Intel ends Open Ecosystem Community/Evangelism and archives other open-source projects

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TerribleReason4195@reddit

Can someone reverse engineer the Intel WiFi chips and help the FOSS world. The BSD's, GNU, and hobby projects would like that.

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steve09089@reddit

Where does it say they will stop supporting Linux on their WiFi chips?

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And why would they stop? Just because they decided to stop maintaing their open source projects? They have almost no reason to stop supporting linux. And if they do who cares use a different wifi chip.

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warpedgeoid@reddit

They stopped maintaining a handful of over 1K open source repositories. Hardly the issue that the alarmist want you to think it is.

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Gilah_EnE@reddit

Not an issue at all. Who cares? A thousand more, a thousand less, whatever.

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fellipec@reddit

Every day the writing on the wall is more clear.

Google restricting Android more and more, big distros rewriting tools in licenses that will allow them to close the source in the future, governments meddling with OSes...

I'm not happy with the future

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zlice0@reddit

for real, the future suks

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TampaPowers@reddit

Fixed a bug yesterday, it's not all bad :)

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SavingsMany4486@reddit

But that's yesterday????

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Martin8412@reddit

Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away

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AvidCyclist250@reddit

Me too. In I-descriptor. Gotta support things like that out of principle.

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fellipec@reddit

I miss yesterday when you fixed a bug. Good times. But tomorrow?

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decho@reddit

big distros rewriting tools in licenses that will allow them to close the source in the future

Care to shed some light on that situation? I assume Redhat and/or Canonical are the main culprits here? I'd like to know more about this.

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WanderingInAVan@reddit

Pretty much.

Rewriting coreutils in rust and then releasing them with major known vulnerabilities is a bad idea. The fact they are using non-gpl licenses and ignoring the fact that none of it is ready for release can not be ignored.

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twitterfluechtling@reddit

Which license do they use? Free Sofware Foundation approved ones? Could people contribute to fix bugs? I do like the idea of a Rust rewrite...

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WanderingInAVan@reddit

They went with MIT. Thing is that just because it's an approved license doesn't mean its a good one. Anyone can take MIT licensed code and change it but not share changes. Thats the problem.

MIT licensed code can easily be no better than proprietary code very easily.

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decho@reddit

I don't understand. Isn't MIT one of the most permissive licenses out there, how is that an issue?

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twitterfluechtling@reddit

While I think there is no evidence, as such, there is an.argument to be made that the strongest reason for Linux replacing practically all Unix systems, conquering most embedded systems etc. is the Copyleft aspect of the license.

This aspect is missing in MIT.

I'm not sure this is as big an issue for coreutils as it would be for the kernel, but it might be.

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FriendlyProblem1234@reddit

While I think there is no evidence, as such, there is an argument to be made that the strongest reason for Linux replacing practically all Unix systems, conquering most embedded systems etc. is the Copyleft aspect of the license.

But to be fair, a lot of software in the general Linux ecosystem is not under a copyleft license.

X11, Wayland, OpenSSH, OpenSSL, Python, MESA, Apache, Latex... All under permissive licenses.

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SEI_JAKU@reddit

Which is a really bad thing that constantly threatens the integrity of this entire ecosystem.

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FriendlyProblem1234@reddit

Which is a really bad thing that constantly threatens the integrity of this entire ecosystem.

Is it? Could you elaborate why?

Say someone forked Python and released a proprietary version. What would happen next? Would everyone stop using Python and start using this this proprietary version? Why? Would Python die just because there is a proprietary version? Why?

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SEI_JAKU@reddit

What is the purpose of this hypothetical when you clearly already know the answer?

That is exactly what would happen, and the only reason it hasn't happened yet is "sheer luck". "Why" is very strange question to ask here.

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FriendlyProblem1234@reddit

That is exactly what would happen, and the only reason it hasn't happened yet is "sheer luck". "Why" is very strange question to ask here.

You say this this is exactly what will happen, but I asked you why you say so.

And since this has been a concrete possibility for the past 30 years, why has it not happened yet? Is it really just "sheer luck"?

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SEI_JAKU@reddit

Yes! All of this is sheer luck! Please stop with the "just asking questions" bit.

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FriendlyProblem1234@reddit

Yes! All of this is sheer luck!

So we have been very lucky for 30 years. I guess we are just very lucky, no reason to expect our lucky star to ever fade...

Please stop with the "just asking questions" bit.

Oh well, I suppose when you have no arguments you can just say you take no more questions...

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SEI_JAKU@reddit

YES! Literally all business is entirely luck or manipulation! That's is arguably the entire point!

Please don't pretend that you don't know what "just asking questions" means. Please don't pretend that you haven't blatantly ignored everything I've been saying, either.

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bdsee@reddit

Because the commercial one ends up being the best one. When Amazon keeps taking open source software, selling it in their ecosystem while improving the open source tool massively but only for their customers they co-opt the tool, they benefit from all of the work of the community and give stuff all back.

