7 ms·

This seems like a flashback to the xscreensaver fights with Debian of yore, given that the entire fight seems to distill to "OBS is shipping EOL Qt because of u

• alexjplant 2y ago
  Don't link to this guy's site. He has a serious personal problem with every reader of HN (including the vast majority he's never met and knows nothing about) and serves an NSFW image to anybody that has this site in the referrer request header.
  • rincebrain 2y ago
    Yeah, I remembered that after, had to open another browser window to confirm it because otherwise I just got the cached one, and then edited.
  • quickslowdown 2y ago
    This is a piece of Internet lore I'm not familiar with! Any good summary or article or anything you'd recommend?
    • dTal 2y ago
      Why do you need an article? Just find a link to some page on http://jwz.org http://jwz.org somewhere on news.ycombinator.com, and click it. Note that you will get a (really quite tame) NSFW image. Said image will explain jwz's feelings regarding Hacker News.
      • ziddoap 2y ago
        Presumably they are looking for more than the 2 lines in the image that don't explain anything about why.
        • dTal 2y ago
          The lines do explain why, from the horse's mouth. I don't know what value-add you'd expect from an "article" - an interview with jwz?
          • deleted 2y ago
            [deleted]
          • wging 2y ago
            https://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-s... doesn't mention HN directly, but will give you a sense of his POV (copy-and-paste the link or you'll get the behavior described up-thread)
      • quickslowdown 2y ago
        Alright, maybe "article" was a poor word choice? Thanks for an example of of what happens when you link to their site from here, I was just curious to read into the drama, it sounds like an interesting story from a pocket of the internet I'm not familiar with. When I said "article," I guess I meant that I don't want to watch a youtube video detailing the drama or whatever, I was hoping to just read about it. Either way, thanks for the link and the explanation further down the thread.
    • renewiltord 2y ago
      There's nothing much to it. Jamie Zawinski just doesn't think highly of Venture Capital etc. He thinks that the first tech boom ruined San Francisco and he thinks that Paul Graham is terrible. That's pretty much it. Considering that I've spent many a night at Bootie SF (back when it was at DNA Lounge) on too many drugs or alcohol to respond to on-call issues, it's entirely possible that he had more power over tech than it had over his life. Like many people in San Francisco, he is an intelligent guy with great will to power and eccentric views.
    • jakevoytko 2y ago
      Coders at Work has an interview with a pretty comprehensive backstory of his time in the tech industry. If you want to get more of his vibe, he's also in the documentary Code Rush.
  • talldayo 2y ago
    Sounds like a sensible and principled fellow.
    • pridkett 2y ago
      Considering that Netscape used to have “about:jwz” as an Easter egg URL and he was influential in open sourcing Netscape…
      • mook 2y ago
        Didn't any unknown about: string just lead to somebody's wwwhome with simple URL rewriting? At least, with some versions?
        • mattl 2y ago
          No there was a pretty small but interesting list of people in the source code. https://www.jwz.org/doc/about-jwz.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/about-jwz.html
  • cxr 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • wsintra2022 2y ago
      Oh wow, love it, a testacle in a teacup, dudes just made my day!
      • aleph_minus_one 2y ago
        > Oh wow, love it, a testacle in a teacup, dudes just made my day! It's an eggcup.
        • jjulius 2y ago
          Well now we're just splitting pubes.
          • walrus01 2y ago
            No, that's the science project being worked on at cern, the large hardon collider
    • walrus01 2y ago
      Unexpectedly appropriate with the price of eggs these days
      • KingOfCoders 2y ago
        $2.50 for 10 eggs? Not getting that reference.
    • TehCorwiz 2y ago
      He's not wrong per se, just really hostile to the idea.
    • kennysoona 2y ago
      > Don't tell me what to do. Breathe.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • crystal_revenge 2y ago
    Honestly it's refreshing to see someone in tech stand up to the VC-only vision of what tech can be. I still enjoy HN, but got a good laugh at image that popped up and agreed he has a point.
  • walrus01 2y ago
    You can hate jwz as much as you want but the fact remains that probably 95% of ycombinator funded startups couldn't exist without making extensive use of the gpl, bsd, Apache and similar licensed software produced by a lot of open source curmudgeons and greybeards. Many of whom share his same opinion on VCs and late stage capitalism.
    • alexjplant 2y ago
      > You can hate jwz as much as you want I don't hate him and didn't write anything of the sort. I've never met him. He might as well be the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny as fas as I'm concerned. > the fact remains that probably 95% of ycombinator funded startups couldn't exist without making extensive use of the gpl, bsd, Apache and similar licensed software produced by a lot of open source curmudgeons and greybeards. Many of whom share his same opinion on VCs and late stage capitalism. I've been using FOSS for personal use since I was a child. I'm a literal card-carrying supporter of the FSF. I'm more passionate about it than I am shitting on random people on the internet. If he has a problem with VCs then he can spam them with pictures of genitalia and ad-hominem attacks, not me, who's just some random dude who _isn't_ worth millions of dollars from a software business exit (along with thousands of others on this site).
