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nilloc, (edited ) in OSS-Blacklist: A blacklist for keeping track of OSS hostile companies/organizations

Add Haier to the list. They’re threatening Homekit devs and issued a takedown on a GitHub hosted HVAC controller for their units. Citing it hurting their income (I assume they mean data mining income when you stop letting them monitor your appliances online).

The dev is looking for a lawyer to consult, and wants to fight, so has probably not got any copyright infringing code in his repo.

Oh and for boycotting purposes, they sell appliances under the brands: Haier, Casarte, Leader, GE Appliances, Fisher & Paykel, Aqua and Candy.

qaz,

They’re already on it

nilloc,

Oops thanks, I must have missed it when I looked.

I’ll check out the repo when I’m back in front of a computer later.

wizzor, in Witchcraft | A Minecraft server written in bash

<span style="color:#323232;">What does not work
</span><span style="color:#323232;">...
</span><span style="color:#323232;">capitalism (IRL; I wouldn't want to try implementing it here)
</span>

I actually lol’d

And I gotta ask, what insanity drives someone to implement a minecraft server in bash…?

grue, in Will the new judicial ruling in the Vizio lawsuit strengthen the GPL?

Reading this article made me giggle with glee.

ouigol, in Witchcraft | A Minecraft server written in bash

How much work is making a Minecraft server from scratch? What things need to be implemented? I saw on the GitHub that placing and destroying blocks was implemented, so I’m guessing it’s a lot of work

qaz, (edited )

One of the most common Minecraft server implementations called Paper MC consists of 321k lines of code (mostly Java and a little bit of Kotlin).

ShortN0te,

To my knowledge Paper, Spigot etc are ‘just’ patching the official server decompiled source.

See here github.com/PaperMC/mache

haui_lemmy,

Its somewhat intriguing to me. I always thought companies would obfuscate their code so that nobody can just reverse engineer their product. Does mojang not do it or is it not possible to keep people from decompiling it?

ShortN0te,

In the end it is always assembler. Enough time given and you can translate it to higher languages. A huge modding community and a lot of tooling for the Java language made it possible i guess.

There was a lot of work here. I doubt there were any symbols present in the binary.

haui_lemmy,

Very cool! Thanks for elaborating. Took me only a decade plus to learn this fact. ;)

Chewy7324,

Mojang/Microsoft actually releases obfuscation maps for Minecraft: Java since 2019. This maps the decompiled random class names to the official variable/class names used by Mojang devs.

In an effort to help make modding the game easier, we have decided to publish our game obfuscation maps with all future releases of the game, starting today. This means that anyone who is interested may deobfuscate the game and find their way around the code without needing to spend a few months figuring out what’s what. It is our hope that mod authors and mod framework authors use these files to augment their updating processes that they have today. These mappings will always be available, instantly and immediately as part of every newly released version. This does not, however, change the existing restrictions on what you may or may not do with our game code or assets. The links to the obfuscation mappings are included as part of the version manifest json, and may be automatically pulled for any given version.

www.minecraft.net/…/minecraft-snapshot-19w36a

As others have said, Java is pretty easy to decompile, so there were community maintained obfuscation maps before (huge amount of work).

haui_lemmy,

Great addition! Thanks. So they did actually help with modding but only eventually it seems.

makeasnek, (edited ) in NGI TALER will bring private and secure online payments to the Eurozone
@makeasnek@lemmy.ml avatar

Love GNU software stack, but they’re about 15 years too late on this one.

Bitcoin can:

  • Transfer internationally or across the room
  • Confirms in less than one second (with Bitcoin lightning, otherwise can take a few minutes but still much faster than most banks, especially internationally)
  • Pay less than one cent in fees per transfer (with Bitcoin lightning, otherwise cents to dollars on main chain)
  • No middlemen
  • Operate with 24/7 uptime, 365 days a year without single protocol breaking hack because it’s some of the most widely reviewed code on the planet.
  • Entirely open source software and protocol
  • Is available to anybody with a network connection and a cell phone regardless of whether or not they have access to safe, stable banking infrastructure, which billions, with a B, do not. No barriers, no credit requirements, no nonsense.
  • Has been doing this for 15 years running.
  • Can’t be printed at the whim of politicians and governments. Has a fixed supply which means as the Bitcoin economy grows, all who have Bitcoin benefit, not just those in charge of monetary policy and whomever they decide to pass the benefits onto. Nobody can split your BTC in half and give the other half to somebody else, which is exactly how supply inflation works.
  • Using <1% of global electricity, often from renewable resources as renewable and over-produced electricity tends to be the cheapest

Each year it gets easier to use, gains more users, increases market cap, and generally adoption continues to grow.

poVoq,
@poVoq@slrpnk.net avatar

Bitcoin is an entirely different thing, it’s really comparing apples with oranges.

makeasnek,
@makeasnek@lemmy.ml avatar

It’s a medium to transfer funds from one place to another. It’s solving the same problem a different way.

poVoq,
@poVoq@slrpnk.net avatar

No, you misunderstood what GNU Taler is.