If a company does this for long enough and manages to get integrated everywhere they simply will abuse their power even more by deciding to start creating differences between their version and the open source version that causes other integrations to make a choice between either supporting two offerings or supporting one and most people will choose the one with the userbase.

This shit has been happening for decades.

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FriendlyProblem1234@reddit

This shit has been happening for decades.

It also has NOT been happening for decades.

Where are proprietary versions of Python, Latex, MESA, Go, OpenSSL...? And why have they not taken over the free versions, since in your words "the commercial one ends up being the best one"?

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bdsee@reddit

Congrats, you are aware that things do happen don't happen in every instance...because that totally defeats the argument that was being made by everyone else.

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FriendlyProblem1234@reddit

Congrats, you are aware that things do happen don't happen in every instance...because that totally defeats the argument that was being made by everyone else.

It is less like it does not happen in *every* instance, and more like it does not happen in *a lot of* instances.

If large parts of the ecosystem are under permissive license and most of the time nothing happens, why would we assume it will happen in this case?

Why reactions to uutils are so emotional about its licensing, but not reactions to every other component such as Python, OpenSSL, MESA, Go...?

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decho@reddit

Ok, my knowledge on licenses is very shallow, but with your reply and the other one above, I think I'm starting to understand.

The MIT License is not copyleft; it is a permissive open-source license. It allows users to modify, distribute, and use the code in proprietary (closed-source) software without requiring the modified code to be released under the same license. It only requires retaining the original license/copyright notice.

So they can just modify coreutils, and then either not release the modified version or release as closed source/proprietary. That being said, I still don't understand why anyone would ever use that.

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

you should know that important parts of what people rely on in linux everyday are under these licenses. Like openssh. For desktop users that'd be xorg (at least until recently) and MESA.

It's not like everything we rely upon has been all GPL until recently.

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decho@reddit

Good to know, thank you. I've been hearing about these GPL licenses for the longest of times, but never really understood or paid much attention. Now I have a better idea about it all.

And yeah, I can understand why people might have their concerns with the permissive licenses. But on the other hand, it might not be an issue like you explained soooo... it's complicated haha.

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

The GPL was a major reason i got involved in Linux in the first place. I'd never seen anything like it.

It's what helped force open the the linksys router wrtg54, which is why we ended up with openwrt today. It's also at least part of why we still have some access to android. These companies are required to share these kernel changes (if they care about legal obligations).

However, I don't actually care about the GPL as much when it comes to components that have many substitutes like coreutils.

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LEpigeon888@reddit

Because it would be the default and people don't care enough to change it ?

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FriendlyProblem1234@reddit

Because it would be the default and people don't care enough to change it ?

How would it be the default?

Say, Oracle (just to pick an evil company) takes the code from uutils (or Toybox, or BSD coreutils) and make their own proprietary fork. Why would Ubuntu start using this implementation, instead of keeping using uutils? Why would Debian start using this implementation, instead of keeping using GNU coreutils? Why would OpenWRT start using this implementation, instead of keeping using busybox? Why would FreeBSD start using this implementation, instead of keeping using BSD coreutils?

And if any of those actually did start using this implementation, why would the rest of distributions follow?

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LEpigeon888@reddit

I guess people implied that Canonical would make the code proprietary, and if they did it there's no reasons to not use it in Ubuntu.

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FriendlyProblem1234@reddit

I guess people implied that Canonical would make the code proprietary, and if they did it there's no reasons to not use it in Ubuntu.

And I was talking about being the default in Ubuntu, not everywhere.

Let us say Ubuntu goes full madness and relicense all permissively-licensed software in their repository as proprietary. OpenSSL, X11, Wayland, Python, Latex, Go, OpenSSH... Everything goes proprietary and you cannot ask for the source. They can technically do it today, if they wanted.

Why would you keep using Ubuntu? Why would the whole community keep using Ubuntu?

Would not people just ignore them, and keep going on with their lives on other distributions?

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LEpigeon888@reddit

I don't know, but some people are still using open office so...

By yeah, it's hard to see how it can not kill them in the long run.

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FriendlyProblem1234@reddit

I don't know, but some people are still using open office so...

Some people do, but the community completely abandoned it ages ago.

By yeah, it's hard to see how it can not kill them in the long run.

Is it...? Python is older than Linux, and in this long run had not been killed.

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LEpigeon888@reddit

I mean switching to proprietary, not switching to MIT.

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FriendlyProblem1234@reddit

I mean switching to proprietary, not switching to MIT.

I do not think I follow you replies then.

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LEpigeon888@reddit

Yeah, by re-reading myself I agree that my messages aren't really clear. Basically I just mean that if Canonical want to make it proprietary they can but I agree that if they do it it's the beginning of the death of Ubuntu.

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fellipec@reddit

Oracle do use a proprietary coreutils. Make their database compatible only with that.

(IBM) RedHat see that and licenses (by paying a lot) the proprietary coreutils from Oracle.

Now if your enterprise runs on Oracle you either use Oracle Linux, Red Hat, or have to migrate to another database, which is a huge effort in an enterprise.

Slowly the enterprise Linux world diverges from the rest....

