Posts by kmorwath

The big FOSS vendors don't eat their own dogfood – they pay for proprietary groupware

Re: "for as long as software has existed, it's been normal to distribute the source code"

You didn't mention Electron at all in your article.

Electron is its own environment and framweork - just like Java or .NET. And as much as stupid like them - as soon as that environment version is no longer supported, your applications aren't too. Electon solves it bring thw whole environment in each app - meaning huge downloads and disk space used, compared to compiled code - so its compiled code layer solves the comaptibility problem, since most OS need to ensure a decent compatibility with complied code (although in this regard Windows is far better than Linux - exactly for the reason you can't recompile for each release, and why should you? Compiling code should not be a user matter - they use software, not build it).

Anyway between pure interpreted languages and compiled ones there are many that use some form of intermediate code - for performance reasons. Is this obfuscation? It's not directly readable by humans, sure. But CPU for now don't speak human languages, nor programming ones. Why WASM, otherwise?

Still, whatever is written in Javascript ends calling lower layers, most of them made of compiled code anyway. Where the CPU spends more time after the code is parsed and maybe JITted?

As I wrote before, I'm still waiting for virtual machines (as in JVM) OS - they never came because they were a stupid idea. This kind of languages are used because they "sandbox" the programmers, so companies can get less skilled and cheaper ones, since they believe thay can't make "big disasters" (not true, but that was how they were sold). So IT started to move backwards - crappier applications, slower performances, huge downloads.

Re: Interoperability?

It looks Sun food was doggy enough, since the company choked...

Re: Too much ideology makes Liam unproductive

Azure Linux runs on Hyper-V.

Anyway Nadella for fear of investments and will to fire as much people as it could - is making MS offering less attractive. Skype and Windows Phone were huge opportunies lost by a CEO who can't develop anything but just look for alternatives elsewhere - like Chrome...

That's what FOSS is about, cut investment, fire developers and testers, exploit free labour (or anyway, labour paid by someone else).

"for as long as software has existed, it's been normal to distribute the source code"

Only when money were made selling the hardware - and users couldn't bring application home and run them on their maniframe or mini. But even when Unix came along, and broke a little the mainframe dominance and allowed the raise of minis - ISV came along too - usually with subscriptions... - and since they made money only selling software, they needed to keep the source code for them - and only let people access it under non-open source licenses. With the PC the process was complete - hardware became almost a commodity, and software became where money were - until data hoarding and behavioural control became the business allowing to ammass a huge wealth - exploiting open source too. Give away something free, get user data in exchange, use them to drive their choices to maximize your own profits.

Because FOSS is an ideology, not a business model - since we're seeing more and more it has no way to pay its own development but by asking money somewhere else. And those comes with strings attached.

That's why Linux is moslty developed to power servers - because it's used by the big internet companies, which are not interested nor in desktop system nor in on-prem groupware systems, which will just become competitors of their "cloud" offerings, and if you make them free, no profits will come from them. Even Microsoft is trying to move people away from on-prem Exchange to Azure.

Sure, something exist under Linux too - but again we hit the bigger pronblem of Linux outside servers - the ugly desktop UI and thereby ugly desktop applications. Groupware power users don't use web applications. That's why Outlook is so widesspread, and killling it Nadella is probably doing one of its biggest mistakes. Still, as long as most Linux groupware is a bunch of applications cobbled together, without proper management tools to simplify it, they won't go far away. In this regard Stalwart Mail is an interesting product, albeit still in development - because it takes everything together in a single application with full remote management capabilities.

Compiled applications have huge advantages over interpreted ones. But the code in your web browser, you're running mostly compiled code. The OS is compiled, the drivers too, the browser too. I'm still waiting for the promised Java and .NET based OS. Android may use a lot of Java for the user space - but that's only because mobe applications do very little.

Compiling is not obfuscation - it's a translation to machine code to get

Lawmakers demand great wall to keep advanced chipmaking gear out of China

"it will be better than anything they currently import."

Yes, no, maybe. Let them try....