It is a digital cash standard for existing currencies and banks. It’s not even the same category as Bitcoin.

bluegandalf, in OSS-Blacklist: A blacklist for keeping track of OSS hostile companies/organizations

It might be a good idea to do the exact opposite I.e. make a OSS whitelist. It will be much easier to maintain given the scale of applications/services/products.

akrot,

Although I agree, it’s tough to make a whitelist than a blacklist, as the latter requires only 1 bad decision, the former is tough to assess (how many good decision to be on the list, ex Microsoft support lots of open source projects, should they be added?)

smpl,
@smpl@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

No. Never. It’s a ruse.

Gooey0210, (edited ) in OSS-Blacklist: A blacklist for keeping track of OSS hostile companies/organizations

As i understand google and Microsoft don’t really fit here

Probably the definition should look something like: companies that proactively did actions towards harming open source culture/community/movement. Don’t respect foss licensing, etc

I nominate Gitea for this one, for hijacking the project, and making it for profit organization

Also, Ultimate Guitar with their kido musescore, for basically trying to do the same thing that manga company is trying to do right now

And my favorite… Facebook for their oculus privacy and for threatening to sue everyone who tries to jailbreak or modify their devices

Simple tools is probably not considered open source anymore

P.S. oh! Really also think about Proton, Brave, and Telegram

Three companies that are famous for saying they are foss, but in really it’s often not exactly that

Proton’s and telegram’s servers are not foss

Telegram and brave had many instances of delaying publishing the source, even though they already updated the apps

Also, not sure how about now, but telegram is famous for having not reproducible builds, brave probably too

bluegandalf,

Proton’s server code is not Open Source because it contains filter and anti spam detection which if released, would severely hamper their ability to detect spam and keep their users safe + detect abuse for their service.

Proton has had extensive security audits done and their claims have been backed up by independent third parties.

The definition should be further modified to include legitimate reasons for not open sourcing some code + having audits to back up claims.

Gooey0210,

Facebook has their reasons to keep stuff as closed as possible, and they don’t claim to be opensource

But proton does, and it’s not about privacy or security, but about using banner of foss just for their own benefit, and don’t contribute what they claim to the foss community

bluegandalf,

They open source all of their clients (when not in beta). They maintain multiple open source cryptographic libraries, in multiple languages, which a lot of developers and companies go on to use. They have a yearly fundraiser for open source and digital rights groups, which they contribute a $100,000 to each year.

Just because their server code is not open source, doesn’t mean they don’t support open source. It’s not an all or nothing situation. Binary thinking and classification is a very dangerous and naïve way to look at things.

bionicjoey, in OSS-Blacklist: A blacklist for keeping track of OSS hostile companies/organizations

Should add Reddit. Started out as FOSS, closed down their GitHub, then killed their API which killed dozens of third party integrations impacting hundreds of thousands of users.

jackpot,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

lol dw we all know

Anon518,

And now apparently removing all comments that mention Lemmy…

Gooey0210, in OSS-Blacklist: A blacklist for keeping track of OSS hostile companies/organizations

Hehehe, somebody really did it after Haier’s act of stupidity

tired_n_bored, in Haier, the air conditioner maker, takes down open source third-party Home Assistant integration
  1. Give the copyright to the FSF
  2. Donate to the FSF
jackpot, (edited )
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

why donate it? theyll just be sued? do they have powerful legal teams?

tired_n_bored,

The FSF actively encourages people to do that, and yes their legal team is there. Not sure whether it’s “powerful” but surely better than a single developer

lambda,
@lambda@programming.dev avatar

How do you “give copyright” to them?

Krafting, in OSS-Blacklist: A blacklist for keeping track of OSS hostile companies/organizations
@Krafting@lemmy.world avatar

Don’t forget to add Nintendo

qaz,
erranto, in Haier, the air conditioner maker, takes down open source third-party Home Assistant integration

I always thought about why don’t FOSS projects that are at risk of getting sued by big corp like (NewPipe, Popcorn Time, streamio, tachiyomi …) embrace the dark web or git over torrent via VPN, so their projects don’t get threatened with take downs. z-library ended having to move to the dark web after all.