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FriendlyProblem1234@reddit

Oracle do use a proprietary coreutils. Make their database compatible only with that.

(IBM) RedHat see that and licenses (by paying a lot) the proprietary coreutils from Oracle.

Now if your enterprise runs on Oracle you either use Oracle Linux, Red Hat, or have to migrate to another database, which is a huge effort in an enterprise.

Slowly the enterprise Linux world diverges from the rest....

Why is this an issue only now with uutils? Why was it not an issue for the past 20 years with Toybox or BSD coreutils? Why is it no an issue with Python, OpenSSL, X11, Go, Latex, OpenSSH...? Where is the rage for all these permissively licensed components that are so important in the Linux ecosystem?

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fellipec@reddit

X11 you said? https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/x.html

People criticize those no-copyleft licenses for a long time

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FriendlyProblem1234@reddit

X11 you said? https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/x.html

People criticize those no-copyleft licenses for a long time

*Stallman* has criticised no-copyleft licenses for a long time.

But look at the community at large. Just the other day there was a post about new version 4 of OpenSSL. A pervasive, fundamental component of Linux distributions, under permissive Apache 2.0. Why all the anger is in this thread, or in the sudo-rs one, and not in the OpenSSL one?

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krsdev@reddit

I think the concern is that if the bigger distros (Red Hat, Fedora, Ubuntu etc) start using a proprietary version they become the defacto standard, and distros that are not using those may lose compatibility with them. Applications would likely target the largest user base which is using the proprietary version, and if those applications don't work on other distros then tough luck; switch to a distro that uses the proprietary version. Microsoft's old EEE strategy comes to mind.

I'm not saying this is very likely to happen but it's a possibility.

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FriendlyProblem1234@reddit

I think the concern is that if the bigger distros (Red Hat, Fedora, Ubuntu etc) start using a proprietary version they become the defacto standard, and distros that are not using those may lose compatibility with them. Applications would likely target the largest user base which is using the proprietary version, and if those applications don't work on other distros then tough luck; switch to a distro that uses the proprietary version. Microsoft's old EEE strategy comes to mind.

Why is this only an issue for uutils?

OpenSSL, Python, Apache, Go, OpenSSH, X11, Wayland... are all software released under permissive licenses.

Do you know any major distribution that switched to proprietary software?

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krsdev@reddit

Again, I don't think it is something that is likely to happen.

One thing I'm wondering though is what is the benefit of going with MIT instead of GPL for a project like this?

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FriendlyProblem1234@reddit

Again, I don't think it is something that is likely to happen.

My point is that for decades there have been dozens of important components distributed under permissive licenses. Now we have dozens plus one, so nothing really changed. But people get very angry specifically about that one, forgetting everything else.

Just a few days ago there was a new in this sub about new release of OpenSSL, a pervasive and fundamental component of Linux distributions licensed under Apache 2.0. Where were all the user concerned about its license? Looked like they were all complaining about sudo-rs license...

One thing I'm wondering though is what is the benefit of going with MIT instead of GPL for a project like this?

For one, MIT is compatible with GPL, while GPL is not compatible with GPL. You cannot mix GPL sources with GPL sources.

And the reason for this seemingly absurd fact is that GPL does not actually exist. There are instead multiple incompatible licenses: GPL-2-only, GPL-2-or-later, GPL-3-only, GPL-3-or-later.

Just to make an example with coreutils: what if the authors of uutils wanted their code to be used both by GNU coreutils and Busybox (let aside that they use a different language)? The former is under GPL-3-or-later, and the latter is under GPL-2-only. There is no GPL-X license that would have worked.

Not to mention others FOSS licenses that are not compatible with GPL-X. MIT is just more universal.

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krsdev@reddit

I don't disagree with you that it's an odd thing to get worked up about, when there are already multiple examples of other projects that are quite fundamental in this space. What is a bit different in the case of coreutils is that the rust reimplementation is as far as I understand meant to replace the GNU implementation eventually. So it's a bit curious to then go with a different license.

Thanks for that explanation btw. The GPL is kind of a mess on its own.

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decho@reddit

I mean, it depends. A big part of the Linux community strictly opposes anything that is not FOSS, it's not just a few dozen die-hard tech-savvy users. NVIDIA drivers are one of the few proprietary pieces that are commonly required in a typical Linux desktop, but to this day they are still hugely frowned upon, people only use them because there is no other choice.

You are right that a lot of people simply wouldn't care, but it will definitely not become the default for everyone. It will create a big split/division within the community, which is also obviously terrible.

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twitterfluechtling@reddit

If by "Linux community" you mean desktop Linux users (community synonym to those who are usually personally invested and make a conscious choice for a minority system, knowing they'll have to go an extra mile in many ways), then you might be right.

However, that's only a tiny fraction of the overall Linux user base: In datacenters, Linux is the default nowadays. It's not a concious choice by the end-user, they just take what they get and what works. They usually won't care if the source code is available for all the tools they use, as long as they can use it for free.