Re: Good luck with that

Sure, but just giving away the technology lets them spped up the development faster, without trials and errors, and spending less - CCCP crumbler because they couldn't keep the pace. Imagine what would have happened it idiiot Western companies had sent them all the technology they needed because Russian wokers were cheaper.... just like they enjoyed to get jet tech they didn't have and kindly donated by UK, and use it for MiG fighters...

That happens when you declare war to your allies, instead of strenghtening the alliance against your common enemies. And sending all your manufactoring to China to pay workers less.

AI vastly reduced stress of IPv6 migrations in university experiment

Re: Ok then, what?

Of course you never had to fight with the restrictions of NAT.... sure, as long as you are only a consumer waching sport, porn and ranting on social media, you need nothing more.

As soon as you need to do something more clever...

"Back in the early noughties the Network people in the organisation in which I was employed had prepped everything for IPv6 "

Really? IPv6 first RFC is 1883 - December 1995. 2460, December 1998. Internet was stil small. Were you among the first implementers? I'm quite sure there wasn't a "business case"...

Or did you just make it up? Use an AI next time, it could deliver better results.

We should manke an IPv4 internet for dummies.... the one who can't get grasp of IPv6 without Ai help.

Re: Some? Some?

At least they ensure proper indenting - which is the reason they were used. And again, not surprisingly, Python is again a language not designed on a US keyboard. US is not the only country in the world, whatever MAGA people could think.

"Also without a very good dns system it would be a knightmare."

Using IP addresses directly but for the few systems you need to reach in an emergency has been a bad idea for the bast thirty years. Yet I made some sysadmin angry because I dared to setup Bind on a system on which they didn't bother to make a DNS available, making its configuration a nightmare (TLS with IP addresses only is possibile with a private CA, but why, really why?? Oh yes, don't use TLS also...)

And to those system you can assign easy to remember IPv6 addresses.

Re: Some? Some?

Think many non-US keyboards require complex three.keys sequences to type curly braces.... and that never stopped programming languages using them becoming popular (that's probably why Wirth didn't use them for Pascal....)

Even "/" requires shift+number on many keyboards. The bactick doesn't exist on many. lile the ~ which I can obtain only with a Alt+xxx sequence.

What I always thought...

... the problem with IPv6 is sysadmins laziness. They just need something else to work instead of them.

As we always said to our sysadmins "We'll replace you with a simple script".

Microsoft dials up the nagging in Windows, calls it security

Re: Actually, per-app permissions are a good idea.

That should be done at setup time - add a button "enable all" if you wish, trying to counter user stupidity is useless. But at least skilled enough users can reduce the attack surface.

After all, is not much different than what AppArmor is trying to do under Linux - and I found it blocking Ceph from using some SSD disks because their /dev paths were not in the allowed list, finding it was a bit more difficult than flipping some switches in a GUI - or not lliking a database on a different mounted directory....

Anyway, if you want security without any effort, you don't get security, and then you get the effort to clean up the mess....

But of course whatever MS does is to blame per se.

Actually, per-app permissions are a good idea.

What's wrong in per-app permission? It's the right way to ensure better security. It should be extended to system resources (CPU, memory, disk space and even directories, bandwidth, etc.)

If one set you are no longer "nagged" - and application can know what settings have been applied to them, that's a sensible design decision. That should have been taken earlier.

Microsoft rolls out Windows 11 26H1, but you can't have it

Like Java, write once, run everywhere*

* (as long as the runtime is available)

Microsoft's Valentine's gift to admins: 6 exploited zero-day fixes

And what was in the kernel updates and recent libc patches? Do you read the changelogs? Or do you believe they release updates just because?

The Linux mid-life crisis that's an opportunity for Tux-led transformation

Re: Capitalism at its finest

Sure, all those musicians were happy to live that way and wouldn't have changed it if they could... all of them were looking for success - which means fame and money also. They didn'y look for dying poor. Sure, there's the Edison with a lot of business acumen (and no ethics) , and there's the Tesla who thinks more about researches than money - but still, he needed money to fund his researches - or you simply go nowhere. The era when you could build your tools out of rocks and trees has been over for over 2500 years... and even back then specialized artisans started to ask to be paid for their work... unless they were slaves.

