How did you start hating opensource?
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"Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."
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@wharrgarbl Okay? I'm saying no one is better at security. Anyway, go away @fbmac237328
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@mott555 said in How did you start hating opensource?:
It's always with stupid things too, like a PNG or weird compression library for some obscure platform. I can see wanting big useful free alternatives to commercial software for things like OS's and word processing suites...but come on, a PNG library?
The vast majority of successful open source projects are things like libraries. Why? Because you can just get a spec, and code away. Either it works right or it doesn't, no discussion. You just need code monkey skills.
Making a word processor? Ha! That's 100x harder. Do you know how hard it is to make user interfaces? And then users start pouring in with their petty demands like "maybe provide a precompiled installer" or "built-in git support is great but can I save to a normal file instead?", why are they even complaining when they got the program for free? They should just code those features themselves.
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@anonymous234 What i like best is when an app requires some library, like libjpeg42, which uses libpng12, but the distro you're on only supports a custom build of libjpeg43 that relies on libpng11, and does not support libpng12.
It's just so nice to be on such a stable operating system with such sane dependency control.
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@Weng said in How did you start hating opensource?:
Working around the GPL is easy.
Build a wrapper service that talks via IPC or HTTP or whatever. Hit it from your actual product. That wrapper is now opensource. Treat it as such.
This is why it's so absurd make your license depend on the technical details of how your program is made. There's always a way around.
Even Linus himself considers the FSF's beliefs to be pretty crazy. Read his fantastically reasonable rant:
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Linus-Torvalds-hate-GPL-v3-0
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@kt_ said in How did you start hating opensource?:
I'm going to reiterate here, because I'm not sure I expressed myself clearly enough: if you go into business and you need open source libraries to succeed and it turns out one of those libraries is licensed under GPL and it's unacceptable to you to use it then it's your failure and you shouldn't blame GPL.
OK. Not the point.
Here is the point: someone was offered money in return for letting you use their library commercially. This is beneficial for him, beneficial for the users, and beneficial for the company. In fact, there is literally no person in the world that would be worse off.
And he refused, out of some silly and wrong philosophical ideal. And everyone is worse off. That ideal made the world worse under the pretense of making the world better.
And seriously, commercial software is not unethical in any possible interpretation of the word.
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@FrostCat said in How did you start hating opensource?:
@mott555 said in How did you start hating opensource?:
I needed the library for like 2 function calls, but would have had to spend 6+ months implementing the library myself
Those must've been two really complex functions!
Not nearly as complex as
main()which runs an entire application! Can you believe the insanity of having a single function call do all that!?@boomzilla said in How did you start hating opensource?:
@Maciejasjmj said in How did you start hating opensource?:
Fuck this shit and boot to Windows.
Now I can't build anything. :-(
I hate how so many projects are an absolute pain to build on Windows for no real reason other than the devs primarily using linux and barely testing Windows, if at all. I still run into projects with unconditional uses of linux-only headers and functions.
@another_sam said in How did you start hating opensource?:
@everybody thinks that software being available under GPL is worse for them than the software not existing at all because "boo hoo I can't distribute derivatives without source" but somehow if the software didn't exist they could? Or something.
No, it's worse because seeing that something has already been done makes others less likely to redo it - you know, that saying about not reinventing the wheel. So the first time someone does something as GPL, many people just use it to avoid having to do it themselves. If it had not existed in the first place, there's a chance the next first person would have chosen a more permissive license. The GPL only benefits people who were already going to use the GPL in their own project, and due to lack of will from others to reinvent the wheel with a more permissive license also harms people who don't want to or can't use GPL software.
How many times have you been annoyed by bugs in software that can't be fixed, you but you decide to just keep using the software anyway because you CBA to write your own from scratch? It's why we have so much legacy junk with a billion and a half bandages strapped to it: some idiots made it work just well enough before anyone else that it became widely used and now alternatives can gain no ground and will only ever be used by the people who don't want to or can't use the mainstream thing, which is a minority. Example: JavaScript. Seen any alternatives? Are they widely supported by browsers? Say you hate JavaScript and don't want to use it, but you still need to do roughly the same stuff: Sorry, you're screwed!
