Israelis are more known for putting backdoors wherever they can than Russians, for example.

Anyway, nation-states are not the only kind of group with malicious interest. Maybe a maintainer is a member of some mafia, I dunno. How are you going to know this?

Many things can be done with FreeBSD. Again, in our time it may get some popularity again not because of such events even, but because of their possibility and to avoid monoculture (in the context of backdoors too).

No, it’s not. But the US is closer to it than some Americans think.

That’s the point of FOSS as copyleft, to use the law to protect “free and open” information. This allows bigger projects, because contributors don’t have to keep their heads down.

At the same time maybe this is a downside, not an upside. As the reason why it has all gotten so big and complex and corporate-influenced.

This does very little to protect against supply chain attacks.

Your example shows that too.

Increasing modularity and reducing complexity of software seem to be the right way to that end. Plan9, GNU Hurd, Minix3 are interesting in that context.

It’s not decentralized on the level of project development, the visible proof of which is what we’ve seen happen.

How many times have you seen two branches of a significant project to coexist with comparable popularity?

I wonder if there’s some way to manage an open source project so that it’s not subject to particular national laws in this way.

Yes. Pseudonymous software development. I’ve seen Ross Ulbricht’s name today, so we also know the risks.

Naturally this is closer to some underground warez than to copyleft, because the legal ways of protecting copylefted information against appropriation will not be available. A different paradigm.

I’m thinking about that conspiracy theory of Linus having been made an offer one can’t refuse, when some time ago he took a vacation and returned with news about seeing the error of his ways.

It almost coincided with Stallman being canceled for one of his usual highly socially unacceptable, but in principle consistent opinions. With most of the attackers being frankly some new random corporate-associated people, not very active in real communities.

Maybe I’ll re-read J4F and compare Linus from there to these events. Canary and all.

EDIT: Before you downvote this for the mush in my head (thx Linus) propagating conspiracy theories, offers one can’t refuse are not exactly an impossible thing. And WWII radio games, where, having captured an enemy station’s operator, one of the sides could either imitate their style in transmissions or just force them to transmit what it wanted.

It’s aesthetically nice. Just when you don’t make compromises, the practical cases will be few.

That’s true even for using OpenBSD as a daily driver. No Stallman there (and they don’t like him), but some principles have to be followed. Thus no Wine and no Linux emulation.

Would like to try using Guix for a long time some day, but it would be an interruption.

There is a kind of shorter-term marriage in Shia Islam which sometimes may approach prostitution in practice.

But generally no. A traditional European marriage is not a worker servicing a client.

Well, honestly what political positions women have means less in “interesting times” like ours.

They are not strongly pressured by conservative men of their family and surroundings (if they have such), because tribal parts of politics rely a lot on crowd instincts, and those of women don’t work exactly the same. They do participate in politics, but with the different kind of emotion.

For men a woman holding different views is usually not an existential enemy. They might ridicule that or dislike, that may look disgusting, but it’s a different kind of attitude. It’s pretty normal for women from families from authoritarian elites to have publicly liberal views. The dictator daddy won’t punish his daughter for reposting something virtue-signalling against what he’s doing. He knows it’s of no consequence.

At the same time women, of course, see the tendencies around us and their views change accordingly.

But again, in the “interesting times” what men do may matter just a bit more, because there are power dynamics involved where women are disadvantaged due to both different tribal instincts and to men being more represented among people with power. In some sense political views are a kind of compensation.

So it’s both bigger incentives for such views (with actual incels loudly talking) and less pressure (that’s spent on threatening violence against male opponents).

I’m not an incel. Just thinking.

We won’t. The desire is to be connected to a real living woman. Toys can’t get sophisticated enough to make you believe what you prematurely know to not be true.

Yes. Liberal is the opposite of “moralist” and sometimes “oppressive”.

The US use of the word “liberal” is a bit shifted in the direction of “libertine” (same as libertarian, but strongly focused on personal freedoms of substance abuse and sexual promiscuity at the expense of economical\political freedoms to own catgirl slaves and shoot up crowds).

Being less educated and living the traditional life of sitting at home and doing house work.

Easy.

Right!

First, Germanic invaders should leave Great Wales and go back to Jutland …

That Americans are actually not Americans, but illegal aliens from Europe?..

OK, I haven’t been in the US.

I agree. We should realize the following:

1. There are things we are not entitled to.

2. There are things we are entitled to.

3. There is Nintendo’s opinion on which is which.

4. There’s someone else’s opinion on which is which.

5. There’s law which should be a dignified compromise between these.

6. The law may or may not be such a compromise.

7. Our obligations before law mirror our rights.

8. Our engagement with law mirrors our participation in forming it.

9. We have been robbed of that ability and raise our voice where it matters.

10. Hence Nintendo’s opinion and said law don’t matter shit.

I think this is intentional. Call me paranoid.

Elaboration: we have seen in the past how RedHat’s and others’ policies would always not reach some part of Linux users, and those users still wouldn’t feel as second class citizens - it was just a matter of choice and configuration to avoid PulseAudio, systemd, Gnome 3, one can go on. That was mostly connected to escaping major environments and same applications working the same with all of them. Wayland, while not outright making Gnome the only thing to work, creates a barrier and doesn’t make that a firm given anymore.

It won’t be too long until using Linux without Wayland will cut you off from many things developed with corporate input - and that’s developers’ time paid as opposed to donated for or volunteered, so much more effort.

Now, there was a time when there weren’t that much corporate input and still things would get done. But it will be hard to fall back to it, when the whole environment, one can say, ecosystem, is so complex and corporate-dependent.

I would say this is the time of all those corps whose investment into Linux was so nice in 00s and 10s reaping what they sowed. This wasn’t all for free or to profit on paid support. And people who thought that it’s GPL that was such a nice license that “forced” corps to participate in FOSS projects they benefit from, with those projects remaining FOSS, are going to have to face reality.

Fat years are ending, so they are going to capitalize on their investments.

This has already happened with the Web 10 or more years ago, when Facebook, Google and others have suddenly gone Hitler, while now they are in terminal stages of enshittification.

Same process.

You can disagree, no need to insult me.

Cheap ARM Linux laptops with all the gamez, GPIO, RJ-45, interfaces and space for 2-3 SSDs plz. And battery that holds 4 days (without gamez). And a choice between amoled and e-ink display options.

Having typed that, I suppose I won’t live to see that. Still, something like RPi or OPi, but with 2 M.2 interfaces, would be sufficient to assemble a convenient enough laptop. EDIT: and upgradeable memory

There are much more Muslims living in India than just those in Kashmir. They also have regions where Muslims treat Christians that way. India is big. That said, yes, it sucks, but Kashmir is a situation where “both sides” can be used honestly. It’s just that somehow Europeans and Americans like to consider Muslims the oppressed group number one. Usually they are the oppressors.

That small proportion of situations is those where it was simply impossible to live oppressed, because there only were options to fight or die. A much larger proportion of people in this world live oppressed.

As compared to beheading them for their ethnicity, yes. So until Azerbaijan is sanctioned and put to its place, please shut up. We all care more about things closer to us, but one is worse than the other.