Posts by DuncanLarge 1024 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2017
> can we expect a license change to the Linux kernel along with the multitude of other upstream components Red Hat uses forcing them to make their source code freely available if they want to make use of any future release
RH source code is already forced to be avaliable to anyone with the binary (although not for free, a distribution cost can be charged) so I dont see what your point is.
> ignoring the whole GPL technicalities for a moment
Technicalities? Dont you mean the legally binding text of the license. Do you think I can ignore the "technicalities" of copyright and try and justify why I'm able to copy and sell the latest blockbuster?
Thing is if I do that it is merely a thought experiment. It all comes crashing down when the "technicalities" are re-established when you re-enter real life.
> By your own statements Red Hat should be willing to share its added value built on someone else’s Libre hard work, regardless of if it is Gratis or not
If their "added value" is under the GPL, the MUST share it when requested by those who have binaries distributed by RH or by anyone further down.
That is the whole point of the GPL. The end user is king, you cant stop them being free.
> I doubt RH will find it too difficult to close off these work-arounds. They’re not stupid
All they can do is make it difficult, they cant close anything off.
They could for example charge a distribution fee for the source code and post it to the requester on cd-r. More difficult yes, but to be legal they would need to do that minimum. The GPL states the source must be distributed in machine readable form, with everything needed to compile a working binary, and on a medium typically used for software interchange.
Oh and before anyone says "but computers dont have optical drives", there is thing called USB and cheap USB drives everywhere. Also my new GPU arrived with a dvd-rom containing their NVIDIA drivers and manuals. Not the most common media today but not uncommon either so RH could simply make the source distribution slow and annoying, but the cant avoid it.
> but damn that's awkward
Right click->Open With
> and most people certainly wouldn't think of it.
Only those who lack decades worth of basic computer skills in regards to opening a file in another program or even changing the default program to open a file.
I doubt such people will even know how to change a font in a wordprocessor, so by your logic averything should be in Roboto?
The thing you need to keep in mind is:
THERE IS NOTHING PREVENTING THE CUSTMER OF REDHAT DOING ANYTHING THE GPL GRANTS THEM.
The restriction is on the contract with RH itself. Essentially you can have a support contract with RH is you dont do X Y or Z. If you do X Y or Z then the contract ends.
The only thing preventing redistribution of BINARIES is the custimer of RH themselves who must decide to do so or not.
Note I capitalised binaries. The GPL allows distribution of binaries, not source code. You have a right to the source after the fact of you getting a binary, not before. When you get the binary you should ask the AUTHORS for the source. The RH customers, unless they modify the program, are not the authors. In fact RH may not even have to give you the source to stuff they havnt modified as they could simply point you to the original source.
No, its more like "you promise not to engage in those freedoms while we maintain a contract".
You allways have those freedoms, you can use them at any time, but RH may decide to cancel the contract.
Thus you have a choice, which is more important to you as a business right now, the support contract or the freedoms?
Here is another example. You have the freedom to drive a car, anywhere at any speed, for any length of time. BUT you agree to give up or accept limits on those freedoms when on the public highway, where you are NOT permitted to drive anywhere at all times (roads can be closed and traffic diverted) and you are NOT premitted to drive at any speed on any particular roads.
If you break those rules you can lose your driving license, but you can drive all you like, at any speed unlicensed on private land.
> Relicensing existing projects isn't easy. It means all the original contributors or their heirs need to be traced and agreement obtained. It's one reason the Linux kernel is still GPL2.
That is incorrect, or at least partially. Anyone using a GPL'ed program can use it, at their option, under the tersm of any later version.
The kernel modified the GPL license to remove that option as Linus didnt like GPL v3 and it would be causing problems for other less free code.
> agree not to redistribute GPL source code
Nobody has the right to redistribute source under the GPL. More "permissive" licenses are not copyleft thus its a non-issue, RH can do what it likes with those and everyone else can too. Only the GPL uses copyright in the form of "copyleft" to provide source code.
BUT, you only have the right to source code if you have the corresponding binary. Never the other way around. The GPL makes sure that you can get the source for the binaries you have.
The GPL protects your rights to distribute binaries, and anyone getting it from you also get those rights.
