The Linux kernel is a separate system layer here, it's the AOSP parts like the Dalvik Runtime (equivalent of JRE) and components built on top of it (such as Play Store) which are being subject to permissive licensing abuse. If AOSP itself was GPL licensed, it'd have been difficult for Google to create something closed like Play Store as it'd have been considered derivative work.
You're right that broadly speaking, there is very little that could be done to stop this but having a culture of "everything GPL" in an organization definitely helps. For example, Sun was farsighted enough, though they couldn't stop Oracle from acquiring MySql, Oracle was still forced to keep MySql under GPL and they were able to salvage MariaDB too.
Similar was the case with Java. Oracle tried everything in its power to control its use and direction including legal means, it's only thanks to GPL that alternative implementations like OpenJDK and Amazon Corretto still exist. We can't even imagine the state of these software today if Sun hadn't licensed them under GPL originally but used some other permissive license instead!
This situation would have been avoided if we, as community of engineers, had insisted on full and uncompromised open source (Stallmanist or GPL way) right from the start instead of going the ESR way of half-hearted open source where it's technically open but corporates get to have a free lunch and make abuses.
Like most coders, I also prefer the permissive MIT/Apache/BSD licensing for most software projects but incidents like these make me question the direction we are heading towards. They raise fundamental questions about freedom itself - looking at the broader picture, is having a restrictive kind of freedom (GPL) often more beneficial than having full permissive freedom (MIT/Apache)?
All true except it being expensive though. I'm yet to find a major and reliable cloud service provider who can beat AWS on pricing. In fact, most either use or resell AWS under the hood themselves, even Vercel does as it turned out recently; and they're supposed to be one of the most competitive in the industry.
There are some rare exceptions who have their own large scale infrastructure and don't depend on AWS like Hetzner in EU, Alibaba Cloud in China or Ananta Cloud in India, but this market is still emerging.
Learning coding is easier than ever today, it's no longer the domain of few elite nerds sitting behind desks in large offices. It takes less than two days to learn python from free online resources like Youtube and SoloLearn; surely a small price to pay compared to lifetime of limping with LLM crutches?
I've just stepped into LLMs, pytorch, transformers, etc. on the learning path, I don't know much about advanced AI concepts yet. But I somehow feel that scale alone isn't going to solve AGI problem, there is something fundamental about the nature of intelligence itself that we don't know yet, cracking that will lead to unleashing of true AGI.
At some point, someone will start calling it out. GenZ may not as they've taken these things as granted or "way of life", but GenA might if they ever start thinking critically and out of the box.
All the charities and foundations like FSF getting donations through Bitcoin? That's a good thing. Another use case is countries like Zimbabwe and El Salvador where the fiat currency get's too inflated by regulatory abuse or becomes defunct.
Another common exception is when the collective herd instinct is invoked. When 10-15 folks congregate at a place and unleash their subliminal thought patterns, it becomes much easier to sanction a kill as it's now part of a collective guilt conscious and no one person has to bear any injury, not even a moral one.
In the interest of minimalism and collective human efficiency, buses are best. Car or SUV makes sense only when a family or friends of 3-4 folks are travelling.
The IT industry has gotten highly specialised over time. The NAND-to-Tetris style education helps create computer scientists who know their stuff from ground up. But tech companies are constantly on the lookout for vocational pragmatists (like "Python Engineer" or "Java Engineer") who could quickly replace another like them. I think that's why the high level language first approach has gotten so popular.
Exactly. Especially when considering that Signal was often advertised as that *one* privacy friendly open-source messaging solution in a world dominated by data-collecting demons like WhatsApp, etc. I don't think even WhatsApp let's such status details leak; notwithstanding whatever they might be doing with the user data on the backend.
There could be limitations on scaling the transistors as we approach nono-meter sizes, but there are other ways to sustain the Moore's Law and economies of scale; like 3D stacking, focus on specialized architectures like GPUs, TPUs, etc. and of course, the ongoing research on quantum computing which will also pay off some day.
Keep up the good work. Both desktop and cloud apps solve problems for users, but there is no doubt a different kind of old school PC era charm in using the former. There is a sense of freedom that comes from the ownership of software and platform while you work with it.
Evolution theory is generally quite coherent and intuitive. But while it can explain how a monkey or ape turned into homo-sapien, it can't explain how an amoeba turned into human. It can't explain the consciousness aspect or how life ever came from the "life-less", or was life always there to begin with?
Let us simplify our IT layers and stacks before it is too late.
It's time to introspect and ask those critical questions: Is it really necessary to install each one of these apps, every single one of these libraries and frameworks? How can I remove dependencies from these libs and do a little core work myself? And tell the same thing to your partners, colleagues, coworkers, etc. If you find 4-5 apps doing basically the same thing (like communication or productivity tool), see if you can consolidate them into one.
The press often does a great job of shielding those in power from reality, and that's what it did in most of the Biden term. Now, I also disagree with the other extreme view that press needs to be positioned so against the establishment that it conflates facts with fiction. Not taking the side of either ruling or opposition but pushing for society's interest is the real job of press.
WebSockets has become popular only due to this "instant" mindset. IRL, only a handful of messages or notifications need a truly real-time priority such as Bank OTPs, transaction notifs, etc. Others can wait for a few seconds, and other architectures like middleware, client-side AJAX polling, etc. could be both cheaper and sufficient there.
It's not about just starting a business but employing folks, working with them as a team, sharing ideas with them and collectively become stakeholders of a new creation. The ultimate source of stress reduction is the people or folks, not material wealth!
After I quit my day job and started freelancing, I actually saw my sleep schedule worsen. It partly had to do with the initial lack of projects and clients, and other challenges of freelancing itself, but what I observed was that my day job's grind or regular schedule also helped my sleep schedule.
However, I eventually overcame those challenges and created my own schedule to work with, and my sleep cycle became better then onwards.
Exactly, the organic nature of search ceased to exist that very moment when they started human intervention in a purely machine based (crawler/indexing logic) algorithm.
Call me eccentric but the only true or utilitarian use case I've found for AI so far is chatgpt. Rest all appear to be shiny toys just trying to bask in the AI glory but none solve any real human problem?
That compromise thing was like eons ago when folks like Bruce Perens and ESR tried to tow that fine line between commercial open source and free libre paradigms and were successful to a great degree.
But today, such nuance doesn't exist. The commercial ones have gone full commercial and making no qualms about it (thus the title of this post).
If this attitude continues, all commercial interests in FOSS will be seen with high scepticism unless they have a proven track record of being a good actor.
Minimal mistakes is a great theme. I had almost decided on minimal mistakes when I wanted to upgrade my blog from a simple two column Hyde theme. But then I wrote the template from scratch using bootstrap-5 as I felt that gave me more control and I took it as opportunity to develop my frontend skills. Here is my blog:
The benefit of sentence case is that you only need the rules of English grammar, simple and efficient. Title case is a layer above that and as you said, there is often little consensus on what should be capitalized and what shouldn't.
I think there is a historical pattern of same thing happening with PHP, when things like cake-php and other foo-php started gaining enough popularity to irk PHP core folks about it. Though I don't remember PHP doing an outright war against them like Matt/WP, I think they did alter their license and mention specifically to not use their name in the project in a way that associates them to PHP.