SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The GNU project was officially announced on 27 September 1983 by Richard Stallman. Thirty-five years of a project that has now become the fundamental building block of everything we use and see in technology in 2018. I would not be wrong to say that there isn't a single proprietary piece of software that anyone is still using from 35 years ago – please post comments if there is something still being used.
There is only one reason for this longevity: the GNU project was built upon the premise that the code is available to anyone, anywhere with the only restriction that whatever is done to the code, it shall always be available to anyone, forever. Richard Stallman's genius in crafting the copyleft license that is the GNU General Public License is probably the best hack of the 20th century software industry.
Extra: Happy Birthday, GNU: Why I still love GNU 35 years later
(Score: 3, Redundant) by RandomFactor on Friday September 28 2018, @10:42AM (35 children)
Unfortunately interest in things like BSD and GNU's Mach kernel hurd pretty much lost interest as Linux took over the world
While we had a benevolent meritocratic (if crass) dictator of Linux kernel development that was dandy.
(interestingly a dictatorship is both potentially the best and potentially the worst form of government)
It appears that Kernel development just got .woke. and the best code will no longer be the prime consideration.
This will have multiple effects.
1) there's a real potential for disruption completely halting forward progress if people de license their code as part of the kernel
2) progress will be slower and code will be less optimal goi ng forward as high quality kernel coders are lost or contributions are considered on non-merit criteria
3) I wouldn't be surprised to see the kernel move to GPL3
4) encroachment of Free options into spaces held by proprietary platforms will stall or reverse
Coding has been a place where all the masks and social prejudices never really mattered. Now we are taking that away from the one place where success was available in a truly equal fashion regardless of your social state. All because Linus has been a foul mouthed asshole.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @11:00AM (1 child)
Linus has as much right to be a "foul mouthed asshole" as Stallman has to be a "cantankerous, smelly commie". That's what it means to live in a free society, the GPL subverted the authoritarian control of corporate copyright to promote freedom. It's time to rethink it in light of creeping authoritarianism under the false banner of "social justice".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday September 28 2018, @02:53PM
Linus has the right to be a foul-mouthed asshole. That doesn't mean that being a foul-mouthed asshole is good for Linux or good for Linus. By all appearances at least, nobody forced Linus to take a step back from Linux, nor did anyone say "stop being a foul-mouthed asshole or you'll be off Linux forever" or something, he decided to do both of those things on his own accord. I mean, perhaps something happened with Tove that Linus doesn't want to make public or something, but that's not coercion unless she threatened to use her mad karate skills on him or something.
In short, he made a choice. Why are you worried about "creeping authoritarianism" over something somebody did voluntarily?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by stormwyrm on Friday September 28 2018, @11:10AM (4 children)
Gee, you say that as though it were a bad thing. But even though I'm not really against this happening, it probably will never happen. Since Linus Torvalds has never insisted on copyright assignments for code contributions to Linux so all such contributions are still copyright whoever contributed them. These many copyright holders must all agree on a sweeping licensing change such as that, and I seriously doubt that any movement will get them all to agree. If even one code contributor refuses or cannot be contacted, any such attempt has difficulties in proportion to the significance and complexity of the contributions they hold. It will become necessary to excise all of the code of the holdouts and replace them with equivalents that can be proven in a court of law to not be derivative of the original code, or else anyone distributing the kernel under new license becomes guilty of copyright infringement against the holdouts. GPLv2 vs. GPLv3 has been a divisive topic ever since the new license came out, and there will be certain to be many contributors of significant portions of the kernel who will refuse any such attempts to change the license. Given the kind of waste of effort that this would entail, I don't think even Richard Stallman would agree to such attempts to change the license of the Linux kernel. The FSF is nothing if not pragmatic, and the GPLv2, while not ideal for them, still helps advance their cause.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0, Troll) by VLM on Friday September 28 2018, @11:57AM (1 child)
You say that like its a problem, but we're dealing with people who care a lot more about the author of the code being a sassy black woman than they care about the code actually working or security in general or memory leaks or priv escalation attacks. In fact the NSA would love to fund it as long as it results in more useful zero-day exploits. A kernel written entirely by gay trans non-white non-asian women is a win to those people regardless if it works or not and regardless if anyone uses it or not. What matters is white males can't have associate with each other or have a "safe space".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @05:31PM
muh uppreshun!!! they are tryin to mahk me talk guhd!