Thus RH gives the customer binaries, as they paid for access to said binaries they have source code access. If they leave the support agrement, the GPL states they still have rights to the source from RH, but ONLY for that binary, thus not a future version. If they want a new version, they must re-subscribe.
A customer of RH has rights under the GPL to distribute binaries, but RH can terminate the support contract should they do so, they may not bother to do so, its up to them. The former customer still has the binaries and still can get source for those versions, but no support contract. They may be former customers but RH cant stop them running GPL'd binaries they already have. Like I said for the non-copyleft licenses, RH could stop them running those, and the customer has no right to source code for BSD code etc anyway.
Anyone getting the binary from the customer, should the RH customer distribute it, also gets the right to the source code for THAT VERSION from RH. Now, RH will want to muck about and play silly buggers with granting source access to former and non-customers but they have done so before and that would be a GPL violation. But remember, you only have the right to the source for THAT BINARY YOU HAVE.
There is no provision in the GPL for redistributing source code. It concerns itself with distribution of binaries and giving access to the source code. Thus RH are well able to tell the customer NOT to distribute the sources, even if the customer distributes the binaries it is RH that must give access to the source.
The GPL allows access to the source because it allows you to modify and study the code. Should the custmer modify a RH binary, then distribute it, THATS when they are responsible to grant access to the modified source when REQUESTED.
Baiscally its this:
1. You get the GPL binaries from RH.
2. You only get that with a paid for contract.
3. You get the sorces for that and future versions easily.
4. You want to leave the contract? OK, no future versions or updates for you. Good luck. You want the source? Well you have that right and we might play silly buggers etc.
5. Or you want to distribute the GPL binaries? Go ahead, but we RESERVE the right to cancel the contract should we decide to do so, thus see point 4. You are not being stopped, just asked to decide to follow the rules of the contract or not.
6. Anything not GPL'ed may or may not be, now or in the future, legal for you to run or distribute, such is the freedom we (RH) are given by these permissivle licenses, sorry about that.
If anything this shows that there are great ways to make money off Free Software, gone will be the days of people crying out that it cant work, well here we are. And also it shows just how horrible persissive licenses are as the GPL protects you and your rights even when you are out of contract with RH.
> Manually reading a meter and entering the readings is really not something that belongs in this day and age
Quite the opposite. We need more of that sort of thing!
By reading your own meter, you will be aware of issues before they become serious. It is nothing more than a 5 minjob anyway, again why the rush?
If you "just let it do it" are you also not chedcking your bank statements? Do you keep tally of the amount of money you spend at the sandwich van every day at work so you can train yourself to stop spending so much for so little or do you just wave the contactless card and "let it just do it".
When was the last time you check the bank statements, or do you just let stuff come out? Checked the pension is being paid into? Checked the firealarm or do you think that too should be automatic. Maybe you have a smart one.. do you kow it works?
Do you check all appliances are off before leaving the house? Especially those with liion batteries that might be charging? When I leave the house, alsmost everything is off at the wall or unplugged, especially stuff that charges (well not my NiMH cherger, those batteries are safe and need a full uninterrupted charge).
So you will happily let the smart meter read and bill you without any checking. Months, years go by and the letter comes through the post (you still have a letterbox dont you?) demanding you pay for the GIGAWATTS you used last month. You phone the power company, knowing that they will laugh with you at how silly the system has been, only they tell you tgo pay up. You cant believe it, you tell them how riduculous a notion it is that your household could have used gigawatts in a few months, totally crazy. They continue to tell you to pay up, the lights are turned off as they disconnect you remotely. Bailifs arrive, court date agreed for non-payment trial. Without power you have to borrow the neighbours PC and printer to try and print of statemenst and unsage information you never bothered to check on, you have lost the login details as you just "let it do it" and after 5 years of never signing up fully the system has gotten in a twist. Support lets you on eventually, and you start printing.
To your horrow you see that the meter was fine till it slowy started reading higher and higher, only nobody caught it as no sod was checking it. The information sent to the little display somehow was out of step with the billing information, the display showed your current usage but the meter was billing more and more actual usage. After several months of not checking it the meter started reading insane usage figures, clearly to you its developed a major fault. But its up to you to convince them, the power company that the moneis owed are not real. YOU are the one at fault, a scrounger, a theif. YOU must go to court and prove it.
