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> They can totally look at it, but if they copy it into Windows Terminal, they need to relicense Windows Terminal under the GPL. That would be a great outcome f

> They can totally look at it, but if they copy it into Windows Terminal, they need to relicense Windows Terminal under the GPL. That would be a great outcome for everyone. no! it would not! the GPL is a truly awful license. "freedom" my white butt. it's a list of requirements, all of which restrict the freedoms and abilities of those who utilize it. about rendering: I'm not trying to say that it's hard. I'm trying to say that they believed they knew how to do it, when in reality they did not. THAT'S ALL. Everyone is laser focused on the details of what I am saying and completely missing the point of what I am saying, or trying to say. I am apparently speaking a language that is close to English but not actually English.

sophacles 4y ago
> Everyone is laser focused on the details of what I am saying and completely missing the point of what I am saying, or trying to say. I am apparently speaking a language that is close to English but not actually English. Have you considered that people are disagreeing with you because you are wrong rather than because they don't understand you?
- kragen 4y ago
  Well, it's true that I spent a lot of words attacking the claim that making a terminal emulator snappy (in the usual case, maybe not Zalgo cases) would be difficult, and it is also true that naikrovek didn't actually make that claim. Rather, they claimed that the Windows Terminal team didn't know how to do it. Which, I mean, maybe that's true, but it isn't that hard to figure out. I think it's more accurate that they didn't bother and made up rationalizations for their shitty software after the fact.
kragen 4y ago
Oh, well, I agree that the Windows Terminal team overestimated their own competence. I just think they had to argue some pretty obviously implausible positions in order to do so. You have to dumb pretty hard to start believing that a 3 GHz 2-core superscalar i7 with AVX256, 24 MB of L3 cache, and a SIMT GPU can't handle the load of emulating a VT100. And having the Windows Terminal licensed under the GPL instead of a Microsoft EULA would strictly increase the freedoms and abilities of its users: they could still legally do all the things with Windows Terminal they do now, plus lots of new things as well. Opt out of undesired updates, for example. Even the Windows Terminal team would have more freedom that way: they could go work at a different employer and keep hacking on the code they wrote as part of Windows Terminal.
salawat 4y ago
>no! it would not! the GPL is a truly awful license. "freedom" my white butt. it's a list of requirements, all of which restrict the freedoms and abilities of those who utilize it. The only freedom the GPL restricts is the freedom to maintain a captive audience in a state of information asymmetry guaranteed helplessness. You're not making a good case for yourself here.
- naikrovek 4y ago
  GPL forces code others write for your project to also be GPL. that is a loss of freedom for that contributor. if I license something with the MIT license, anyone can use it for any purpose, and they can take my code with their modifications private if they want, meaning those entities are free to do what they want, and the code I released is still freely available just like it was before. I lose nothing, and no freedoms were taken from anyone who uses my code.
  - kragen 4y ago
    Windows Terminal isn't licensed under any of the various MIT licenses, though; it's licensed under the Windows EULA. The Windows EULA forces code others write for Windows Terminal to never exist in the first place, and it forces the people on the Windows Terminal team to lose access to their own code if they leave Microsoft. So moving Windows Terminal to the GPL2 would be a gain of freedom for all those people. Only Satya Nadella would suffer a loss of freedom. That sort of simple numerical counting isn't enough for an ethical argument, of course. If my house is converted to a public park, then everyone gains the freedom to drink beer in it, or at least everyone in Buenos Aires does, and only I lose any freedom, like the freedom to sleep in a dry bed when it's raining without raucous beer-drinkers guffawing all around me. But this is still a net loss because the benefits to everyone else are not as important as the loss to me. In the Windows Terminal case, the situation is the other way around: Nadella would suffer a loss of freedom that affects him only in a de minimis way, while everyone else would gain substantially.

sophacles 4y ago

> Everyone is laser focused on the details of what I am saying and completely missing the point of what I am saying, or trying to say. I am apparently speaking a language that is close to English but not actually English. Have you considered that people are disagreeing with you because you are wrong rather than because they don't understand you?

kragen 4y ago
Well, it's true that I spent a lot of words attacking the claim that making a terminal emulator snappy (in the usual case, maybe not Zalgo cases) would be difficult, and it is also true that naikrovek didn't actually make that claim. Rather, they claimed that the Windows Terminal team didn't know how to do it. Which, I mean, maybe that's true, but it isn't that hard to figure out. I think it's more accurate that they didn't bother and made up rationalizations for their shitty software after the fact.

kragen 4y ago

Oh, well, I agree that the Windows Terminal team overestimated their own competence. I just think they had to argue some pretty obviously implausible positions in order to do so. You have to dumb pretty hard to start believing that a 3 GHz 2-core superscalar i7 with AVX256, 24 MB of L3 cache, and a SIMT GPU can't handle the load of emulating a VT100. And having the Windows Terminal licensed under the GPL instead of a Microsoft EULA would strictly increase the freedoms and abilities of its users: they could still legally do all the things with Windows Terminal they do now, plus lots of new things as well. Opt out of undesired updates, for example. Even the Windows Terminal team would have more freedom that way: they could go work at a different employer and keep hacking on the code they wrote as part of Windows Terminal.

salawat 4y ago

>no! it would not! the GPL is a truly awful license. "freedom" my white butt. it's a list of requirements, all of which restrict the freedoms and abilities of those who utilize it. The only freedom the GPL restricts is the freedom to maintain a captive audience in a state of information asymmetry guaranteed helplessness. You're not making a good case for yourself here.

naikrovek 4y ago
GPL forces code others write for your project to also be GPL. that is a loss of freedom for that contributor. if I license something with the MIT license, anyone can use it for any purpose, and they can take my code with their modifications private if they want, meaning those entities are free to do what they want, and the code I released is still freely available just like it was before. I lose nothing, and no freedoms were taken from anyone who uses my code.
- kragen 4y ago
  Windows Terminal isn't licensed under any of the various MIT licenses, though; it's licensed under the Windows EULA. The Windows EULA forces code others write for Windows Terminal to never exist in the first place, and it forces the people on the Windows Terminal team to lose access to their own code if they leave Microsoft. So moving Windows Terminal to the GPL2 would be a gain of freedom for all those people. Only Satya Nadella would suffer a loss of freedom. That sort of simple numerical counting isn't enough for an ethical argument, of course. If my house is converted to a public park, then everyone gains the freedom to drink beer in it, or at least everyone in Buenos Aires does, and only I lose any freedom, like the freedom to sleep in a dry bed when it's raining without raucous beer-drinkers guffawing all around me. But this is still a net loss because the benefits to everyone else are not as important as the loss to me. In the Windows Terminal case, the situation is the other way around: Nadella would suffer a loss of freedom that affects him only in a de minimis way, while everyone else would gain substantially.