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Cake day: July 16th, 2023

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  • Let’s just say this properly ok so that 70 percent of the commenters here might better understand.

    Association with some of the people previously on the kernel maintainers list was putting the Linux kernel at risk. The risk was that European, American, and other users may be prohibited from using it. The risk was that entities such as the Linux Foundation could be held in contempt of sanctions and sanctioned themselves. That could mean financial damage or even a full stop to operations.

    If the kernel were sanctioned, every entity, individual or company, could be put at risk.

    Association with sanctioned individuals put every other maintainer at risk. Being listed together in the maintainers file put many innocent people in extreme jeopardy.

    So, let’s say this properly ok…

    Some of the maintainers were removed to defend the Linux kernel and the many, many entities ( individual and corporate ) that use it. They were removed to protect the other maintainers and the people and companies that they associate with.

    The Linux Foundation, being American, may have been particularly at risk. But “moving” the kernel does nothing. The contributors and maintainers are still wherever they are. Linux users are equally economically dependent on the US and Europe regardless. The issue are the international sanctions. My country has issued them too ( neither American or European ). And blaming the counties that issued the sanctions, instead of blaming Russia, is a very interesting morale position to take ( not getting into that here ).

    My first reaction was to have a problem with how this was done. However, once you acknowledge the association, any interaction, collaboration, or communication becomes even more problematic as you KNOW that you are working with sanctioned individuals. So, doing it simply and succinctly was probably best.





  • Very nice link that not only does not have a list of names but also fairly explicitly explains that it is not talking about Americans killing Americans.

    I am not going to spend more than 30 seconds on it but here is the first list of “lots” of Russians that are believed to have been assassinated by their own government.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_deaths_of_notable_Russians_in_2022–2024

    Despite your personal attacks, the trivially discoverable facts are not on your side.

    I used Wikipedia since you apparently find it credible.

    My favourite “suicide” of a notable Russian in the last couple of years was the one that had a suicide note signed by “illegible signature” ( what it actually said ). I guess the FSB did not totally understand the instructions.

    Indeed A LOT of falling out of windows. Quite a bit of poisoning as well. These are the successful ones. How about that time they poisoned the entire Ukrainian peace team including the owner of the Chelsea Football Club?


  • LeFantome@programming.devtoScience Memes@mander.xyzsmart engineering
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    8 days ago

    It would be better to use .PCX or .TGA

    The Digital Dark Age is real. At best, we are carving out runes out in a language the future will no longer understand.

    What do you have stored on your Zip drives and DAT tapes? Because not only are we carving runes but in fact we are chiselling them into sandstone.

    Paper writing will last vastly longer than most digital archive formats. If the data is not actually lost, the devices to read them will be. If we somehow read the data off, it will be incomprehensible gibberish. The file formats could eventually be decoded I suppose, like hieroglyphics. Unless of course they are encrypted….

    500 years from now, there will be less information about what we were doing day to day than there is for things that happened hundreds of years ago. If anything is left, it will be the “official” record. In other words, all that will be left are lies.



  • You are right that the tone was a little insulting.

    That said, who is the “us” that you are referring to?

    A lot of Open Source software is written by people that would not see the use of non-free components for testing as a problem. A lot of Open Source software is written by people that believe in the superiority of collaborative software development but do not have strong opinions on user freedom. The may ever value developer freedom in ways that is incompatible with the most extreme or idealist views of user freedom.

    Are you demanding recognition to “us” for all that software?

    The post you are replying to was unnecessarily combative. Your is no better and is supported by no better moral high-ground.







  • GNU / Linux is an overstep. It is inaccurate and misleading.

    “Linux” as the majority of people that know the term use it refers to a family of operating system “distributions” that share a large number of common traits ( including the Linux kernel ).

    GNU / Linux is a poor name for the majority of these distributions. It would be an ok name for a specific distribution from the Free Software Foundation.

    Not all Linux distributions use Glibc. You mentioned Alpine Linux. There are others. This does not make Alpine less of a Linux. ( this is a tangent but saying “most” software does not work on MUSL is wildly inaccurate ).

    Not all Linux distributions use the GNU utils. Check out Chimera Linux sometime. If I sat a Linux user down at Chimera, they would be perfectly at home. They can of course even install Flatpaks or use Docker or Podman. Because it is Linux even with no GNU.

    Not all distros use GCC. I have listed one already.

    Saying Linux was “never completed” is wildly inaccurate. Linux has been completed in many different ways and it continues to expand and evolve.

    Even on the most popular Linux distros, GNU represents only a tiny fraction of the software installed. In most distro repos, the most popular license is MIT. So even if we pretend that GPL means GNU ( itself a totally inaccurate overreach ) a GNU label for the entire system makes no sense.

    As above, there is more MIT licensed software in most distros. Should it be MIT / Linux? Red Hat probably contributes more code than anybody ( including to Glibc and GCC ). Should all Linux be Red Hat / Linux? Both those are bonkers but, fair attribution wise, they make more sense than GNU / Linux does.

    Yes, Richard Stallman has asked all the Linux distros to call themselves GNU. He should not have. He should stop. There is no problem to solve other than he has not stopped asking.

    GNU is a massively important project historically. The GPL is a vital piece do the Free Software landscape. These need to be celebrated and acknowledged. This is not the way to do it.

    But let’s take another look at history. First, of course Linux would likely not have caught such early momentum without GNU utils and certainly not with GCC. Linux had its own libc but Glibc was better. Sure.

    Did you know that the author of GNU HURD originally wanted to use the BSD kernel? That would have been an interesting alternate history. GNU may have truly emerged as an OS alternative. It could have filled the space now occupied by Linux. We would all be using the GNU OS.

    In 1992, GNU / Linux may have been a decent description of what Linux was at the time ( though that is a bit of a slap to XFree86 ).

    FreeBSD was a complete OS before anybody ( anybody free ). However, they got caught in a lawsuit around whether they were allowed to be free. Linux appeared in the space left by BSD and, it was while BSD was under a legal cloud that Linux filled its sails with wind. By the time that was settled, BSD was way behind. Not as far behind as GNU without Linux would have been though.

    If there had been no Linux kernel, the BSD lawsuit would have ended and the world would have had a free UNIX while GNU was still a collection of utilities with no kernel.

    If Linux had not appeared and FreeBSD had taken off, few of us would probably ever have heard of the GNU Project. Many GNU fans totally underestimate how important Linux has been to them.

    Finally, how is GNU a desktop OS ( especially in 2024 )?

    Here is the full list of GNJ projects. “All GNU packages” straight from the horses mouth:

    https://www.gnu.org/software/software.en.html#allgnupkgs

    First, many people will be surprised how short that list is. My distro offers 70,000 packages. Fewer than 500 are GNU. That is what I was saying above.

    But where is the display server? Where is the sound server? Where is the desktop environment? How may GUI applications are there?

    You can say that that GNU kernel is “unfinished”. If GNU still wants to be a desktop, it would be better described as “unstarted”.

    It is not 1992 anymore. GNU is not a desktop OS.

    Of course a GNU desktop could use X11, Wayland, and Mesa. Those are all Free Software but they are are not GNU. In fact, all those are MIT licensed and not even GPL.

    None of the desktop environments are GNU. There is GNUstep but its homepage says explicitly that it is “not a desktop”.

    Anyway, GNU is a massively important project. Let’s educate people on why it did and does matter. But let’s not destroy its legacy and goodwill by abusing its name and misrepresent its role today.