It's getting cold outside and winter is coming, the kids are compalining of damp on the walls. No power, no lights, nothing till you get cleared of a dept that you know you shouldnt have.
Sound familiar?
Should do, that actually happened to some people after getting a smart meter. They are not proven, they are made cheap, they were (the SMETS2 ones) a national security risk BY DESIGN till MI5 stepped in and fixed them. Woking in IT, that gives me the heebie jeebies. I used to be a software tester and when MI5 step in to save the national grid from attack, I take note. Maybe I''l have one when SMETS3 comes out, till them I'll use the PROVEN and FUNCTIONAL dumb meter I still have, it is an asset and so many peopel believ athat which is why only 57% have moved over.
I know what my meter says, I read it every month.
But in this day and age, youd like to be oblivious.
> With 4 of us in the house having a shower each daily
You are showering too frequently. Its bad for your health. Shower once every couple of days if you have not sweated and during summer when you probably do shower every day do so only for 4-6 mins. 4 mins is a bit fast for me, 6 manageable, but I find if I'm not on the ball I end up taking 15 mins!
Why do we let them get away with it?
It's bad enough that big oil work together to keep prices high, introducing artificial scarcity without others joinging in.
It'll be the farmers next, burning potatoes to increase the price.
I work in IT, perhaps I should configure most PC's to be unbootable unless I am paid the overtime to re-ebable them every few weeks.
> I'm curious about the hate for IMAP that always comes up in these discussions
I still use it and I'm considering returning to POP3. The only reason IMAP became a thing was because PC's had small drives and ISP's had big drives back in the 90's, so you got to keep your mail on the ISP servers and when Google Mail came about they offered an insane amount of space (1GB I think), for FREE.
IMAP also makes it easy to have multiple devices get the same emails. So I can have my phone get them when I'm not at home.
IMAP itself isnt an issue, but leavng the email on the server is. Why?
Well several years ago most of my email was on ukfsn.org. I used IMAP to sync between my phone and my tablet. I DID NOT USE EMAIL ON MY PC.
I used K9 mail, and had it keep all emails on my devices. I mostly used the phone and let the tablet be a "backup copy", in case the phone broke etc.
Unfortunatley I had a couple of issues happen. The first was K9 mail started slowing down greatly on my mobile and was beginning to not work well at all with hangs and crashes. It needed a good old re-install, then it can re-download al the messages. That was the plan. But I was trying to be clever, I thought "Why download K9 while I can just delete the local data?". Well, deleting the app cache did nothing, so I deleted the app data. I should have uninstalled and reinstalled really becase what happened was K9 mail, now lobotomised and not stable at the time, procedded to see the wiped app database as an indication that the messages had been deleted. It then SYNCED this new version of the truth when it polled the server!
My tablet happily then wiped itself of all emails.
IMAP was only the problem because I was keeping the emails only on the server, even when the emails were downloaded to the device, they were only a reflection of the CURRENT state of the server.
Luckily I had thought ahead, being a software tester I wonderred what I would do if I had accidentally wiped all emails on one device, thus wiping all others. So I had just connected Thunderbird to the ukfsn.org IMAP server and downloaded all the emails. "Ah but TB was also syncing wasnt it?" you say, well no, I had closed it. My only record of my emails was thus on my PC. They were stored in mbox format, so I copied them off somewhere else, opened Thunderbird, watched it wipe itself clean, then I IMPORTED ALL THE EMAILS BACK INTO THUNDERBIRD!! Whoo, TB now had an offline copy as a second local only account. I then recreated my mails on the IMAP server by simply dragging between accounts on TB.
Problem sorted.
Thus I now use TB to download every account and I include the folder structure in my home directory snapshots. The issue could happen again, but I have snapshots so can recover almost every email, maybe not the most recent.
Then I started thinking ukfsn.org had its day and I should move. Why? Well I feel like I'm one of the last few surviving users. The mailserver is run by a single guy who is too busy to remember to update the SSL cert when it expires... It can take weeks! Also I'm getting more annoying spam. TB to the rescue, I just created a set of offline folders and dragged everything to those, then I logged in everywhere and changed primary emails and recovery email addresses to gmail.
