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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: May 31st, 2023

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  • I’m not complaining; I’m clarifying for less informed readers. It’s a subtle and often misleading distinction.

    Calling a license that leads to more proprietary software “even more open source” is absolutely debatable. The only extra restriction is disallowing free software becoming proprietary, which promotes more openness overall.

    You’re not wrong by any means, but people should understand the actual tradeoff when considering licenses.






  • Yes, exactly! For all the noxious effects of greed, it drives competition which drives evolution.

    Even if a utopian communist/anarchist society were able to stabilize on its own, it would inevitably be overcome at some point in the future by a more competitive society that had martially evolved beyond the utopia’s understanding.

    Whether its right or wrong has no bearing on the entropy of it.



  • What a goofy take. “Having trouble with self control? Have you tried having self control?” Obviously there’s something more going on or life would be a whole lot simpler. Sometimes externalizing a decision through a tool like a timer is part of how a person indirectly exerts self control.











  • The BDFL model, as it’s called, is what allows large projects to continue to have focused vision rather than devolving into design-by-committee. The kernel is actually already well beyond pure BDFL, but my point is having a single point of overall leadership can be a huge boon for the organization of large and complex projects. FOSS philosophy has literally nothing to do with management structure; it’s entirely about the rights of the end user.

    BDFL is not without its own risks. WordPress is a good counterexample these days. But, when someone originates a project and sticks around to steer it, it would be silly to reject their proven successful leadership for such a vague reason as you have presented.

    When things do go sideways, people are free to fork the project. That is what FOSS is.