Post B2b1kh5IOILY60YvnE by ity@estradiol.city
(DIR) More posts by ity@estradiol.city
(DIR) Post #B2aG6rCsdp1E3pc2gi by SuperDicq@minidisc.tokyo
2026-01-23T17:47:20.380Z
8 likes, 5 repeats
I don't want "European Alternatives" to American proprietary software. I want free software, because it doesn't matter where in the world free software is made, because it is always ethical and has no power over its users.
(DIR) Post #B2aI0wox3UTxdwjJwG by tusharhero@mathstodon.xyz
2026-01-23T18:08:41Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
@SuperDicq evil bloodsucking corporation, US.Evil bloodsucking corporation, Europe.
(DIR) Post #B2aI3nkpDlLsOPA1a4 by SuperDicq@minidisc.tokyo
2026-01-23T18:09:12.823Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@tusharhero@mathstodon.xyz Yes, exactly. That's not the solution.
(DIR) Post #B2b1kh5IOILY60YvnE by ity@estradiol.city
2026-01-24T01:47:41Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@SuperDicq it doesn't matter where in the world free software is made, because it is always ethical and has no power over its users.that's untrue. Software which has a BDFL that has aligned itself with Nazis (like Linux) is just as unsafe to use. They intentionally control who can contribute & ban contributors for political reasons, can intentionally leave security vulns open, create new ones...
(DIR) Post #B2b1kiZoqIMAixqp0a by SuperDicq@minidisc.tokyo
2026-01-24T02:41:03.908Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ity@estradiol.city That's completely fine. The whole point of free software. If you disagree with how a project is being run you can just make your own fork and pick and choose which changes from upstream you want to include or not. You have the freedom to that, so these people have no power over what you run and how you run it.
(DIR) Post #B2brl6Lpe3Ne4koRwu by Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com
2026-01-24T12:23:55.654713Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ity @SuperDicq Why would you even use proprietary software like Linux?Use the real GNU Linux-libre replacement.
(DIR) Post #B2btNV6q8vAroufsKO by ity@estradiol.city
2026-01-24T02:53:56Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@SuperDicq do you have the resources to maintain a fork of Linux? Go thru each and every commit? Maintain enough knowledge of all subsystems and drivers to avoid letting anything bad slip thru? I sure don't, and I'm a Linux kernel developer. The thing is huge. Now consider the effort needed to do that to all components of a running Linux system. Thing is, just because a thing is open source doesn't mean they don't have any power over you. They have a lot of power. It's just slightly easier to fight back against antifeatures, or make forks of smaller software that went bad.
(DIR) Post #B2btNWL3ZY8ldIKk7s by ity@estradiol.city
2026-01-24T02:57:49Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@SuperDicq you can maintain softforks. Hard forks of things like Linux are practically impossible, the drivers are half the time written & maintained with knowledge under NDAs. The thing is full of security holes that are constantly being found and patched in a way that often only fixes a vulnerability if you apply the correct set of previous patches.
(DIR) Post #B2btNXewf5dxjGe8lU by SuperDicq@minidisc.tokyo
2026-01-24T12:41:56.089Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ity@estradiol.city I run Linux-Libre
(DIR) Post #B2btg1Ll0nED1cTzxg by Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com
2026-01-24T12:45:25.106969Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ity @SuperDicq >that to all components of a running Linux system.It's the GNU system - Linux is only a kernel.
(DIR) Post #B2c9PcHw1NUHvmtXCi by tusharhero@mathstodon.xyz
2026-01-24T15:41:42Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ity @SuperDicq GNU literally maintains a free Linux fork called GNU Linux-libre.
(DIR) Post #B2c9Qcw95yUYESBWUK by tusharhero@mathstodon.xyz
2026-01-24T15:41:55Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ity @SuperDicq >shifting the goal post.