      • nativeit 2y ago
        It's a shitty move, I'll grant you, but it's also clearly a form of protest, and acts of protest are by-design intended to make the public uncomfortable in some way. As far as this kind of thing goes, I personally find it mildly amusing, mildly offensive, and mildly clever. I think the internet is more interesting for people like jwz doing things like this. Not necessarily "trolling," because this--for all its crude imagery and sardonic language--it's a very clever way to continuously raise awareness toward a larger issue they have taken with society. I was just motivated to read a pair of blog posts from 13-years ago, ones that required additional effort to access, and considered jwz's perspective on VCs and a hyper-aggressive work culture...for anyone who's ever attempted to publish any kind of content? That's kind of impressive. Not that I would seek to deny your valid annoyance and offense. It's a non-consensual scrotum in a teacup. I personally would have gone a different direction, I get why that would raise someone's hackles.
  • wetpaws 2y ago
    [dead]
  • ikiris 2y ago
    He seems to have a pretty good grasp of the average commenter here, I don't know what your problem is with him exercising his free speech rights on his own website to deal with people he feels that way about.
  • freeCandy 2y ago
    I find it insane that everybody is seemingly okay with the fact that websites get to know what a user was browsing before landing on their site. And that there's no straightforward way to disable this behavior without the use of extensions. Highly recommend installing https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/smart-referer https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/smart-referer
    • usr1106 2y ago
      Hmm, the addon description says "has been largely superseeded by better browser defaults"
      • freeCandy 2y ago
        huh, no idea why it would say that, the only sane default is when referrer is not leaked to websites at all.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • jamesy0ung 2y ago
    Doesn't seem NSFW to me at all. It's a skin textured egg with hairs in an egg cup. https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2024/hn.png https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2024/hn.png
    • ellen364 2y ago
      Huh, looks like he changed the image in 2024 (based on url). Before today, I'd have said the jwz image was goatse.
      • sangnoir 2y ago
        It was always the hairy egg/scrotum.
  • yencabulator 2y ago
    Get a better browser that doesn't leak the site you came from all over the place.
  • wakawaka28 2y ago
    Sounds like you're the one with the personal problem. Let people read and link to what they want, and mind your business.
• SCUSKU 2y ago
  Aforementioned image for those who are curious: https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2024/hn.png https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2024/hn.png
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • darylteo 2y ago
    Gilfoyle (Silicon Valley character) vibes
  • cxr 2y ago
    More importantly, the link to the referenced article, properly marked up, since some quorum of nincompoops who hate the Web flagged the other comment destroying the link for any user/agent without showdead on (which will include every agent not operated by a user): <https://jwz.org/blog/2016/04/i-would-like-debian-to-stop-shipping-xscreensaver/ https://jwz.org/blog/2016/04/i-would-like-debian-to-stop-shi...>
• Lammy 2y ago
  And Quod Libet vs. Gentoo (2006): - https://bugs.gentoo.org/101619 https://bugs.gentoo.org/101619 - https://bugs.gentoo.org/124595 https://bugs.gentoo.org/124595 And Quod Libet vs. Debian (2007): - https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=421167 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=421167 - https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=477454 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=477454
  • vthriller 2y ago
    And tuomov (ion3) vs debian: https://web.archive.org/web/20070307113840/http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/b/archives/2007/03/03/T19_15_26/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070307113840/http://modeemi.fi... https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=413469 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=413469
• layer8 2y ago
  This doesn’t seem similar at all. Debian didn’t break xscreensaver, they merely shipped a two-year old version at some point, in line with their stable releases. This is unlike how Fedora apparently broke their own OBS repackage.
  • jchw 2y ago
    Yeah, I'm a bit disappointed at how quickly the perception turned against OBS. Maybe I'm missing something, but their "threats" actually seem pretty reasonable: They asked Fedora to stop shipping a broken version of OBS/make it clear that the Fedora version is unofficial, they got absolutely no response for three weeks, then they requested that Fedora cease using the OBS trademarks. This is not like xscreensaver, this is much closer to Firefox/Iceweasel/etc.
    • rincebrain 2y ago
      I wasn't trying to suggest I thought OBS was in the wrong here, to be clear, just that the debate between maintainers and developers, and not wanting to get bugs for things that were external, reminded me of that exchange. There's plenty of other examples, of course - one that springs to mind was when Ubuntu shipped a patch of their own design in OpenZFS that caused data loss, and it got reported to upstream.
      • jchw 2y ago
        To be fair, not necessarily singling out your comment: I've seen mixed sentiment around the net. I think the characterization of the threats as being "legal threats" makes people more prone to see this as the OBS project being vexatious, but it seems like it's more a last resort to get Fedora to even pay attention. And credit to Fedora, it looks like they're working quickly to fix the problem now. It's pretty obvious it wasn't malice that led them to not respond quickly.
