@nay who is Adam Colley (in your x-clacks-overhead header)?

@bagder AI generated?

@ariadne @jas @mupuf Guix is still using freedesktop pkg-config, so it’s not “basically nobody” (although it seems a patch was submitted in 2024 to switch to pkgconf by default, I’m not sure what the status of that is)

@ariadne Is the FSF allowed to do that? According to the ncurses FAQ, they aren’t:

For what it’s worth, the agreement which we (original ncurses developers) made with the Free Software Foundation reads in part:

The Foundation promises that all distribution of the Package, or of any work “based on the Package”, that takes place under the control of the Foundation or its agents or assignees, shall be on terms that explicitly and perpetually permit anyone possessing a copy of the work to which the terms apply, and possessing accurate notice of these terms, to redistribute copies of the work to anyone on the same terms. These terms shall not restrict which members of the public copies may be distributed to. These terms shall not require a member of the public to pay any royalty to the Foundation or to anyone else for any permitted use of the work they apply to, or to communicate with the Foundation or its agents in any way either when redistribution is performed or on any other occasion.

As is well known, that precludes relicensing to the GPL in any version, since it would place restrictions on which programs may link to the libraries. That would deprive a substantial fraction of the current user base of the use of subsequent versions of the software. No such restriction exists in the ncurses license.

… but I don’t see how that agreement precludes relicensing to the (L)GPL, as it says nothing about placing restrictions on which programs may link to ncurses.

(Also, ncurses has been part of GNU for a long time, why would they relicense now?)

@zaire I agree that the bazaar development model is better, but calling AOSP not open source because it’s not developed in public is simply wrong.

Although in this case it’s actually worse because Google does release updates more immediately, but only to OEMs. AOSP isn’t proprietary but the version of Android that most people run is.

@zaire It is open source, it's just using the cathedral development model. By that definition SQLite isn't open source (it doesn't accept third-party contributions) and Emacs wasn't either in the 1990s (when The Cathedral and the Bazaar was written). It used to be quite common for free software projects to not have a public version control repository and only publish releases.

Hot take: Industry should abandon HDMI.
DisplayPort is better in every single case (licensing, bandwidth, physical connection).

Every single time I need to use HDMI, I have some kind of issue. One of my monitors is connected using HDMI and I had to add aliases to my shell called "fucking-lg-on" and "fucking-lg-off" that writes values to i2c device (DDC) to tell the monitor to suspend.
Otherwise when kscreenlocker sends DPMS standby, monitor keeps disconnecting and re-connecting itself which sooner or later crashes my wayland session.... and that's just one example.

I've had issues with HDMI as far back as I can remember (likely circa 2014 when I finally could afford swapping burnt-out CRT from 1999 with 1080p LCD monitor).

DisplayPort however? Zero, nada.

Then of course there's HDMI Forum which I personally hate with burning passion (for obvious reasons).

I genuinely wonder *why* manufacturers of monitors and TVs stick with HDMI when DP is superior in every single way.

@Lilith @domi I think it's possible to reject private message requests but not to reject in-room messages from a certain server (as a server admin, room admin can block servers from a room).

Even if it was possible, you'd end up blocking half the network because far too much of it is centralized on matrix.org.

Matrix is a mistake.

@ariadne I’ve been reminded of several more unfixed major bugs:

• You can set bans with spaces in them, which breaks s2s and allows you to set arbitrary modes on channels (and cause desyncs, since the server you’re on won’t see those modes but others will) as long as you can set bans. This allows you to escalate privileges from halfop to founder and set oper-only modes.
• Remote LIST exists and isn’t rate-limited, so you can easily flood off any server and cause a netsplit. Combined with the “bans with spaces allow for privilege escalation” bug and lack of timestamps, this means you can easily take over any channel and escalate your privileges to +q (founder).
• Apparently there’s a way for neither user to get killed in case of a nick collision resulting in weird cursed ghost users. I don’t quite understand this one.

I’m pretty sure jrmu knows about all this but does not care enough to switch to a less broken ircd.

@ariadne In practice none of this actually applies and pissnet is better coordinated than IRCNow. There’s no single staff channel (equivalent of pissnet’s #opers), and NgIRCd is horribly broken in ways too numerous to list (but the founder, jrmu, refuses to give up on NgIRCd and suggests that if you don’t like it you should start another network with another ircd and somehow bridge it).

