There’s a fair bit of bias in the terms “restrictive” and “permissive”, which make MIT seem like a ‘better’ choice than a give-and-take license like GPL.

The truth is, MIT is risky for developers. Using just one line from an MIT-licensed project will automatically allow others to exploit your work without giving back. I’d prefer to advocate for balanced licenses that protect both user and developer interests.

We are at risk

of losing many developers who would otherwise choose a license like the GPL. Fortunately, I’m glad to be surrounded by people, just like you, who care about licenses like GPL. By uploading this type of content and engaging with it, be show our commitment to it. I wish to suggest how we can deal with this threat.

We will lose developers who choose GPL if we use words that suggest GPL is “restrictive”. Sure, the word “restrictive” was avoided in this meme by using the word “copyleft”, but the cognitive jump from “permissive” to “restrictive” is minimal: just add an “opposite” and you’ve got “permissive is the opposite to restrictive”. It really is that simple. That’s how brain works (check out Relational Frame Theory to see how that works).

So what can we do about it?

Well, we can approach this with science. There is a historical global trend towards people being more meta-cognitive. That means that people are becoming more aware of how our thoughts interpret everyday reality and how to be intentional with our relationship with our thoughts so that we live better lives. We know this trend is happening to virtually everyone everywhere because of the work of brilliant sociologists like Anthony Giddens and Christian Welzel. Heck, even the history of psychology —going from noticing and changing behaviors (behaviorism) to noticing and changing behaviors and thoughts (cognitive-behaviorism), to noticing and changing the context and function of behaviors, thoughts, and emotions (functional contextualism)— reflects this trend.

We can use meta-cognition in our favor; we can use the meta-cognitive tool of framing to change how we think about GPL and MIT licenses. Effective communicators like influencers, political campaign experts, and influential activists use framing all the time. For example, instead of using the dangerous framing that suggests GPL is ‘restrictive’, we can use another one that truly displays the virtues of the license.

What would this other frame look like? I may not have a perfect answer, but here are some

ways of framing (thinking about) the relationship between licenses like GPL and MIT:

(ironically!!!, these were ‘suggested’ by an LLM; I wonder if these frames already existed)

• “Investment-Protecting Licenses” vs. “Investment-Risking Licenses” (as in developers invest by working on projects that they could (not) lose the ability to contribute to)
• “Community-Resource-Guarding Licenses” vs. “Exploitation-Vulnerable Licenses”
• “Give-and-Take Licenses” vs. “Take-and-Keep Licenses” ⭐
• “Freedom-Ensuring Licenses” vs. “Freedom-Risking Licenses” ⭐
• “Contribution-Rewarding Licenses” vs. “Contribution-Exploiting Licenses”
• “Open-Source-Preserving Licenses” vs. “Closed-Source-Enabling Licenses”

I’d be happy to hear what you think, including suggestions!

A friend of mine and I have gotten used to using it during our conversations. We do fast fact-checking or find a good first opinion regarding silly topics. We often find it faster than digging through search-engine results and interpreting scattered information. We have used it for thought experiments, intuitive or ELI5 explanations of topics that we don’t really know about, finding peer-reviewed sources for whatever it is that we’re interested in, or asking questions that operationalizing into effective search engine prompts would be harder than asking with natural language. We always always ask for citations and links, so that we can discard hallucinations.

It’s about time Instagram enshittifies in a grotesque way, grotesque enough for people to realize it’s shit (because it’s enshittified).

The article’s “valuing your time” argument is problematic in certain contexts. My brother has had so much trouble with his dual-boot (Windows and Linux). Yes, he could learn how to solve something in Linux every time a problem arises, but he also has to deliver his projects on time. Because of that, he mostly spends time on his Windows dual boot. Yeah, it sucks ethically and has its own pragmatic issues, but he has never had issues resolving dependencies or hunting down the most recent version that can actually be run in NixOS.

I don’t doubt these will become issues that will not be as problematic in the future, but right now my brother cannot use Linux reliably for his assignments.

Edit: My brother has tried what I use: Fedora and NixOS. He has also tried PopOS.

In Fedora, he found some of his software didn’t exist as .deb, and struggled to make .tar files work smoothly for him.

He tried NixOS afterward. He really liked the whole immutability thing, as well as the idea that apps would have their own dependencies.

His dependency problem happened in PopOS. If I remember correctly, it was a code editor that required a version of something that was different to what a package he used in his software was.

I think the order he tried was Fedora -> NixOS -> PopOS -> NixOS -> ? (Haven’t talked to him about it recently)

I can’t see how AI can’t be done in a privacy-respecting way [edit: note the double negative there]. The problem that worries me is performance. I have used texto-to-speech AI and it absolutely destroys my poor processors. I really hope there’s an efficient way of adding alt text, or of turning the feature off for users who don’t need it.

