beyond

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[–] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 5 points 1 year ago

This is proprietary software even if it's been put in a git repo (presumably without the consent of the rightsholder) and run offline.

As has been pointed out in this thread, someone already got hit with a DMCA takedown for this.

[–] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

We don't do planned obsolescence in the software freedom world. We keep old software and hardware usable way past its intended expiration date. If something is usable and does the job there's no reason to throw it away - and, remember, since it's free software anyone interested can fork it and bring new life to it.

Of course, with old software and hardware there are security considerations to keep in mind - I wouldn't use an abandoned web browser, for instance. But for any app that has no network access and no or very little attack surface there's no harm in using it as long as it suits your needs.

[–] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

I don't understand why we spend so much time praising proprietary software in these communities.

As to your question, I have a separate Windows machine for gaming, but that's it. I keep one foot in the free world and one in the proprietary. As for productivity tools I can't think of a proprietary tool I "can't quit" or that I would pick in favor of a free tool.

Fans of proprietary software have this weird belief that free software users choose inferior tools for purist or idealist reasons. This is offensively ignorant. No one chooses bad tools on purpose; we just consider freedom to be part of the criteria of a good tool.

[–] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because it's not really about the "availability" of source code, but more about what you can actually do with the source code. If you don't have the four freedoms it's not free software.

[–] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

source-available.

Ergo, proprietary.

edit: my prior comment on the difference between fauxpen source and true free software licenses. It's not just theoretical or "purist"

[–] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 4 points 1 year ago

I agree that the Midori website is suspicious however their repo properly credits Firefox and Floorp in the very first sentence of the readme (however they don't actually link to this repo for some reason). In any case, my intent isn't to defend Midori (which I don't use or have any interest in) but rather to defend the four freedoms none of which are conditional on how much a fork adds or contributes back. In other words, it's perfectly ok to just fork something and change the name.

I still maintain it's ironic that a fork developer is complaining about forks of his fork. This statement is baffling but I suppose it comes from a proprietary mindset where copying is theft:

If these are forked, my hundreds of hours will have been wasted.

By this logic the decades of development time on Firefox is wasted because of this guy's fork.

[–] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 5 points 1 year ago (6 children)

The "open sourced" private components repo is under a fauxpen source (non-commercial) license. Floorp is still proprietary.

[–] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Unfortunately a lot of this seems in reponse to Midori, a seemingly hostile fork with a pretty suspcious website.

To some people all forks are hostile. This appears to be such a case. He just seems to be sour over people exercising the same freedoms he got from Mozilla upstream. Rules for thee but not for me. The free software community doesn't need his obscure fork.

[–] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

With Unison syncing is a manual process, I run it and it tells me what's changed on each side and I can make changes as appropriate. Syncthing is a bit too automatic for my taste and its conflict resolution is a bit more involved.

[–] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

They do say that

They will be using a different repository with a different license for some of its new features

"different license" suggests to me it might be a proprietary/fauxpen source licene, since this is explicitly being done to punish a fork.

[–] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I use the Unison file sync tool to keep backups of all my important files on flash drives and servers. For mobile devices I do use Syncthing because MTP is painfully slow and taking the SD card out of the device to plug it in is too much of a hassle, but I would rather use Unison.

[–] beyond@linkage.ds8.zone 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Fauxpen source licenses (both of the "business" variety as well as the so-called "ethical" variety) have a fatal flaw: they prioritize the interests of the rightsholder over that of the community or the user. They are thus not so different than a standard proprietary EULA in concept, even if they are more permissive.

The reason this is an issue is because it inhibits code reuse. True free software licenses don't privilege the interests of the rightsholder any more than copyright law already does, because in the free software movement the developer is just a fellow user/member of the community. In other words, the GPL is the GPL is the GPL no matter who the rightsholder of the GPL code is. This means that code from many different rightsholders can be mixed together into a single program with no issue. Linux, of course, is probably the biggest example of this.

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