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Fuchsia is going to hurt humanity. If that sounds exaggerated, consider that its license's sole purpose is to allow propietary drivers and other kernel modules.

Fuchsia is going to hurt humanity. If that sounds exaggerated, consider that its license's sole purpose is to allow propietary drivers and other kernel modules. In a world where google wants to have clean hands and governments want to enforce policies on computers, what do you suppose will run on your android phone in the future? That's right, a government-mandated rootkit. Edit: Of course, I know that this is technically possible already now, but if google creates an OS with the explicit support for such a contraption, there will be an industry where companies like Samsung can buy their "legal modules" for their target markets soon.

spijdar 5y ago
Okay, so, two things: There are already many similarly licensed and capable OSes, some (e.g. FreeBSD) capable of running Linux executables. Are these hurting humanity? I guess you could argue that they've enabled proprietary OSes on, say, game consoles, which could be a negative on humanity. The second is it strikes me as absurd that the thing standing in the way of government rootkits is copyleft licensing. The power to enforce GPL style licenses lies in government -- a corrupt government can just ignore it. You can already ship proprietary kernel components with Linux. It happens all the time. It's why you can't use "normal" kernels on most smartphone devices. And it's easy for entities like the government or Google or Samsung or whoever to run their code in, say, TrustZone, or heck, just run Linux as a guest under a microkernel. So many ways to do it, and creating an evil BSD licensed OS with the primary purpose of furthering the surveillance state just feels ... silly to me. Because they just don't need to. Tldr; I don't believe anyone who isn't already installed rootkits on our phones is holding out until they can do it "officially" with modules for a BSD licensed kernel.
- choeger 5y ago
  As I wrote, the problem is not the license itself (although we see more and more problematic cases with liberally licensed software). The problem is that google does it explicitly to support propietary modules better. If you don't see how removing legal, organizational, and technical obstacles to controlled devices helps this modern policy, I cannot help you. Besides, this is not about surveillance anymore, that battle has long been lost. This is about enforcement.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    >The problem is that google does it explicitly to support propietary modules better. And you don't see far more use cases where "proprietary modules" are meant for, besides the one you've mentioned (which is already possible anyway)? Basically: to allow for a stable ecosystem for proprietary drivers for all kinds of devices (Fuscia will also be a desktop OS eventually)...
  - chalst 5y ago
    > If you don't see how removing legal, organizational, and technical obstacles to controlled devices helps this modern policy, I cannot help you. As spijdar observes, with FreeBSD the legal and technical obstacles were removed long ago. I find the claims of doom to be so overworked in your post that I am not clear as to what organisational obstacles you are talking about: can you calm down and express this point more clearly?
    - afiori 5y ago
      The argument would apply in the same way FreeBSD if google tried to move android to FreeBSD. The point is not that a kernel with such license exist, but rather that a major platform is moving from a GPL kernel to a non-GPL kernel. This will surely harm linux phones in the future. Whether it is the end of the world is something I do not know, but it is not a net positive for software and hardware freedom on mobile devices.
    - fsflover 5y ago
      > with FreeBSD the legal and technical obstacles were removed long ago One obstacle is still there: it has too low market share.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        That depends how much you count macOS and PlayStation as part of that market share.
        fsflover 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
hutzlibu 5y ago
"Fuchsia is going to hurt humanity. " You mean the world is the linux ecosystem? Well I disagree and I will just say, that the way I see it, Fuchsia is just pragmatic with drivers. You cannot really force the vendors to ship open source drivers for your OS. But you can make it easy for them to write them against a stable ABI. I would love to have a 100% open system. But because of proprietary standards and linux drivers policy, I am forced to use windows on my laptop. I rather would have a open OS and take just the proprietary drivers. Now I have to have the core proprietary and the drivers, with the alternative of messing with linux driver configs and custom kernels again. No thank you. I got work to do. I would take fuchsia instead, if I could. Which is open as far as I know, so I really do not see the way from here to government mandated rootkits. At least not through fuchsia.
- fsflover 5y ago
  > You cannot really force the vendors to ship open source drivers for your OS. I wish Google did exactly that. > But because of proprietary standards and linux drivers policy, I am forced to use windows on my laptop. How does it force you to run Windows? I don't understand. You just choose hardware designed for Linux and you don't need to care about the drivers at all.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    "You just choose hardware designed for Linux and you don't need to care about the drivers at all. " Yeah well, if you can afford this (money and time) luxery and find what you need, good for you. My hardware needs are not met with "linux designed hardware". I need 2 devices: full powered gaming laptop and lightweight rugged long life battery touchscreen laptop: I found nothing in that realm and I actually did searched a long time. So I have windows and chromeOS on my mobile hardware, but I gladly take fuchsia if it would be avaible.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  > "Fuchsia is going to hurt humanity. " > You mean the world is the linux ecosystem? No, humanity in general. There has been a decades-long battle between the powers that would love to have everything tightly controlled by the manufacturer (or a consortium of corporations with admissions for a lofty fee) and users who are aware of the advantages of open computing. It's a dividing line between actually owning a computing device and something like leasing it under certain conditions even though you paid for it. As everybody household has more and more computing device, and as these become much more user-hostile, transparency and openness is needed more than ever.
johncolanduoni 5y ago
Do you feel the same way about Linux kernel features like eBPF and tracepoints that provide a stable ABI for monitoring all kinds of userspace and kernel activity?
varjag 5y ago
I'm a little more optimistic. Without external community lifecycle standards to adhere to, the factional nature of Google will make Fuchsia an ever-changing festival of APIs and implementations as their userspace is. Long term they'll just add friction in their ecosystem.
coldtea 5y ago
>Of course, I know that this is technically possible already now, but if google creates an OS with the explicit support for such a contraption, there will be an industry where companies like Samsung can buy their "legal modules" for their target markets soon. What prevents one such now?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nnamtr 5y ago
How are rootkits possible in Fuchsia? IIUC, drivers run in user space, don't they?
- monocasa 5y ago
  Since it's capability based, the kernel doesn't export a list of current processes. That arguably makes rootkits easier even if they live in user space.
pjmlp 5y ago
Humanity was doing great before Linux happened, it will keep doing great afterwards.
legulere 5y ago
Linux is already destroying the environment by making updates for most android phones impossible turning them into throw-away products.
- ssth 5y ago
  No, not linux itself though, rather it is the phone manufacturer who do not want open their kernel source code so that random developer can reuse their phone even when outside support terms.
- candrews1 5y ago
  This is typically an issue with the manufacturer of the System on Chip, such as Qualcomm, Mediatek or Broadcom. They’ve likely done some CBA and determined that porting their existing platforms to new operating systems requires a lot of work, and it’s far easier to sell a new SOC to OEM instead! TLDR; blame Board manufacturers and not the Linux operating system/community as a whole. Although Google is trying so very hard to decouple the Operating system from the drivers as a whole.
- dmytrish 5y ago
  It's not like Apple products fare much better on the deprecation front, although for different reasons.
solarkraft 5y ago
Uh, okay. They could also have made it proprietary.