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decho@reddit

You're right, I meant desktop users. I don't have a good counter-point to what you said because I don't know what the actual numbers are. But even if desktop represents a tiny fraction of the total, it can still be a massive amount - enough people with the knowledge and will to maintain a fork.

In another comment I also speculated that such potential fork could receive funding from companies and the community itself to keep things free and open. I think (or rather hope) that people won't just accept we must use proprietary software and collectively call it a day.

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d32dasd@reddit

Because the license allows it.
MIT: they can close the source at any moment, good luck. That's called "permissive": "they reserve the permission to go closed source" aka "They reserve the permission to take away the users' rights" aka "the developers have more permissions than the users".

GPL: They are forced to share the code changes if they ship the code. That's called "copyleft": "the users have move permissions that the developers".

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FriendlyProblem1234@reddit

MIT: they can close the source at any moment, good luck.

What...? That is simply not true.

At best, someone could take the source and create a new proprietary software out of it. But the source under MIT stays free software forever.

Everyone always says "Sony used FreeBSD to make a proprietary OS". But FreeBSD is still there, nobody took it away.

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d32dasd@reddit

It is functionally the same after a handful of months pass by, maintenance is not free. Also, if they are the ones driving the project, they control the mind power.

In addition, Canonical is known for forcing contributors to sign CLAs: the copyright owner is not each contributor but Canonical LTD. That allows them to relicense their software under whatever license they want in the future (such as a propietary one). They have done this in the past.

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FriendlyProblem1234@reddit

It is functionally the same after a handful of months pass by, maintenance is not free. Also, if they are the ones driving the project, they control the mind power.

You are worried that the original author will stop maintaining a software. That is a fair worry, but entirely unrelated to the license.

If KDE stopped maintaining their desktop environment, regardless if it was licensed under a permissive license or a copyleft one, you would be in the same situation. Either someone else stepped in as maintainer, or you would have to switch to a different alternative.

Again, FreeBSD is still there, decades after its source was used by Sony.

In addition, Canonical (contrary to other competitors) is known for forcing contributors to sign CLAs: the copyright owner is not each contributor but Canonical LTD. That allows them to relicense their software under whatever license they want in the future (such as a propietary one). They have done this in the past.

You know who also did this? The Free Software Foundation...

The copyright holder is not bound by any license, but this is irrelevant. They can release new versions under a different license, even a proprietary one. But the ones available under MIT will still be available under MIT.

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d32dasd@reddit

> Again, FreeBSD is still there, decades after its source was used by Sony.

And let's be honest, largely irrelevant. Didn't get much benefit for FreeBSD that Sony was using it.

> If KDE stopped maintaining their desktop environment,

Bringing KDE as an example, when the sole reason for GNOME to be brought to life is the difference in licenses, I think misses the mark.

> They can release new versions under a different license, even a proprietary one. But the ones available under MIT will still be available under MIT.

The copyright holder *is bound to release future work as copyleft, if the license is copyleft*. With MIT, they can stop, It's not difficult to understand.

> You know who also did this? The Free Software Foundation...

Comparing a non-profit foundation with a for-profit corporation *that already has the track record of using the CLA to closed source projects*.. well, I think the point makes itself.

I start thinking that you just have a bias towards permissive licenses, instead of copylefts, just by the examples and framing that you use.
Signed: a soft engineer on one of those big open-source only corporations.

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FriendlyProblem1234@reddit

Bringing KDE as an example, when the sole reason for GNOME to be brought to life is the difference in licenses, I think misses the mark.

Please avoid drifting out of topic.

You do not like KDE example? Pick something else. PostgreSQL, Firefox, GCC, whatever.

If any of these stopped maintaining their software, regardless if it was licensed under a permissive license or a copyleft one, you would be in the same situation. Either someone else stepped in as maintainer, or you would have to switch to a different alternative.

The copyright holder is bound to release future work as copyleft, if the license is copyleft. With MIT, they can stop, It's not difficult to understand.

What...? Absolutely no, the copyright holder is not bound by any license.

If you receive a source with an attached license, you have to follow the license. If it is copyleft, you need to forward the modifications, otherwise you might just have to acknowledge the author, or whatever the license says.

But the copyright holder did not receive the source with an attached license to follow. The copyright holder created the source from thin air (or more often they acquired it together with the copyright). They can do whatever they want with the source.

I start thinking that you just have a bias towards permissive licenses, instead of copylefts, just by the examples and framing that you use.

Maybe. I use software under copyleft licenses, and I have published software under copyleft licenses.

I am just really tired of seeing free licenses being bashed just because they are not copyleft.

And I am also really tired of people oversimplifying the licensing complications. GPL does not exist. There are multiple, all incompatible, GPL-X licenses.

I made this example elsewhere: if uutils wanted to make their code usable by GNU corelibs and Busybox, both licensed under GPL, they could not have chosen GPL. Because GNU corelibs is GPL-3, and Busybox is GPL-2-only. There is no GPL license compatible with them. MIT, on the other hand, is compatible. Not to mention other free, non-GPL-compatible licenses.

MIT makes my code usable by other free software projects, GPL does not.