C'mon, please, tell me, how do you make money, and how much? It's too easy to ask others to work for free. while you don't. Still, even artists from wealthy families didn't give away their work for free.

Have you ever read Van Gogh letters? He wanted to **sell** his pictures, not giving them away for free. And without his brother Teo help, he would have died even before. I find really sad people like you could think they ware happy to live a miserable life "because of art" - probably like slave owners looked at their slaves and said "look at how the pick up cotton happily, singing!".

There are people who live to work, and people who work to live - and I can't really blame them, unless they are just lazy and deceiving. Sure, if they found someone giving them all they need to live for free, they wouldn't work.... just, the world doesn't work that way - it never did.

I take pride in my work, and THAT'S EXACTLY WHY I WANT TO BE PAID FOR IT - since it take a lot of efforts and expenses on my part - and since I have no other source of income

Why should I let a few becoming rich exploiting my work for free? Why Torvalds graciously accept all that money, while others are unpaid and should do it "for the glory" - the same way people were sent to die on battefields for the lust for power and greed of a bunch of people who put themselves at the top?

If I wanted to live in a shack eating from the garbage, or having to ask for charity, or live alone in my parents' basement, I won't be working at all..

I met people in the FOSS world that are just activits believing they will change the world, and not so few without a clue about what they were talling about. Just like those who can't accept proprietary drivers because or it's FOSS or nothing. So some vendors won't give a damn supporting an unwelcoming platform.

Re: I can run an outdated OS with a ugly UI and ugly applications

Windows 10 onwards shows the effects of Linux on Windows development - enshittified as well.

Nadella unlike Ballmer is doing a lot of work to exploit FOSS too - firing testers, developers, and exploiting unpaid work. Shareholders are happy while they laugh all the way to the bank, when they meet Nadella with his huge bonus....

Re: Capitalism at its finest

Stallman is just a greed man who doesn't want to pay for software, since he was paid by some university or other interests.

Re: Capitalism at its finest

Now any successful startup is swallowed by one of the big companies before it could even become a competitor. Because with FOSS they have no chance to grow themselves, the VC wants the money back, and the founders want to become rich too....

So, what's the difference? Probably we have worst products now, since we are not the real customers.

Re: They can do that because they subverted Free Software

General SaaS couldn't began until the Internet became widespread - but those who already had their large networks and services could exploit free code to reduce investments (and spend money for themselves...) - then ineternet companies simply copied already existing behavious....

Re: Capitalism at its finest

> I strongly disagree.

Then show me how you can be truly creative when you starve... even the amanuenses could work for "free" only because their order gave them food and a place to live. Do you know how expensive some colours could be in the past - since the materials to make them were rare and came from far away? Even ink and paper were not cheap in old times... And without Internet and color prints, you had to travel far away to see other masters' works.... the common freetard is a recent invention - "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (Benjamin)

> Of course. Which is completely orthogonal to their worth as painters, musicians and writers.

Sure - tell them when they are alive they will become worthy ones after a miserable life.... sure, there were those who pursed their ideals and didn't make money, but not for lack of trying, often because they were exploited by others who made their money instead.

> but were more than happy to dial it in and take the money.

Of course, since without you can't live - eat, have house, have a partner, have a family.... and FOSS too doesn't ensure pride and quality - for many it's just an ideological/religious stance, regardless of their skills. And because it's an ideology, it often brings worse products because of the very narrow mind it brings - "hey, we can't have proprietary drivers, so just deliver bad ones!"

Re: Capitalism at its finest

And what do you believe most people aim for? Becoming a Picasso, and live a nice life, or a Van Gogh, and shoot themselves in despair?

Sure, today Van Gogh makes rich some collectors and aucttioneers, but what would he think?

Re: They can do that because they subverted Free Software

Ballmer was right that Linux is a cancer - and we saw the metastasis - enshittification.

The problem with FOSS is since money don't come from end users, development is fully driven by other interests - that now diverge a lot.

So first was the advertisers, and now those who control advertisement - and worse - people's behaviours. End users became the product, and have no way to protest since they do not pay for software and/or services.

Antitrust auhtorities fixated only with "end users prices" do nothing because they look at the finger, and not the hungry claws behind.

