It can create a hard place. If the current government is a rock, these late night hosts can create a hard place, to catch the network between. The network cares about money - if the government starts taking away licenses, they can’t make money, so they’ll roll over (as they have done). But they can’t make money without their talent either, so the hosts can push back from the other side to maintain their platform/voice.
Will it work? Maybe not. Will giving up? Definitely not.
Silencing themselves is counter productive. They need to do the opposite. They need to use their platform to make as much noise as possible.
They can and should protest in other ways, but to sit out is to give the other side what they want, and to squander their ability to affect change.
*An official letter, signed by at least three colleagues.
What bugs me the most is I’ve pointed it out to people in conversations that basically go like this:
Me: You used it for X and caught mistakes - why are you trusting it for Y? Them: That’s a good point.
And then they keep doing it anyway.
I’m not an AI hater at all - it can be a great way to accelerate work you are capable of doing on your own. But using it for things you don’t understand, and/or not double checking its work is insanity.
I hate to bring up AI, but this is exactly what I keep trying to explain to people - when you ask any of these bots questions about things you’re an expert in, you see all the flaws. The trouble is people tend not to ask questions about things they already know…
Malcolm Jamal Warner also died within the past few days.
For what it’s worth, I just bought a TCL 55S450F (55 inch 4K HDR FireTV) specifically because it does not ever need an internet connection to function (expressly stated in the manual). It is currently on Amazon for $268 (they have other sizes at other prices). It’s a great TV, considering the price. The only real drawback for me is the remote is Bluetooth, rather than infrared (less compatible with universal remotes).
Note that for full dumb TV effect, you’ll want to go into the settings and tell it to resume the last input, rather than going to the home screen when you turn it on (without connecting it to the Internet, the home screen is basically just a big banner telling you it’s not connected, and when you dismiss that, it just allows you to access inputs and manage settings).
You are falling into a common trap. LLMs do not have understanding - asking it to do things like convert dates and put them on a number line may yield correct results sometimes, but since the LLM does not understand what it’s doing, it may “hallucinate” dates that look correct, but don’t actually align with the source.
Thanks! I am in the US. I’ve never heard of RH, but I’ll definitely check them out.
This is not true. The GPL does not force anyone to give up their code, unless they distribute it. From the “Definitions” section:
A “covered work” means either the unmodified Program or a work based on the Program.
And
To “convey” a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.
And from the “Basic Permissions” section:
You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains in force. You may convey covered works to others for the sole purpose of having them make modifications exclusively for you, or provide you with facilities for running those works, provided that you comply with the terms of this License in conveying all material for which you do not control copyright. Those thus making or running the covered works for you must do so exclusively on your behalf, under your direction and control, on terms that prohibit them from making any copies of your copyrighted material outside their relationship with you.
Conveying under any other circumstances is permitted solely under the conditions stated below. Sublicensing is not allowed; section 10 makes it unnecessary.
Under the terms of the GPL, the owner can revoke your access for any violation of the license, and at their discretion, they can make that revocation permanent. The GPL does not guarantee equal treatment - an author can punish one person harshly, and another not at all. It still comes down to the author. Yes, there is a small barrier in that you have to find a violation, but if you look hard enough, you can probably find a violation - especially in large projects using libraries distributed under multiple different licenses.
the FUTO license can revoke the license just because Rossmann says so. It is a mechanism to keep Rossmann the owner of everything that spawns from the code of the app and being the only one who can make money from it. If Rossmann doesn’t like someone who wants to redistributes the app, he can immediately revoke their license.
Quoting from my comment here:
They’re just trying to prevent a company from making money off the free labor of the authors. It’s the same issue that has plagued other projects, such as Elastic Search, which ultimately led it to change licenses. And it’s why MariaDB created the BSL, which they and other companies have adopted (very similar terms here - source free to use for non-commercial purposes).
If the hangup is specifically that they can change the terms, or revoke rights altogether, the other licenses also allow for that - that’s how these projects are changing licenses at all, and it happens quite a bit. I have personally contributed to projects that were GPL, and then went Apache.
only one who can make money from it
This is not true. You can make and sell plugins, you could offer support, you could sell your services as a code auditor/security expert… anything other than selling the code you didn’t write. On top of that, in practice, this isn’t different from anything else - most contributors to open source projects don’t profit from them, unless they work for the organization that owns the project. When the non-owners do profit, it’s usually big companies and results in the license changes I’ve described above.
A user that doesn’t care about licensing is typically called a pirate.
The license literally does not govern the usage of the app. Here’s the first line:
This license grants you the rights, and only the rights, set out below in respect of the source code provided.
Read the entire license (it’s only 32 lines), and you won’t find anything related to using the product, only the code.
This license should only be scary to developers, who might build on the project, and then have it taken away. As a user, your concerns are different, and this license vs the GPL, or any other FOSS, or even source available license, are more-or-less the same. As a user, your primary concerns are probably going to be related to the security and privacy related aspects, and as long as you have access to the source, you can audit it and ensure it meets your standards. If they choose to revoke access to the code, as a user, you’re in the same boat you described - don’t take new versions because you can’t audit them, but you can stay on the old version. They can’t revoke that access with this license, because again, this license literally does not govern usage of the product.
repackaging is a fundamental software freedom
Re-packaging is fine. You just can’t sell it.