oh noes my neo nazi friends might think i got cucked
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday September 28 2018, @04:51PM
Actually it's not as if all developers must agree at once to it. There can be lobbying to add the "or later" (or even just a more restrictive "or 3") clause to the license of individual code snippets; such code snippets continue to be license compatible with code only under GPL version 2. Then when a critical mass is reached, an effort can be started to replace the code of people who don't want to add the version 3 disclaimer. As soon as all code has the "or later" or "or 3" clause, it can be easily switched to GPLv3.
Indeed, should it actually happen that people withdraw their license due to CoC issues, it might even speed up such a transition project, because then that code has to be written anew anyway, so the "or later" provision can be added to all that new code immediately.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Friday September 28 2018, @11:03PM
I was trying to present the outcomes neutrally, although i was initially listed negative ones only, maybe some of that tone still crept in.
Didn't mean it as good or bad, but as something we might reasonably see come about as a result of the kernel getting torn up by code withdrawals. If that occurs I could easily see a push to move to the next version GPL that doesn't allow that type of behavior.
I was typing in a rush as it was time to head to work :-)
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Friday September 28 2018, @11:45AM (5 children)
systemd?
Not that there's anything wrong with the BSDs. FreeBSD is all the good parts of Linux without the bad parts.
Given that his every utterance has been scrutinized like a supreme court appointment for a quarter century, I'm not sure a cherry picking expedition necessarily proves anything. Compared to, say, Jewish comedians on TV, he's actually not that foulmouthed, I've certainly heard worse. I mean, when someone sounds more laid back than Sarah Silverman, doesn't that make it inherently anti-Semitic to criticize Linus?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @05:39PM
Otherwise, FreeBSD wouldn't have known better, and wouldn't know which good parts to steal instead.
There are 2 kinds of Operating Systems: Those people bitch about, and those nobody uses.
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Friday September 28 2018, @10:58PM (3 children)
1) Linus is Jewish? If I had been asked I would have guessed vaguely Christian, but I never looked for that info either. That whole line of thought on your part is offbase hypersensitive BS.
2) Regardless, I probably should have phrased the last sentence differently, it wasn't intended as a criticism of Linus, it was meant as a criticism of this (his abrasive style/language/personality) being the catalyst for this change and all its ramifications.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @08:17AM
No, ethnically Swedish but a Finn, if I recall correctly. So probably Some Kind of Lutheran, possibly a Papist, maybe a new age Crystal worshipper, or a modern human who is an atheist. VLM is just exercising his inner Nazi a bit more. With proper exercise, he will be just as much as a bigot as Ethanol_fueled, but not nearly as amusing. VLM need to go recode his own kernel, a pure kernel, one kernel to seek them all, one kernel to find them, one kernel to bring them all, and in the systemd bind them!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday September 29 2018, @11:51PM (1 child)
Less abrasive than Sarah Silverman so calling for him to be punished is essentially calling out (some) jews for being much worse....
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Sunday September 30 2018, @03:36AM
RIF
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 28 2018, @12:14PM (4 children)
Or this was all a setup by Linus to show everyone why Linux had the Code of Conflict in the first place. Probably not but I'll laugh my ass off if it turns out that way.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @12:40PM (1 child)
Unfortunately not. [bbc.co.uk] I find his reasoning paper thin, he doesn't want to be falsely associated with shitheads [wikipedia.org] but doesn't identify those who would make false accusations as the problem?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 28 2018, @02:42PM
Well it wouldn't be much of a strategy if he went and said it was a week later, now would it? You're probably right that it's not though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @05:35PM (1 child)
The really telling part is how the most toxic users on SN are the ones crying the hardest. What ever happened to personal responsibility? Can't handle the consequences of being rude to other people?
I guess we'll have to wait and see how many OSS contributors get blackballed through the CoC. My bet is on this being a non-issue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @07:40PM
No, can't stand blatant liars faking offense at self-invented "insults". IOW, the ones who behave just like you.