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d32dasd@reddit

The incompatibility that you tout comes mainly from GPL 3.0 being incompatible with Apache 2.0 (a permissive license), because of patent grant clauses. Doesn't have anything to do with copyleft per se.

> MIT makes my code usable by other free software projects, GPL does not.

MIT (permissive) gives more permissions to the corporations and the developers, which already hold the power. GPL (copyleft) gives more permissions to the users (some of which may also be developers), and is historically the group that is less advantaged.

It's obvious we disagree philosophically; yet I find very disingenuous that you seem to obviate this point in favor of your preferred solution.

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FriendlyProblem1234@reddit

The incompatibility that you tout comes mainly from GPL 3.0 being incompatible with Apache 2.0 (a permissive license), because of patent grant clauses. Doesn't have anything to do with copyleft per se.

Are you replying to the right post...? There is no mention of Apache 2.0 in my post, and none of the software I mentioned is released under Apache 2.0.

GPL-X is incompatible with GPL-Y for nearly all X different from Y. They are effectively unrelated licenses, except their name has the GPL- prefix.

You cannot use code distributed under GPL-X in your GPL-Y project (unless both use the -or-later variant), this is a fact.

MIT (permissive) gives more permissions to the corporations and the developers, which already hold the power. GPL (copyleft) gives more permissions to the users (some of which may also be developers), and is historically the group that is less advantaged.

MIT gives exactly the same permissions to users than GPL-X: they can read, use, compile, modify, and distribute the software. There is no permission given to user by GPL-X which is not given by MIT. Especially because MIT can be relicensed to GPL-X, which by definition gives the same rights as GPL-X.

I do not care about corporations. I care about other free and open-source software. If I release under GPL-X, then there will be many free and open-source software projects that will not be able to use my code. If I release under MIT, nearly all free and open-source software projects can do (I used "nearly" just in case).

It's obvious we disagree philosophically; yet I find very disingenuous that you seem to obviate this point in favor of your preferred solution.

Disagreeing philosophically does not mean you get to make verifiably-false statements, such as "The copyright holder is bound to release future work as copyleft, if the license is copyleft".

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WanderingInAVan@reddit

Because permissive means they don't have to share changes to the code. GPL requires that any modifications to code be shared with anyone who its distributed to.

MIT doesn't have that.

Being permissive isn't necessarily a good thing.

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Mapariensis@reddit

That’s not quite how it works, though. Having released code under the GPL before does not prevent the copyright holder from re-releasing versions under proprietary licences either, modifications or no modifications. In fact, having an (A)GPL product that is provided to corporate customers under a proprietary licence to prevent them from being bound by the terms of the (A)GPL is the business model of a great deal of OSS-adjacent companies.

Sure, when there are many copyright holders relicensing gets hairy, so as soon as a significant part of the codebase contains external contributions that are only licenced under GPL, this manoevre becomes more difficult, but corporate-backed OSS projects requiring external contributors to sign over ownership rights to the main corpo through a CLA is not exactly a new phenomenon either (whether it’s good for the ecosystem or not is a different discussion, I’ll grant that).

My point being: if it’s just about having the ability to take the project back in-house, the GPL would only go so far in preventing that.

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RatherNott@reddit

While it isn't completely immune, the GPL is the best defense we have against enshittification and corporate control.

If a corporate project has a CLA, then yes, it is effectively not GPL in practice, since a CLA can remove rights from contributors, making it instead act like the MIT license in practice.

If a corporate project does not have a CLA, but does not have any or very many outside contributions, then it is easy to change the license to a proprietary one.

If a corporate project does not have a CLA, bot does have many outside contributions, now it would be difficult for them to make it proprietary, as they would realistically need to reimplement all code that is from outside contributors before being able to change the license, or buy out each contributor (which defeats the advantage of MIT or CLA-GPL software being able to quickly grow with community contributions, and then rug-pull when the time is right, without having to pay any of the contributors).

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decho@reddit

Because permissive means they don't have to share changes to the code. GPL requires that any modifications to code be shared with anyone who its distributed to.

Ok, but I still don't understand why they would supposedly modify coreutils and not make the code public. If it's released as closed source/proprietary, then no one is going to use it and it will just get forked.

Sorry if these are silly questions, I'm a bit ignorant on the topic of licenses.

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

The problem people are upset about is that they can take the code without sharing their changes back at all.

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d32dasd@reddit

Because the license allows it.
MIT: they can close the source at any moment, good luck. That's called "permissive": "they reserve the permission to go closed source" aka "They reserve the permission to take away the users' rights" aka "the developers have more permissions than the users".

GPL: They are forced to share the code changes if they ship the code. That's called "copyleft": "the users have move permissions that the developers".

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decho@reddit

I honestly don't think this is as big of a deal as you're implying here. From the thousands of Linux devs out there, you don't think you'd find a dozen of them to volunteer their time for such an important cause, and instead will just accept the fact we have to use proprietary solution? And that is not even mentioning all the companies donating to open source projects. Just the other day I was reading about Futo for example.