(DIR) Post #B2cFDSXF3ZwXvrdmT2 by ity@estradiol.city
2026-01-24T14:49:03Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@SuperDicq Linux-Libre is a softfork from what I remember:you can maintain softforks.Which, yea, that's doable. I've been curious about what specifically Linux-Libre is removing since I didn't stumble on any blobs yet (but that doesn't mean there aren't any, I just wasn't looking that particularly hard)Doubt you go thru every commit though, which sidesteps the entire issue I was mentioning. If upstream decides to do something, like, say, dropping support for an architecture which you use, your work will get progressively harder and harder to maintain good support for the architecture in a fork.Malware can be sneaked into the codebase (see eg. xz), even if it's open source, esp. easier if upstream is on-board with it. How would you protect against malware sneaking in in a softfork?
(DIR) Post #B2cFDTAwfxhbv0DULw by SuperDicq@minidisc.tokyo
2026-01-24T16:46:40.045Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ity@estradiol.city The Linux kernel actually contains many blobs, because the Linux project does not care about freedom, they just want to support as much hardware as they can at the cost of freedom. You can find an example of the scripts used to deblob the kernel in Linux-Libre here: https://linux-libre.fsfla.org/pub/linux-libre/releases/6.18.7-gnu/If upstream decides to do something, like, say, dropping support for an architecture which you use, your work will get progressively harder and harder to maintain good support for the architecture in a fork.That is true. Doing something together with other people, is always much more efficient than doing everything alone. But the fact that it is hard does not mean that this benefit of freedom does not exist. You can if do it if you really want to, that's the point. Can't do it with proprietary software, it's not allowed.Malware can be sneaked into the codebase (see eg. xz), even if it's open source, esp. easier if upstream is on-board with it. How would you protect against malware sneaking in in a softfork?A lot of people name what happened in xz-tools as an example of "free software" bad, but in reality it is actually a success story. Only because xz-tools was free software this backdoor was actually caught before stable release. It is in my opinion one of the best examples of how free software can protect users against malware and backdoors.
(DIR) Post #B2cIg9JftHFoaQfOqm by ity@estradiol.city
2026-01-24T17:17:14Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@SuperDicq Am I misreading the script or are you deleting the entirety of the i915 & xe drivers because they reference blobs from the linux-firmware project> You can if do it if you really want to, that's the point. Can't do it with proprietary software, it's not allowed.At projects of this scale, the difference between proprietary software and open-source software blurs. There's no such thing as "not allowed". There's only "it's illegal", which is a question of "is what I'm doing gonna annoy $COMPANY enough that they'll spend a lot of money suing me" rather than a binary "yes/no". But maybe this is a mindset I have from being primarily a hacker & activist x3 To be entirely clear, I go to pretty big lengths to avoid running proprietary blobs. But that's because of the practicality of debugging & modifying with access to source code. Software being free/open source will not prevent whoever runs it from fucking me over (see eg. Firefox, and unwanted stuff slipping thru LibreWolf, Visual Studio Code and unwanted stuff slipping thru VSCodium (I had to hand-write patches myself)), but will make it easier to fight back. However, someone still has to do the *work* of doing the fighting, and sometimes it's a lost battle (eg. catching malware when upstream is actively malicious), The reason why I named xz was to show that just because something is open source, doesn't automatically protect it from getting malware snuck into. Someone has to do the work to find it and remove it.Which is what is my entire point is: Something being open source does not automatically make it respect the user. All it means is that it's usually easier to fight certain forms of anti-user behavior. I want explicitly multi-national open source software, because if all of upstream & the BDFL of a project are aligned with Nazis, if the project is too big, they can and will fuck over the users, even if the project is open source. You need to find a large enough group to do the actual work. Work that often can be done on proprietary software, and is done on proprietary software (see eg. Discord mods to remove or fix a lot of the anti-user code).So, the deciding factor is not whether the software is open source or not, but rather how organized is upstream, how forkable is the project if it's open source, how many eyes are watching it, is there any group maintaining patchsets...
