Notices by Tirifto (tirifto@jam.xwx.moe)

Do you love blobcats? Are you a fan of free culture? Then you’ll be happy to know there’s been a brand new blobcat pack made specially (but not exclusively) for the Fediverse! Now also available in English! :gutkato_hura: :flago_britujo:

Designed from scratch for a neater look, these new blobcats try their best to preserve and emphasise the original’s fuzzy feel. Bold, yet lean. Refined, yet silly. Blob, yet cat. :gutkato_kimegesto:

And best of all? They’re all free! Not just free of cost, but free to use, share, and change in whatever way you see fit! Possibly the first truly original blobcat pack released under a free culture licence. What’s a blob if not malleable? Make them yours today! (Or tomorrow. No pressure.) :gutkato_oscedas:

More info on the website, link above. Come in for a visit! :gutkato_trinkas_kakaon:

#lang_en #art #blobcat #blobcats #emoji #emojos #English #Fedi #FediArt #Fediverse #free_art #free_culture #stickers

@BeAware Wait until you see this! :gutkato_naŭza: :gutkato_post_muro:

@susie @Jain Yes, the problem is with Unicode, sadly. Some Fedi software expects emoji names to be composed of ASCII characters only, at times (which of course is utterly ridiculous). :gutkato_ploras_riveron_cede:

The correct solution is for any affected software to fix the bug and support Unicode more properly. Issues have been filed for Pleroma, Mastodon, Misskey, Glitch-SOC, Hometown and Iceshrimp. I guess a separate one should be made for Akkoma? :gutkato_pensas:

Barring that, the blobcat pack should eventually be translated to English (and other languages). In the meantime, should you wish to ASCII-ify the names, I can recommend the following substitution, which is the ‘canonical’ way to do it in Esperanto:

• ĉ → ch
• ĝ → gh
• ĥ → hh
• ĵ → jh
• ŝ → sh
• ŭ → u

… or maybe if more instances stick with the accented ones, it’ll help some maintainers realise that people speak other languages, too. :gutkato_hihias:

@lanodan @cell Language tagging and filtering really should be more of a given for a universal social network. There are people from all over the world on the Fediverse, posting in all sorts of languages, so it makes perfect sense to have some way of handling different languages differently.

Since I’ve personally never used Mastodon, I’m not familiar with their particular way of handling it, but it’s perplexing how long they’ve gone without having a similar feature, and even more so how Pleroma now seems to be falling behind in this regard. :gutkato_flucerba:

@tk It goes back to two columns when your window shrinks. :blobcat:

@mwl @Corvan I thought we were talking about unauthorised copying (i.e. pirating), not stealing.

At any rate, my point is that people have different ideas about morals, different things they care about, different convictions. Your conviction (if I get it right) seems to be that disrespecting any copyright licence is equally bad, be it a licence to a piece of software or a piece of culture. But I don’t see what would make your conviction more valid or objective than others, and admittedly I don’t share it, myself.

@feditips It is noteworthy that this is not free software.

@donnodubus @feditips I don’t think I’ve made my logic well understood. I don’t claim that anyone’s definition is inherently authoritative. It only becomes authoritative once it becomes the sole definition in common use. I claim that is the case for FSF’s definition, and therefore all software to meet it is rightly called ‘free software’, while any other software is not (at least in absence of further clarification). Other definitions of ‘free software’ are valid in theory, but they are not common in practice.

The four freedoms explicitly state that you must be free to ‘run the program as you wish, for any purpose’. It should stand to reason that if you are not allowed to run the program to exploit labour, you are not free to run it for any purpose. Therefore, such program does not meet the common definition of free software, and should not be called ‘free software’.

There is not a single word about permissiveness in the definition, and the only way the concept is relevant is if it limits any of the four freedoms. Licences like the GPL, MPL, Expat or zlib do not do this, while that of BookWyrm clearly does.

@udon @gnusocialjp @TerminalAutism @digdeeper @ryo Well put; I think I understand the other point of view being presented here better now. Freedom is being viewed in the big picture, as a think of its own, and freedom-respecting software must be software that does nothing to harm it. And I would agree that it’s practical, but not more so than the 4 freedoms.

The 4 freedoms don’t care about other aspects of your life; they are limited in scope precisely to what you can do, specifically what you can do with the program. And you are right in saying that does not ascertain your freedom outside that scope. But I think that scope is, in itself, very practical. If nothing else, it allows the program to be changed to help you outside of the scope it already does; it’s the minimal prerequisite to change how the program affects everything else. It’s often not enough in the big picture (when looking beyond just ‘software freedom’), but it sets a solid foundation which allows people to build the other important stuff on top of it.

I think it makes sense to call this ‘software freedom’, as opposed to ‘freedom’ as a general concept, and I do often use the term ’software freedom’ when talking about ‘free software’ (as defined by the FSF). It’s the part of freedom that pertains to the software and nothing else. And it can be useful to consider on its own. But of course it’s not enough, and I suppose I can see why’d you want ‘freedom’ to not refer only to that.

Complexity and readability of source code is another issue on the 4 FOSS laws.

Yes, and an important one. I sometimes read that not taking them into consideration is a failing of the 4 freedoms, but it’s really us who must do that. Most people in the sphere have been accustomed to the technical/theoretical determination of freedom: if it’s technically feasible for the 4 freedoms to be exercised, the program is free. But how practical it is to do so? The ability to edit the source code is normally taken as the dividing line, and I’m not sure there’s a better line to be drawn. How easy it is to exercise the freedoms is subjective, but it’s safe to say that e.g. Guix does a much better job on the freedom front than e.g. Chromium, which does make it across the line, but the ‘freedom’ it gives us remains largely useless in practice.