Notices by NiceMicro (nicemicro@fosstodon.org)

@danirabbit @lukeshu case in point: I care about software / computing / user freedom, and personal freedom in general, and I join Free Software advocacy to... advocate for free software, and I don't need people from the first world to descend from the heavens and tell me what other issues should I care about and in what priority.

@danirabbit @lukeshu I don't know what other people think, what annoys me occasionally, is that how people bring in their other political issues (with whatever genuine positive intentions they have) is very much USA-centric, sometimes specifically USA-cultural-hegemonist.

As a non-US citizen who never went there, it is a bit offensive when people expect that I should have the same political priorities as Americans.

@lukeshu so I believe that if we attach other political ideals to our free software advocacy, that will cause unnecessary division in the community. Which is a problem, if you want to achieve anything against the huge corporate interests that hate the computing freedom of their users.

I know I'm a bit of a hypocrite here, too, because I sometimes attach my urbanism advocacy to my free software advocacy, but I'm just a small guy, not running a big project or member of a foundation.

(end)

@lukeshu While there are for sure bad faith actors in this space, I think when people complain about "politics in free software", they actually mean "politics other than the politics about free software".

I believe that it is possible to have a wide range of political persuasions that lets you derive the computing freedoms. Or, you can be just simply selfish and want to get these freedoms for yourself.

(cont.)

It's crazy how normal we think it is, that twice in a day (early morning, still sleepy, and after work, already tired) half the population gets into and controls heavy machinery that kills hundreds of thousands of people every day.

#fuckCars #warOnCars #Urbanism #xkcd

@BrodieOnLinux I forgot, are we against all uses of generative AI on the Brodie Robertson train?

@BrodieOnLinux to me, the question is the following:

if your project is so difficult to compile into a usable binary that not even seasoned maintainers can do it, are you really making #FreeSoftware, or is it a "letter of the law but not the spirit of the law" situation?

I wonder what the opinion of actual devs and distro maintainers are.

#OpenSource #Foss #Linux #FlatPak #OBS

@libreoffice Congrats!

I just hope that soon the Korean grammar check will start working again LOL

If a #FreeSoftware program on #Linux would be like "you can not open two files of the same name at the same time from two different directories", people would be complaining how #OpenSource and Linux are just not ready for massive adoption.

When Microsoft Excel does this for 30 years straight, it's just "it is what it is".

@lukeshu don't worry, copyright protections apply for multiple years, so you don't have to be in a rush to change them :)

#FreeSoftwareAdvent
#Inkscape! @inkscape

I love Inkscape. I use it in my personal life, I use it to make illustrations for my papers and teaching materials in my professional life.

It is the best vector graphic software. It can do curves, shapes, turn bitmaps into curves and shapes. Turn curves and shapes into bitmaps. What else do you need? Triangles? It has them, too!

Also, follow the great @doctormo for devlogs and news about the project.

https://inkscape.org/

#FreeSoftware #FOSS

It is that time of the year (I see some people boosting my posts from last year), so let's do another #FreeSoftwareAdvent to appreciate all the great #FreeSoftware out there. I have definitely explored and made use of a bunch of software for the first time this year, so let's shout some out.

For today, it's #LabPlot @LabPlot by the #KDE @kde team.

Amazing, versatile graphing and data alanyisis tool that I actively use in my classrooms. Check it out!

https://labplot.kde.org/
#OpenSource #FOSS

Now that the release of GIMP 3 is on the horizon, maybe it would be a great time to change its controversial name to something more fitting for the GNU/Linux environment.

I was thinking about changing it to "GIMP Image Manipulation Program" so it can finally ascend to the plane of recursive acronyms. 😂

#gimp #gimp3 #FreeSoftware #joke

@mekkaokereke the OP is about the importance of end to end encryption. all your examples are valid reasons to be pro-end-to-end encryption.

#Encryption #E2EE

@lxo I guess it depends on the point of view.

I use "permissive" for MIT and BSD licenses, because they are not restricting developers. Free software is freedom for the users, not the developers. "Permissive" means that the developers are permitted to take away the right of their users by locking down a derivative or redistributed work that was originally free software.

Like, how a "Permissive" regulation might let you cause damage to others without consequence.

#FreeSoftware

the latest conversation of @BrodieOnLinux and the #Futo guy on the #TechOverTea podcast was quite interesting.

What I found strange is how they separate licenses by being #OpenSource or #FreeSoftware. AFAIK, most popular licenses like GPL, MIT, BSD, MPL, etc. conform to both the #FSF and the #OSI standards. I guess what they meant was #CopyLeft vs permissive licenses?

@smxi honestly, I don't really mind that much what RedHat is doing. No one is entitled to get updates to a software from you just because you gave them an earlier version.

As long as they don't restrict your GPL guaranteed rights for the software itself, they can condition the future business relationship with their customers on whatever they want.

@clacke @smxi I don't think what you describe here is correct. I think what you describe here is true for their publicly available repositories. As a customer you have the right to ask for the exact source code that your binary packages were compiled from, and I am not aware of any instance of them not honoring them.

@clacke @smxi The GPL does not have any clause that makes a user entitled to any future versions or any tech support.

Therefore, it is not a violation of the GPL to terminate business relationship based on an action that is allowed by the license but not allowed by the business agreement.

Red Hat can't come and take away the code they already gave you, and can't stop you redistributing it. They have all the rights to not talk to you any more though.

@smxi if at least developers used #GPL / #AGPL, the corporations at least were forced to contribute back in one way or an other, but due to the rampant use of MIT and BSD licenses, they can literally get away without doing anything beneficial for the wider ecosystem while using other people's code (those other people let them do it).

I think the proliferation of MIT and BSD licenses really made the #FreeSoftware free rider problem much worse than it should be.