'Completed' part, that's not helpful, certainly not the best way to attract PR's.
Given your bio I'm sure you must know that not everyone in #foss has the energy, time or character to give a thoughtful empathic response to each individual issue reporter. But we all try :)
Remember how #PyYAML ignored #Cython 3 compatibility problems for a year and a half? Well, Cython 3 got released today and now the related bug exploded when tons of pipelines suddenly started failing.
The #PyYAML problem is only getting better. People are trying really hard to make their things work again. Apparently there's a way to force constraints on pip but it's not a perfect solution either.
I have two thoughts about this:
1. *Finally*, it's not just us in #Gentoo being hit by constraint conflicts (i.e. two packages in depgraph requiring different #Cython versions).
2. Given that PyYAML knew about the problem for a year and a half and did nothing to avoid it… do you think it's a good idea to continue using that package? Or #YAML in particular, Norway?
The #PyYAML problem is only getting better. People are trying really hard to make their things work again. Apparently there's a way to force constraints on pip but it's not a perfect solution either.
I have two thoughts about this:
1. *Finally*, it's not just us in #Gentoo being hit by constraint conflicts (i.e. two packages in depgraph requiring different #Cython versions).
Today's #WTF: how threadpoolctl (a #Python package) asserts that the tests are run on a specific CPU. Sigh.
Of course I've noticed because my CPU is not on the list! I wonder if we should start filing bugs about missing CPUs until upstream realizes it's a bad idea.
"I bought the energy, I paid for it, so I can use it to do whatever I want" is such extreme capitalist thinking.
Where does this energy come from? Of course from the fact that someone arbitrarily claimed it in the past — either because they had influence, money, power or simply were the first to claim it. They claimed coal/oil deposits, they claimed the land to build power plants on. They "produced" (or rather converted) energy and now they're selling it.
Where does your money come from? Most likely you're getting it because you're turning some cogs in the grand machine of capitalism. Once you skip all the middlemen, this eventually boils down to the same thing — someone claimed some resource in the past, and used it to make money.
Humanity just loves to claim everything. Natural resources are theirs to take. All land is theirs to take. Air is theirs, water is theirs, nature is theirs.
Who cares if they're destroying everything? They worked hard and they paid for the right to do so!
"I bought the energy, I paid for it, so I can use it to do whatever I want" is such extreme capitalist thinking.
Where does this energy come from? Of course from the fact that someone arbitrarily claimed it in the past — either because they had influence, money, power or simply were the first to claim it. They claimed coal/oil deposits, they claimed the land to build power plants on. They "produced" (or rather converted) energy and now they're selling it.
In other #Python news, the new #scikit-build-core #pep517 backend turns out to break building extensions via #setuptools in yet another way, this time noticed via #pdm-backend.
Oh, and there's also this bug where it breaks fail2ban too. Perhaps it's the same issue.
Remember when I said a week ago that #LLVM 17.x is nearing the branch point and it's looking good so far? Well, #Clang was broken 5 commits later, they knew it and disregarded is as "happens on just one platform". Well, surprise, it's not "just one platform", and the code is definitely broken somewhere!
Gregory's Server
@mgorny
Opinion on GPL-* variants vs each other and vs MPL-2.0?
Meanwhile here GPL is a license family I tend to avoid due to it's pretty bad license compatibility, which even today ends up forcing duplicate work.
That said for recent projects I'm picking the MPL-2.0 rather than BSD-3-Clause which I used to pick, this way it's balanced between copyleft and reusability, I really wish it could forbid usage in outright proprietary software though.
> Perhaps it was a matter of simplicity — having a short license that I could understand.
This is the main reason behind the choice of the 2-Clause BSD License for most of my work.