They’re just trying to prevent a company from making money off the free labor of the authors. It’s the same issue that has plagued other projects, such as Elastic Search, which ultimately led it to change licenses. And it’s why MariaDB created the BSL, which they and other companies have adopted (very similar terms here - source free to use for non-commercial purposes).
If the hangup is specifically that they can change the terms, or revoke rights altogether, the other licenses also allow for that - that’s how these projects are changing licenses at all, and it happens quite a bit. I have personally contributed to projects that were GPL, and then went Apache.
As a developer, I could certainly see not wanting to build on the project while the license is what it is, but as a user, I don’t think this license is bad. I also think this is likely temporary (hence the name - “FUTO Temporary License”), and the tight grip on the rights are probably just so they can re-license later (hopefully to something a little more permissive). I could definitely be wrong, but given Louis’s track record of fighting for things like right-to-repair, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt here. He could certainly prove me wrong though, if they do anything shady. Feel free to rub it in my face if he ever does.
Edit:
Just for proof, here’s the specific line that says you can re-package and redistribute, from section 2, line 2:
- You may provide the code to anyone else and publish excerpts of it for the purposes of review, compilation and non-commercial distribution, provided that when you do so you make any recipient of the code aware of the terms of this license, they must agree to be bound by the terms of this license and you must attribute the code to the provider.
As a user, or a developer? As a user, I don’t think it matters. As a developer, I think other licenses have similar carve outs, e.g. the GPLv3 section 8 is a whole section on “termination” - the copyright holder can revoke your rights for any ticky-tack violation of the license, and at their discretion, the revocation can be permanent.
Additionally, even with other FOSS licenses, the copyright holder can re-license the project. If I had to guess, this ability to re-license is probably why it is written as it is - the license is called the “FUTO Temporary License.” I would assume it’s written as is so they can re-license later, and they just want to cover their bases now. It’s entirely possible that’s incorrect, and they’ll clamp down. I’m personally willing to give them the benefit of the doubt (though having said that, I have no intention of buying, using, or contributing to this project).
Is there a particular aspect of the FUTO license you are concerned with? The code is publicly available, and the license seems to allow you to do anything you want, except sell the code. Other than not allowing you to re-package and sell the code, it seems like your rights are very similar to anything distributed via the GPL.
Am I missing something?
Can you describe your use case more?
I don’t think format matters - if you’ve got multiple processes writing simultaneously, you’ll have a potential for corruption. What you want is a lock file. Basically, you just create a separate file called something like my process.lock. When a process wants to write to the other file, you check if the lock file exists - if yes, wait until it doesn’t; if no, create it. In the lock file, store just the process id of the file that has the lock, so you can also add logic to check if the process exists (if it doesn’t, it probably died - you may have to check the file you’re writing to for corruption/recover). When done writing, delete the file to release the lock.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_locking, and specifically the section on lock files.
This is a common enough pattern there are probably libraries to handle a lot of the logic for you, though it’s also simple enough to handle yourself.
I have no personal experience with this company, but I’ve followed them for a few years. I was initially very interested in their laptops, but was also very excited when the phone was announced. In the years since the phone was announced, I’ve heard and read many negative things about build quality and software on their laptops, and I’ve seen the shipment of the phones get repeatedly delayed. More recently, https://youtu.be/wKegmu0V75s showed up in my feed. I would recommend anyone considering purchasing from them watch that video, and do a little research into their security/openess claims, as well as customer satisfaction.
Again, I don’t have the personal experience to say they are bad in anyway, but I don’t want to see anyone get scammed, so I would recommend healthy skepticism and due diligence before making a purchase.
They do care. They’re trying to find a way to stop it. That’s the point of the article. It’s the first sentence:
The Danish government will seek to “find a legal tool” that would enable authorities to prevent the burning of copies of the Koran in front of other countries’ embassies in Denmark, Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told the national broadcaster DR on Sunday.
At 1:30 in that second video, he shows that YouTube already converts dot zip domains, even in old comments that predate the domain’s existence. At 3:19, he shows/mentions Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I would consider those major platforms. And keep in mind, it only takes one person downloading one file to cause major damage - the LMG hack was due to someone downloading and trying to open a fake PDF that was sent via email: https://youtu.be/yGXaAWbzl5A.
So yes, not everything does or will auto convert the links, but I think you are underestimating the potential for issues here.
See https://youtu.be/GCVJsz7EODA and https://youtu.be/V82lHNsSPww
There are a few problems, but I believe the biggest issue is that .zip and .mov are valid and common file extensions, and it’s common for people to write something like ‘example dot zip’ or ‘attachment dot mov’ in emails, tweets, etc. Things like email clients have features where they automatically convert text that looks like a web address into clickable links. So now, retroactively, all those emails etc suddenly have a link, where they used to just have text, and the domains that are equivalent to those previously benign file names are being purchased by nefarious actors to exploit people unaware of the issue.
Fediverse… Fed… Federated. Unifying it would defeat the purpose. Yes, there could be a single platform, with federated hosting, but multiple platforms working with a single protocol is a good thing.
Consider the web - in the old days, it was an open platform. Then Internet Explorer got a stranglehold, and to use the web practically required using IE on Windows (many sites did not work in other browsers). Eventually we righted the ship, but now Chromium browsers are taking over, and we’re heading in a similar direction.
For the fediverse to remain open and effective, we should embrace extra platforms*. It prevents anyone getting too much control over the protocol, prevents lock-in, prevents centralization, etc.
*We should generally encourage use/development of the same protocol, though.