Hijacking of foss community lazarus / 8-Other ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Joanna · 2021-05-30 00:30 I’m sure you have all heard about the stampede of foss projects from freenode to libera by now because of some squabble between the staff and owner. I advise caution in this matter for the following reasons. There are a lot of unanswered questions about who is responsible and who really is financing for the Libera servers. The former staff of freenode use GitHub which is owned by Microsoft who helped destroy pascal as the popular language that it once was by poaching the developers from Borland who were developing Delphi. There is a good possibility that parties that are not friends of free software are paying for the trolls and spam attacks on freenode. This whole situation warrants a more thorough investigation before blindly abandoning Freenode irc channels. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lucamar · 2021-05-30 00:46 Didn't we already have an "announcement" about this? Not in these terms and with a different level of paranoia (whether merited or not), but ... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- denis.totoliciu · 2021-05-30 00:55 Quote from: Joanna on May 30, 2021, 02:30:17 amMicrosoft who helped destroy pascal as the popular language that it once was by poaching the developers from Borland who were developing delphi. The fundamental idea is that FreePascal, Lazarus and its community should remain independent of politically correctness and abide to freedom of speech. That was already available on freenode. I heard that there isn't enough staff to handle both libera and freenode, but that is false. The #fpc channel on freenode worked very well up until now, it had interesting discussions, a lot of freedom and debate on many subjects, which was great. It has been defended against trolls with active efforts on the channel for the chance of keeping the small community on IRC together and not demoralized by shills. Why isn't it good enough? The move is purely political. It is not something technical. And you are moving in the den of the enemy. I want to remind you that in open source there is this small category of programmers that fight for a cause. I fall into that one and Joanna does, too. You might call us conspiracy theorists or crazy people, but check out the history and the perspective on longer term, not based on impulse and social trends and you will see that things might not be as they seem in haste at first sight. M$ has the mentality of an empire, a corporate empire and their purpose is to conquer everything, nowadays open source being one of their greatest targets. It saw that it can't bust it to the ground as it did with other companies/corporations, so now they befriend it so that they can corrupt its principles through money and promises of grandeur to programmers that fall into this trap. From what I know, Libera uses an IP owned by Github which in turn is owned by M$. Now please remember the history of Delphi and what M$ and Bill Gates did to Borland, Embarcadero, the Delphi IDE and the Object Pascal language. M$ bought the architect of Delphi, Anders Hejlsberg, and they built the C# language inspired by Object Pascal, and the .NET platform inspired by RTL and VCL. The legend says that he was given $3 million just to come over to M$. Then they bought the 2nd man after him with $1.5 million. Then they took another 34 key developers from Borland. Afterwards they infiltrated management and had the company into taking bad decisions such as building their own buggy C# compiler and running always as a karaoke singer after the technologies that M$ was building. Then Delphi 2005 was the complete mess that resulted from all this. M$ is known for doing these things to companies, corporations and to open source projects now. You have to look on the long term for keeping the independence of communication and of the programming language from these mischievous strategies and tactics. If you think FreePascal and Lazarus doesn't have their enemies, then you are blinding yourselves intentionally. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lucamar · 2021-05-30 02:49 Yet, interestingly enough, you're both "new members" in this forum which, along with the mail lists, is the primary FPC/Lazarus users communication channel ... Curioseur and curioseur Nevertheless, my point is that this thing about freenode isn't exactly "news":  we all (or at least those interested enough) know about this. All the rest is, you'll excuse me the frankness, plain "we must fight the empire!!!" rhetoric. And not very exact, at that. ETA: And then I'm breaking my own rule of "never feed a troll" (or two). My excuses to the normal people ... EATA: I know you're not really a troll, Denis, but come on ... unless someone elese has hijacked your account ... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- trev · 2021-05-30 02:54 I imagine that IRC users use that facility more than they use the Forum and so may forever be "new users" here ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Joanna · 2021-05-30 02:57 That’s right I prefer to use Irc rather than forums. I wish more people would also use irc but to each is own. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lucamar · 2021-05-30 03:08 Quote from: trev on May 30, 2021, 04:54:21 amI imagine that IRC users use that facility more than they use the Forum and so may forever be "new users" here It's not a question of "IRC more than forum/mail lists", it's a question of "only IRC". And it's a "problem" (note the quotes, please) because ... Quote from: Joanna on May 30, 2021, 04:57:50 amThat’s right I prefer to use Irc rather than forums. I wish more people would also use irc but to each is own. The problem is that IRC is ephemeral: It's the equivalent of a more or less lousy talk in a bar with some colleagues around a couple beers. The forum and mailing lists are more like a tech talk around the coffe machine at the workplace ... with a notepad and a pen in the pocket, just in case. And let us remember we deal mainly with technical issues ... To each their own, of course, but the difference of outlook is pretty clear, isn't it? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-05-30 06:16 Quote from: Joanna on May 30, 2021, 02:30:17 amI’m sure you have all heard about the stampede of foss projects from freenode to libera by now because of some squabble between the staff and owner. I advise caution in this matter for the following reasons. There are a lot of unanswered questions about who is responsible and who really is financing for the Libera servers. ... There is a good possibility that parties that are not friends of free software are paying for the trolls and spam attacks on freenode. This whole situation warrants a more thorough investigation before blindly abandoning Freenode irc channels. With respect, wasn't it you who jumped up saying that everybody should move from Freenode to Libera a few days ago without presenting much of an explanation or argument? QuoteThe former staff of freenode use GitHub which is owned by Microsoft who helped destroy pascal as the popular language that it once was by poaching the developers from Borland who were developing Delphi. In fairness, MS weren't responsible for that since there were multiple compilers around and they even had their own. It was a gradual process fuelled by many factors, possibly the most significant being bad management at Borland. MarkMLl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-05-30 06:23 Quote from: lucamar on May 30, 2021, 05:08:45 amThe problem is that IRC is ephemeral: It's the equivalent of a more or less lousy talk in a bar with some colleagues around a couple beers. The forum and mailing lists are more like a tech talk around the coffe machine at the workplace ... with a notepad and a pen in the pocket, just in case. And let us remember we deal mainly with technical issues ... I agree, and would mention that this has been a bit of a hot topic elsewhere over the last few weeks since Arduino abandoned SMF in favour of Discourse which- from an end-user's POV- is far more difficult to manage. The most productive channels IMO are mailing lists or (marginally better) newsgroups, but there usability is highly dependant on how competent client software is at threading messages properly. I've used a private conferencing system in the past which was better, since every user was guaranteed to have the same URI for each message... something that SMF etc. does of course ensure even if its sequential display is rather crude. MarkMLl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- trev · 2021-05-30 06:41 I prefer forums because of the better categorisation of posts - but then I was an old FidoNet and EchoMail sysop/developer/zone coordinator from before this new fangled Internet thingie was a thing ;-) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-05-30 07:28 Quote from: trev on May 30, 2021, 08:41:54 amI prefer forums because of the better categorisation of posts - but then I was an old FidoNet and EchoMail sysop/developer/zone coordinator from before this new fangled Internet thingie was a thing ;-) I prefer CIX, which is