(DIR) Post #B2cIgAGANo2fVq271M by SuperDicq@minidisc.tokyo
2026-01-24T17:25:30.394Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ity@estradiol.city >Am I misreading the script or are you deleting the entirety of the i915 & xe drivers because they reference blobs from the linux-firmware projectYes, Linux-libre removes essentially the entirety of linux-firmware, as all of it is nonfree binary blobs.Anyway I have a feeling that we are now arguing about a definition about what "respects the user" really means.I say the ability to remove anti-features is respecting the user, you say it only respects the user when that work has been done. In either case the result is the same because that will work will be done.I don't see the point of the argument.
(DIR) Post #B2cIgHsi2u239P7UZM by ity@estradiol.city
2026-01-24T17:25:08Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@SuperDicq also, re: i915 & xe, if you write a software job scheduler instead of using GuC like the current code does, Intel GPUs can run entirely blobless. Nobody tests this though, so you might hit hardware bugs. Same for Mali.
(DIR) Post #B2cInZH5mCVp7czpgm by SuperDicq@minidisc.tokyo
2026-01-24T17:26:51.760Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ity@estradiol.city If you know how to liberate these GPUs so that they can run without blobs I would suggest contributing.
(DIR) Post #B2cJ6e9XraORknZ0fQ by SuperDicq@minidisc.tokyo
2026-01-24T17:30:18.575Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ity@estradiol.city And as for your Discord example. The modified clients still do not respect the user's freedom. Sure they maybe managed to remove some of the anti-features from it, but at the core Discord is still a fully proprietary platform and many things can not be done, even with enough work, because of it.
(DIR) Post #B2cJccoWNSq8rpyihs by meso@new.asbestos.cafe
2026-01-24T17:36:07.859552Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@SuperDicq @ity this person is a toxic piece of shit why even bother arguing with them
(DIR) Post #B2cJdi0uWvYpHfI3ou by SuperDicq@minidisc.tokyo
2026-01-24T17:36:18.460Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@meso@new.asbestos.cafe @ity@estradiol.city Says you
(DIR) Post #B2cJfAJSndsTLGf9EW by meso@new.asbestos.cafe
2026-01-24T17:36:35.534055Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@SuperDicq @ity Yeah :gigachad:
(DIR) Post #B2cJjB8lfIH14CZcdE by meso@new.asbestos.cafe
2026-01-24T17:37:19.047079Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@tusharhero @SuperDicq AMERICANIZE EUROPE NOW
(DIR) Post #B2cKtxuHJ9EFA9VH6m by ity@estradiol.city
2026-01-24T17:49:19Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@SuperDicq Basically all of the things that cannot be done to Discord also cannot be done to, say, Signal, because despite the Signal client being open source, it's a centralized platform. So whether something is open source or not doesn't exactly matter that much in this case.
(DIR) Post #B2cKtyufZB8UHeh6MC by SuperDicq@minidisc.tokyo
2026-01-24T17:50:22.559Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@ity@estradiol.city >despite the Signal client being open sourceIt isn't free software. The Signal client is proprietary. It includes many proprietary dependencies mostly on Google stuff.
(DIR) Post #B2cLFWdrMHW8yP6Xdg by ity@estradiol.city
2026-01-24T17:53:23Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@SuperDicq Source? You should be able to trivially strip any dependencies on proprietary Google stuff if it is, say, FCM or other Play Services garbage. There's also 3rd party reimplementations of the client for both Discord and Signal
(DIR) Post #B2cLFYKR5TAWCk23do by SuperDicq@minidisc.tokyo
2026-01-24T17:54:14.295Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@ity@estradiol.city If you want a source of all the proprietary things in Signal you should look at whatever the Molly-FOSS project changed to make the client more freedom respecting.
(DIR) Post #B2cMC82cSyzJlFd77Q by jmw150@poa.st
2026-01-24T18:04:58.553235Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@SuperDicq The creator of software matters for the software even if it is free. Rust and Firefox are tranny shit. Gnu and lisp are kiked. Straight White racists with masters in actual engineering degrees, powered by devine revelation, are where it is at.
(DIR) Post #B2eaAPYtrGXqVrGmv2 by Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com
2026-01-25T11:39:55.335373Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@SuperDicq @ity The i915 and Xe drivers work just fine - Linux-libre patches them to work without proprietary software.Too bad the other poster cannot see my messages.