And ammassing an enornous wealth because they were able to avoid to redistibute it exploiting cheap and free labour, tech companies nowadays can control whole governments, and bend them to their will.

But hey, I can run an outdated OS with a ugly UI and ugly applications for free....

Why? FOSS allow them to pay just enough to keep projects they need like the Linux kernel alive, without sustaining the full investment, exploiting a lot of low paid of free work. And without investing in features that actually can impact their own business (i.e. Google don't want you spend your time in a desktop application that doesn't send data to Google like Chrome does...)

Do you believe Pichai, Bezos or Zuckberg are charitable people? Do you believe their shareholders are? These are companies whose business model is exploiting people....

Those people pay only when they are left no choice. That's why it's in their full interest to make people believe FOSS is gooooood and commercial software is baaaaaaad.

Like Napoleon and his pigs in Animal Farm, they need to change things just to ensure they are those who can exploit others, and money flows freely at the top, where they are....

Re: They can do that because they subverted Free Software

How good is GPL to ensure Google, AWS, etc. open source their code? And it wasn't an oversight from Stallman - he knew that entities like univerisities and researchers would have been happy to obtain a large amount of code for free (so they could spend their budgets elsehwere), but keep their internal use one closed....

Re: Don't know what you've got 'til it's gone

Yes, and I would like to know all those downvoters what job have and how they get paid.

I'm sure they are not monks living together in a wodden shelter crafting free code for the benefit of mankind.

It's always easier to steal from others than giving anything away for free....

Re: Capitalism at its finest

Yes, as long as money is required to live, moneu us the motivation at the foundation of any form of creativity - yes, even painters, musicians and writers liked to become rich, and became frustrated when they didn't. After all, even to buy brushes, paints and canvases you need money, since nobody gives them to you for free. And so if you give your work away for free, you can't work, and also you can't eat.

Of course unless you find a patron that takes everything away from you in exchange for little - but that's serfdom, not freedom.

So FOSS advocates for freedom, but really drivers people towards serfdom. Like many religions and political movements before, after all.

Re: Capitalism at its finest

"Paying for the service" never worked and could never work. Especially since you could set up a "service company" that offered the same service at a fraction of the price because they didn't need to invest in the development itself - or, of course, avoid services wholly.

Where is RedHat now, the poster child of FOSS? Bought by IBM - which sells a very different kind of services today, delivered by cheap workers in India....

FOSS was a very big lie from the start - and it was designed to ensure **a few** reap all the benefits from the efforts **of many**. Illuding them they are working for "the better good" - and not for the bank accounts of others.

"sufficiently valuable to get support from employers in time and other resources"

Good luck with that. FOSS advocates keep on ignoring basic rules of economy and business - and more broadly, about human behaviour itself.

Moreover, the more FOSS kills commercial software companies, the less employers will be available to pay developers.

Quest Software (where the writer of sudo used to work) - had a troubled life in the past years, bought by Dell, than going through another couple of owners - this time funds that want to make money. How many today use something like DBeaver because it's free, instead of TOAD?

Again, money may only come from companies whose main business IS NOT selling software - but for which software is only a way to achieve far worse goals - especially, taking control of people's mind, through subtle (and not so subtle) manipulation. And they like to have a large amount of cheap or free labour to achieve it spending less, and ammassing wealth at the top.

But FOSS worshippers are still brainwashed to hate Microsoft alone... the other throw them some free bones, and they wag their tails happily. Unless it's Apple, then they will be happy to pay for shiny bones too. After all FOSS itself is a demonstration of that kind of manipulation. Brainwash people they should not be paid for their work - give 'em a "certificate of appreaciation" from the TTA and hope someone else will pay them. Get people used to believe they get software for free, while you hoard their data and then use them agains the "users".

Oh, what a wonderful world FOSS is bringing us!!! Worshippers believe it will be a software paradise, actually we're bound to hell. Open source to bind them all - and laugh all the way to the bank.

How the GNU C Compiler became the Clippy of cryptography

Re: Can someone please explain to me ...

How do you compare hashes that doesn't fit wholly in a CPU register? And if the hash is stored as a string, and the code still does a string comparison?