based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoSy_(computer_conferencing_system) ... which is every bit as old. However the fundamental points are (a) whether every message has a URI (or equivalent) which is consistent for every user and (b) whether messages have an "in response to" or similar header, which allows client software to order messages by thread. Most systems fail to implement one or the other of those properly. MarkMLl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- denis.totoliciu · 2021-05-30 10:23 Quote from: lucamar on May 30, 2021, 04:49:27 amEATA: I know you're not really a troll, Denis, but come on ... unless someone elese has hijacked your account ... This is what I believe in and it is my analysis on the subject, regardless of what I am called. As a matter of fact, I want to suggest to the forum to make a special section for such discussions, such as Conspiracies or The Republic or Defending FreePascal and Lazarus where we can post some of our opinions without interferring with the users that don't believe in such things. In that way we have our small corner where the heads of the projects can take a look any time, if they are curious, on our analysis that we can post over there and maybe at some point it will help. But of course, this request can also be seen by the more politicaly correct righteous ones as a means for having the forum going towards `rag fair discussions`, `becoming a mess`, `enabling conspiracy crazies`, `enabling bad behavior`. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Joanna · 2021-05-30 11:23 That is true I did get mislead and caught up in the libera hype and posted about new channels there. I also received more information and deleted my post as soon as possible on the same day. I never claimed to be perfect and know everything did I ? And neither is anyone else. Irc chat maybe ephemeral but the things I learn in there and many people I have met mean quite a lot to me. You will not find anyone who wants irc chat channel to be a success more than I do as you can tell by my previous posts. The experience in irc depends who you are talking there of course. There are many paid trolls in irc picking fights as well as spammers. It’s no secret that I don’t want to waste whatever is left of my life spending time with such people. Nor do I want to encounter them in any channel I frequent. Unfortunately i have unwillingly become an expert on many of the tricks that professional trolls play. I’m a firm believer without any hesitation in the idea that pascal related channels are for people who use the free pascal compiler or at least are interested  talking about the pascal/delphi family of languages. The pascal channels are NOT in my opinion a place to bash the fpc compiler and harass the people who use it. Anyone who thinks that a paid troll who comes to the channel is a possible convert to using the language is horribly mistaken.   It’s quite easy to tell who is interested in pascal and who is not. I’m so grateful for all the hard work that many people have put into developing the free pascal compiler and it makes me really angry when people come to our channel to try to wreck the project and chase people away. The troll whom I complained about last year got banned from the channels with nickysns help. However he definitely did not give up. He keeps coming back under different names to try to finish his task of wrecking this project. This means a heck of a lot to me because I only program in Pascal. Many people here are quite smart and program all sorts of useful things but they are not aware of or can’t accept the fact that the pascal user community is under constant attack by people who want it to be gotten rid of. Everywhere I go I try to tell people how wonderful Lazarus is but someone else has always convinced people otherwise before I got there and they won’t even give Lazarus a try because “it’s not marketable” or other lame excuses which have no connection to reality. I know this post might cause some people to not like me but this has to be said . I refuse to compromise or mince words when I say that in my opinion Lazarus is the best programming tool ever made and I will do my best to defend it and it’s users. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- denis.totoliciu · 2021-05-30 12:13 Speaking of ethics and principles, I think the FreePascal and Lazarus communities can take can example from SQLite for creating a list of principles that drives the community. This database engine is known worldwide, present everywhere, a real success and maybe there is some wisdom to learn from it, aside from the technical aspects. Regardless of money and fame, this is what drove this man to create SQLite. https://sqlite.org/codeofethics.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Handoko · 2021-05-30 12:21 @Joanna I appreciate what you've done to 'defend' Pascal. But I think the best thing to do for defending Pascal is not defending it from the attackers. But by making it better. You are a programmer not a warrior, why should you face the attackers! The more time you spend to eliminate the attackers the less time you can use for doing programming. You fall into their tricks. Visit the bugtracker, there are a huge amount of bugs are waiting. If you good enough, pick a bug and fix it. Even if you're not so skilled, you still can be helpful. By become a tester and providing feedback. If you're good in English, you can improve the documentation and wiki. There are many duplicates pages and outdated information. Or if you're good in your native language, you can start a blog, write some howto Pascal tutorials in non-English languages on other sites. But if you think your Pascal knowledge is limited, visit this forum often. There always some new tricks can be learn everyday. At the same time, help the beginners. Most of beginners' questions are relatively easy to answer, just do some forum or web searching you should be able to provide the answers. If you like to challenge yourself, do like what I frequently do. If someone asking how to do something, try write a demo as quick as you can, but still the source code is properly written in an easy to understand flow and properly formatted. Don't use JEDI code formatting tool, but do it manually. After a period of time, this kind of exercise will improve you programming skill a lot. When Lazarus/FPC has more features, less bugs and beginners can get help easily, there will be more people want to use it. When Pascal has a large amount of users, it is very hard to be defeated. Spending more time on doing the things I said, I believe will be better than fighting attackers by arguing with them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-05-30 12:33 Quote from: denis.totoliciu on May 30, 2021, 02:13:53 pmSpeaking of ethics and principles, I think the FreePascal and Lazarus communities can take can example from SQLite for creating a list of principles that drives the community. I don't. Manifestos and charters invariably end up pandering to the alleged "disadvantaged" irrespective of whether they're present in the provider or consumer population, and are too often used as an excuse to not step beyond the mandated point even if doing so would appear to be demanded by common decency. The statements of fact at https://www.freepascal.org/ are entirely adequate: "Free Pascal is a mature, versatile, open source Pascal compiler" ... " The language syntax has excellent compatibility with TP 7.0 as well as with most versions of Delphi " and so on. Those are statements of fact, nothing else is needed. Look at what happened to StackExchange... MarkMLl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- denis.totoliciu · 2021-05-30 12:44 Quote from: MarkMLl on May 30, 2021, 02:33:00 pmI don't. Thing is that once you moved the IRC channel to libera, you still have a set of implicit principles, but they are not stated out to everybody. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-05-30 12:48 Quote from: denis.totoliciu on May 30, 2021, 02:44:24 pmQuote from: MarkMLl on May 30, 2021, 02:33:00 pmI don't. Thing is that once you moved the IRC channel to libera, you still have a set of implicit principles, but they are not stated out to everybody. I beg your pardon? MarkMLl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- denis.totoliciu · 2021-05-30 12:54 Quote from: MarkMLl on May 30, 2021, 02:48:51 pm I beg your pardon? MarkMLl To be more precise: I think the heads of the project and the community itself already have a set of principles since there was a decision to move the #fpc channel from freenode to libera, but they are not stated/written anywhere in the open. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-05-30 14:14 Quote from: denis.totoliciu on May 30, 2021, 02:54:05 pmTo be more precise: I think the heads of the project and the community itself already have a set of principles since there was a decision to move the #fpc channel from freenode to libera, but they are not stated/written anywhere in the open. If it's a "heads of project" issue then please don't quote my postings as though I'm responsible. And I fail to see why the project owners should publish stuff. It's not a democracy, and while they're usually interested in the opinions of longstanding project contributors ** they're under absolutely no obligation to solicit or conform to them. MarkMLl ** i.e. people with a substantially more productive history than either of us. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FPK · 2021-05-30 16:19 We will see how it turns out and I am still on both networks. But the fact that the freenode staff apparently overtook OSS channels because of "inappropriate advertising" (mentioning the new libera channel) narrows it down for me. Of course, they can do so - it's their network/server - but a service acting like this is most likely not suitable for an OSS project in the long term as they simply miss the idea of OSS. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-05-30 18:45 Quote from: FPK on May 30, 2021, 06:19:27 pmWe will see how it turns out and I am still on both networks. But the fact that the freenode staff apparently overtook OSS channels because of "inappropriate advertising" (mentioning the new libera channel) narrows it down for me. Of course, they can do so - it's their network/server - but a service acting like this is most likely not suitable for an OSS project in the long term as they simply miss the idea of OSS. Entirely reasonable Florian. I'd add that an ISP I use heavily- AAISP in the UK- uses IRC for some of their support, and I look forward to seeing their habitually- outspoken MD's take on this. MarkMLl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Joanna · 2021-05-31 01:48 Handoko thank you for your inspirational words. When I’m not being distracted by trolls I do try to help the pascal project by actively using And promoting it. Sometimes I find some bugs but I’m not sure if I should report them because I’m still using an old version of Lazarus. I recently finished my first application in Lazarus but I’m having difficulty with flickering trackbars when I resize and it seems to not work at all for very high resolution. I guess it will take awhile to find out what I did wrong.  I’m a bit intimidated by forums because I sometimes have seen people being scolded for asking questions ‘incorrectly’. However the forums do seem to be full of useful information that I can search through. FPK Yes it’s true that the owner of freenode who was under a barrage of attacks did act hastily and disrupted more channels than he should have. It was because he saw some channel owners forcing people who wanted to stay off of freenode by locking channels and kicking people. He was definitely unprepared to take control of freenode and is a bit inexperienced but I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt because I once made a blunder similar to his.. The lack of preparedness also in my opinion indicates a lack malicious intent. The channels are not permanently gone their owners can have them reopened.  Here is the link explaining https://freenode.net/news/post-mortem- may21 Im grateful to both the owner who paid the bills and the former freenode staff for keeping it operating so I refuse to take sides in this divorce -> custody battle over irc users affair. I will use both networks with preference given to the one I was on first ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Martin_fr · 2021-05-31 02:05 Quote from: Joanna on May 31, 2021, 03:48:17 am I guess I’m a bit intimidated by forums because I sometimes have seen people being scolded for asking questions ‘incorrectly’. However the forums do seem to be full of useful information that I can search through. "scolded for asking questions ‘incorrectly’" I guess this is sort of a: When you ask a myriad of people, you may find one of them to be unkind towards you or your question. Don't know if that ever happens on IRC... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Joanna · 2021-05-31 02:15 Martin it definitely does and I put people who do it on ignore asap.  Most people in pascal channels who aren’t lurkers are fairly friendly and helpful I’ve had more of that behavior in non pascal irc channels . The good thing about irc that gives it a definite advantage over forums is that I don’t have to know the exact terminology for what I’m asking about. I often ask questions about something I vaguely remember doing before or some issue where I sort of describe what is happening but am not sure what is happening exactly and people there can usually figure out what I mean. I guess forums don’t limit who you can talk to by your time zones like irc does. Both are important resources for the project I think. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Handoko · 2021-05-31 03:27 That's okay if you prefer irc more than forum. What does not kill you makes you stronger. I can understand you feel intimidated on the forum. Me too, get criticized. I posted some codes, which I was sure worked perfectly. But still some could tell me there were security issues, potential problems, not efficient, etc. As a normal person, I felt bad. But instead of doing nothing, I studied their advice. It turned out, what they said were true. This forum has many professional programmers, their criticisms mean to make you a better programmer. Sometimes there are people who are not very polite and seem unkind. That's okay, cultural differences I think. They may talk too directly but they don't really mean to hurt you. Unless trolls. Quote from: Joanna on May 31, 2021, 03:48:17 amSometimes I find some bugs but I’m not sure if I should report them because I’m still using an old version of Lazarus. If you are not sure about the bug. Post it on the forum first. Some may test it on different machines or tell you if it has been already reported or solved on the newer versions. Quote from: Joanna on May 31, 2021, 03:48:17 amI recently finished my first application in Lazarus but I’m having difficulty with flickering trackbars when I resize and it seems to not work at all for very high resolution. I guess it will take awhile to find out what I did wrong. That is what forum used for. Start a new a new topic, post the issue there and get help. For the politic issue, I better stay away. I'm not good on it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-05-31 06:59 Quote from: Joanna on May 31, 2021, 03:48:17 am I’m a bit intimidated by forums because I sometimes have seen people being scolded for asking questions ‘incorrectly’. However the forums do seem to be full of useful information that I can search through. On occasion I'm guilty of that. But let me argue it this way: forum- type software means that people with questions generally put some sort of coherent description in the subject line... except for the clown who puts NEED HELP NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! to everybody's detriment and annoyance. If a subject line appears that looks like something I can help with, then I'm likely to look more closely at it. But if the body of the message doesn't give a coherent explanation of what OS he's using, what Lazarus/FPC version he's got, and what the problem actually is, preferably with an example program that can be fed straight to the compiler, then I've already wasted time which could have been better spent elsewhere. There's nothing wrong with asking questions in public. There's not much wrong with asking questions which could be resolved by a few moments with Google or Wikipaedia (and you'd be surprised how many people don't know about that). Non-technical people who are unfamiliar with the "style guides" such as the classic http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html have nothing to be ashamed about. But the fact remains that civilised public behaviour does have certain norms, and one of those is that if you're writing something or making a verbal presentation then you try to be coherent, grammatical, and conform to an appropriate style. So if somebody does get snapped at for not following "house style" when asking a question, he should still console himself with the knowledge that at least one person has read it and would be likely to help if it were better presented. MarkMLl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-05-31 07:03 Quote from: Joanna on May 31, 2021, 04:15:07 amI guess forums don’t limit who you can talk to by your time zones like irc does. Both are important resources for the project I think. That's one thing, but another is that good forum software threads messages properly, so if you see that a subthread is heading off in some irrelevant or objectionable direction you can simply mark it as "to be ignored" without blackballing everybody involved in it. MarkMLl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Joanna · 2021-05-31 07:27 Forums definitely organize and preserve discussions better . Irc is faster but more informal. Both have their merits. I have found that there are people in both mediums who can be very strict about how they want you to ask questions. It’s as if they are burned out or busy and don’t want to be bothered unless you are willing to put forth considerable effort beforehand. I suppose this is understandable being that nobody is being paid to come here or irc to help people. The second category of people just enjoy trying to be helpful unconditionally often because they want to show off or improve their skills or they like the social aspect of interacting with other people in the community. It has been said that helping others is also of great benefit to those who help. There is also a third category of people who pretend to know more than they do and won’t admit it. