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Joined duela 2 urte
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Cake day: api. 09, 2021

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This link is relevant for context. It’s a small blog post from Steve McIntyre identifying the problems he sees with firmware in Debian and proposing solutions. Eventually McIntyre’s views led to this general resolution.

Quoting from that link:

In my opinion, the way we deal with (non-free) firmware in Debian is a mess, and this is hurting many of our users daily. For a long time we’ve been pretending that supporting and including (non-free) firmware on Debian systems is not necessary. We don’t want to have to provide (non-free) firmware to our users, and in an ideal world we wouldn’t need to. However, it’s very clearly no longer a sensible path when trying to support lots of common current hardware.

With his proposed solution being to

[…] split out the non-free firmware packages into a new non-free-firmware component in the archive, and allow a specific exception only to allow inclusion of those packages on our official media. We would then generate only one set of official media, including those non-free firmware packages.

So basically the same that was voted now, “Change SC for non-free firmware in installer, one installer”.


In my humble opinion, as a literal nobody on the internet: sometimes you need to take a step back to take two forward. This inclusion looks undesirable but necessary, and I feel like giving differential treatment to non-free firmware vs. non-free software was the right move here, to minimise the ideological damage caused by promotion of non-free code.


Then my bad on claiming that those were “your” claims, what I said should apply to the original author.

My point still stands though. Those questions are still better addressed individually; for example, gathering some data on software quality and contrasting open and closed source, including the reference that you linked in #2. Then I bet that you’ll get better arguments, as the matter is more approachable for discussion.


It does add meaningful info to the discussion: it shows why people would be less-than-eager to reply to a post to contradict it. It also shows that good faith discussion, trying to achieve a consensus (or at the very least better understanding) should start with simple and basal claims, otherwise the other side will not answer.

Now analyse your own post, and notice how many claims you did to chain your argumentation:

  1. That the meaning of “open source” has changed over time; did it?
  2. That “most free software is poor or unusable”; is it?
  3. That “protagonists like to use isolated points fallacy to sell the idea that FOSS is great”; do they?
  4. Who are even the “protagonists” in #3?
  5. Taking #2 as true (something that plenty people here won’t), the alleged poor quality is due to lack of capital. Is it?
  6. Are the examples mentioned (OO, Emacs, Linux) representative?
  7. Is free open source “not often innovative”?
  8. How those attributes compare with commercial software?

You’re also making a definition mess, for example at the end you’re contrasting “open source” with “commercial”, even if both attributes are orthogonal to each other. (i.e. you can have non-commercial closed source, and commercial open source). There’s also the issue with “free-as-free-speech software” and “open source” being conflated together.

I won’t bother defending free and open source here because, frankly, I’m more of a lurker than a debater, but this is not the way to introduce a discussion.


you never start anywhere

A good start would be Brandolini’s principle of bullshit, stating that “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.”


LvxferretoOpen Source@lemmy.mlrss
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119 hilabete

RSS/Atom is comfy and does what I need it to do: it tells me when a page is updated.


LvxferretoOpen Source@lemmy.mlrss
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29 hilabete

I do. Mostly /a/, /ck/, /g/ and /vg/.

Yes, the place has been infested by Stormfront refugees, /pol/ is cancer central undergoing metastasis and spreading cancer everywhere, and /b/ managed to go from “this shithole was never good, but it’s funny” to “this unfunny shit needs to improve to become a shithole”. And the whole site has been redditised, so users there spend more time assuming words on the others’ mouths than actually discussing the topic.

However, it’s still a decent place to discuss random stuff. Your typical Anon is dumb as a brick, but at least not dumb as a snoo. Entitled whining leads you nowhere there so most entitled users either leave or stop whining. And there’s still some sense of humour left, not touched by the alt right.


I love Debian but I don’t recommend using it. Stable is mostly ancient software, and Testing is like a less stable Ubuntu or Mint.


Yes it absolutely is, because “woke culture” is nothing but a strawman to justify LGBTQIA±phobia and racism. Let’s not forget that “traditional values” are forged in a lot of those things.

It’s 90% strawman, 10% hypocrite finger-pointing at things that the alt right also does - such as the thing that they call “virtue signalling”. The later is yet another of those “even a broken clock is right twice a day, but if you’re assuming that a broken clock is reliable then you’re braindead” cases.


It looks disgusting, exactly like the original. I love it!


Nothing intrinsic; only through subjective associations one might make between the language and something else.


It is said that this document work will fundamentally change the way everyone works at Canonical and require documents to a higher standard.

That’s great, but I hope they don’t get rid of chunks of documentation just because “it’s of lower quality”. Low quality doc is still better than no doc at all.


If you prevent users from doing stupid shit, you’ll end preventing them from doing smart stuff too.


I think the article handles well the message that version numbers are meaningful for users, and that developers should be a bit more careful with them than just “ah, I got 20 fingers/toes so it’s up to 20”.


Besides, using this argument you’d imply the global south would be a better place if, for example, the US political system (or Russia for that matter) disintegrated and balkanized into 50 small strongly non-synchronized states.

Yes.