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Friday September 28 2018, @12:29PM (12 children)
Unfortunately interest in things like BSD and GNU's Mach kernel hurd pretty much lost interest as Linux took over the world
Interest can be rekindled.
The hard bit is separating politics from an engineering project. Unfortunately, wherever there are humans, there is politics, and the result is usually that people who are better at politics than at engineering get the power. I am not aware of any successful means of insulating scientific and engineering projects from political influence - if there were one, I expect it would be insanely popular.
The problem that engineers have is that they frequently approach political problems as though they were engineering problems, then get mystified when standard problem solving approaches don't work. People who excel at both are vanishingly rare. I know I do not have such skill, but at least I am self-aware enough to know that, and aim to avoid getting into political deep water. I don't succeed in that, as I have drowned in office politics more than once.
You only need to look at the stereotypes satirised in Dilbert: Dilbert is a knowledgeable engineer, but the technically clueless Pointy Haired Boss is still the Boss. It is a stereotype, but stereotypes often contain a kernel of truth (or maybe truthiness ;-))
4.19-rc3 could become a turning point*. We'll see.
*Linus' announcement of 4.19-rc4 was after after the actual the commit of 4.19-rc4, which was after the commit of the new Code of Conduct.
Timeline:
- at 2018-09-16 11:42:28 -0700 the CoC commit is here [kernel.org] ;
- at 2018-09-16 11:52:37 -0700 the actual 4.19-rc4 commit is here [kernel.org]
- at 2018-09-16 12:22:43 -0700 Linus' announcement is here [lkml.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @12:48PM (8 children)
It's not possible to prevent interpersonal or political squabbles. Amending the GPL to prevent takeover of projects by individuals demanding adherence to some political dogma may be possible. If a way were to be found, all the hatred thrown at the GPL back in the day would reemerge and the same people would be behind it. The objective of the enemy is excerting control over others by disempowering them and the mechanism (closed source, imposition of CoC) doesn't matter.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday September 28 2018, @03:18PM (7 children)
How exactly does amending a legal agreement regarding the distribution of source code with compiled code have jack squat to do with efforts to establish code of conduct? The code of conduct affects the organization creating code, not the code itself.
Under the current rules, there's a mechanism for dealing with any organizational move from the people creating code that you don't like: Build your own version. (With blackjack! And hookers!) For instance, you could fork Linux right now. And as the BDFL, you could decide what gets included in your fork completely arbitrarily, and also make the promise of no Codes of Conduct ever. And what's more, you could even pull in any changes from Linux into your fork you wanted to, since they're both GPL'd.
But instead of doing that, what you'd like to do is use copyright law (a.k.a. government intervention) to force organizations you're probably not even a part of to conduct their internal affairs according to your own views about what is and is not acceptable. Not what Congress said, not what the EEOC said, not what those organization's leaders/boards/members said, but what you said. Now I want you to re-read this sentence:
How exactly are you different from "the enemy"?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @04:32PM (6 children)
Correct but no one person could maintain it. The GPL turned copyright against itself to ensure the code would be free and I suggested the same freedoms should be preserved for those writing code. Why is it important? It's important because millennials take freedoms for granted, they don't appreciate how hard won they were.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday September 28 2018, @05:05PM (5 children)
Sure they could. I even demonstrated how. To put it more specifically, your simplest approach to maintaining it on your own looks something like this:
Done. You now have any changes done by all those Linux nannies with their annoying CoC, and you also have any changes you did without being subject to a CoC. And of course you can also try to convince other developers to contribute to your OS rather than Linux, in which case you aren't working on your own anymore. And I should also point out that since your stuff would have to be GPL'd, in the event that it's technically superior you may find your stuff pulled into Linux as well.
As for the rest of your argument: Freedom means that the Linux Foundation can adopt whatever non-illegal rules they want for how they conduct their activities. Your freedom is to walk away if you don't like those rules. This is no different from your boss saying you aren't allowed to tell customers to go f*** themselves no matter how much you want to, and if you don't like it you can find yourself another job.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @06:10PM
A slight change to your analogy reveals the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @07:24PM (3 children)
Please get off your magic unicorn and do remember the sizable amount of work that Gentoo, Slackware, Devuan etc. teams now have to do to unfuck the parts of system deliberately twisted to "require" a systemd infestation.