At least with GPL you don't have to worry about browser support, but the point still stands: the first to create something that works well enough will deter everyone else from making something better from scratch when they could just use something that already exists and apply their own workarounds and fixes as needed. Viral licenses are BAD, and the existence of libraries using viral licenses is worse than the non-existence of them.
A river doesn't get up and move over to another continent with rock which is easier to erode - once it has started forming somewhere, that's it. You have to make a new river, or just go with the flow. At least there's a bright side: if your new river is better, people will come. But now you have to make a better river.
@ben_lubar said in How did you start hating opensource?:
But in the general case, the MIT license protects the author of the software from lawsuits, so go with that.
http://unlicense.org/ also does that and is even less restrictive. I don't know what the FSF thinks "free" means - you can't get more free than public domain.
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@anonymous234 did it really make the world worse, or did it just not make it better?
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@anonymous234 said in How did you start hating opensource?:
And he refused, out of some silly and wrong philosophical ideal. And everyone is worse off. That ideal made the world worse under the pretense of making the world better.
GPL libraries are a competitive advantage for free software over unfree ones, and as an incentive for you to write free software.
It's unfortunate that most free software libraries use the LGPL that isn't viral.
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@LB_ said in How did you start hating opensource?:
the first to create something that works well enough will deter everyone else from making something better from scratch when they could just use something that already exists and apply their own workarounds and fixes as needed.
E_NOREPRO
Something as simple as json parsing has dozens of different competing libraries.
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@wharrgarbl said in How did you start hating opensource?:
and as an incentive for you to write free software
Too bad it's not as strong an incentive as a decent salary.
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@wharrgarbl You said it yourself, it's simple. Image and video formats...not so much. Cryptography...safer to not even try.
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@LB_ said in How did you start hating opensource?:
I hate how so many projects are an absolute pain to build on Windows for no real reason other than the devs primarily using linux and barely testing Windows, if at all.
The problem is that the toolchains are quite different, and the assumptions baked into the OS are rather different in a few places. There's a limit to how much “different” you can hide: the smarter you are, the more you can hide, but nobody's sufficiently smart to hide everything. (For example, you can't really hide the difference between the fact that Windows expects a case-folding filesystem whereas Linux expects a case-preserving filesystem. Most of the time it doesn't matter too much, but you really can't hide it.)
IOW, the exact same thing applies in reverse.
The core of the difficulty is that this is all about assumptions. Most people are very much unaware of the assumptions that they make, or even that they're leaning on a bunch of them in the first place. As long as they stay in their comfort zone, everything is fine. Move outside, and stuff goes wrong in unexpected ways. And yes, this doesn't just apply to computing…
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@Magus said in How did you start hating opensource?:
@boomzilla Wait, you guys didn't see the first post and think, 'oh look, its @fbmac4728346'?
Huh? Why do you think I don't know all of his sockpuppets? What does that have to do with @Jaloopa posting dumbass nonsense?
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@anonymous234 said in How did you start hating opensource?:
This is beneficial for him
So you say, like you know what's best for him. Fuck off with that nonsense.
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@lordofduct said in How did you start hating opensource?:
I'm not sure about if you can redistribute a modified copy of an existing vehicle... I'm betting there are patents on large portions that would come into issue. I guess if you modify out those parts??? And rebrand of course??? Of course you'd have to fall under regulations.
I'm pretty sure there's lots of car repair shop sells customization parts and help you install it. Lots of carshops also offer to modify the new car (air-con, Hi-Fi, or even core parts like engine, etc.) before the car is handed to car owner.
I guess hacking is common in car industry... only very few people insist on having every parts original.
And you know what, the modification is only bounded by the law. If you don't modify the car exceeding the limitation specified by the law (safety equipments, black smoke tests, etc.), at worst you can only have the car warranty voided and there will not be any further consequence on the shops' part.
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@boomzilla said in How did you start hating opensource?:
Huh? Why do you think I don't know all of his sockpuppets?
You cheat by looking at IP addresses, don't you?
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@LB_ said in How did you start hating opensource?:
No, it's worse because seeing that something has already been done makes others less likely to redo it
You mean do it for free, right? So you can profit from it? Without distributing source?