Something as important as coreutils (fork) will attract a ton of attention.

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nzfrio@reddit

I think FreeBSD is probably instructive. It's licensed similarly to MIT. Sony's Playstation OS is built off FreeBSD, but they contribute very little back to mainline BSD.

Comparatively, everything Google does on the Linux kernel for Android has to be released back to the world.

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fellipec@reddit

They issue is you can be like Sony, take an FOSS Operating System, fork it, close its source, use to power one of your best-selling products and nobody see a line of the code changes/improvements you made.

Or any of the big names of the Unix that each one took X11 and did they own thing with it and again, never gave back. Why do you think X11 is the "outdated standard hard to maintain"? Because big players never had to share their fixes/improvements to the original codebase.

This Rust rewrite of the coreutils, with MIT license, will allow Red Hat, Canoninal, Microsoft (yes they have a Linux distro) to make their own versions, don't share their code and the compatibility of those utils we take for granted today will be gone.

Then a major company like Oracle releases their product with a dependency on one of those closed core utils and suddenly you can't run their enterprise software in things like Rocky Linux or Alma Linux. Either pay for the RHEL or other one with the closed core utils or you can't run the software your enterprise rely on.

Slowly the enterprise Linux world moves away from the FOSS Linux world because of diverging standards and we got less and less support. Imagine NVidia releasing their drivers compatible only with some proprietary fork of rewritten system components. The huge players in datacentres don't bat an eye, we lose the support.

TL/DR, Stallman Was Right.

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captainBSD@reddit

I think MIT and BSD are mostly the same. So, you can compare FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD development with GNU/Linux and take your own conclusions.

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SEI_JAKU@reddit

Being completely permissive is inherently bad. This is about the paradox of tolerance. The GPL protects against the paradox.

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cafk@reddit

It's permissive, but unlike GPL variants doesn't require publishing the source code under the same license.
So some companies can easily form it and publish proprietary incompatible binaries, without insight to their changes.

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nelmaloc@reddit

As an addendum to the other thread, the actual license the FSF approves for non-copyleft code is the Apache license. The MIT license doesn't protect against patents.

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twitterfluechtling@reddit

Good point! I didn't think much about the SW-patent problem for some time, was more focused on copyright :-(

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

Ya know what most of us rely on that has never been GPLed though? xfree86/xorg, openssh, MESA. They seem to have not caused any problems.

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warpedgeoid@reddit

Some maintainers just want to fucking code and not worry about license politics. GPL is just too complicated and fraught with compatibility issues.

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adenosine-5@reddit

Its simply not true - some utilities are being rewritten using MIT licence, which makes it specifically impossible to "close the source".

They could in theory proceed with developing a closed-source continuation, but the original will always be open-source.

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inemsn@reddit

In your own comment you pointed out exactly how it's possible to close the source when using MIT.

This is why we need to push for GPL usage. Projects written with the GPL can never be stolen and closed down. The MIT license leaves that door wide open and the GPL was created specifically because this was already a problem decades ago.

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adenosine-5@reddit

You can't "close the source".

You can build a close-source software on top of it.

But the MIT code can never be taken away.

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fellipec@reddit

It is so useful to have an outdated, unmaintained codebase sole on the hands of community while huge companies use their closed fork forever, build around it and nobody can do a thing.

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adenosine-5@reddit

unmaintained codebase sole on the hands of community

I'm not sure if open-source community is best for you with view like that, if all you want is some large corporation "properly taking care of a code".

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fellipec@reddit

I don't know if you are an ally of the community if all you want is a license that allows big companies to steal from it.

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warpedgeoid@reddit

You’re being a perfect example of why participating in open source projects is not more mainstream. The obsession with politics and making sure that only approved types of freedom are exercised is off putting.

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Synthetic451@reddit

Eh, he has a point though. It's about making sure corporations contribute back their improvements. It is part of the reason why corporations contribute so much to the kernel.

Open source is inherently political, especially since corporations are running out of control these days. It is important to be aware of the dangers.

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warpedgeoid@reddit

Fine. But most people (and companies) just want to make cool stuff. They will do it and never formalize it if the burden is too high.

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VelvetElvis@reddit

Companies exist to maximize value for investors. The company has a fiduciary duty to do so. The stockholders and board of directors do not care in the slightest what the company's product even is. How does releasing source code when not required to do so make investors more than keeping it closed? Why would the board not be justified in suing the CEO for all he's worth if he gives away their product for no reason? It's not the company that's on the hook. It's the CEO personally, AFAIK.

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Synthetic451@reddit

Engineers just want to make cool stuff yes, but the money men who control and fund things do not and frankly I am tired of pretending they give a shit about the health of the industry. The monetary incentives need to be aligned in the right way and it starts by making sure that some of those incentives are aligned with open source.

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ValuableOven734@reddit

Ironically many of the people who are into the MIT license are libertarian types who are very much perusing a political agenda. One where profit is the motive and MIT makes that easier (because its friendly to closing a fork).

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IncidentalIncidence@reddit

the idea that anybody can take it and do what they want with it is like the entire basis of the FLOSS movement. That isn't stealing.