People with an agenda having a free run at the kernel itself, can of course inflict even more and harder-to-counter architectural damage on the OS.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday September 28 2018, @08:18PM (1 child)
1. It's entirely possible to use an unpatched vanilla Linux kernel without systemd. If you compile your own kernel, the help sections for the relevant options will even helpfully point out exactly what you can turn off to make systemd impossible to run on your system, but the system will run just fine on sysvinit or upstart or openRC with those options enabled. The work you're referring to is in userspace (e.g. undoing the reliance of key system utilities on systemd's crappy binary logging system), not the kernel. So from a technical standpoint, you do not appear to have the slightest clue what you're talking about.
2. Even if that were completely true, you'd still have the right and the ability to fork the kernel. My simple "pull in whatever happens to the mainline kernel" is just one way of handling the maintenance if you're understaffed. You could, of course, pull in the mainline kernel to a branch, evaluate and/or eliminate the patchset to your heart's content, and keep only what you like.
From your statements, I think it's safe to assume that you are not a kernel contributor, and thus not affected by any kernel contributor code of conduct in any way whatsoever. You are unwilling to fork off the code now before any "more and harder-to-counter architectural damage" occurs, and are unwilling to create your own version of the OS that is presumably without this architectural damage because it's too much work. I'm going to suggest that your concerns have nothing at all to technical issues and everything to do with the fear that your chosen hobby or profession isn't a place where you can do whatever you want.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @09:11PM
When I say "system" and you bloviate about kernel it's disingenuous at best. From a technical standpoint.
But when you start telling me how I'm "not affected" by how and by whom the kernel of the OS that I run is made - you get firmly into the realm of the crazy. Go tell Windows users they're "not affected" by the consequences of architectural decisions within MS.
Please do not insult anyone's intelligence here with such ham-fisted rhetoric. Thanks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @12:52PM
I still don't really understand why the desktop really needs the init system as a dependency. Why should it care?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @03:40PM
> I am not aware of any successful means of insulating scientific and engineering projects from political influence...
On a small scale there is someone called "a good boss". The definition of a good boss (or group leader) is a politically savvy & empowered person with enough understanding of the engineering process to isolate one from the other. I've worked for some good ones and strive to do the same now that I'm a manager (but in my case I only manage one highly productive engineer).
One of the best I worked for was in the heydays of the arcade game business. In a company where the normal product cycle took about 6 months, he managed to get three years of development time for a "game changing"(sorry) new way of developing the hardware and software for arcade games. This manager had come off a very successful project (so he had cred with the company top managers). He challenged his group of 4 engineers with the new approach, finding budget and resources so they could keep working, while he attended all the hand-wringing meetings and dealt with the normal corporate in-fighting. Only near the end of the development did the group pull in resources from the rest of the company (cabinet design, testing, marketing, etc) to complete the product. It all worked out and was a big money maker.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday September 28 2018, @04:54PM (1 child)
Well, that's easy: Just make sure the project is done by a single person, and has no success whatsoever.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Funny) by chromas on Friday September 28 2018, @05:34PM
TempleOS by Terry A. Davis. The CIA niggers finally got him.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 28 2018, @02:34PM
While Linux will be around for a very long time, I think, Linux is showing its age.
Linux will be around for a very long time for the same reason as Java, or COBOL, or even Windows. The economic value of the code created for it is so huge that it simply won't disappear overnight. Something can have huge economic value despite its warts.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug into other computer. Right-click paste.
(Score: 4, Informative) by jelizondo on Friday September 28 2018, @04:37PM (2 children)
An interesting piece on Linus Torvalds [bbc.com] on the BBC published today, talking about the CoC, which Linus thinks is way too much. A good read.
(Score: 2) by EETech1 on Saturday September 29 2018, @04:06AM (1 child)
It would be the ultimate, if he came back, and forked it.
Probably taking vacation to set up the new infrastructure.
Get back, and send a message to the old list...
We'll be over here! Come on by!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @12:56PM
You mean like Git?
"I can't see viable options. I'll just make my own. Who's with me?"