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the people faking it from the people in first category. In any case an irc channel where people are told to shut up and go use google is not a good place because it kills most of the interaction in the channel and deprives people of learning new things unexpectedly about features that they didn’t know existed. I go to irc to talk to live people not to be told off. A lot of discussions on irc do start off in the vague “I need help now” category but the interesting thing is that the act of talking about problems with someone else often stimulates the thought processes and helps solve the problem even when the person they are talking to doesn’t know the answer either suggestions can be made that are helpful. Here is the explanation of the channel closings for advertising libera https://freenode.net/news/post-mortem-may21 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-05-31 07:45 Quote from: Joanna on May 31, 2021, 09:27:51 amForums definitely organize and preserve discussions better . Irc is faster but more informal. Both have their merits. Agreed. Snipping most of your other points in the interest of brvity and without intending disrespect, there are also users who are quite clearly out of their depth, profess a level of expertise (possibly to people paying them) that they quite simply don't possess, lack all ability to read and inwardly digest relevant documentation, and demand an immediate solution to an ill-described problem without being prepared to contribute an iota of effort themselves. Fortunately they usually also lack enough understanding of how annoying they are to change their moniker on a regular basis :-) QuoteHere is the explanation of the channel closings for advertising libera https://freenode.net/news/post-mortem-may21 Thanks for that. Can I ask one followup: The intent of doing this was not an attempt of a hostile takeover nor hijack like many people are saying. Since certain projects were disrupting their users' ability to chat on freenode via mass kicks, force closures, spam, we decided to enact this policy in those places which were deemed in violation and could cause an issue later. Is he alleging that Libranode was interfering with Freenode at a protocol level, i.e. by injecting control messages into Freenode traffic? MarkMLl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Marc · 2021-05-31 07:46 In the mean time we also have an official Lazarus channel on libera. I'll keep them both for a while, I myself tend to go for libera, but we'll see where this end. Marc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dbannon · 2021-05-31 07:49 While a freenode v. Libra tussel is not really relevant to this forum, the comments about rudeness is, so - Quote from: Joanna on May 31, 2021, 09:27:51 am I have found that there are people in both mediums who can be very strict about how they want you to ask questions.... Yes, there is. But sometimes its a case of people asking questions that cannot possibly be answered given the information provided. That does not excuse rudeness but it does, to some extent explain it.  People often forget to say what OS they use, what version of FPC/Lazarus and often ask questions like "whats wrong with my code" without showing even a hint of what their code looks like. And often people ask questions that have already been answered multiple time in the wiki and forum, indicating that they have not really tried to help themselves. So, 'old hands' do sometimes get a bit terse, its never a good idea but I am afraid its bound to happen on just about any platform.  You should look at the "average response" and ignore the unpleasant ones. Davo ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Joanna · 2021-05-31 10:29 Mark this whole freenode divorce drama has been accompanied by all sorts of spam attacks on both networks plus paid trolls filling the support channels with slander and saying hateful things about the people running the servers and trying to encourage people to stop using irc. The freenode channels themselves were hit with spam attacks shortly after the staff quit. Finally the new staff on freenode got their act together and put the #freenode support channel into auditorium mode so that users can only see the ops talking. Whomever is financing these paid trolls and spammers has not been determined which makes me all the more suspicious that this affair is a premeditated attack on the foss community as a whole. I honestly hope that the people running libera have good intentions but I’m not going to jump to conclusions being that they use GitHub which is not a foss platform kind of hurts their credibility. Some freenode channel owners actually did try to force people off the network by locking their channels so members couldn’t talk. The ##sqlite channel which I am now cofounder of did this and we talked the channel owner into setting up a bridge to not force people off the network. Something I’d like to add about the people asking questions topic. Trolls often like to impersonate newbies who need help. It wasn’t too long ago when we had a troll who kept making new accounts with new names and coming to the #fpc channel from same IP address to ask the same question over and over again about object oriented programming..should he or shouldn’t he use objects?? When people tried to help him he would argue with them and waste as much of their time as possible going on an on about not being sure what to do. We also had a troll named zero3k who role played someone who was mentally impaired and came to the pascal channels demanding that we fix his “tard playa” which was written in delphi. I believe some of you had the displeasure of his posting here also. I don’t know who is sending these people but they certainly make life interesting don’t they ? Unfortunately the result of their actions In the long run makes people less friendly and willing to help newcomers which is not a good thing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-05-31 11:00 Quote from: Joanna on May 31, 2021, 12:29:00 pmMark this whole freenode divorce drama has been accompanied by all sorts of spam attacks on both networks plus paid trolls filling the support channels with slander and saying hateful things about the people running the servers and trying to encourage people to stop using irc. The freenode channels themselves were hit with spam attacks shortly after the staff quit. OK, but did the attacks only take the form of visible postings or were there also illicit /kick etc. commands? The first of those is obviously objectionable, the second is probably illegal... and saying that the IRC protocol is so poorly designed that there's no protection against such things is no defence. Somebody acting with "malice aforethought" who's prepared to do something illegal is either displaying immaturity or the sort of incaution which suggests that they consider themselves to be outside the owner's legal reach. QuoteI honestly hope that the people running libera have good intentions but I’m not going to jump to conclusions being that they use GitHub which is not a foss platform kind of hurts their credibility. The "rubicon" there is whether Github starts interfering with people's ability to extract the entire history of their projects. I'm somewhat sceptical, being old enough to remember when MS was at its least pleasant. QuoteI don’t know who is sending these people but they certainly make life interesting don’t they ? Unfortunately the result of their actions In the long run makes people less friendly and willing to help newcomers which is not a good thing. I don't want to suggest that I know more about the current outbreak than I do, but I'd suggest not jumping to conclusions too quickly since attackers' motivations can be subtle: a few years ago I had to deal with a troll in an astronomy forum who turned out to be part of an Australian Evangelical Christian outreach campaign. One thing I'd add is that while I'd hardly call this forum a tight- knit community, many of us know each other from years of interaction using the mailing lists. You might have noticed a comment from FPK yesterday, (in case you don't realise) you'd be amazed how long he's been involved with FPC even if the forum software identifies him as a junior member :-) MarkMLl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Joanna · 2021-05-31 11:32 Mark the attacks were denial of service type attacks with spam bots coming from different ip addresses and nicks and yelling some garbage then disconnecting. I believe that irc Protocol is fairly well tested and robust and does not allow  properly set up channels to be hijacked . It was the channel ops kicking people. GitHub is definitely not the friend of the free software community. They banned the ip address of one of our nicest most helpful channel members because they didn’t like his country. And if I remember correctly he lost access to his repository there. Do we really want entities like this deciding who can belong to our community? I sure hope not. https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-countries/ I have also heard that irc.libera.chat belongs to git hub also. Can anyone confirm if this is true ? It’s hardly a coincidence that they want to herd us off irc into proprietary platforms like slack which they can better control. Many of the paid trolls were suggesting other platforms besides irc. I have heard that several open source projects have left irc altogether as a result of the attack on freenode. It’s interesting that you are interested in astronomy I just finished an application in Lazarus related to astronomy . I’m still working out the small flaws. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Joanna · 2021-05-31 12:14 Dbannon I know what you mean . I think it depends upon the situation. Sometimes it can be figured out with general questions other times it takes some code pasted in a web link other times people find my code so confusing that they can’t understand what is happening and I end up figuring it out myself.. This is why I make code that is easy to test alone piece by piece ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Handoko · 2021-05-31 12:22 Quote from: Joanna on May 31, 2021, 12:29:00 pmWe also had a troll named zero3k who role played someone who was mentally impaired and came to the pascal channels demanding that we fix his “tard playa” which was written in delphi. I believe some of you had the displeasure of his posting here also. I personally think he is not a troll. His real name is Bryan Kirk, a 34 years old computer and video game enthusiast. He spends a lots of time creating videos for the games he plays and posts them on YouTube and TwitchTV. Tardsplaya was a tool he used for streaming on TwitchTV, but it had some issues. The developer of the program had abandoned the software but made it open source. He was not a programmer so visited here hoping someone can fix it for him. Unfortunately no one was interested on it. He later offered a $100-300 bounty for looking someone to fix it. About his rude and pushy behavior, I think that because he sits in front on of the screen playing games for too long without direct interaction with people. Someone payed him to harm the open source community? No, I don't think so. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-05-31 12:47 Wandering OT with apologies to the community. Quote from: Joanna on May 31, 2021, 01:32:24 pmGitHub is definitely not the friend of the free software community. They banned the ip address of one of our nicest most helpful channel members because they didn’t like his country. And if I remember correctly he lost access to his repository there. What's the alternative? If Github is to be owned then (taking liberties with Hobbes) that ownership must be underwritten by a sovereign jurisdiction. And while I would (I hope) be the last person to be identified as an admirer of the Americans it must be said that their idea of "rule of law" is rather better than that of most countries on their s^Hhitlist. And if it were not owned... well, remember what happened to the Trustees Savings Bank (TSB) in the UK when the government decided that it wasn't owned. Or if you're intent on using IRC- and remember that that is a /protocol/, not a single server or cluster of servers- and if you're intent on decentralising it such that it's not in any particular jurisdiction, then you will eventually have a situation where the local security services will be knocking on the door of anybody they think is using it for anything they consider objectionable. And worse, they'll be breaking down the door of anybody they think is using IRC for coded or encrypted messages, and putting people in prison on the suspicion that they're using steganography. So much as I like the idea of unregulated peer-to-peer chats and data transfer, the safest situation is where hubs are owned and situated in a jurisdiction with a strong rule-of-law tradition, and where the owners have enough clout that they're able to demonstrate to their customers and potential customers that they'll resist "informal" coercion by the authorities. MarkMLl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Joanna · 2021-05-31 21:19 Handoko thanks for solving the mystery. He certainly was different than the others . I’m not sure why he didn’t go to the delphi community wherever that is to solve his problem. He came across as some sort of freeloader who didn’t want to do anything and acted like we were his servants. We suggested he hire a programmer or Learn to program himself niether of which was advice that he liked.. Mark I doubt that Microsoft or any similar big business is going to say no to the government when it demands information. It’s more accurate to just to say that giving information to a big tech company is the same as giving it to the government that the big company was financed by. The fact that the governments demand to monitor and record all communications and stop things that they can’t decrypt from reaching their destinations only serves as a grim reminder of a very bad situation. The concepts of privacy and free speech have been exposed as the shallow promises that they always were. How soon is it before the government comes here and demands that back doors be put into the pascal compiler if they haven’t already? The fact that irc is a protocol without a centralized control which allows you to choose your own client {or even create your own client with pascal as some people have done } is all the more reasons that it deserves our support. Governments have been breaking down people’s doors under various pretexts long before there was the internet. Sure it would be great to have a powerful government authority to keep us all safe But have you ever noticed that the largest crimes in history are always carried out by governments? The authorities can’t even seem to or don’t want to stop all the Ransom ware or spam bot attacks can they? It’s no secret that hardware ,firmware,operating systems and software all have backdoors often put there on purpose to be used later for whatever purpose strikes the fancy of people who know about them. The internet itself started as and probably still is a government project. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-05-31 21:42 Quote from: Joanna on May 31, 2021, 11:19:29 pmMark I doubt that Microsoft or any similar big business is going to say no to the government when it demands information. It’s more accurate to just to say that giving information to a big tech company is the same as giving it to the government that the big company was financed by. Apple- for all their faults- have a history of standing up to the US government in that area. Quite frankly I'm not sure how I feel about that: if damning evidence implicates a miscreant should a company really be defying legitimate authority acting within its jurisdiction? QuoteThe fact that the governments demand to monitor and record all communications and stop things that they can’t decrypt from reaching their destinations only serves as a grim reminder of a very bad situation. There's nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is that most "lawmakers" are sufficiently clueless as to be completely ineffectual when it comes to supervision and control. QuoteThe concepts of privacy and free speech have been exposed as the shallow promises that they always were. How soon is it before the government comes here and demands that back doors be put into the pascal compiler if they haven’t already? Unlikely. The place you should be looking at is code signing, not compilation. QuoteThe fact that irc is a protocol without a centralized control which allows you to choose your own client {or even create your own client with pascal as some people have done } is all the more reasons that it deserves our support. Not quite what I said. I said that there wasn't just one IRC network. QuoteGovernments have been breaking down people’s doors under various pretexts long before there was the internet. Sure it would be great to have a powerful government authority to keep us all safe But have you ever noticed that the largest crimes in history are always carried out by governments? The authorities can’t even seem to or don’t want to stop all the Ransom ware or spam bot attacks can they? It’s no secret that hardware ,firmware,operating systems and software all have backdoors often put there on purpose to be used later for whatever purpose strikes the fancy of people who know about them. The internet itself started as and probably still is a government project. How can they stop that sort of thing? The only practical way would be to identify the country which apparently hosted the perpetrators and isolate it. MarkMLl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Joanna · 2021-05-31 23:01 Mark I hope that’s true because I use apple products. On the other hand it’s hard to believe that any business can be too defiant towards governments that regulate them. It’s really hard to say who the miscreants are anymore especially