Yesterday, I urgently needed to run a piece of software on one of my systems. I had two versions of that software on hand: One for linux and one for windows.
The linux version flat-out refused to run. In my desperation, I installed wine and (to my surprise and the surprise of my coworkers) the windows version ran flawlessly.
Granted, the specifics surrounding my situation was far from typical, but I wouldn't be surprised that the majority of wine usage is also atypical in one way or another. Measuring wine's relevance by your own (or my own) use cases will likely only lead to inaccurate conclusions.
The result isn't the same though. With hate speech there has been an open debate in society and the media about what is acceptable and what isn't, and that consensus is not complete and is regularly challenged. Even the media that is censored, such as videos of hostage executions, is often discussed widely and the content described so people still know about it andcan often track it down if they really want to, it's just not propagated in it's raw offensive form. The state censorship in China is of a completely different order.
It saddens me that so many people draw this sort of false equivalence. All it does is provide comfort and support for the sort of pervasive state imposed news blackouts and retribution against individual commentators practiced in places like China.
Yes, because the alternative is the government forcing a 3rd party to provide a platform for speech they disagree with. And since that platform isn't free, you're also forcing them to spend their own resources to support it.
Those 3rd parties have rights too. They shouldn't be required to support and provide resources for speech they disagree with.
> Yes, because the alternative is the government forcing a 3rd party to provide a platform for speech they disagree with. And since that platform isn't free, you're also forcing them to spend their own resources to support it.
> Those 3rd parties have rights too. They shouldn't be required to support and provide resources for speech they disagree with.
I think people keep conflating the notion of being _able_ to say what you please and having a platform to do so. I sympathize with these people because I have witnessed the erosion of the public square as a place to promote your own ideas (with people glued to their phones, with headphones on, etc).
However, I agree that we can't force service providers to host content they disagree with _for free_ but there's a reason we require water companies to provide water to synagogues and mosques alike.
I think as we advance technologically, access to information (and the platforms through which they are spread) will be regarded as a necessity to function as a member of society and will be regulated as such.
Not even close. In China, you cannot even talk about politically-sensitive topics like the Tiananmen Square massacre. I don’t think you appreciate the massive chilling effect of its policies, and the strength of the Party’s grip on the social consciousness. It’s a different ball game.
Many years back, I bought an expensive android phone to discover that it did not support my native language. I have the necessary technical skills to add support for it, but because the phone was locked down (something enabled by permissive licenses but not the GPL), I couldn't fix the phone myself and ended up with a very expensive but useless brick.
Corporate interests rarely align completely with your own, and this small difference can be very damaging to your interests. The GPL, while not perfect, alleviates some of the damage caused by this misalignment by ensuring that users remain in a position to address it.
The problem is, in practice, the GPL doesn't assure as many rights to the user as it is claimed. The example of Android shows this clearly. While the base of Android is GPL and consequently freely available, nonetheless Google managed to mix it with enough proprietary parts, so that they could could block Huawai from selling their phones with Android. Of course, Huawai is able to build their own OS based on the open source parts of Android, but for all practical purposes it will be a separate OS.
You are not getting my point. The point was, that the ability of the GPL to enforce source sharing is limited. Where source sharing and redistribution are not desired, GPL licensed software just isn't used. Or used in a way that it does not affect the propriatary parts.
The whole argument of Stallman is that you don't give companies the choice to use permissively licensed software (by making it economically impossible for them to rewrite the entire body of free software).
I think "there isn't enough software under the GPL" is not a criticism of the GPL's effectiveness. If anything it supports the GPL as a method for ensuring user freedom.
If the only open source software available to companies were GPLed software, they would not switch their product to GPL, but rather not use open source software. GPL isn't making companies share source which they don't want to share, they just avoid anything GPL. That is what I meant with the limited powers of GPL.
This isn't about not wanting to "give back" to the community, companies using permissive licensed software are contributing back. It is about that the GPL is incompatible with the business model of all companies which are licensing (selling) the software they produce.
I also have difficulty believing anything bloomberg puts out after what had happened.
With all the independent investigations and the lack evidence found, I'm baffled that they still haven't admitted their mistake and issued a redaction.
Bloomberg unleashed this bombshell of a story about a supply chain attack on Supermicro, which supplies servers to some big-name companies. Except... literally everyone else says it didn't happen, and didn't make sense in the first place.
I'd be glad to forget Mozilla's past if they'd show that they have learned from them. The problem is that they haven't. In some cases, they've doubled down on them.
I say this as someone who uses firefox on every device he can.
Projecting political views onto browser users by default is a big one (new tab). Another is the limiting of user control by not allowing them to install third-party extensions. They also enable telemetry by default, and that not all telemetry can be disabled without going into about:config (i.e the settings in the preference page do not disable telemetry about telemetry itself; the browser can and will still send some telemetry even when telemetry is set as disabled).
I (and many others) use Firefox because we need a trustworthy browser, but issues like these take away from that trustworthiness.
> I am getting increasingly annoyed by the fact that buying anything is becoming a minefield
Not only that, but they keep repopulating the minefield with new mines after you've spent considerable time clearing them. (Google, I really don't want you to use wifi to "improve" location precision and silently re-enabling the setting after a system update isn't going to change my mind.)
Yes but they probably can't subpoena corporate data/emails to complete the necessary due diligence. They need the FBI to seize evidence, if that even exists.
Depends if Ethiopia believes the US will declare war against Ethiopia, or otherwise destabilise Ethiopia over one token Boing executive being detained fairly-indefinitely.
Pressure on U.S. to cave in on sanctions. Trump refuses.
I wonder if Lion Air will be determined to be the Arch Duke Ferdinand of WW3. Either way would be good to get some actual consequences for decision makers at the top of corporations.
If this is even possible they would do this to trade for the Huwei exec. Also Ethiopia gets a ton of US aid and military support so it wouldn’t be in their interest.
Unless the developer has enough foresight to account for, and sufficiently handle, every single instance where that brick wall would stop a legitimate false positive, I stand vehemently against them.
There are enough examples in the past that clearly demonstrate that developers are not benevolent or competent enough to have complete and final control over the software their users run. Sometimes this control even results in the exact opposite of what the developers originally intended, as was the case with firefox addons just a couple of days ago.
Ultimate control over software should always reside in the hands of the user.
Yesterday, I urgently needed to run a piece of software on one of my systems. I had two versions of that software on hand: One for linux and one for windows.
The linux version flat-out refused to run. In my desperation, I installed wine and (to my surprise and the surprise of my coworkers) the windows version ran flawlessly.
Granted, the specifics surrounding my situation was far from typical, but I wouldn't be surprised that the majority of wine usage is also atypical in one way or another. Measuring wine's relevance by your own (or my own) use cases will likely only lead to inaccurate conclusions.