Hashes do not allow to reconstruct the plain-text easily - but if you can probe a stored hash directly to find a match.... is not different than comparing a plain text password - the elapsed time will tell you how far you went.

Sudo maintainer, handling utility for more than 30 years, is looking for support

Re: Remind me...

Where does your income come from? It might doesn't matter for your because your live like a monk, or you have another nice source of income, mr. Stakanov.

Other people don't have that., or don't like to live like a monk, so they MUST be paid for their work. Telling people they shoud work for FREE while others make tons of money exploiting their work is utter, pure greed.

But I understand your issue (and Stallman one) - before the PC money were made selling hardware, so companies may give away the source code, especially since nobody has their own mainframe or mini to run it. The PC changed everything - now money was made writng and selling software.

But old people like you can't accept changes, and being paid for doing something else, don't want to pay those who actually write software. But software paid by other interests, especially bevihoural control. is inherently "enshittifed".

Re: Remind me...

I have full interest in changing it, just I don't believe a religion like FOSS can change it.

Paying people properly for their work is one way to change it. Waiting for charitable companies is not a way to change it. And brainwashing people into believing they can work for free and maybe one day someone will pay them is not a way to change it, it a way to endure world becomes worse and worse and people are exploited by a few ones.

Read for example: https://theintercept.com/2026/01/02/empire-ai-sam-altman-colonialism/

"Empires similarly consolidate a lot of economic might by exploiting extraordinary amounts of labor and not actually paying that labor sufficiently or at all. "

You've all are being blindsided by not having to pay for software. Because greed is one of the most powerful insticts of people. That's why you post as AC - are you ashamed of your opinions? I'm not.

Re: Remind me...

In which world do you believe you live in? People don't pay what they can steal without issues. FOSS can't change mankind - not even religions could...

And today we see outstanding example of pure, enormous greed being promoted at the top. Good luck with "being reasonable"....

Taiwan tells Uncle Sam its chip ecosystem ain't going anywhere

Re: Bargaining chip (no pun)

He and Hegseth would probably bomb the Taiwanese foundries too before the Chinese could get hold of them....

Containers, cloud, blockchain, AI – it's all the same old BS, says veteran Red Hatter

Re: Unavoidable ... Microsoft

.NET is just a MS reimplementation of Java - and actually what you write is true about Java as well - how many languages are being implemented on the JVM?

But Java/.NET are the perfect languages to offshore software develoopment to cheap countries.

Re: How could you forget

AC is the lazy sysadmin who uses the same password on each and every system he manages, so MFA is a pain in the ass for him. Just like HTTPS, since managing a PKI is work, and setting app and ACME client as well...

Re: "Which of your bêtes noires did we miss?"

Actually, most of the time I see using DevOps to switch sysadmin responsibilities to developers - so sysadmin could do even less.

Actually the whole Ops part must be sysadmin responsibilities - Dev ones must end at merging code (including automated tests), from there on deployment (test/staging/production) and related tests should not be their responsibility.

But the "it works!!! Dont touch anything, never!!!!!" crowd can't work that way.... they can't be bothered to install required patches, often....

Now, if someone at RedHat was unable to convince executives at my company...

.... that the path to migrate away from vSphere was to use Red Hat OpenStack on OpenShift - meaning you have to through a poorly documented cumbersome procedure to deploy it (hoping you pay also for their expensive services to have it installed for you, by someone poorly paid in India...) - my recent life would be far better. Even changing the Horizon web UI timeout requires writing and modifying Kubernetes manifests...

Re: Containers

Now, if an OS would be able to proper partiion and control application resources like some old maniframes did, containers and their whole overhead would not be necessary. Nor VMs. Maybe with some help from the CPU which could *segment* memory properly so a bad application can't do damages reading and writing memory that doesn't belong to it.

But since RedHat is one of the culprits insisting on an OS design from the 1970s, unable to use more sophisticated CPU tehcnology - and the company that doesn't deliver anything that isn't at least aged ten years - here we are....