spijdar 5y ago

Okay, so, two things: There are already many similarly licensed and capable OSes, some (e.g. FreeBSD) capable of running Linux executables. Are these hurting humanity? I guess you could argue that they've enabled proprietary OSes on, say, game consoles, which could be a negative on humanity. The second is it strikes me as absurd that the thing standing in the way of government rootkits is copyleft licensing. The power to enforce GPL style licenses lies in government -- a corrupt government can just ignore it. You can already ship proprietary kernel components with Linux. It happens all the time. It's why you can't use "normal" kernels on most smartphone devices. And it's easy for entities like the government or Google or Samsung or whoever to run their code in, say, TrustZone, or heck, just run Linux as a guest under a microkernel. So many ways to do it, and creating an evil BSD licensed OS with the primary purpose of furthering the surveillance state just feels ... silly to me. Because they just don't need to. Tldr; I don't believe anyone who isn't already installed rootkits on our phones is holding out until they can do it "officially" with modules for a BSD licensed kernel.

choeger 5y ago
As I wrote, the problem is not the license itself (although we see more and more problematic cases with liberally licensed software). The problem is that google does it explicitly to support propietary modules better. If you don't see how removing legal, organizational, and technical obstacles to controlled devices helps this modern policy, I cannot help you. Besides, this is not about surveillance anymore, that battle has long been lost. This is about enforcement.
- coldtea 5y ago
  >The problem is that google does it explicitly to support propietary modules better. And you don't see far more use cases where "proprietary modules" are meant for, besides the one you've mentioned (which is already possible anyway)? Basically: to allow for a stable ecosystem for proprietary drivers for all kinds of devices (Fuscia will also be a desktop OS eventually)...
- chalst 5y ago
  > If you don't see how removing legal, organizational, and technical obstacles to controlled devices helps this modern policy, I cannot help you. As spijdar observes, with FreeBSD the legal and technical obstacles were removed long ago. I find the claims of doom to be so overworked in your post that I am not clear as to what organisational obstacles you are talking about: can you calm down and express this point more clearly?
  - afiori 5y ago
    The argument would apply in the same way FreeBSD if google tried to move android to FreeBSD. The point is not that a kernel with such license exist, but rather that a major platform is moving from a GPL kernel to a non-GPL kernel. This will surely harm linux phones in the future. Whether it is the end of the world is something I do not know, but it is not a net positive for software and hardware freedom on mobile devices.
  - fsflover 5y ago
    > with FreeBSD the legal and technical obstacles were removed long ago One obstacle is still there: it has too low market share.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      That depends how much you count macOS and PlayStation as part of that market share.
      - fsflover 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

