• 7 Posts
  • 191 Comments
Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 10th, 2023

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  • Why is SSPL not considered FOSS while other restrictive licenses like AGPL and GPL v3 are?

    So I have an answer for this. Basically all of the entities listed that relicensed their projects to the SSPL, also relicensed their projects using the dual licensing scheme, including one proprietary license. That’s important later.

    The SSPL’s intent is probably that the deployment framework used to open source this software must be open sourced. I like this intent, and I would consider it Free/Libre Software, but it should be noted that another license, the open watcom license, which requires you to open source software if you simply deploy it, is not considered Free Software by the FSF. I don’t really understand this decision. I don’t count “must share source code used” as a restriction on usage cases. It seems that the FSF only cares about user freedom, whoever is using the software, and views being forced to open source code only used privately as a restriction.

    Now, IANAL… but the SSPL’s lettering is problematic. What is part of the deployment system? If I deploy software on Windows, am I forced to open source windows? If I deploy it on a server with intel management engine, am I forced to open source that? Due to the way it is worded, the SSPL is unusable.

    And a dual license, one proprietary and one unusable means only one license — proprietary. There’s actually a possibility that this is intentional, and that the intent of the SSPL was never to be usable, but rather so that these companies could pretend they are still Open Source while going fully proprietary.

    But, for the sake of discussion, let’s assume the SSPL’s intent was benevolent but misguided, and that it’s intent was not to be unusable, but rather to force companies to open source deployment platforms.

    Of course, the OSI went and wrote an article about how the SSPL is not an open source license but that’s all BS. All you need to do is take a look at who sponsors the OSI (Amazon, Google, other big SAAS providers) to realize that the OSI is just protecting their corporate interests, who are terrified of an SSPL license that actually works, so they seek to misrepresent the intent of the SSPL license as too restrictive for Open Source — which is false. Being forced to open source your deployment platform still allows you to use the code in any way you desire — you just have to open source your deployment platform.

    Is there some hypothetical lesser version of SSPL that still captures the essence of it while still being more restrictive than AGPL that would prevent exploitation by SaaS providers?

    AGPL. There’s also Open Watcom, but it’s not considered a Free Software license by the FSF, meaning software written under that wouldn’t be included in any major Linux distros.

    I think in theory you could make an SSPL that works. But SSPL ain’t it.

    Of course, there are problems with designing an SSPL that works, of course. Like, if you make it so that you don’t have to open source proprietary code by other vendors, then what if companies split themselves up and one company makes and “sells” the proprietary programs to another.





  • Yeah, I read that manual but it didn’t answer my question.

    The big problem is that the arch wiki describes a setup with nested subvolumes first (in a subvolume below @ or whatever your root subvolume is), but then suggests in a tip to use a subvolume directly below the top level subvolume. The limitations mentioned in that manual don’t seem to apply to either setup, as they would prevent swap from working, which is not the case. I have tested both setups and they work fine — or so it seems. I’m worried there is some hidden gotcha I’m missing.

    in addition to that, some of those limitations simply don’t apply to my setup, as I only have a single device.











  • Old version docs tend to offer you a redirect to more recent docs

    Sadly, the docs, I’ve worked with (openstack and ansible) frequently, don’t do this. They have a button to go to the latest version of the docs, but not to the equivalent page on the latest version. This means I have to find the equivalent page again, from the integrated search usually.

    And yes, a lot can change between versions. New features can get added that solve your problems or older stuff can get removed.


  • Putting something on GitHub is really inconsequential if you’re making your project open source since anyone can use it for anything anyway,

    Except for people in China (blocked in China) or people on ipv6 only networks, since Github hasn’t bothered to support ipv6, cutting out those in countries where ipv4 addresses are scarce.

    So yes, it does matter. Both gitlab and codeberg, the two big alternatives, both support ipv6 (idk about them being blocked in china). They also support github logins, so you dob’t even need to make an account.

    And it’s not a black or white. Software freedom is a spectrum, not a binary. We should strive to use more open source, decentralized software, while recognizing that many parts are going to be out of our immediate control, like the backbone of the internet or little pieces like proprietary firmware.



  • The python3 package should contain the entire python standard library

    You are free to use a distro which does not split packages, favorite distro, Arch Linux (btw).

    Or, you can install the recommended dependencies of python3. Testing in a container, the python3 package pulls:

    root@a72bd55a3c1a:/# apt install python3
    Reading package lists... Done
    Building dependency tree... Done
    Reading state information... Done
    The following additional packages will be installed:
      ca-certificates krb5-locales libexpat1 libgpm2 libgssapi-krb5-2 libk5crypto3
      libkeyutils1 libkrb5-3 libkrb5support0 libncursesw6 libnsl2
      libpython3-stdlib libpython3.11-minimal libpython3.11-stdlib libreadline8
      libsqlite3-0 libssl3 libtirpc-common libtirpc3 media-types openssl
      python3-minimal python3.11 python3.11-minimal readline-common
    Suggested packages:
      gpm krb5-doc krb5-user python3-doc python3-tk python3-venv python3.11-venv
      python3.11-doc binutils binfmt-support readline-doc
    The following NEW packages will be installed:
      ca-certificates krb5-locales libexpat1 libgpm2 libgssapi-krb5-2 libk5crypto3
      libkeyutils1 libkrb5-3 libkrb5support0 libncursesw6 libnsl2
      libpython3-stdlib libpython3.11-minimal libpython3.11-stdlib libreadline8
      libsqlite3-0 libssl3 libtirpc-common libtirpc3 media-types openssl python3
      python3-minimal python3.11 python3.11-minimal readline-common
    0 upgraded, 26 newly installed, 0 to remove and 18 not upgraded.
    

    python3-venv python3.11-venv

    I find it odd, because debian does this by default, actually. They account for usecases like yours, and instead you have to edit a config file or use a command line flag to get it to not install recommended dependencies.