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> AOSP, Chromium, Firefox All exploitative projects entirely funded and mostly operated by a monopoly found violating the law or awaiting judgment for such in

> AOSP, Chromium, Firefox All exploitative projects entirely funded and mostly operated by a monopoly found violating the law or awaiting judgment for such in almost every single first world jurisdiction. Also neither AOSP nor Chromium are used in the real world in practice, over 99.99% of users use proprietary forks. In other words, thank you for supporting my statement entirely. > Linux desktop software Yeah, definitely "not niche".

hollerith 2y ago
>Also neither AOSP nor Chromium are used in the real world in practice, over 99.99% of users use proprietary forks. I didn't think it needed spelling out, but OK: GrapheneOS would not exist if AOSP didn't have an open-source license. Electron, Microsoft Edge and Brave browser wouldn't exist if Chromium hadn't been released on open-source terms. Surely it is not your claim that because Google has done bad things, nothing that Google has ever done has ever been positive? Going back to your previous comment, where you write, "the OSI is not interested in open source being the default way to make software." Do you actually believe that if the OSI had been smarter or more ethical or had listened to your advice (sent back in time perhaps) then open source might have become the default way to make software? I consider it obvious that that was never a possibility.
- kragen 2y ago
  possibly you are a time traveler because in this timeline open source did become the default way to make software
  - hollerith 2y ago
    OK, my previous comment was clumsy (and I concede that most of the software on the machine I'm using to write this is open source). What I meant to do with my previous comment was point out that my interlocutor seems to believe that the situation in software is just terrible, which implies that if things had gone different, it could be a lot better. But I'm not able to imagine a realistic evolution in which software ends up in a much better place than the current status quo.
    - kragen 2y ago
      it's been much worse in the past, so we know it can be much worse. probably at the time it was hard to imagine the evolution to where we are now, so maybe it can get much better too. certainly i had no idea 30 years ago where we'd be now
      - hollerith 2y ago
        OK, then let's focus on the fact that my interlocutor seems to believe he can see how to make it much better than it is now, which is very different from its being possible, but none of us in this conversation can see how to do it with any confidence.
        kragen 2y ago
        i think it's reasonable for him to try different things to try to make it better, but i share your lack of confidence in his proposed course of action, particularly since he seems to have such a hazy understanding of what has been tried already ;)
- ocdtrekkie 2y ago
  Really making this easy for me. Here we go! > GrapheneOS would not exist if AOSP didn't have an open-source license First, Graphene OS is used by... less than 0.01% of Android users, so again, thank you for confirming my point. Furthermore, GrapheneOS is harmful for the ecosystem. Similar to VSCode, proprietary services are essentially gated out from alternatives to the default proprietary Android. And the big problem with Graphene and other AOSP forks, is they waste developer effort while protecting monopolies. Every developer-hour wasted on Graphene is a developer-hour not spent on a truly open mobile OS, and that's sad. > Electron We could live without it. Nobody needs a whole browser to ship a single page app. But also... > Microsoft Edge and Brave browser wouldn't exist So remember that whole part where I said 99.99% of use is the proprietary forks? Edge is, of course, completely proprietary. (Brave is just a cryptocurrency grift, will focus on Edge here.) Microsoft is a monopoly in several respects still, and Edge adds several anti-features like ads on the start page and shopping "features" which collect your shopping behavior. Furthermore, the switch to Chromium for Edge makes the Internet ecosystem worse. Because one of the largest independent web rendering engines disappeared overnight... further contributing to Google's monopoly stranglehold over the web ecosystem, and it's ability to essentially force standards bodies to comply with it's choices or become irrelevant. > if the OSI had been smarter or more ethical I think time travel conjecture is sort of pointless, obviously there are dozens of conditions on when good licenses got approved, what projects adopted them, etc. But if SSPL was approved, as the viral copyleft license it is, less open alternatives would evaporate overnight. Without the risk Amazon would lift your product, wrap it in a proprietary platform, and simultaneously undercut you on cost, I think at least for SaaS, there'd be very little reason for a business to launch without providing their code on fair terms. All that being said, the discourse around the OSI and open source is toxic enough and compromised enough, I think shifting to new terms is ideal anyways. I saw https://fair.io/ https://fair.io/ "fair source" recently, which seems quite reasonable, though I'd love to also see an expression of it more focused around labor and sustainability in addition to just business case. Developers deserve to get paid for their work, and I feel the primary goal of open source at this point is to cultivate free labor for the tech monopolies backing the OSI.