Re: How could you forget

They are strongly tied to containers. We have a supplier so fixated with microservices that delivers an application built on about 40 containers, each running a microservice using a separate Postgres database. They ask a 8-nodes Kubernetes instances with lots of cores and RAM, even if our telemetry says they don't use more than 10% of it - but hey, thet make their application look bbbiiiiiigeeeer!

Openreach turns up the heat to force laggards off legacy copper lines

Re: Perhaps....

Actually wtih VoIP it was easier to install a VoIP PBX at my home and intercept and divert unwelcomed calls. Moreover I can do concurrent calls, give alarm lines priority, and other nice stuff. I don't live tethered to my mobile, so I have VoIP phones aroun the house, they also double as an intercom.

Don't know about the architecture in UK, here in PON lines connectors are installed in street cabinets where the optical splitters are also installed - to ease moving customers betwween "passive" providers (those installing their own OLTs at exchanges). since they need to be attested on their own splitters, and at "building terminals" - where the milti-fibre cables (usually 4/8 fibres per cable here) separates to reach the end customers with single-fibre cables. Everything between is usually fusion-spliced to ensure lower attenuation and better robustness. If a single entity delivers fibre, the splitter connection can be fusion spliced as well.

Still connectors have no metallilc parts and can't be corroded - than plastic may broke with time if low quality, that's true. Anyway today many xDSL line speeds suffer from copper line in bad conditions, - especially where cheaper cables were used and conditions are harshier - and interferences among pairs can't be reduced but using more expensive and power hungrier "vectoring" ONUs (and "modems").

FTTH Passive Optical Networks (PON) don't require power in street cabinets - they host only optical splitters. Only the exchange OLT and customers' ONT required to be powered, and they can be many kiolomteres apart.

FTTC requires powered cabinets because the VDSL ONU is there. So you can have still UPSes and generators where the OLTs are - but now customers require UPS or generators (solar power is OK too, if there is enough light...) to power their ONTs.

Mobile towers require power to drive the antennas' transceivers - that requires more power than fibre transceivers.

On the other hand fibre is not susceptible to electrical shorts like copper lines in some situations. It is susceptible to dirt into the connectors, though.

Re: Apples and oranges?

Since they become VoIP anyway at the exchange, that's not the reason. But those PSTN-VoIP gateways are probably old now, just like ADSL DSLAMs, and replacing them is expensive. Meanwhile copper lines too are old and deteriorating, and their maintenance expensive, especially the large primary cables with hundreds of pairs. Since they are replaced, or being replaced by fibre lines switching to VoIP is the only alternative, since they can't be used for PSTN.

It is true the simplicity of PSTN makes it very robust - but VoIP and mobile systems can be made more robut too - at a price, of course.

SpaceX wants to fill Earth orbit with a million datacenter satellites

Re: Kardashev nonsense

I always wonderered where the materials to build such an enormous sphere should come from - are there enough in a planetary system, even dismantling unused planets (if the consequences are not catastphic?)

Microsoft starts the countdown for the end of Exchange Web Services

Re: IMAP, LDAP, CalDAV, CardDAV

Yes and no. Anyway, it was just an explanation why Exchange as proprietary protocols.

The real issue is the lack of full suppport for standard protocols for non-Outlook users.

From the product pespective if you need to add groupware features not available in the current protocols you need to extend then with propietary features or design your own.

It's not the only one - Google too uses proprietary mail protocols but supports standard ones.

Now JMAP has been designed as an alternative to IMAP because "The new JMAP protocol addresses shortcomings of previous open protocols connecting email clients and servers were not designed for the modern age" (https://www.ietf.org/blog/jmap/) - so you may blame MS at most for proprietary protocols, not designing new ones.

Re: IMAP, LDAP, CalDAV, CardDAV

Yes, ROTFL - it's clear yo don't know nothing about the Exchange model.

Sure, there nothing that can be resolved with another layer of indirection - but that may make the system clumsier. Especially with Exchange that has features not available in each of those protocols.

MS could extend those protocols with proprietary features - and people like you would complain anyway - or design its own protocol.

Was Lotus Notes built only arond standard protocols? No, it wasn't either.

Re: IMAP, LDAP, CalDAV, CardDAV

Exchange underlying architecture is a bit different from a simpler mail server, and those protocols don't match all its features.