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sigma914@reddit

That's not closing the source, that's closing future development, the source of the version that's out there never goes away.

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zmaile@reddit

What the poster is saying is if a closed source (or non-free open source) version gets all the development, then it can become the defacto standard version, which for all practical purposes makes it closed source.

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sigma914@reddit

And people who care about having and open source version will just build on the last free software version. You know like linux distros etc. It's a complete non-issue for things like this.

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inemsn@reddit

It was an issue in the 80s, and it would be an issue now. Why exactly do you think Linux thrived whereas BSD did not?

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sigma914@reddit

Novell

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inemsn@reddit

A case which would have been avoided if open source projects used the GPL from the beginning, which would have made the legitimacy of that case VERY clear.

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sigma914@reddit

Huh? The GPL only came about in like 1989, it was released like a decade after Berkely got it's hands on the original AT&T source, of course that suit would have gone ahead.

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inemsn@reddit

This hypothetical scenario obviously assumes the GPL would have been made much earlier due to the industry understanding the need for a copyleft license like the GPL. Which it didn't, hence why it was made with a permissive license instead.

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

ya know what's worse though imo.. is when a project takes GPLed code contributions but require you to sign a CLA, and they can use it just like it's closed source.

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spacelama@reddit

They could in theory proceed with developing a closed-source continuation, but the original will always be open-source.

In ways in which the GPL would have prevented. Which is why it's being done.

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m4teri4lgirl@reddit

Red hat isn't a company.

"Red Hat" already has a closed source Unix-like OS that they could force people to use but they don't.

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KratosLegacy@reddit

Good ol capitalism and authoritarianism. What a power couple.

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frozenbrains@reddit

Never thought I'd be nostalgic for the days when Intel adding a unique serial number with the Pentium III heralded the end of private computing. Things were so much simpler then.

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tilsgee@reddit

big distros rewriting tools in licenses that will allow them to close the source in the future,

I request context

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global-gauge-field@reddit

But, in the article it mentions

"While unfortunate to see something such basic happen especially with how they have been such vocal open-source proponents over the past two plus decades, this archival may stem from their lack of current open-source evangelists at the company"

Also, framework also announced a partnership with intel in their event this week. I would not be so pessimistic. Just keep supporting companies (e.g. framework) that supports open source development.

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eredengrin@reddit

Intel works on a really broad range of hardware and software to the point that a lot of their software projects make me wonder whether anyone really uses it. They've been on the back foot for quite a while and doing a lot of internal reorganization/re-prioritization and looks to me that these are just part of that effort. Only one of the repos linked has more than 40 commits, and most haven't seen a commit in years. Intel has 1.3k repos on github, archiving a few old demo projects is just business as usual. I'd be more concerned about reducing headcount of their open source liaisons, but given all their other layoffs, it doesn't strike me as especially nefarious.

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i-hate-birch-trees@reddit

Yeah, the biggest victim in all of this Intel cut back was Clear Linux a while back. So many distros and kernels adopted their patches, it was a very good effort to optimize. Another good project was IWD, I found it to be a bit quicker and ergonomically more comfortable than wpa_supplicant, but apart from these 2 I struggle to remember any other Intel projects I actively used.

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Indolent_Bard@reddit

What other distros than cachyos adopted their patches? What kernels?

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i-hate-birch-trees@reddit

Linux Xanmod Liquorix Kernel Linux-tkg

Apart from Cachyos - Solus also adopted ClearLinux patches, and Nobara, Garuda, Arch, etc all have one of the above kernels available as an option. Pretty much any Linux-related tuning project, uses ClearLinux pathes.

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AdLimp8574@reddit

I wanted to like IWD, it bonds faster on my home network and roaming works a lot better but because it doesn't have support for the authentication the Wi-Fi my work uses I couldn't keep it on my laptop

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unixmachine@reddit

The problem, in my view, is that AMD was taking advantage of these patches to advance its CPUs. I can understand the reason for abandoning the distro, as it was more of an experiment than a real distro.

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

intel's contributions to the kernel have helped AMD, and they know about it.

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Gozenka@reddit

Is iwd one of the archived projects too? It is hosted on git.kernel.org. Commits and releases on it seem to continue as usual? I think they only pulled some of their own staff from actively developing it. And perhaps that is because iwd is more mature now, compared to years ago.

I can understand the archival of many small projects, while keeping those that are rather mainstream and liked by masses. They do not need to keep 1000+ active open-source projects managed by themselves. But I still am not sure if I should think these actions are a setback for open-source in general.

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i-hate-birch-trees@reddit

Yeah, it's being developed, but without intel now

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Gozenka@reddit

The commits still seem to come from the same people as years ago, and an Intel employee is still the one with the release commits.

I am just unsure about how to interpret this retraction from open-source projects by Intel. If it is just a decision about official dedicated staffing, that seems rather harmless and understandable.