@LB_ said in How did you start hating opensource?:
How many times have you been annoyed by bugs in software that can't be fixed
In GPL software? The whole point of the freedoms the FSF go nuts over are about exactly this!
@LB_ said in How did you start hating opensource?:
But now you have to make a better river
If the GPL really were that bad, somebody would make a better non-GPL river. If it hasn't happened I think that tells you something.
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@lordofduct said in How did you start hating opensource?:
How about we apply this to other products...
Oh, a strained car analogy. It's flawed, as expected. You didn't even draw the closest parallel, which is a car with the bonnet welded shut so you can't even see the motor let alone study, repair or modify it. Given that cars are physical and not so easily copied that's about as far as your analogy can be forced.
@lordofduct said in How did you start hating opensource?:
So... most all literature is unethical.
For those that consider the artificial scarcity created by copyright law unethical, yes it is. But again, flawed analogy because software is quite different to books. The version of software that is required for execution (usually) isn't the version that's used for study or modification because it's been through a compiler and sometimes deliberate obfuscation methods.
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@LB_ said in How did you start hating opensource?:
the next first person
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@LB_ said in How did you start hating opensource?:
seeing that something has already been done makes others less likely to redo it - you know, that saying about not reinventing the wheel.
Maybe somebody should have told that to the people working on computer video formats.
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@fbmac said in How did you start hating opensource?:
You cheat by looking at IP addresses, don't you?
No.
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@another_sam said in How did you start hating opensource?:
The version of software that is required for execution (usually) isn't the version that's used for study or modification because it's been through a compiler and sometimes deliberate obfuscation methods.
Hi, novelist here. The version of the book you buy in the bookstore is capable of being deconstructed on a mechanical level, to see what beats, tropes, elements, et cetera went into it, but you can do that to Word by deconstructing the GUI choices, the file format, et cetera. How you get from "I want a book about ice zombies and dragons!" to A Song of Ice and Fire is a whole nother story, and it's a very individualized process. Being able to see earlier drafts, outlines, notes, and some sort of "director's commentary" description of the person's thought process would help significantly in learning how to do it yourself over just reading books. There's a lot of terrible fanfic authors out there who read a bunch but have never taken the time to learn the craft of writing.
So yeah, I'd say the raw inputs to the book-writing process are not delivered with the book.
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@flabdablet said in How did you start hating opensource?:
@LB_ said in How did you start hating opensource?:
the next first person
I don't understand how that's relevant? Is "next first person" too sci-fi for you or something? There are many times in history where multiple people have independently invented the same thing around the same time with slight differences, e.g. Calculus. In the case of the telephone you could literally go back in time and stop whoever was first, making the other become the "next first person". Imagine if you stop both - a third is likely appear.
@Gurth said in How did you start hating opensource?:
@LB_ said in How did you start hating opensource?:
seeing that something has already been done makes others less likely to redo it - you know, that saying about not reinventing the wheel.
Maybe somebody should have told that to the people working on computer video formats.
That implies that there has ever been a "one size fits all" video format. New formats are created to solve problems that no existing format solves acceptably, but the catch is "acceptably" - at some point you pass a "good enough" point and people just contribute to the original instead of making a new thing.
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@Magus said in How did you start hating opensource?:
@TimeBandit And you're saying that in all of those months, no linux software has had security patches?
Of course there was security patches. No software is perfectly secure except maybe this one:
int main() { return 0; }But if you can't see the difference between a remote code execution and a local escalation of privileges, you are the
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Can't mount disks now unless you turn off security, makes sense ... but damn.
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@LB_ said in How did you start hating opensource?:
you could literally go back in time and stop whoever was first, making the other become the "next first person".
No. If you go back in time and start knocking over inventors, the first one you don't knock over becomes the first inventor, not the "next first" inventor. "Next first" is a contradiction in terms.
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@flabdablet what about next frist?
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@another_sam said in How did you start hating opensource?:
In GPL software? The whole point of the freedoms the FSF go nuts over are about exactly this!
And yet their software is full of bugs, so obviously their stupid philosophy does not work.
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@flabdablet I assume he was talking about murdering him just before he made the invention.
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@flabdablet said in How did you start hating opensource?:
@LB_ said in How did you start hating opensource?:
you could literally go back in time and stop whoever was first, making the other become the "next first person".