But I still have this background worry that IMAP syncs back AND forth, that it can wipe me out again. Also, TB and other clients sometimes only update a folder when you open it. The Inbox is always updated but I find many simply need a nudge, I find that annoyong. POP3 wouldnt have that issue, ALL emails are downloaded and the client then sorts them. I like that better, but there wont be any syncing unless I manage deletion times. IMAP can do what POP3 does, there is no need for a client to keep messages on the server, but my other clients may not support that feature.
I'm likely sticking with IMAP but I'm making sure I have those snapshots offline. I said I will consider POP3 but I think I will want the multi-device syning.
I totally agree. There is a ton of legacy stuff out there including where I work and it simply is not possible to NOT support 32bit, heck we probably have some 16 bit stuff about as well.
It is legacy but required. It cant not/will not easily be re-written without significant investment. It's taken the best part of the last 10 years to even get started re-wtiting just one bit of softwware we have here, and thats because the original coders are long gone. It works just fine but we have an issue that it needs a rewrite so we can move it onto another OS, but that will still be 32 bit.
> Re: 3: Techies (used to) have all sorts of DOS-based and bare-metal based diagnostic and testing programs. If PCs will no longer boot into a 16-bit mode, these programs won't work. Many of these programs were hobbyist-or small-company-written, and their functionality will not be effectively replaced by the larger software houses who "do Windows" ... because there is insufficient paying market for it. Without those tools, techies will have to spend more time diagnosing and testing things, which means a higher (potential) bill for the end-user, which means things which previously were economical to repair no longer are.
Dont worry. Us technies hoard the hardware and software needed to run that stuff. When all the new kids/IT apprentices are trying to wrap their head around figuring out why something isnt working and getting lost because M$ constantly hides behind "Something went wrong" messages instead of real error messages, we pull out our magic boxes of flashing cursors and we get the job sorted easily.
When we retire in 30/40 years (when I do at least) those skills will be all but lost. I'll be pottering about in the garden with a DOS PC running in the shed and playing about with old Linux distros and programming PIC controllers via RS232 happily, having taken all my magic boxes with me, leaving all those that follow me in IT struggling and capitulating to the IT service desk version of ChatGPT.
> Pretty much everyone wants a machine that uses UEFI
Not me.
All my machines use BIOS or UEFI with CSM and will do for many more decades.
I'm waiting for UEFI to stabalise enough to run something other than windows without caveats/hoops/patches. Once that happens I may boot as UEFI.
PLus a load of my hardware must use a BIOS or CSM to load in their own BIOS's such as my SCSI cards.
> network interfaces aren't files
Yes they are.
> sockets aren't files
Yes they are.
> USB devices aren't files
They most certainly are.
Just because you may not have these files visible in the tree doesnt mean they are not fies.
There are some things that are unfortunatly not given filehandles. But that "rot" was implemented in UNix a long time ago and the creators of Unix saw it and made sure they resolved all those issues in Unix's replacement PLan 9, where literally EVERYTHING is a file, including your network.
> But this wasn't a mission, there was no payload so likely the number of failures could be higher
Oh yeah, thats the selling point I'm hanging off when you try to market your rocket to me.
"When it is a mission reliability magically increases to 97%"
What total BS. Look rockets are DONE, D...O...N...E... Not trashing the pad, flying correctly, heck even getting off the pad (this thing sat there burning its way through its pad for ages) has been done. I have never for the life of me understood why SpaceX is re-inventing the wheel when its already been done. Getting a big tank of propellant up is easy, they managed to figure out making it land, which is cool if not next to useless as they found (to no ones surprise) that the parts are very untrustworthy once they do so you have to replace all the stuff you didnt want to originally.
Seems to me there is something to be said about going to school and learning from the experts. Imagine if we applied this strategy to child education, where every few years every school forgets everything and figures out maths and geography from scratch by testing the next generations of students to see if they fail their exams or not.
> having the entirety of human knowledge in one's pocket can and should be used for good.
No. That is a fallacy. You have quick access to a large amount of knowledge both true and false.