hutzlibu 5y ago

"Fuchsia is going to hurt humanity. " You mean the world is the linux ecosystem? Well I disagree and I will just say, that the way I see it, Fuchsia is just pragmatic with drivers. You cannot really force the vendors to ship open source drivers for your OS. But you can make it easy for them to write them against a stable ABI. I would love to have a 100% open system. But because of proprietary standards and linux drivers policy, I am forced to use windows on my laptop. I rather would have a open OS and take just the proprietary drivers. Now I have to have the core proprietary and the drivers, with the alternative of messing with linux driver configs and custom kernels again. No thank you. I got work to do. I would take fuchsia instead, if I could. Which is open as far as I know, so I really do not see the way from here to government mandated rootkits. At least not through fuchsia.

fsflover 5y ago
> You cannot really force the vendors to ship open source drivers for your OS. I wish Google did exactly that. > But because of proprietary standards and linux drivers policy, I am forced to use windows on my laptop. How does it force you to run Windows? I don't understand. You just choose hardware designed for Linux and you don't need to care about the drivers at all.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "You just choose hardware designed for Linux and you don't need to care about the drivers at all. " Yeah well, if you can afford this (money and time) luxery and find what you need, good for you. My hardware needs are not met with "linux designed hardware". I need 2 devices: full powered gaming laptop and lightweight rugged long life battery touchscreen laptop: I found nothing in that realm and I actually did searched a long time. So I have windows and chromeOS on my mobile hardware, but I gladly take fuchsia if it would be avaible.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
> "Fuchsia is going to hurt humanity. " > You mean the world is the linux ecosystem? No, humanity in general. There has been a decades-long battle between the powers that would love to have everything tightly controlled by the manufacturer (or a consortium of corporations with admissions for a lofty fee) and users who are aware of the advantages of open computing. It's a dividing line between actually owning a computing device and something like leasing it under certain conditions even though you paid for it. As everybody household has more and more computing device, and as these become much more user-hostile, transparency and openness is needed more than ever.

johncolanduoni 5y ago

Do you feel the same way about Linux kernel features like eBPF and tracepoints that provide a stable ABI for monitoring all kinds of userspace and kernel activity?

varjag 5y ago

I'm a little more optimistic. Without external community lifecycle standards to adhere to, the factional nature of Google will make Fuchsia an ever-changing festival of APIs and implementations as their userspace is. Long term they'll just add friction in their ecosystem.

coldtea 5y ago

>Of course, I know that this is technically possible already now, but if google creates an OS with the explicit support for such a contraption, there will be an industry where companies like Samsung can buy their "legal modules" for their target markets soon. What prevents one such now?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nnamtr 5y ago

How are rootkits possible in Fuchsia? IIUC, drivers run in user space, don't they?

monocasa 5y ago
Since it's capability based, the kernel doesn't export a list of current processes. That arguably makes rootkits easier even if they live in user space.

pjmlp 5y ago

Humanity was doing great before Linux happened, it will keep doing great afterwards.

legulere 5y ago

Linux is already destroying the environment by making updates for most android phones impossible turning them into throw-away products.

ssth 5y ago
No, not linux itself though, rather it is the phone manufacturer who do not want open their kernel source code so that random developer can reuse their phone even when outside support terms.
candrews1 5y ago
This is typically an issue with the manufacturer of the System on Chip, such as Qualcomm, Mediatek or Broadcom. They’ve likely done some CBA and determined that porting their existing platforms to new operating systems requires a lot of work, and it’s far easier to sell a new SOC to OEM instead! TLDR; blame Board manufacturers and not the Linux operating system/community as a whole. Although Google is trying so very hard to decouple the Operating system from the drivers as a whole.
dmytrish 5y ago
It's not like Apple products fare much better on the deprecation front, although for different reasons.

solarkraft 5y ago

Uh, okay. They could also have made it proprietary.