No. If you go back in time and start knocking over inventors, the first one you don't knock over becomes the first inventor, not the "next first" inventor. "Next first" is a contradiction in terms.
Hmm...
What do men consider the most valuable of talents? One mentioned artistic ability, as you so keenly guessed. Another chose great intellect. The final chose the talent to invent, the ability to design and create marvelous devices. Aesthetic genius, invention, acumen, creativity. Noble ideals indeed. Most men would pick one of those, if given a choice, and name them the greatest of talents. What beautiful liars we are. In this, as in all things, our actions give us away.
If an artist creates a work of powerful beauty - using new and innovative techniques - she will be lauded as a master, and will launch a new movement in aesthetics. Yet what if another, working independently with that exact same level of skill, were to make the same accomplishments the very next month? Would she find similar acclaim? No. She’d be called derivative.
Intellect. If a great thinker develops a new theory of mathematics, science, or philosophy, we will name him wise. We will sit at his feet and learn, and will record his name in history for thousands upon thousands to revere. But what if another man determines the same theory on his own, then delays in publishing his results by a mere week? Will he be remembered for his greatness? No. He will be forgotten.
Invention. A woman builds a new design of great worth - some fabrial or feat of engineering. She will be known as an innovator. But if someone with the same talent creates the same design a year later - not realizing it has already been crafted - will she be rewarded for her creativity? No. She’ll be called a copier and a forger.
And so, in the end, what must we determine? Is it the intellect of a genius that we revere? If it were their artistry, the beauty of their mind, would we not laud it regardless of whether we’d seen their product before? But we don’t. Given two weeks of artistic majesty, otherwise weighted equally, we will give greater acclaim to the one who did it first. It doesn’t matter what you create. It matters what you create before anyone else. So it’s not the beauty itself we admire. It’s not the force of intellect. It’s not invention, aesthetics, or capacity itself. The greatest talent that we think a man can have? Seems to me that it must be nothing more than novelty.
-- Wit, The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
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@masonwheeler
Actually, it often matters not who creates first, but who first gets the word out about their creation. No matter how amazing your creation, if you just hide it in a shed in your yard, nobody's going to give you any credit for it at all.
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@masonwheeler said in How did you start hating opensource?:
Intellect. If a great thinker develops a new theory of mathematics, science, or philosophy, we will name him wise. We will sit at his feet and learn, and will record his name in history for thousands upon thousands to revere. But what if another man determines the same theory on his own, then delays in publishing his results by a mere week? Will he be remembered for his greatness? No. He will be forgotten
Leibniz and Newton both came up with calculus independently. I forget who is considered to have been first.
We tend to credit Newton while using Leibniz's notation
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@Jaloopa Newton because he got some of it wrong in the original proof.
Newton used to pull stuff off of his shelf after someone else discovered something just to be a nob.
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@blakeyrat I don't deny some free software has bugs, I just value my freedom more.
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@flabdablet That's one of my favourites of Lehrer's songs, and he wrote so many funny ones.
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@dkf Life is skittles and life is beer
Tom Lehrer - Poisoning Pigeons In The Park – 02:17
— The Tom Lehrer Wisdom Channel
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@flabdablet said in How did you start hating opensource?:
@LB_ said in How did you start hating opensource?:
you could literally go back in time and stop whoever was first, making the other become the "next first person".
No. If you go back in time and start knocking over inventors, the first one you don't knock over becomes the first inventor, not the "next first" inventor. "Next first" is a contradiction in terms.
What do you suggest I say instead of "next first" to succinctly get my point across? I thought it did a good job of describing the situation.
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@LB_ "First".
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@masonwheeler I do not agree.
The described things that we do admire are not identifiable directly, they can only be identified through their manifestations: work.
This, we need to judge based on what we learn and when someone shows a skill unique we figure they indeed are unique. If someone shows a skill later on we cannot be sure they indeed achieved it without "inspiration". It's as simple as that.
Making the quoted author's conclusion stupid.
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@flabdablet said in How did you start hating opensource?:
@LB_ "First".