You dont have access to everything that has been published, and yes I'm talking of the books you can get from a library or a second hand bookshop today, not ancient tomes.
You dont have access to every doccumentary etc ever broadcast. A lot of that is trapped on VHS tape and more trapped on UMATIC tapes and locked in the BBC archives etc. Now maybe some documentaries have been updated with newer releases such as Carl Sagans Cosmos which of course needed an update as Astronomy answered questions and found new ones. Now the original Cosmos is easily avalaible and should be watched in tandem with the new stuff as the original one has loads to offer and teach, only lacking the new information.
When you really look at it you find that much of the knowledge on the internet is also locked behind a paywall. DRM is rife, even ebooks delete themselves overnight, they dont wait for you to finish making notes.
So the entirety of human knowledge is not on the internet. It is in fact spread across multiple media types, some of which are locked behind paywalls or legal issues etc. What you think is the entirety of knowledge on the internet is actually a mish mash of knowledge and made up psuedo factoids as well as downright lies. You only know the truth that a serach engine algorithim decided to show you and even then you, or your kid, have no idea if its real or fake. You cant even trust a video as deepfakes are childs play to create and can make anyone say anything. Then there is something like ChatGPT, an overhyped language simulator that on paper (well on screed) looks like it is actually thinking, searching, teaching you things, but when you REALLY talk to it, and read what others have said, you find that it can do those thinsg as well as make the whole load of crap up. It's a language simulator and it is not surprising it can make everything and anything asked of it up, it only knows how to put words together, yet people are reading it and it reads so well that "it must be true".
So, is the tosh that people are making ChatGPT spit out also part of the entirety of knowledge you think little kiddies have?
My young cousins once asked me "whats an index"? They had no clue how to use a book. They just asked google and google spat out what was the most popular thing, even if it was total shit ripped off a website that had been popular for some reason. No checking, no cross referencing, nothing. The word, the FIRST words from Google were unimpeachable. Even I have fallen into that trap.
So if I had a penny for every time someone who doenst understand the enourmous danger of saying "the internet has the entirety of human knowledge on it and my 3 year old is a superbrain because of it" I'd be a lot richer.
> What is different with IA
They were taking in-print published paper books, scanning them, and lending unlimited copies. Books that were in-rpint and for whatever reason never turned into an ebook too.
Imagine if they were an independant bank and got hold of the hardware to mint coins and print notes, then just started churning them out to anyone who came by and wanted some.
DRM based ebooks are limited in number, the library only has a set number they can loan till the time is up and it can be re-issued. A library works fine that way as it serves a very limited number of people, a town and the surrounding area. The IA however is serving the entire globe, thus cant get by on limiting loans to say 50 copies at a time as geting a copy would have lower chances as winning the lottery twice.
So the said fuck it and let every human on the planet have a copy free.
> I am under no obligation to publish more if I choose not to, just because someone wants a copy
How the table turned.
Before the printing press, copyright was designed to prevent just that by making sure that copies could be made by individuals if they so wished. Hence the name, copy right, the right TO copy. After the printing press was something that an individual could own in their homw it focussed on restricting the right to copy instead.
> Russian apologists out in force on this one
Yes, and those who think that when coding everyone is somehow a serene angel beyond reproach.
They have a sort of naivety about computer security too, thinking a back door etc is going to come in as a commit with a comment line disclosing the fact there is a back door.
If I were to install a back door, I'd do it in stages, bit by bit, commit by commit over months. Only someone with a memory and a suspiscion to watch me would have a chance to peice together by jigsaw puzzle, then they also need to know how I'm impolementing the back door in the first place. Maybe I'm adjusting how variables are garbage collected, or not. Maybe I'm fixing real issues, but I just happened to leave a random pointer floating about. Maybe I'm "optimising how my loops work in the CPU cache".
Lets not forget that a university introduced malicious (but not dangerous) commits into the Linux kernel without any sod noticing just for research purposes. They were found out when someone read the paper that they published. Linus Torvalds himself may ahve seen some of the comits and yet people here think that a maliciopus commit would be detected and all Russian (chinese also) commits are thus trustworthy because they dont have the comment line saying "# Implement a backdoor for the motherland!".
Here is something I just though of: "If you take no chances, you give none"
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