ShortN0te,

Most ppl don’t think about that or don’t know that their project will take off. And then it is already too late.

rufus, (edited ) in The issue to create a new main menu for Minetest has been open for 6 years.

I think it’s just a larger undertaking. Like mentioned in the last comments. People either need to address that as the main focus for some new major release and work on it. Or subdivide it and find people to work on the individual components to make it happen (gradually).

Also there is always the thing with hobby / free software projects. Sometimes people focus on functionality and features and not so much on asthetics and the first impression. I agree the welcome screen is somewhat important as it’s the first thing a new player sees. But I also like the developers to work on features which enhance the actual gameplay because I just see that screen for 10 seconds and it’s kind of a waste of time to improve it for someone like me. The current screen works alright. There are several dynamics affecting projects: “Perfect is the enemy of good” (don’t make it too complicated) but also sometimes a makeshift solution or something that works “okay” stays inplace indefinitely because “it works” and people concentrate on other stuff. That’s just how things work. It takes deliberate effort to work against those dynamics.

So I’d say the cause is, their focus is somewhere else.

thesmokingman, in OSS-Blacklist: A blacklist for keeping track of OSS hostile companies/organizations

It’s probably a good idea to have a stronger definition and mission. Here are a few scenarios you should consider.

  • FSF defines anything that’s not copyleft as hostile. That’s most companies. I personally don’t think I can tell my users what to do with my software other than remove my liability so I vehemently disagree with Stallman.
  • Mongo wrote the SSPL and MariaDB wrote the BSL. Both licenses are seen as regressions. I personally respect the MariaDB case and have been harassed by too many Mongo salespeople to say the same about them.
  • Platforms like AWS are the reason companies like CockroachDB and Elastic implemented restrictive licenses.
  • IBM has been gutting open source through its acquisition of Red Hat. This is a common story; Oracle has been screwing *nix longer.
  • Protecting trademarks causes a lot of consternation from users. The Rust Foundation is the most recent example of this I remember blowing up the FOSS community.

I like your idea a lot. I think it needs some definition to be very successful!

jackpot,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

i feel like the MPL is fsr superior and fairer than the MIT license

thesmokingman,

I personally use Apache 2.0 because it’s been upheld in court. I’m not sure if MPL has been directly challenged in court. Either way, I agree with the sentiment. The legal perspective is why I moved away from MIT/ISC.

jackpot,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

you should considwr MPL, if someone found a security vulneravility theyd be legally obligated to tell yoy for example. also, it still allows commerical closed source software. try it!!

qaz, (edited )

FSF defines anything that’s not copyleft as hostile. That’s most companies. I personally don’t think I can tell my users what to do with my software other than remove my liability so I vehemently disagree with Stallman.

I’m not planning on counting that as hostile behavior. Organizations can choose a license for their software (and I can choose not to buy/use it). This collection is mostly focused on companies that hurt existing Open Source software. Such as sending a cease and desist to an unofficial plugin/extension or closing down software that was originally open source.

taladar,

Maybe your could also add organisations (companies, government agencies, NGOs,…) that create standards in such a way that the standard is hard or impossible to implement in open source implementations?

ResoluteCatnap,

I.e reddit raising API costs high enough that it effectively killed it.

taladar,

I was more thinking about things like governments that decide that every implementation of something must be certified to be used, e.g. with wireless technologies. Not so much implementation as specification or legal compliance barriers to open source basically.

You raise a good point though, financial barriers such as per user pricing that are hard to implement for software distributed for free would be quite similar.

psud,

IBM is so good and so bad. Their machines are so open. Their software is not.

haui_lemmy, in OSS-Blacklist: A blacklist for keeping track of OSS hostile companies/organizations

This is awesome! Maybe it should be noted where the cutoff is. What is considered hostile behavior and what is not?

qaz,

That’s a good point. I wasn’t really sure where to put the cutoff point nor how to define it. Another problem is what consists as anti-OSS behavior. Is anti-right-to-repair part of it?

haui_lemmy,

Good question! May I suggest some kind of poll or questionaire to gather what the majority thinks constitutes oss hostile or anti oss behavior. Maybe it would also be good to question the purpose of this list to maybe find a logical cutoff point that way. Example: If naming and shaming is the purpose then it might not matter if anti right to repair or just not giving any api access since it makes controling stuff you bought harder by choice.

I always choose this kind of philosophical approach since it helps me make decision.

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