It seems like you’re passionate about emojis

I agree. And that’s exactly my point 😅

Out of curiosity, what makes you say so?

Edit: Oh. Did a “Wooosh” happen to me right now? Are you being ironic and referring to the XKCD thing about how to make a secure password using words in phrases?

Frame challenge: to avoid mass surveillance, a good FLOSS E2EE app ✌️😎

This makes me think that malware will be able to be in an iPhone even before it is taken out of the box. I wonder if this will become an issue in the future. I suppose time, good research, and effective journalism will let us know.

The way string of any material is woven should be durable. But plastic can be a magical material. It doesn’t cool when wet, regardless of whether it’s got fat on it (unlike wool, which requires lanolin). And its cheapness makes it readily available to billions of people.

To be clear, yes, we should avoid overproduction and overconsumption of plastic. Yes, we should research cheap ways of making durable and waterproof/still-warm-when-wet clothes that are biodegradable. Yes, we should require good filters in every washing machine and dryer so that we don’t get full of microplastics.

Ah. This makes sense! Thanks!

I’m not sure adblockers change the OS they report. Other tools I know for a fact do it.

Edit: However, as @aebletrae@hexbear.net mentions, adblockers don’t have to change what OS is reported to change the overall statistics. They explain how in a comment below.

Ok, so I just read upon Proton AG, the company behind Proton, and they don’t seem to owe investors money, because it was originally crowdfunded and now it finances itself with subscriptions. That sounds great! It is quite different to surveillance capitalism and enshittification (given that enshittification requires advertisers).

I am not advertising for Proton, by the way. To make that clear, I still wouldn’t use them because they seem to have very limited VPN functionality in their Linux clients. As a Linux user, I wouldn’t want that. However, if they fix that in the future, I could consider switching.

Edit: Similarly, I found this website https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/company-profile/tutao-gmbh summarizing its evaluation of Tutanota as ethical. It takes into consideration its ownership structure. Unfortunately, I cannot find details because there is a paywall for the information, but it could be the case that Tutanota does not owe money to investors and therefore is not seeking to maximize profits but rather provide a good service while compensating fairly its workers. I wish I could have more evidence.

I like that, if I only need mail with 20gb of storage, Tutanota is cheaper.

I don’t know what to do. I’ll have to think a bit longer.

I think most of the criticism on Telegraph regarding how Matrix handles rooms and events are addressed by the work behind linearized matrix: https://www.qwant.com/?l=en&q=linearized+matrix+messaging&t=web

EDIT BEINGS HERE

So I actually watched a talk by the person who coinded “enshittification”, Cory Doctorow, recently, and I have changed my perspective about Kagi. I no longer think Kagi is doomed to enshittify.

Enshittification requires advertisers. As long as Kagi finances itself with money that does not come from advertisers, it will not enshittify.

This does not mean that it’s not problematic that their code is closed-source.

EDIT ENDS HERE

I like what I hear about the user experience, but there are many problems I see with the service.

For one, it’s based in the USA, so it is legally subject to the insane, antidemocratic, and awful state surveillance there.

It is also a corporation, so it is subject to enshittification. Currently, it is giving users loads of stuff so that users use it, but sooner or later investors will want their money back and Kagi will enshittify.

Finally, these two problems would be mitigated by open-sourcing and making libre their software. With that, alternatives in more sensible legislatures could open. Users could migrate to instances that are still libre and not enshittified.

It is really unfortunate that Kagi is doing so many things well while doing some fundamental things terribly. As it stands, Kagi is doomed to enshittify.

Veloren is written in Rust and is inspired by Zelda Breath of The Wild. Both of those are relatively recent.

Hence my question :) If there are investors waiting for returns, you bet (and, like, actually, you do in fact bet) they will get more expensive. If it’s a social enterprise, I wouldn’t worry as much.

Interesting. Thanks for the reply!

I have also chatted with Tutanota workers and I didn’t have the impression that they were not driven. In fact, I think about myself: if I was a good enough developer, experienced with their stack, I’d love to work with them just for what they stand up for regarding privacy and openness. It seems like a very gratifying way of spending my time.

As to the closed platforms, I totally agree with your criticism in purely abstract terms; I don’t like that I need to rely on Tutanota for encrypted email instead of a federated system like XMPP or Matrix. However, Matrix has been an aspirational platform in which only my closest friends, and the wokest or tech-savvy acquaintances join. For a good chunk of my daily life, if I want libre, metadata-reduced, and encrypted communication, I have to rely on Tutanota’s closed email system.

Do you think there’s a way of extending email (rather than “reinventing the wheel”) that’s also as simple as “give me your email and let’s agree on a password”?