        • bigiain 2y ago
          > It's pretty obvious it wasn't malice that led them to not respond quickly. So stupidity then. Seems legit.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• ndiddy 2y ago
  I don't understand what the big deal was there. Debian has its own bug tracker for all of its packages so the distro maintainers get bothered about bugs in old packages shipped by the stable version of Debian rather than upstream developers. JWZ decided to voluntarily subscribe to the Debian bug tracker for his package and then add a nag screen and start a flame war over them shipping an old version.
  • immibis 2y ago
    When you look at the about box, does it say Debian Screensaver based on xscreensaver, or does it say xscreensaver? When you Google the name of the program, whose website comes up first?
  • plorkyeran 2y ago
    Debian users frequently report bugs to upstream and not Debian.
    • Shish2k 2y ago
      An unfortunate side effect of github being extremely user-friendly, while debian's reportbug tool still greets "novice" users with "please enter your SMTP host" (I dread to think what questions it would have asked me if I'd selected the "expert" mode)
  • sunshowers 2y ago
    This contract has not been upheld in practice for a very long time. Users will go straight to upstream a lot of the time.
  • edflsafoiewq 2y ago
    Distros have neither the knowledge nor the bandwidth to analyze bug reports for upstream projects.
• LeoPanthera 2y ago
  > Debian doesn't just ship upstream updates every 30 minutes. This grossly understates the problem. The debian xscreensaver package was years old, and contained bugs related to screen locking which were an actual security issue. Your comment is in very poor taste.
  • midtake 2y ago
    Debian is the most stable distro for a reason. They don't rebase from upstream every 30 minutes because it is a community project. It is wonderful that volunteers have continued the Debian project for so long. In contrast, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, a distro funded by IBM and countless faceless backers, has recently stopped patching many vulnerabilities, recommending to their users to rely on mitigations instead, despite the availability of upstream patches. Furthermore, the recent vulnerability threatscape is inundated with CVE hunters who are desperate to call the most minor degradation of service a vulnerability. For a community project (and apparently an enterprise-serving megacorporation), this causes patching fatigue.
    • robertlagrant 2y ago
      Where is the "every 30 minutes" coming from? You and another commenter have both used this identical phrase.It sounds as though the complaint was not because a patch hadn't been applied after 30 minutes, or even 30 days or 30 weeks. More like 30 months.
      • rincebrain 2y ago
        I said "every 30 minutes" as a piece of hyperbole, in my original comment. I'm not really sure why everyone is focusing on that phrase, though. I think it's pretty clear if you read any of the source material, as said, that that is not an accurate representation of what was going on, and I would have also expected "every 30 minutes" to be a pretty clearly hyperbolic expectation for anyone to process updates after.
        • robertlagrant 2y ago
• thayne 2y ago
  > Fedora views shipping EOL Qt as unjustifiable neglect That's rich, coming from a project very closely tied to Gtk, which has a history of massive breaking changes, and outright removing functionality, leading to many projects continuing to use older versions of gtk for a very long time.
  • rsch 2y ago
    One of those project is the OG — GIMP.
  • worthless-trash 2y ago
    Many different people have different priorities in fedora. I believe they mainly remove functionality between major releases of GTK, not within a release. Can you cite an example where they have done this between gtk minor releases ? Aka gtk 3.1 -> 3.2 ?
  • akdev1l 2y ago
    How is fedora “closely tied to Gtk” in any way that it isn’t also “closely tied to Qt”? Fedora KDE is literally release blocking and has been approved for promotion to be on the same level as Fedora Workstation.
    • thayne 2y ago
      Fedora is owned by Red Hat, which is a major contributor to gnome and gtk. Red Hat isn't as involved with Qt, which is mainly maintained by yhe Qt group company.
    • lmm 2y ago
      > How is fedora “closely tied to Gtk” in any way that it isn’t also “closely tied to Qt”? RedHat employees make the majority of commits to Gtk and I think are some of the maintainers/managers?
• foul 2y ago
  >OBS is shipping EOL Qt because of unfixed regressions in newer Qt, Fedora views shipping EOL Qt as unjustifiable neglect and repackaged it with newer Qt, which, as described, breaks things. Why do they still mingle with sw distributions? Wasn't the sandboxed blob trend born also to try blackbox strategies and have parallel versions without dealing with too much hell? Was that laziness/economical advantage (EOL'd library, no business in porting fixes, upgrade to the latest and greatest) or something else?
  • vrighter 2y ago
    Backwards compatibility is not in style anymore. Upgrading several libs system-wide is likely to cause breakage in old apps. A statically linked application doesn't rot (because linux guarantees userspace compatibility). By "doesn't rot" I mean "will keep running indefinitely without requiring some maintainer to keep working on the code indefinitely."
    • foul 2y ago
      This is crazy because it's a flatpak, which should be a blob with all its deps in there, like a statically linked application "but better" for other system reasons because e.g. you can sandbox the app by design. For this reason I don't understand why did they changed the library in there (that build of OBS wasn't broken because of system-wide libs, it was because allegedly they changed the lib in the flatpak), whatever the security hole couldn't they block it "from the outside"?