5 ms·

Glad you're liking it! I've been working on simplified hosting for nixosConfigurations; likely I'll launch paid plans along with that, since otherwise costs wi

by jkarni 4y ago

Glad you're liking it! I've been working on simplified hosting for nixosConfigurations; likely I'll launch paid plans along with that, since otherwise costs will be too high for me to shoulder, and anyhow free hosting leads to abuse or the moral hazard of accidentally using too many resources. I still have some hope for a donation-based system for individuals, and paid plans for companies, though. I do think about open-sourcing it as well. I've been thinking about a license that would require only running it (and derived software) on green energy; that way, if competition were to arise, cheaper/dirtier energy wouldn't be what we would be competing on. But figuring out whether that's plausible, and what the consequences of the decision would be, is hard!

mikedelago 4y ago
I can't say I like that idea for licensing the source code only to use in systems that run off of clean energy. It's great in practice, and I would love for all electricity use to be non-renewable, but it's saying that many people in many countries are not allowed to use the software due to something entirely out of their control.
- jkarni 4y ago
  I think you're absolutely right that there are nuances such as what you described. More: I imagine there are very few offices/homes that run completely on clean energy - in the most naive formulation of the license, no one could test the software locally! Likely first you'd need some progressive system (e.g.: no less than 80% now, no less than 100% by 2030). But I disagree with you on that people in many countries would not be allowed to use the software - you would still be able to use the service (i.e., visit garnix.io, have it build things), or even host it yourself in a different country. Yes, countries with more green energy (rather than exclusively cheap energy) would benefit. But the countries with high green/renewable energy aren't even primarily rich ones [0], so I don't feel too bad about that. Note that this argument only applies to services such as garnix, where you can still use the service (so it would be a bad license for, for example, a text editor). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable_electricity_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable...
  - lloeki 4y ago
    > But I disagree with you on that people in many countries would not be allowed to use the software - you would still be able to use the service (i.e., visit garnix.io, have it build things), or even host it yourself in a different country Which in a way is nice as it enables areas that can't have clean energy (locally) to use clean energy (remotely) via the hosted version, which maybe they otherwise would not, so hopefully acts as an incentive to reward clean energy generation and services wherever they may be (and maybe increase interest in clean energy generation locally if/when that becomes possible in such areas)
- mikedelago 4y ago
  > I would love for all electricity use to be non-renewable This is supposed to say "renewable" rather than "non-renewable"
sneak 4y ago
Such a license would not be open source (free software), it would be nonfree software with source available.

by jkarni 4y ago

mikedelago 4y ago

I can't say I like that idea for licensing the source code only to use in systems that run off of clean energy. It's great in practice, and I would love for all electricity use to be non-renewable, but it's saying that many people in many countries are not allowed to use the software due to something entirely out of their control.

jkarni 4y ago
I think you're absolutely right that there are nuances such as what you described. More: I imagine there are very few offices/homes that run completely on clean energy - in the most naive formulation of the license, no one could test the software locally! Likely first you'd need some progressive system (e.g.: no less than 80% now, no less than 100% by 2030). But I disagree with you on that people in many countries would not be allowed to use the software - you would still be able to use the service (i.e., visit garnix.io, have it build things), or even host it yourself in a different country. Yes, countries with more green energy (rather than exclusively cheap energy) would benefit. But the countries with high green/renewable energy aren't even primarily rich ones [0], so I don't feel too bad about that. Note that this argument only applies to services such as garnix, where you can still use the service (so it would be a bad license for, for example, a text editor). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable_electricity_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable...
- lloeki 4y ago
  > But I disagree with you on that people in many countries would not be allowed to use the software - you would still be able to use the service (i.e., visit garnix.io, have it build things), or even host it yourself in a different country Which in a way is nice as it enables areas that can't have clean energy (locally) to use clean energy (remotely) via the hosted version, which maybe they otherwise would not, so hopefully acts as an incentive to reward clean energy generation and services wherever they may be (and maybe increase interest in clean energy generation locally if/when that becomes possible in such areas)
mikedelago 4y ago
> I would love for all electricity use to be non-renewable This is supposed to say "renewable" rather than "non-renewable"

sneak 4y ago

Such a license would not be open source (free software), it would be nonfree software with source available.