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redundant78@reddit

yeah this is the right read. the repos being archived are mostly evangelism/demo stuff, not their actual driver or kernel work. intel is still one of the largest contributors to the linux kernel by a wide margin. people in this thread acting like intel is pulling out of open source entirely need to actually look at what was archived.

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i860@reddit

I can only imagine what the last 10 years of their hires are comprised of. Dead man walking and they did it to themselves.

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Ill_Net_8807@reddit

if they don't support linux i won't be buying their chips.

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MushroomGecko@reddit

Yes... embrace the RISC-V... do it... it's an open architecture... literally the Linux of CPUs... No Intel ME. No AMD PSP... Anyone can make a chip, and it's only getting better by the day. Embrace it. Get a Spacemit K3 board. You know you want to...

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adenosine-5@reddit

Pretty much no one is buying Intel these days anyway.

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Flash_Kat25@reddit

Their new desktop chips kick AMD's butt. Far better value for money than AMD, which is the opposite of the situation 3 or 4 generations ago.

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adenosine-5@reddit

Did they solve the issue they had with power consumption, where AMD would be like 65W and Intel like 200W?

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Flash_Kat25@reddit

Yes. 14th gen core slurped power like there's no tomorrow. 1st gen core ultra improved the efficiency a lot, losing a bit of performance in the process. 2nd gen was a big perf bump with only a small increase in power consumption. The main issue now is socket longevity - Intel has no sockets like AM4 that were supported for ~10 years. Though to be fair, AM4 was an outlier even in AMD's sockets.

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adenosine-5@reddit

I just checked and the lowest Intel TDP I see is still 120+W, which is slightly better, but still pretty bad (and IIRC Intel counts TDP differently, so in reality its still higher, unless something changed?)

But yeah, the sockets are the other huge issue for me - TBH I hate even their completely chaotic naming.

AM3 -> AM4 -> AM5? Yes please.

Intel 1556 -> 1555 -> 1550 -> 1551? What the hell are they smoking?

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_Bella_1993@reddit

They’d be killing a whole ton of commercial servers by not supporting Linux on their newest chips, they wouldn’t dare not support Linux

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Unpopular-Opinion777@reddit

Isn’t AMD buying them out?

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prijindal@reddit

They will definitely keep on supporting Linux, the real money is in selling chips to data centers

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Misicks0349@reddit

havent been for years since ryzen tbh.

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pandaro@reddit

if they don't support linux

they will - there are no other options.

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BeautifulMundane4786@reddit

Framework just released a framework 13 laptop with Intels newest mobile cpu and Ubuntu preinstalled from the factory 🤦‍♂️. Also Framework needs to do research about company’s they want to have partnerships with otherwise its investors might leave the company.

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rjzak@reddit

I’d love an OpenPower/PowerPC version, they should team up with https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/

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i_lost_my_bagel@reddit

Why powerpc specifically

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rjzak@reddit

It’s well supported by Linux, has good performance, and for some: nostalgia

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nelmaloc@reddit

PowerPC doesn't have firmware blobs. It's the same reason Stallman used a MIPS-based Lemote Yeeloong.

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totallynotbluu@reddit

because its got zero game in the modern computing landscape or something

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LoserOtakuNerd@reddit

At this point, if you want to put your backing behind uncommon and open hardware, you should focus on RISC V. I don't see a future in PowerPC.

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warpedgeoid@reddit

You should do research before running your mouth in a public forum

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WanderingInAVan@reddit

When it comes to clubs there are only 2 players in the x86 game. I honestly was thinking of buying the pro chassis and then getting my hands on either the risc-v board or the aem64 board.

Thing I love about them is being able to do that.

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trenclik@reddit

They also sell experimental risc-V mainboards

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Informal_954@reddit

You can always get it with an AMD mainboard

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Global_Grass829@reddit

let Intel die in peace

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Tireseas@reddit

Oh god, reading some of this is like going back to he early 90s and the permissive vs copyleft licensing debates. Only this time there's a great deal more kneejerk idiocy. MIT licensing is fine, it's worked for longer than some of you have been alive for it's intended purpose of making code available and broadly usable.

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nelmaloc@reddit

Permissive licensing is fine

With a permissive license OpenWrt wouldn't exist, and the whole ElasticSearch issue wouldn't exist. Now, what patches has Intel contributed to MINIX? Where can I get the PS4's FreeBSD source code?

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Tireseas@reddit

Without permissive licensing half of the internet wouldn't exist.

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nelmaloc@reddit

Yes it would.

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Tireseas@reddit

I'd advise you to go look at the sheer amount of critical infrastructure that's under permissive licenses. The people who built those projects were not, for the most part, stupid.

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nelmaloc@reddit

«wouldn't exist» is a lot different from «[i]s under permissive licenses». What piece of infrastructure wouldn't exist without permissive licenses?

The people who built those projects were not, for the most part, stupid.

Nobody said they were.

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Tireseas@reddit

Pretty much the entire underpinnings of the Internet protocol and server wise. I mean yeah someone could have done alternate implementations but the permissive reference implementations almost certainly would have emerged on top via darwinism. The whole point of having a standards base is to get the code used by as many parties as possible.

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