hollerith 2y ago

>Also neither AOSP nor Chromium are used in the real world in practice, over 99.99% of users use proprietary forks. I didn't think it needed spelling out, but OK: GrapheneOS would not exist if AOSP didn't have an open-source license. Electron, Microsoft Edge and Brave browser wouldn't exist if Chromium hadn't been released on open-source terms. Surely it is not your claim that because Google has done bad things, nothing that Google has ever done has ever been positive? Going back to your previous comment, where you write, "the OSI is not interested in open source being the default way to make software." Do you actually believe that if the OSI had been smarter or more ethical or had listened to your advice (sent back in time perhaps) then open source might have become the default way to make software? I consider it obvious that that was never a possibility.

kragen 2y ago
possibly you are a time traveler because in this timeline open source did become the default way to make software
- hollerith 2y ago
  OK, my previous comment was clumsy (and I concede that most of the software on the machine I'm using to write this is open source). What I meant to do with my previous comment was point out that my interlocutor seems to believe that the situation in software is just terrible, which implies that if things had gone different, it could be a lot better. But I'm not able to imagine a realistic evolution in which software ends up in a much better place than the current status quo.
  - kragen 2y ago
    it's been much worse in the past, so we know it can be much worse. probably at the time it was hard to imagine the evolution to where we are now, so maybe it can get much better too. certainly i had no idea 30 years ago where we'd be now
    - hollerith 2y ago
      OK, then let's focus on the fact that my interlocutor seems to believe he can see how to make it much better than it is now, which is very different from its being possible, but none of us in this conversation can see how to do it with any confidence.
      - kragen 2y ago
        i think it's reasonable for him to try different things to try to make it better, but i share your lack of confidence in his proposed course of action, particularly since he seems to have such a hazy understanding of what has been tried already ;)
ocdtrekkie 2y ago
Really making this easy for me. Here we go! > GrapheneOS would not exist if AOSP didn't have an open-source license First, Graphene OS is used by... less than 0.01% of Android users, so again, thank you for confirming my point. Furthermore, GrapheneOS is harmful for the ecosystem. Similar to VSCode, proprietary services are essentially gated out from alternatives to the default proprietary Android. And the big problem with Graphene and other AOSP forks, is they waste developer effort while protecting monopolies. Every developer-hour wasted on Graphene is a developer-hour not spent on a truly open mobile OS, and that's sad. > Electron We could live without it. Nobody needs a whole browser to ship a single page app. But also... > Microsoft Edge and Brave browser wouldn't exist So remember that whole part where I said 99.99% of use is the proprietary forks? Edge is, of course, completely proprietary. (Brave is just a cryptocurrency grift, will focus on Edge here.) Microsoft is a monopoly in several respects still, and Edge adds several anti-features like ads on the start page and shopping "features" which collect your shopping behavior. Furthermore, the switch to Chromium for Edge makes the Internet ecosystem worse. Because one of the largest independent web rendering engines disappeared overnight... further contributing to Google's monopoly stranglehold over the web ecosystem, and it's ability to essentially force standards bodies to comply with it's choices or become irrelevant. > if the OSI had been smarter or more ethical I think time travel conjecture is sort of pointless, obviously there are dozens of conditions on when good licenses got approved, what projects adopted them, etc. But if SSPL was approved, as the viral copyleft license it is, less open alternatives would evaporate overnight. Without the risk Amazon would lift your product, wrap it in a proprietary platform, and simultaneously undercut you on cost, I think at least for SaaS, there'd be very little reason for a business to launch without providing their code on fair terms. All that being said, the discourse around the OSI and open source is toxic enough and compromised enough, I think shifting to new terms is ideal anyways. I saw https://fair.io/ https://fair.io/ "fair source" recently, which seems quite reasonable, though I'd love to also see an expression of it more focused around labor and sustainability in addition to just business case. Developers deserve to get paid for their work, and I feel the primary goal of open source at this point is to cultivate free labor for the tech monopolies backing the OSI.