A software developer and Linux nerd, living in Germany. I’m usually a chill dude but my online persona doesn’t always reflect my true personality. Take what I say with a grain of salt, I usually try to be nice and give good advice, though.

I’m into Free Software, selfhosting, microcontrollers and electronics, freedom, privacy and the usual stuff. And a few select other random things as well.

MRZ LCK 00

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Joined 5 years ago
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Cake day: August 21st, 2021

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  • Yes, I thought of that as well after sending my comment. Everything these days is a subscription service anyway. And every gadget comes with a smartphone app and a cloud which transfers my data across some ocean. The real deal happens on some server.

    Guess AI raises these questions… Even before those AI reverse engineering efforts, people have been questioning been whether it makes sense any more to learn programming, write books, draw… I’d say yes. But it ain’t easy.


  • I don’t think it’ll be bad scary though. I mean companies lock down everything by software. It’ll probably not do any harm to us if we decompiled the software on our TVs, cars, games, anticheat, …, smart toasters, and learn how they work.

    Companies letting go of 30% of their workforce, security vulnerabilities and all the copyright theft in a top-down way is what worries me. And we get that anyway with AI. So… idk… maybe this is one small upside? We can decompile and AI-wash software, too? (It is part of an ugly, bigger picture, though.)





  • I think I get what you’re saying. That is the purpose of the license text. I mean not just companies, everyone needs to abide by the rules. But yeah, that’s basically what that text does.

    What I’m trying to say is: In my experience that’s not all there is to Free Software. I mean Linux famously started out “Just for Fun” and under a different (more restrictive) license. And it took a while before it got corporate attention. Before that it was used by individuals for their own individual benefit. And it still does both as of today.

    And I tend to see that a lot. Software like the software I was talking about and a lot of stuff on my computer was started by individuals. They had an itch to scratch or whatever and just put it out there. Lots of projects I use don’t see any contributions by (other) companies and they don’t seem to care. They’re fine. There’s quite some nice large/high-profile projects out there which work the way you said. And that’s exactly how it should be like.

    Guess there’s just a lot of reasons to publish Free Software. Some do it for profit. Some do it by themselves or in a small team. Some gets used by companies and companies contribute back. Some is done by students to learn, some because someone needed something to get a job done in their life and they’re a nice person… I also like the (A)GPL. I don’t expect my stuff to be picked up by anyone and that’s not why I write software as a hobby. But uploading it is mainly a gift to the world. Not for for-profit companies to capitalize on my work. That’s why I do copyleft.

    So I think when I look at software like the one I mentioned, or the platform we’re currently using: Getting contributions back (by large corporations) might not be what the developers had in mind at all. It is however the purpose of the license text in the repository. That’s correct.

    And regarding the AI tools: Yeah, I don’t think that’s noteworthy. AI is here to stay. It’s being used as of today and will be used in the future, the world doesn’t stop or turn back.


  • I can’t tell whether that’s supposed to be opinion or a factual matter.

    What I can say, though, is: it is some sort of utopia for me. It enables me as a user to run my own independant “cloud” services, my own social media. I get to use CAD software for free which my university used to pay some 5-digit sum for, I can have a random light show in my living room, “hack” all sorts of devices and command them to do whatever I like them to do. And a bunch of really useful stuff.

    And then it also made me understand computers, learn programming… It’s transparent and I can look inside. And I’m fairly sure it’s part of who I am today, I probably wouldn’t have studied CS if it weren’t for Free Software and all the stuff it enabled me to do as a teenager.

    And that wasn’t just to force big companies to do something… The community made a big effort to welcome me, gift me stuff, teach me stuff and we even had quite some parties and user meetings and those morals and the motivation to change the world really stuck with me.

    So I got hacked and I believe in some utopia. I’m currently living it, at least for personal stuff, and to the extent we get to be free in the modern world with all its apps, spying, and tightening down things. And I’m probably not the only one.


  • I’ve been using Debian for a long time and honestly, I’m not going to worry about this too much as of today. We got that decision, yes. But I don’t think I’ve seen any consequences, yet. And I always try to judge people by what they actually do. Less so by what they say.

    I say that the last word hasn’t been said yet. On this whole AI thing. We still got many Linux people who don’t really appreciate AI. The entire community isn’t really fond of it. We got people who say there isn’t a way to make use of it responsibly. I have a hunch there’s more to this story. But only time will tell. Until then I’m going to continue using Debian, just like I have for the past 10-15 years. I trust the community distributions, they faced other challenges before. And usually they’re not half bad at facing challenges and ultimately doing the right thing.

    Doesn’t have to be easy. Sometimes we’re headed the wrong direction for a while. But what matters IMO is the result. And I’m positive they’ll find some way to deal with this. I don’t think AI fits Debian’s identity at all. Would be a big surprise to me if they don’t realize it as well.