Sarah Jamie Lewis2d ago

The extent to which core linux projects are laying the groundwork for age verification is very concerning.

I understand why some believe they are compelled to do so, and why others feel that it may be better to implement the most minimal conforming implementation in the hopes of fending off something worse.

But the line must be drawn such that no threat can obligate an OS to collect/store personal information - without that freedom, we face an uphill fight to protect general purpose computing.

Show threadAlex Lohr (RIP Natenom)2d ago
@sarahjamielewis I think the best way to go is to make this a) fully optional and b) as loosely coupled to the system as possible. Next, we need to look into licensing to ensure that if we provide a system meant for the rest of the world w/o age verification, that we can get any legal costs back from users who used it in a country w/ age verification.
Show threadtuban_muzuru2d ago

@lexLohr @sarahjamielewis

Shifts liability to the user - and away from the OS

Show threadAlex Lohr (RIP Natenom)2d ago
@tuban_muzuru @sarahjamielewis Unfortunate, sure, but where else could it be moved? The devs? Then nobody would ever contribute to open source again.
Show threadKim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷1d ago
@lexLohr @tuban_muzuru @sarahjamielewis
I wonder if that’s the hidden agenda of the big corporations? Microsoft would love FOSS to go away.
Show threadAlex Lohr (RIP Natenom)1d ago
@KimSJ @tuban_muzuru @sarahjamielewis Which is pretty short-sighted, as all of them heavily rely on open source software nowadays.
Show threadtuban_muzuru1d ago

@lexLohr @KimSJ @sarahjamielewis

MSFT has a complex relationship with open source over the years. Consider: they created this money printing machine called MS-DOS licensed per-CPU per machine shipped.

Let's just think about Bill Gates and all those 386 machines.

Linus T was writing for his own machine, a 386, and was explicit that it wasn't portable and wasn't meant to be.

There just happened to be lots of i386 machines lying around...heh

Show threadAlex Lohr (RIP Natenom)21h ago

@tuban_muzuru @KimSJ @sarahjamielewis What they did create was OEM software. MS-DOS was merely a re-licensed QDOS. Microsoft was always more a software selling company rather than a software development company.

On the other hand, Linux is about noting but development.

Show threadtuban_muzuru20h ago

@lexLohr @KimSJ @sarahjamielewis

Heh. IBM had a program to get everyone's coders in the same room, back around 1975 I think. We'd bring a big tape and a small tape, with our cool utilities ( mine was an inventory system for our JCL )

They'd have a dinner, a presentation - and all the while they'd be combining and copying everyone's utils onto the Big Tape.

There was so much work outstanding and so few of us to do anything about it, coding-wise, the idea of paying for software was insane.

Show threadtuban_muzuru

@lexLohr @KimSJ @sarahjamielewis

We had an IBM site engineer who ended up marrying one of our coders. IBM got rich on support contracts - and they were worth every penny.

Mar 23 at 7:54amWeb
Show threadAlex Lohr (RIP Natenom)20h ago

@tuban_muzuru @KimSJ @sarahjamielewis IBMs biggest mistake was limiting itself to B2B, while leaving B2C to Microsoft, claiming there might be only a market for 5 computers worldwide. Yes, they got rich (e. g. supporting the Nazi regime through DEHOMAG). Their devs and support were always top-notch, but the management was always... questionable, to say the least.

Still, without IBM/compatible being an open specification, RISC-based systems would have overtaken the x86 architecture a lot faster.