Here’s a far-from-complete list of the ways in which NgIRCd is broken:

• There’s a bug that allows for s2s injection if charconv is enabled. This is now disabled on all IRCNow servers, but it took a few weeks to get everyone to do this. One server refused (claiming that disabling charconv would introduce other bugs somehow) and eventually got delinked and switched to unrealircd, but now seems to be back again.
• Sometimes random modes and bans get set on channels on netjoins, and there’s no way to unset them without a pseudoserver. I’m sure there’s a memory safety bug here somewhere.
• There’s no timestamps so it’s easy to abuse a netsplit to nick-collide someone off the network or take over a channel.
• On netjoins, servers send incorrect messages like MODE +o nick1 nick2 nick3 nick4, resulting in desyncs.
• Cloaking is horribly broken. There’s two kinds of random cloaks: one which is always enabled and one which can be enabled by setting umode +x. The configuration of this isn’t consistent across the network (some have no cloaking, some have umode +x cloaking, and some have always enabled cloaking), and servers apply umode +x cloaks remotely, which results in bans and G-lines not working properly access the network. I’m also not sure if there’s even a way to set CIDR bans, since K/G-lines apply on the cloaked IP rather than the real IP.
• Every K/G-line set leaks the oper’s real uncloaked IP address to the entire network (as well as the ban reason and mask the ban was set on), because anyone can set umode +s (or join &SERVER) to receive snotes.
• There’s no oper override logging, or way to opt out of oper override without completely disabling it for the server.
• It’s not modular and there’s no reloading the code without restarting the server.

It is literally the worst ircd I have ever used.

@stefano happy birthday!

@mapache system packages or binaries I compile myself if unavailable

@ariadne I didn't know what this was and actually thought you meant insurance for umbrellas (like in case they get damaged by wind) until I looked it up

@cwg1231 @alexia

The minio thing is shitty, but also not at all the same as what the OQL is suggesting. Also, the AGPL seems like it forbids selling license exceptions.

Correct. in order to sell exceptions you need to use a separate license for that. It’s kind-of like dual-licensing except instead of the alternative terms being available to anyone, they’re only available to those who buy them. The FSF wrote an article about this. I am using the terms “selling exceptions” and “selling an alternative license” interchangeably.

If you are the only copyright holder you can easily do that (no license can forbid the copyright from also releasing their code under another license), but if there are any other copyright holders then they must agree too, or you need some sort of CLA which gives the maintainer extra rights.

It’s exactly the same if you use the OQL instead of the AGPL. If you release your software under any license and accept contributions without some sort of copyright assignment or CLA (meaning you are not the sole copyright holder and have equal rights to the code as any other user), you cannot sell exceptions to that license.

That’s the relevance of the minio thing - I wasn’t saying it was similar to the OQL, I was saying that it’s a danger of using a CLA, which is necessary in order to sell license exceptions (whether to the OQL or the AGPL, or any other license) unless you are the only copyright holder. I’m not sure if there’s a way to mitigate this with a more restricted CLA.

The point isn’t scaring off companies, I want my software to be used, but only to better the world. The point is that under the current state of capitalism, incorporating OSS into your supply chain should require compensating developers commensurate to the responsibility you’re placing on them.

If I understand your point correctly, what you want is for companies that use your software to pay you. There are two ways to achieve this:

• Explicitly forbid them from using your software (using the OQL), and sell an alternative license.
• Scare them off from using your software without explicitly forbidding them (using the AGPL), and sell an alternative license.

They both achieve the same goal (companies will pay you for the alternative license), but the latter does so without making your software non-free. Perhaps the OQL is more effective at getting companies to pay (I’m not sure by how much), because some companies are fine with the AGPL, but using the AGPL and selling exceptions is a business model that people have successfully used.

@catsalad Three semicolons.

#include <stdio.h>
int main(void) {
;;;printf("Like this\n")
;;;return 0;
}

@dpk 2000 (Transmeta Crusoe). Also arguably P6 even before that (instructions were internally translated into RISC-y micro-operations)

@ariadne @ignaloidas Should I try writing a patch (and sending it to LKML) that adds vm.overcommit_memory=3 which would disable overcommit (as mode 2) but not ignore MAP_NORESERVE or has someone already done that and had it rejected for some reason?