Linux

hideshow 3 child comments

parent

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 point 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I can't tell whether that's supposed to be opinion or a factual matter.

What I can say, though, is: it is some sort of utopia for me. It enables me as a user to run my own independant "cloud" services, my own social media. I get to use CAD software for free which my university used to pay some 5-digit sum for, I can have a random light show in my living room, "hack" all sorts of devices and command them to do whatever I like them to do. And a bunch of really useful stuff.

And then it also made me understand computers, learn programming... It's transparent and I can look inside. And I'm fairly sure it's part of who I am today, I probably wouldn't have studied CS if it weren't for Free Software and all the stuff it enabled me to do as a teenager.

And that wasn't just to force big companies to do something... The community made a big effort to welcome me, gift me stuff, teach me stuff and we even had quite some parties and user meetings and those morals and the motivation to change the world really stuck with me.

So I got hacked and I believe in some utopia. I'm currently living it, at least for personal stuff, and to the extent we get to be free in the modern world with all its apps, spying, and tightening down things. And I'm probably not the only one.

hideshow 2 child comments

parent

[–] Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago* (1 child)

That all is good and lovely. My point is that this is a side benefit of having an awesome community and most people when given the choice will help someone rather than gatekeep.

The main purpose of the license is exactly the one that is forcing facebook to contribute back to the kernel, because they want the enourmous firepower of all other competitors work, and would like that their own is easy to keep with future upgrades, so they contribute not only because they are forced, but because tit is the most efficient way for them to get what modifications they need integrated properly. 40 years of this gave us the current kernel.

So if ai tools help this process they will be used, regardless of how they work morally. Because most contributors to the code are developers payed by corporations.

parent

hideshow 1 child comment

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 point 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

I think I get what you're saying. That is the purpose of the license text. I mean not just companies, everyone needs to abide by the rules. But yeah, that's basically what that text does.

What I'm trying to say is: In my experience that's not all there is to Free Software. I mean Linux famously started out "Just for Fun" and under a different (more restrictive) license. And it took a while before it got corporate attention. Before that it was used by individuals for their own individual benefit. And it still does both as of today.

And I tend to see that a lot. Software like the software I was talking about and a lot of stuff on my computer was started by individuals. They had an itch to scratch or whatever and just put it out there. Lots of projects I use don't see any contributions by (other) companies and they don't seem to care. They're fine. There's quite some nice large/high-profile projects out there which work the way you said. And that's exactly how it should be like.

Guess there's just a lot of reasons to publish Free Software. Some do it for profit. Some do it by themselves or in a small team. Some gets used by companies and companies contribute back. Some is done by students to learn, some because someone needed something to get a job done in their life and they're a nice person... I also like the (A)GPL. I don't expect my stuff to be picked up by anyone and that's not why I write software as a hobby. But uploading it is mainly a gift to the world. Not for for-profit companies to capitalize on my work. That's why I do copyleft.

So I think when I look at software like the one I mentioned, or the platform we're currently using: Getting contributions back (by large corporations) might not be what the developers had in mind at all. It is however the purpose of the license text in the repository. That's correct.

And regarding the AI tools: Yeah, I don't think that's noteworthy. AI is here to stay. It's being used as of today and will be used in the future, the world doesn't stop or turn back.