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Comment Re:First against the wall (Score 3) 43

Railing against age verification while an orange man is sending the military into your cities, destroying your way of life and antagonizing the whole world against you is priceless.

Age verification is not what is being discussed, and only an incredibly simple person who is completely unable to imagine ramifications of what is obviously ubiquitous identity verification would make such a drastic mistake. This kind of technology is an obvious component of "sending the military into [our] cities" and "destroying [our] way of life" and is in fact exactly what the followers of the orange piggy are promoting. Did you not notice what's going on with e.g. flock? Fucking wake up and learn to pay attention, fascism enabler.

Comment Re:Non-commercial use only (Score 1) 76

Maybe the legal experts could sit down and work out how to modify licenses (including the GPL/LGPL) to be for non-commercial use only?

That's easy. You just put "for non-commercial use only" in the license and give the license a new name. Then no corporate entities use it and therefore they never give anything back to the project and it dies. Mission accomplished?

Comment Re:We must normalize paying for worth (Score 1) 76

Comparing this to tipping is the wrong approach because tipping is fucking stupid. The problem with your analogy is that the executive are going to a for-profit business that isn't paying its employees properly.

I thought it was a stupid analogy until I read that. This is essentially what's happening, who's working where is the only difference. The executives love it specifically because they don't have to pay the people doing the work. We do need to solve that problem. If we're not going to solve it with UBI, which remains the simplest way to solve a long list of problems like this, then it's just going to need to be solved in some other way.

But just like best solution to the tipped wage problem is to eliminate it and make everyone pay a living wage, the best solution to this problem is UBI.

Comment Re:Time for a tax. (Score 1) 76

Perens' Post Open licensing approach is interesting but creates a two-tier ecosystem: "free for individuals, pay for commercial use" sounds clean until you realize it breaks the fundamental property that made open source eat the world.

This is on brand for Perens, who was part of the OSI effort to take over the whole idea of "Open Source".

What's actually needed: mandatory contribution structured as a fee, not a license restriction. Here's one way to do it. Small flat fee on all US commercial revenue above $5M (the entire world runs on OSS, everyone pays to maintain it), larger marginal fee on companies whose products directly incorporate OSS.

Holy shit just get it from the general fund, spending shitloads figuring out who pays how much and arguing about it in court (which is what will happen, guaranteed) is dumb when we all benefit from foss.

Comment Re:If payment's required to access open-source sw (Score 1) 76

Consider how IBM / Red Hat are actively overriding the licenses of the software they distribute.

This is a real problem.

Consider how coding LLMs copy without attribution open source snippets found by their company spiders.

This is also a real problem.

Consider how Google locks up Android code by making closed source play services effectively essential.

This is not a real problem. Google gives away the OSS code as required. You are free to use it as you like. If you don't like being hobbled by play store requirements you can use the other pieces to build a system which isn't like that. There are already systems which do this which prove it.

Consider how web sites use modified open source tooling without sharing their added code back.

That's why we now have the AGPL. You're free to use it for your projects.

We live in a different world.

The web site model is the same as the microcomputer or mainframe or SaaS model (which is old AF, consider Compu$erve) so that part isn't new. It's just come back.

I really don't think people are taking the IBM/Redhate problem seriously enough. It's open and flagrant violation because it clearly violates the additional restrictions clause.

Comment Re:but they want the same dealers to be only repai (Score 1) 45

but they want the same dealers to be only repair place.

Automakers are generally happy to sell training and service equipment to non-dealership shops. Parts can be a more complicated problem. They don't want to sell parts outside of dealership networks. However, if they successfully got rid of dealerships (and all automakers do all of the direct sales they can get away with, they would love to dispose of them) they either would step that up or develop their own service networks, or both. They would have to either open service chains or enable franchises, or I suppose simply allow the suppliers to sell parts into the channel directly earlier. They already do this, just not immediately in most cases.

If you (yes, you) want to take the same courses from Audi or Ford or Honda that the dealership techs take, you can do that. You just sign up and pay a shitload of money.

Comment Re:Was not expecting them to admit that (Score 1) 45

They had to say it that way, because the more accurate statement is that the dealership law unfairly advantages existing automakers.

Even the entrenched automakers don't want dealerships to exist, they would all prefer to sell directly. They have better ways to keep down competition at the federal level. Dealerships just take a cut of what they could be keeping all of if they didn't exist.

Comment Re:I live in Washington state (Score 3, Insightful) 45

I say let people choose, do they wan to buy from a dealer or direct from manufacturer,

I say do not let manufacturers choose, mandate that they release all documentation and software they create internally for service purposes. That's what's going to free consumers from tyranny of manufacturers and stealerships.

Comment Re:It's inevitable (Score 0) 179

it is LGPL2 or later. So LGPL3 applies. So the anti tivoization clause applies.

That's the opposite of how that works. It's LGPL 2 or later. That means you can follow the terms of redistribution from either license. Either. Or.

Sure. But it won't be your usual Linux distro.

It will do the same jobs. Most of the software on which we depend predates the GPL3 and/or uses an even more permissive license without an anti-tivoization clause.

Comment Is that because of the monopoly? (Score 4, Interesting) 61

The most fortunate part of Bell Labs' situation, however, was that in being attached to a monopoly it could partake in long-term thinking... Without competition nipping at its heels, Bell Labs engineers had the luxury of working out difficult ideas over decades.

Was it the monopoly that made the difference? Or was it simply management smart enough to not only not kill the goose, but also to feed it? They had wins, they got more funding, they had more wins, repeat until they no longer got more funding and stopped getting wins. What's probably more important than why they succeeded is what happened at the end.

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