Darth Kilroy @darthkilroy@benign.town

Here's the details of what happened on Saturday when all our services went down:

https://hub.fosstodon.org/our-domain-expired/

I still don't get why people view forking as something bad and make up shit like "hostile forking".

Forking is a right granted by the GPL (as well as all the permissive licenses like the BSD one) so that people may make their own modifications to a piece of software. This is in line with the BSD way of thinking, and also one of the prime features RMS was truly after when he came up with the GPL.

Whether this is beneficial to your project or not is irrelevant. It has nothing to do with being nice or being a shithead. Everyone has the right to fork your shit because you gave them the permission to do so when you picked the license. And that someone is now exercising their right to make their own modifications, for whatever reasons they might have.

"What about contribution?" That's project management. Ideally we'd all work together on the same team. But that's not always possible. And frankly, being able to fork and do your own thing is very liberating (which is kinda the point). And in the worst of cases, it's always possible to manually backport stuff from forks if needed. Time consuming? Yes. Necessary? Not always.

So really, there's no such thing as a hostile fork. Forking might happen because people don't agree with the main project's management style (see gogs and gitea), but that is a management problem. People might have good reasons to fork. Some might not. But they have the right to fork, the freedom to modify your software, for whatever reason they see fit. If that's an issue, you should consider changing licenses to a proprietary license where you can prevent forking.

Note: none of this is aimed at a particular group or project, it's just a common thing I keep seeing in the open source communities these days and it really irks me. People have the right to fork, why get angry about that? You picked an open source license, that's what you get.

How blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven, Whose sin is covered!
How blessed is the man to whom
the Lord does not impute iniquity,
And in whose spirit there is no deceit!

Psalms 32:1-2

Today I found out that purple carrots exist. 🤯

Did you hear the word? LibrePlanet 2022 videos have been published! Everything from command line graphic design to brain hacking. Read about their publication and check out the videos on #PeerTube. https://u.fsf.org/3j3

It's okay to say no.

Hacking A Jack-in-the-Box To Be Extra Surprising

https://hackaday.com/2022/07/20/hacking-a-jack-in-the-box-to-be-extra-surprising/

#jack-in-the-box #arduinonano #ToyHacks #toy

Taking care of myself doesn't mean 'me first.' It means 'me, too.” ~ L.R. Knost

As long as the code behind "smart" home devices is proprietary, these companies are free to spy on us as much as they like. Help us fight back: tell your friends about free software and urge then to join the FSF! Support #FreeSoftware. https://fsf.org

Any good alternative to #Duolingo without trackers and #privacy friendly ?

Tesla sells most of its Bitcoin holdings

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62246367?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA

Take a nice long shower or bath. Let the water loosen your muscles and your mind.

Judge says Twitter-Musk trial will kick off in October

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/07/21/judge_twitter_trial/

iFixit teardown shows there’s not much inside the new M2 MacBook Air

https://9to5mac.com/2022/07/19/ifixit-teardown-m2-macbook-air/

#News

Are you playing the comparison game?