Notices by satchmoz (satchmoz@mastodon.sdf.org), page 2

I really think it behooves proprietary vendors to at a MINIMUM do a source code dump when they decide to sunset a product line/platform.

And while it's nice if you can do it clean, and setup a foundation or donate it to Apache. It's not necessary.

If you can't do those things just toss a tarball over the wall.

If you don't own all the code. Toss the code you do have the rights too.

Apple sharing the source code of the #LisaOS under proprietary non-commercial terms irks me.

What commercial applications are left in that code could possibly impact their bottom line? We're talking about code older than Classic Mac OS.

I know it is remarkable in the sense that other people like Microsoft are clutching onto the code for Windows 1.0 still at this late hour in computer history.

But it another sense it shows remarkable cowardice and lack of vision.

Alternate OSes have a rougher path to relevancy than they did in the 90s.

LibreOffice requires a full Java runtime environment, GCC and Python to be ported to your OS.

Firefox adds Rust to that equation.

Modern web browser performance is tied to hardware acceleration on GPUs.

Keep in mind too that your users will consider you not functional for day to day operations if you can't read and write FAT32 exFat NTFS HFS+ UDF and communicate to devices over SAMBA and MTP.

I still keep checking. *sigh* #Plan9 #SDF

Though im beginning to make my peace with no Plan9 bootcamp this year. (Not a lot of time left in 2017 for it, no.)

I need to either decide if im going to teach myself Plan9 in a VM. (Does Plan9 run in Qemu ?) Or figure out what cheap hardware I want to run it on. ( It supports one or two cheaper single board computers if I recall correctly. )

Anyone out there running Plan9 locally in your home? What are you using?

https://mastodon.sdf.org/media/j99fdhapu1CsAgb7b2Y

Is this rendition of #Oumuamua giving anyone else Arthur C Clarke, "Rendezvous with Rama" vibes? https://mastodon.sdf.org/media/Bl-5Rq-SW5g7fod2qko

Remember when Google used to say things like how people deserved "client choice" and "service choice"; how they wanted developers to create their own innovative and unique apps that connected to Google's services as peers on open protocols not as second class citizens on undocumented reverse engineered private APIs? and federate with other instances?

https://developers.google.com/talk/open_communications#what

https://developers.google.com/talk/open_communications#service_1

Good times.

I thought the SFLC's defense of Canonical on the ZFS/CDDL issue over the objections of SFC, the FSF, Redhat Legal and Debian Legal was odd enough.

But this makes me think something weird is going on at the SFLC. https://lwn.net/Articles/738046/rss

Guys boosting my sudden tangential idea. Its been pointed out to me I may have semi independently re-dreamed up plan9.

Sudden tangential idea:

Is it possible to have a federated public unix access system? If that makes any sense?

Users with accounts on separate servers, but they could all share files and run programs off of each other's instances across a distributed file system?

Couple this with GNU HURD's concept of running services and servers at a user level.

@maiki considering SDF's naming roots. (Macross, Anime) Something that compliments your own entertainment interests with a more egalitarian ethos?

@maiki In that vein I kind of want to try my hand at gopher based interactive fiction or gopher versions of gamebooks at some point.

Sudden thought I had this morning.

Still would like to play with an A/UX system or would pay to crowdfund a free software clone of A/UX.

That moment when you realize that big data and Facebook are really the depressing more realistic flipside to what Isaac Asimov called "Psychohistory".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional)

A lot of hay is being made on how Facebook isnt transparent on how Russia used them and their data to conduct information wars on U.S. citizens and democracy.

The problem is that is Facebook's business model. Accepting payments to enable organizations to conduct information wars on U.S. citizens & democracy.

Russia doing it in lieu of a private business might be an important distinction for many.

But let us not act surprised that they dont want the light of day shown on their business model.

Remember when Google and Facebook took peoples pseudonyms away and insisted online discourse would become civil if people's real names were attached to it? And how it inconvenienced and hurt, activists, trans men and women and many others?

How did that go for people? How much more civil are we finding things?

@maiki Completely liberated silicon. Not only the instruction set but many of the chips itself are being designed completely in the open with no royalties. Also unlike other such attempts it's goal is to be competitive with proprietary silicon and scale from micro-controllers to general purpose computers.

Its also much cleaner on the instruction set level than x86 and Arm.

Its also going to possibly serve as the foundation of a new waive of SoCs many of which ought to be completely libre.

@maiki Not to keep waxing on about it but the EOMA68 project is definitely worth following. They are primarily working on a laptop and a microdesktop right now, but they have other form factors on their roadmap and actually care about RYF certification.

They have plans for tablets and other handheld devices down the road.

And honestly their trying to keep one on affordability in a way which doesn't seem to blip most other's radars.