since everything is full of vulnerabilities and  back doors so incriminating evidence and malware can just be snuck onto your computer and without you knowing it, your computer can be used for criminal activity. The only solution is to disconnect from the internet. I’m not really a fan of the flawed concept that all wrongdoers will be caught and punished after the fact. More often people who do the biggest crimes are unpunished and the focus is deflected towards people who may or may not have committed lesser crimes. Most lawmakers work on behalf of the interests of people who contributed to their campaign to get them elected. Their act of pretending that their blunders are by accident is all a show . They are following a script written by someone else. Speaking of isolating perpetrators ..I know someone who has blocked entire continents from his irc server because so many spam attacks were coming from them. What if the computers used for crime are not confined to any geographic boundary? In my opinion the fact that people can have malware so easily installed onto their computers that runs software hidden from them and allows their computers to be used for malicious things like spambot attacks is completely unacceptable and the makers of the operating systems are fully responsible for it. But this is a problem that definitely won’t be solved as long as there are people who want remote access influencing the makers of operating systems. I don’t know much about the code signing process however I have heard of instances of people trying to sneak code into opensource  projects that shouldn’t be there including copyrighted code. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- trev · 2021-06-01 10:57 Quote from: Joanna on May 31, 2021, 01:32:24 pmGitHub is definitely not the friend of the free software community. They banned the ip address of one of our nicest most helpful channel members because they didn’t like his country. And if I remember correctly he lost access to his repository there. Do we really want entities like this deciding who can belong to our community? I sure hope not. https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-countries/ That's a somewhat disingenuous representation of the situation Joanna. It had nothing to do with Microsoft - it was not their decision, they were merely following the export laws passed by the US Federal Government to which they are subject. I might add that these were the same US export laws that in the 1990s prevented the export of FreeBSD encryption code to Australia! We in Australia used to download the code from Canada, South Africa or Finland instead where there were no such laws to be broken ;-) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-06-01 11:24 Quote from: trev on June 01, 2021, 12:57:51 pmI might add that these were the same US export laws that in the 1990s prevented the export of FreeBSD encryption code to Australia! We in Australia used to download the code from Canada, South Africa or Finland instead where there were no such laws to be broken ;-) And for that matter prevented Sourceforge serving FPC to various places. And in the UK Wikipedia was blocked because somebody didn't like one page. However- and noting that this is wandering way off-topic- on the balance I've concluded that it's inevitable that Internet traffic be subject to local laws, which ultimately will mean that people- like Apple- who offer encrypted mail will be obliged to be able to produce a decrypted version from their local servers. Because provided that the supervisors are competent (which broadly speaking they are not at present), diligent (ditto), conscientious (ditto) and answerable (ditto) the alternatives are far worse. Apropos Joanna's comment about people slipping backdoors into open- source code, the classic was code roughly like this that person- unknown almost managed to get into the Linux kernel: Code: C  [Select][+][-]window.onload = function(){var x1 = document.getElementById("main_content_section"); if (x1) { var x = document.getElementsByClassName("geshi");for (var i = 0; i if (privilege = 0x00) then {  dosomething;}  It didn't get in, not so much because it was caught by inspection but because the developers' working methods highlighted the intrusion... the same working methods that highlighted the unwelcome intrusion of an American university recently. It was that episode that provided the incentive for the C community to change its practice to read Code: C  [Select][+][-]window.onload = function(){var x1 = document.getElementById("main_content_section"); if (x1) { var x = document.getElementsByClassName("geshi");for (var i = 0; i if (0x00 = privilege) then {  dosomething;}  which would, of course, be detected as an error by any reasonable compiler. Finally, I presume that everybody is familiar with https://www.cs.cmu. edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_ReflectionsonTrustingTrust.pdf Mark ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Zvoni · 2021-06-01 11:31 Small titbit about that Apple-stuff (which also applies to Android): I met a former classmate of me some years ago, and in the evening during some beers we talked about who did what in the intervening years. He founded a small software-company in the early nineties, and wrote a program supporting emergency-services to reach a destination in the most efficient way (basically what GPS-navigation is today). That company prospered, and he has now some 20 people working for him. He told me at that time (2015 i think) that he was in negotiations with the german police for them to use his Software. Following dialogue (110 being the emergency-phone-no of the police in Germany --> 911 for Americans): Me: "So, that's the Software when i call 110, then you can see where i am, see my phone-no, and the software already starts calculating the best/fastest path to my position?" He: "Yep!" Me: "And if i activate 'Don't send location', or if i activate 'suppress phone-no'?" He just smiled at me, and shook his head: "eh eh.... You can do whatever you want on your smartphone, they know...... We know the protocols...." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-06-01 11:45 Quote from: Zvoni on June 01, 2021, 01:31:03 pmMe: "And if i activate 'Don't send location', or if i activate 'suppress phone-no'?" He just smiled at me, and shook his head: "eh eh.... You can do whatever you want on your smartphone, they know...... We know the protocols...." Yes, because once you've got privileged access to the landline infrastructure you know what cell the GSM 'phone is in plus much other stuff... it's analogous to knowing a computer's MAC address rather than just its IP address. And quite frankly that is how it should be: it's far better to have the infrastructure behaving in a certain predictable way than it is for the security services (and others, and you'd be astounded at how broad "others" can be) relying on injecting their own monitoring code onto individual handsets or computers. In fact subject to appropriate supervision, it's basic "rule of law" stuff. MarkMLl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Martin_fr · 2021-06-01 12:01 Quote from: MarkMLl on June 01, 2021, 01:45:40 pmYes, because once you've got privileged access to the landline infrastructure you know what cell the GSM 'phone is in Off topic, but (with proper access) within a city you can triangulate the position down to 1 meter (IIRC, definitely less than 3meter) including altitude in buildings. Outside cities it's less exact. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Joanna · 2021-06-02 02:44 Those examples of privilege escalation only serve as proof that there is intent to compromise things not that other bad but more subtle things didn’t slip through. Did they ever identify the person who tried to put bad code into the Linux kernel? I talked to the guy who had his access to git hub blocked but it was only his private repository. So I told him they don’t want to miss a chance to get some good free code even if it’s from a sanctioned country! About encryption I’m sure it works if done properly but it seems like a honeypot in many cases. Send all your things you want nobody to know about using our cryptography    I’m willing to bet that encryption wouldn’t be allowed at all if it truly kept the government from snooping. If you write your own encryption that they don’t have the keys to you will probably get a visit from the authorities or your messages will be intercepted and stopped. I haven’t tried this experiment myself but I have heard stories from people I know. Sure there are stories about Apple protecting privacy but we don’t really know if it’s true unless actually in a situation where it would be tested. Saying that they have great encryption and won’t give anyone your data certainly makes for a good marketing strategy for selling high end devices. Even if your device were to have flawless encryption most people can be tricked or scared into divulging information. That is an interesting discussion about how police can find the locations of phones yet there are also cases of spoofed phone numbers and police sending the swat team to the wrong address because of prank calls and sometimes killing the people who didn’t call them or have an emergency. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- skalogryz · 2021-06-02 04:33 just an observation: the forum hijacked Joanna from IRC channels ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Joanna · 2021-06-02 07:01 More distracted than hijacked....  The irc channels get too quiet at certain times of day because there are no people in my time zone . It sure would be nice to have more people in the same time zone as Asia and Australia.. Hint hint.. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PascalDragon · 2021-06-02 07:03 Quote from: Zvoni on June 01, 2021, 01:31:03 pmFollowing dialogue (110 being the emergency-phone-no of the police in Germany --> 911 for Americans): Me: "So, that's the Software when i call 110, then you can see where i am, see my phone-no, and the software already starts calculating the best/fastest path to my position?" He: "Yep!" Me: "And if i activate 'Don't send location', or if i activate 'suppress phone-no'?" He just smiled at me, and shook his head: "eh eh.... You can do whatever you want on your smartphone, they know...... We know the protocols...." Of course that is no problem. If you have an interface to the mobile network providers you can get the cell ID a phone is booked in (and also those close by). Thus you can a rather good estimate of the location. And the suppression of the number also happens on the side of the network, not your phone. Quote from: Joanna on June 02, 2021, 04:44:35 amThose examples of privilege escalation only serve as proof that there is intent to compromise things not that other bad but more subtle things didn’t slip through. Did they ever identify the person who tried to put bad code into the Linux kernel? I don't know about the event back then, but there was one this year by a university who tried that as part of a research project and got themselves banned. Quote from: Joanna on June 02, 2021, 04:44:35 am  I’m willing to bet that encryption wouldn’t be allowed at all if it truly kept the government from snooping. If you write your own encryption that they don’t have the keys to you will probably get a visit from the authorities or your messages will be intercepted and stopped. I haven’t tried this experiment myself but I have heard stories from people I know. You're wrong. Encryption does keep the government from snooping otherwise e.g. the EU wouldn't work on laws regarding secure messengers like Signal in the name of the fight against child pornography. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-06-02 07:20 Quote from: Joanna on June 02, 2021, 04:44:35 amThose examples of privilege escalation only serve as proof that there is intent to compromise things not that other bad but more subtle things didn’t slip through. Did they ever identify the person who tried to put bad code into the Linux kernel? In the older case, I believe I said "person unknown" and used a word such as "attempted". And I certainly attempted to make the point that it was detected because manipulation of the repository was noticed, not because of a line-by-line review. QuoteAbout encryption I’m sure it works if done properly but it seems like a honeypot in many cases. Send all your things you want nobody to know about using our cryptography  Which is why it's important that implementations should be studied by people who understand the potential problems. QuoteI’m willing to bet that encryption wouldn’t be allowed at all if it truly kept the government from snooping. If you write your own encryption that they don’t have the keys to you will probably get a visit from the authorities or your messages will be intercepted and stopped. I haven’t tried this experiment myself but I have heard stories from people I know. You might have noticed that multiple jurisdictions are attempting to get backdoored encryption adopted. As I've said, I think the preferable solution is for strong cryptography to be allowed but only between endpoints in the same jurisdiction, so if you want- for example- to move a large amount of money between countries it has to go via two banks. And I've already remarked that yes, if you try to use an unsanctioned algorithm or send an encrypted or coded message to an endpoint outside the jurisdiction then you'll have somebody hammering on your door. It's not good, but most of the alternatives are worse. QuoteThat is an interesting discussion about how police can find the locations of phones yet there are also cases of spoofed phone numbers and police sending the swat team to the wrong address because of prank calls and sometimes killing the people who didn’t call them or have an emergency. Yes, but there's "police" and "police". "Police" are there for rapid response, and don't necessarily have the time or the ability to mine the infrastructure. "Security Services" have both time and ability and it's part of their job, BUT they need to be supervised properly... don't ask for my opinion of most politicians. MarkMLl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Zvoni · 2021-06-02 07:32 Quote from: PascalDragon on June 02, 2021, 09:03:48 amQuote from: Zvoni on June 01, 2021, 01:31:03 pmFollowing dialogue (110 being the emergency-phone-no of the police in Germany --> 911 for Americans): Me: "So, that's the Software when i call 110, then you can see where i am, see my phone-no, and the software already starts calculating the best/fastest path to my position?" He: "Yep!" Me: "And if i activate 'Don't send location', or if i activate 'suppress phone-no'?" He just smiled at me, and shook his head: "eh eh.... You can do whatever you want on your smartphone, they know...... We know the protocols...." Of course that is no problem. If you have an interface to the mobile network providers you can get the cell ID a phone is booked in (and also those close by). Thus you can a rather good estimate of the location. And the suppression of the number also happens on the side of the network, not your phone. PD, of course it's not a problem if you have access to the Interface. I wanted to point out "perceived" vs. "real" privacy of the "Standard"-User I remember being on a business-trip to China (Shanghai), where i was booked into a first-class hotel (paid by the company). Color me surprised when i saw a sign above the reception-desk: "We accept WeChat-Payment" (followed by a phone-number) --> For those who don't know: WeChat is a messenger like WhatsApp, but with a lot more functions (digital wallet and what not) I asked my boss if they are for real, since i am/we are pretty sure that chinese government is reading along with whatever you say/do in WeChat (Backdoor!) His answer: "So what? As long as you don't make a donation to "Free Tibet" what can happen to you?" I agree with Mark regarding backdoors, that as long as it is used for the proper purpose and under correct supervision and jurisdiction, the "Standard"-user shouldn't have a problem with it. Currently, there is another discussion here on the forum i'm of two minds about it: Allowing/installing a Sub-Forum for arab speaking/writing Users. I won't take odds on bets, if we allow/install that, that we wouldn't get flagged by american government to keep an eye on us.... (and i know that this is a provocative statement from me!) EDIT: If i remember correctly (and correct me if i'm wrong!): there was some boolahoo some 20-25 years ago, when Microsoft offered the US- Government a discount for Windows for the US to use Windows on their computers. The Government declined as long as MS didn't provide the source-code for Windows. From a Government's POV it makes sense to not install/use anything they don't have full control of, on the other hand, if they did get the source-code (as sloppy as it is), they also did get the knowledge where the loopholes/backdoors were/are ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-06-02 08:21 Quote from: Zvoni on June 02, 2021, 09:32:01 amPD, of course it's not a problem if you have access to the Interface. I wanted to point out "perceived" vs. "real" privacy of the "Standard"-User ...which has been the issue ever since the "phone phreaking" in the USA (and in the UK, if you know where to look) in the 1960s: once you know the "true name" by which something is identified, you have enormous control... particularly if that  obscurity is the only security. QuoteI agree with Mark regarding backdoors, that as long as it is used for the proper purpose and under correct supervision and jurisdiction, the "Standard"-user shouldn't have a problem with it. I don't think it's a backdoor issue so much as an endpoint issue. And for all of their complaints about the behaviour of China, the Americans have been pushy about insisting that compnies engaged in military contracts have All-American directors etc. QuoteEDIT: If i remember correctly (and correct me if i'm wrong!): there was some boolahoo some 20-25 years ago, when Microsoft offered the US-Government a discount for Windows for the US to use Windows on their computers. The Government declined as long as MS didn't provide the source-code for Windows. From a Government's POV it makes sense to not install/use anything they don't have full control of, on the other hand, if they did get the source-code (as sloppy as it is), they also did get the knowledge where the loopholes/backdoors were/are But in that timeframe a number of universities had the source for research purposes, so the issue was likely to be more a question of "what do you want to do with it" than anything else. MarkMLl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Joanna · 2021-06-02 09:02 Backdoors interfere with what I believe is a fundamental right of property ownership. When I buy something whatever it may be I don’t want other parties having control over it.  