First time I see something like this net upvoted. Mood improved.

There’s often no in any way complete source code after 25 years.

Media degrade, get forgotten hell knows where, get occasionally destroyed.

There’s no such thing as untrackable.

The feeling of being a completely honest and lawful citizen was really nice at some point, buying games in Steam, GOG or just bookstores, too bad it was mostly gaslighting and they were not going to be honest with us.

Impostors, in other words.

You can use VMs even more ambitiously. If your wi-fi is not supported by FreeBSD - there’s a wifibox port, basically it runs a minimal Linux with PCI passthrough.

And of course if I need Windows, it won’t be bare metal.

Oh no, please no, hell no, fuck no

I’ve recently seen a nice description of that - “peasant mindset”.

People who are not ready and willing to peacefully discuss reality with literally anyone, and most of all marginal and weird viewpoints, like sovcits and antivaxxers, because those are more interesting, - have that “peasant mindset”.

(I’ve found something like that in my head too this morning, so sharing the thought.)

Aggression is a sign of fear, and fear is something we feel when we are not ready to change our mind if we get some good arguments, or when we get bad, insufficient arguments, but are pressed to change our mind anyway.

Why can we not be ready for that, feel powerless before that possibility of deciding to think differently 5 minutes from now?

Because there’s something that we follow like a peasant follows their master. It’s the assumed identity, the family, the group, the party, the state, the nation. Such a decision, and a decision to discuss reality preceding that, is an act of defiance toward those. It’s a conflict, and we as humans sometimes try to avoid conflicts. It’s like discussing orders. Only there’s not a single soul above us who is entitled to order us how we vote or how we think.

Every decision worth making is destructive, everything new comes in the place of something old and something that could be, there’s nothing to fear.

Changing one’s mind by a conscious decision after careful consideration is a sign of having personal dignity. Not changing one’s mind in the same situation is too a sign of having personal dignity.

Keeping your head down and trying to eat anyone not in line is not.

(too long again)

I thought I’m alone. A rather obnoxious person just plainly refusing to reason.

Surprisingly few. I usually block people who think it’s a good idea to incorporate my comments into their witch hunt and go my way with a pitchfork. That is, those who use offensive or derogatory tone instead of arguments.

Israelis are more known for putting backdoors wherever they can than Russians, for example.

Anyway, nation-states are not the only kind of group with malicious interest. Maybe a maintainer is a member of some mafia, I dunno. How are you going to know this?

Many things can be done with FreeBSD. Again, in our time it may get some popularity again not because of such events even, but because of their possibility and to avoid monoculture (in the context of backdoors too).

No, it’s not. But the US is closer to it than some Americans think.

That’s the point of FOSS as copyleft, to use the law to protect “free and open” information. This allows bigger projects, because contributors don’t have to keep their heads down.

At the same time maybe this is a downside, not an upside. As the reason why it has all gotten so big and complex and corporate-influenced.

This does very little to protect against supply chain attacks.

Your example shows that too.

Increasing modularity and reducing complexity of software seem to be the right way to that end. Plan9, GNU Hurd, Minix3 are interesting in that context.

It’s not decentralized on the level of project development, the visible proof of which is what we’ve seen happen.

How many times have you seen two branches of a significant project to coexist with comparable popularity?

I wonder if there’s some way to manage an open source project so that it’s not subject to particular national laws in this way.

Yes. Pseudonymous software development. I’ve seen Ross Ulbricht’s name today, so we also know the risks.

Naturally this is closer to some underground warez than to copyleft, because the legal ways of protecting copylefted information against appropriation will not be available. A different paradigm.

I’m thinking about that conspiracy theory of Linus having been made an offer one can’t refuse, when some time ago he took a vacation and returned with news about seeing the error of his ways.

It almost coincided with Stallman being canceled for one of his usual highly socially unacceptable, but in principle consistent opinions. With most of the attackers being frankly some new random corporate-associated people, not very active in real communities.

Maybe I’ll re-read J4F and compare Linus from there to these events. Canary and all.

EDIT: Before you downvote this for the mush in my head (thx Linus) propagating conspiracy theories, offers one can’t refuse are not exactly an impossible thing. And WWII radio games, where, having captured an enemy station’s operator, one of the sides could either imitate their style in transmissions or just force them to transmit what it wanted.

I agree, but yours are real oligarchs, while those I’m talking about are a relatively new thing for you.

Russian-style ones are just blokes from one and the same corporation who chose they want to be celebrities. A façade. They used oligarchy as a scapegoat in the 90s, to avoid lustration while it still could be done.

Since a government is, in its pure form, only a body of people,

That implies that logical structure of that body is negligible, if used to transfer human traits to a government.

Inconsistency of style most likely.

Most importantly with respect to elf/goblin part: I found that distasteful and resent the implication that I said anything to that degree. I do not think people are fundamentally different, only that the conditions (material basis and social superstructures) that they find themselves in allow for and promotes certain kinds of actions and ways of being.

In Tolkien’s lore goblins were made from elves through torture and various degrading conditions and magic.

I agree about trust, but it can’t be global, only friend-to-friend, in real life as well.

And trust in government should be taboo.

and I feel dumber to have read your comment

Then I have improved your self-consciousness. Thank you.