Okay:
@another_sam said in How did you start hating opensource?:
@everybody thinks that software being available under GPL is worse for them than the software not existing at all because "boo hoo I can't distribute derivatives without source" but somehow if the software didn't exist they could? Or something.
No, it's worse because seeing that something has already been done makes others less likely to redo it - you know, that saying about not reinventing the wheel. So the first time someone does something as GPL, many people just use it to avoid having to do it themselves. If it had not existed in the first place, there's a chance the
nextfirst person would have chosen a more permissive license. The GPL only benefits people who were already going to use the GPL in their own project, and due to lack of will from others to reinvent the wheel with a more permissive license also harms people who don't want to or can't use GPL software.How many times have you been annoyed by bugs in software that can't be fixed, you but you decide to just keep using the software anyway because you CBA to write your own from scratch? It's why we have so much legacy junk with a billion and a half bandages strapped to it: some idiots made it work just well enough before anyone else that it became widely used and now alternatives can gain no ground and will only ever be used by the people who don't want to or can't use the mainstream thing, which is a minority. Example: JavaScript. Seen any alternatives? Are they widely supported by browsers? Say you hate JavaScript and don't want to use it, but you still need to do roughly the same stuff: Sorry, you're screwed!
At least with GPL you don't have to worry about browser support, but the point still stands: the first to create something that works well enough will deter everyone else from making something better from scratch when they could just use something that already exists and apply their own workarounds and fixes as needed. Viral licenses are BAD, and the existence of libraries using viral licenses is worse than the non-existence of them.
A river doesn't get up and move over to another continent with rock which is easier to erode - once it has started forming somewhere, that's it. You have to make a new river, or just go with the flow. At least there's a bright side: if your new river is better, people will come. But now you have to make a better river.
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@LB_ said in How did you start hating opensource?:
seeing that something has already been done makes others less likely to redo it
If that were true, there would be no rationale for the existence of the patent system.
@LB_ said in How did you start hating opensource?:
So the first time someone does something as GPL, many people just use it to avoid having to do it themselves.
Yes, that's the point of free software. You can re-use it and you don't have to do it again yourself.
@LB_ said in How did you start hating opensource?:
If it had not existed in the first place, there's a chance the first person would have chosen a more permissive license.
Demonstrably true, as software components released under permissive licences exist. However, your assertion that the prior existence or not of GPL-licensed components with similar functionality is somehow relevant remains just that: an assertion. You've provided no evidence in support of it.
And in fact it's a mistaken assertion. There exist many GPL-licensed software components for which non-GPL-licensed alternatives exist. Sometimes the GPL-licensed components were released first. Sometimes the non-GPL-licensed components were. And of course there are also many non-GPL-licensed software components for which no GPL-licensed alternative exists. This is inherent in the decentralized, unplanned, uncoordinated nature of software development as a whole.
@LB_ said in How did you start hating opensource?:
the first to create something that works well enough will deter everyone else from making something better from scratch when they could just use something that already exists and apply their own workarounds and fixes as needed. Viral licenses are BAD, and the existence of libraries using viral licenses is worse than the non-existence of them.
Here you've leapt from an unsupported, incorrect assertion to an unrelated conclusion. You might just as well assert that non-viral licenses are BAD and that the existence of libraries using non-viral licenses is worse than the non-existence of them. Neither conclusion follows; you're merely stating your opinion in a form that superficially resembles an argument.
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@LB_ your argument doesn't make sense.
Or they can use the GPL one, or they'll have motivation to write their own.
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@flabdablet said in How did you start hating opensource?:
Yes, that's the point of free software. You can re-use it and you don't have to do it again yourself
Unless you need to use it in software that can't obey the restrictions of the freedom
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@masonwheeler I loved the conclusion to that train of thought. Great setup.
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@Jaloopa said in How did you start hating opensource?:
Unless you need to use it in software that can't obey the restrictions of the freedom
This describes GPL better than I could ever imagine.
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@Jaloopa Correct. You can't use GPL-licensed components to make non-free software.
NOTABUG_WONTFIX
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@Yamikuronue said in How did you start hating opensource?:
@masonwheeler I loved the conclusion to that train of thought. Great setup.
You think that's good, you should read the rest of the book!
Principle of explosion - Wikipedia