There is a man named Cory doctorow who Discusses this topic extensively. Your printer should not be allowed to decide that you aren’t allowed to use ink made by companies that don’t gouge you etc. The example of stopping terrorists and people who exploit children by not letting them have secure messaging is hard to disagree with and definitely triggers some knee jerk emotions .. But in reality the surveillance is applied to everyone without probable cause and then who knows what will happen to it ? Several possible uses include monetization , preventing political dissent. Blackmail, “Accidentally “ losing control of it because of a data breach and having it go who knows where.. The Likelihood is high that it will end up in the possession of people who will exploit it to commit fraud or identify theft. Just collecting all possible data on everyone just in case you want something to use against them at some future date does not sound like a good idea. The only true way to keep data secure is not collect it to begin with in my opinion. Although I definitely prefer opensource software to closed source I am always a bit skeptical and sometimes worry that everyone expects that someone else is auditing it. I am not sure how feasible it is to audit already approved code just in case. There is a good chance that this forum is already being data mined guessing from the number of views versus the number of people talking ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-06-02 09:25 Quote from: Joanna on June 02, 2021, 11:02:31 amBackdoors interfere with what I believe is a fundamental right of property ownership. Communication is not property. To employ the sort of sort of glib argument beloved by Cory Doctorow, "free speech" and "free beer" are distinct. QuoteWhen I buy something whatever it may be I don’t want other parties having control over it.  There is a man named Cory doctorow who Discusses this topic extensively. Your printer should not be allowed to decide that you aren’t allowed to use ink made by companies that don’t gouge you etc. In which case you should read the small print very carefully before each purchase, and make sure that your jurisdiction prevents companies rewriting the contract that they consider binds you on the fly. QuoteBut in reality the surveillance is applied to everyone without probable cause and then who knows what will happen to it ? Several possible uses include monetization , preventing political dissent. Blackmail, “Accidentally “ losing control of it because of a data breach and having it go who knows where.. Which is why the legislators and administrators within a jurisdiction need to be kept on a tight leash. QuoteThe Likelihood is high that it will end up in the possession of people who will exploit it to commit fraud or identify theft. Just collecting all possible data on everyone just in case you want something to use against them at some future date does not sound like a good idea. And speaking personally, I'd prefer that such things were handled by a well-regulated infrastructure rather than by some quango pushing a monitoring app onto my 'phone. MarkMLl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Joanna · 2021-06-02 10:36 I don’t know about communication not being “property”. It is most certainly intellectual property or should be. My communications intended to be private should not be shared with third parties no matter how much they feel entitled to be nosy. I don’t speak for everyone of course. There plenty of people who willingly put hackable cameras connected to the Internet into their homes for the enjoyment of voyeurs. My computer is certainly my property and I do not knowingly consent To have back doors if any sort put on it. Any policies that deviate from this principle are fundamentally just wrong. Consumers should not have to navigate through many pages of fine print written in legalese that puts the blame on them for consenting.  I was listening to a video where Edward Snowden was talking about people are manipulated into consenting to things they shouldn’t consent to and it ended with him saying I will not press ok to continue. I found it pretty profound because most people really don’t consider the long term consequences of their actions they just do what is most expedient in the short term. Well regulated infrastructure sounds great but that depends upon the intentions of those regulating it. People in charge don’t always care about the best interests of those that they rule if history serves as any precedent. I can’t imagine how legislators could be kept on a “short leash” when there is a revolving door between government officials and the personnel of the industries that they are supposedly regulating. Another thing I should mention is this trend of insecure operating systems that allow computers to be controlled remotely by people that their owners didn’t intend can have serious consequences especially with large dangerous things connected to the internet like dams and power plants as well as facilitating ransomware attacks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PascalDragon · 2021-06-02 11:28 Quote from: Zvoni on June 02, 2021, 09:32:01 amCurrently, there is another discussion here on the forum i'm of two minds about it: Allowing/installing a Sub-Forum for arab speaking/writing Users. I won't take odds on bets, if we allow/install that, that we wouldn't get flagged by american government to keep an eye on us.... (and i know that this is a provocative statement from me!) We core developers of both FPC and Lazarus are Europe-centric. We honestly don't care what the US thinks about other countries. Also we already have a Russian section, so an Arabic one can't be worse considering the general attitude regarding Russia... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lucamar · 2021-06-02 11:50 Quote from: PascalDragon on June 02, 2021, 01:28:01 pmAlso we already have a Russian section, so an Arabic one can't be worse considering the general attitude regarding Russia... And afterwards we could open a Chinese one, to complete the triumvirate Frankly speaking, *not* opening an Arabic section (or a Swahili one, for that matter) just because what someone in the USA might think ... that would really be "hijacking the community". And completely defeating the purpose of this forum. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dbannon · 2021-06-02 11:57 > Frankly speaking, *not* opening an Arabic section (or a Swahili one, for that matter) just because what someone in the USA might think ... that would really be "hijacking the community". And completely defeating the purpose of this forum Well said ! Davo ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Kays · 2021-06-02 12:08 Quote from: PascalDragon on June 02, 2021, 09:03:48 amQuote from: Zvoni on June 01, 2021, 01:31:03 pm[…] Me: "And if i activate 'Don't send location', or if i activate 'suppress phone-no'?" He just smiled at me, and shook his head: "eh eh.... You can do whatever you want on your smartphone, they know...... We know the protocols...." […] And the suppression of the number also happens on the side of the network, not your phone.Also, in Germany it’s illegal (for phone carriers) to implement effective suppression of your number when calling the emergency services, § 102 (8) TKG, or facilitate suppression of position data, § 98 (3) TKG. Public (pay)phones even have to ensure their number and position are transmitted in any case, § 108 (1) 3 TKG. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MarkMLl · 2021-06-02 12:47 Quote from: Joanna on June 02, 2021, 12:36:30 pmI don’t know about communication not being “property”. It is most certainly intellectual property or should be. Communication is not property. Intellectual property is property. Even in the USA which has the most rabid attitude to free speech possible, you can say anything you want but if you divulge somebody else's IP in the process you'll face the consequences. QuoteMy computer is certainly my property Bet? You have a license to use the operating system, you don't own it. Ditto the IP in the BIOS. Ditto the IP in the increasing-number of cores that make up the chipset and peripherals. You don't actually own very much there, except that you can violently surrender the collective licenses by putting the whole thing through a scrap shredder. MarkMLl ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Martin_fr · 2021-06-02 13:44 Locked, due to the following reasons: * The original concern has (afaik) been addressed. * Recent posts have diverged. And are either outside the scope of this forum, or belong into other threads.