Mastodon: @sean@dice.camp

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • AGPL? Google has a ban on all AGPL software. Sounds like if you write AGPL software, corporations won’t steal it.

    Code licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) MUST NOT be used at Google.

    The license places restrictions on software used over a network which are extremely difficult for Google to comply with. Using AGPL software requires that anything it links to must also be licensed under the AGPL. Even if you think you aren’t linking to anything important, it still presents a huge risk to Google because of how integrated much of our code is. The risks heavily outweigh the benefits.

    Any FLOSS license that makes a corporation shit its pants like this is good enough to start from IMO.

    https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl-policy






  • At some point there’s proprietary stuff in our bodies, be it a driver, a BIOS or the code that runs on the various microcontrollers that run low level functions from the USB ports to simple power management.

    The most “security paranoid” organizations in the world usually run a lot of stuff on children and babies are full of opaque and proprietary code and they consider it “safe enough”.

    People are replacing lost/damaged organs and limbs with computer-controlled hardware. The same problems that occur in computers that exist outside of humans will occur in computers inside of humans. Do you trust non-open drivers from Corporation X or Government Y in your eyes telling your brain what you do or don’t see?

    That’s the extreme, of course, but it isn’t any less scary than computers you trust with your credit card, bank account, etc information.

    Open source drivers means when corporation X goes under, your hardware still can work and isn’t automatically abandoned. It keeps more hardware out of landfills longer, with the ability to drastically reduce e-waste.