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• Post #4361472

  (1/2) #OSI leadership (both past & present) seem to take every opportunity to pretend AGPLv3§7¶4 doesn't exist. This time, it's done w/ sneaky & subtle politics. Pay particular attention to OSI's former Executive Director & a current Board seat occupant's posts upthread to mine: https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/2026-August/022583.html For the record again: a license of “AGPLv3 plus further-restriction” is both an #OpenSour...

• Post #4181996

  I am feeling sick today so randomly watching Star Trek. Usually Star Trek gives one a Utopian future to consider. Then I remember just now in Star Trek history, WWIII breaks out in 2026. I hope life doesn't imitate art, but I'm scared it might. #StarTrek #disturbing

• Post #4166589

  @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org Oh, I just read underlying article. I often listen to ATC when I'm on a plane, & I've been flying into SNA for SFC's Vizio case hearings. That mess btw SNA, LAX, the Center at Van Nuys is out of control, particularly w/ small aircraft owned by wealthy people (so many such in LA-area). I heard a pilot arguing with ATC about how his passenger wanted a runway at SNA *right now*. ATC correctly told them keep the holding pattern, & clear the channel unless th...

• Post #3952084

  Thanks @misc@social.ephaone.org & @carmenlisandrette@mastodon.social for helping me feel better! But, my spouse just texted me that she's seen 6 pugs & someone wearing this t-shirt. I found its online shop… https://willburrowsart.com/shop/ … which looks like the ultimate vendor of #queer #StarTrek fan apparel. But now I am 😢 I didn't go. Also, re: pugs, are pugs actually the to preferred dog type of queerfolk? I'm starting to think so! Our pug can't go to Pride march...

• Post #3913821

  (1/4) A #disturbing trend I observed over the last 30 years in leadership (speaking primarily of #FOSS #leadership) is a slow but steady tendency as leaders get more powerful, they become increasingly unwilling to admit they've erred. I've observed this both with prior generation of #FreeSoftware leadership (eg: Moglen, Raymond, Rosen, Stallman), & with FOSS leaders contemporary to me (eg: Behlendorf, Dolan, Torvalds, Zemlin). … (This is N posts long; replying to helps threading.)...

• Post #3897781

  😲 … 👀 at this essay from @jcolag@mastodon.social. John is doing something I really think that makes #FOSS great: exploring incomplete philosophical, political, and/or policy questions in public. Strive to be comfortable with the stream of consciousness ramble and consider the ideas that John is exploring: There are real insights about how errors in #SoftwareFreedom leadership left the #FreeCulture movement w/out its natural allies. Fascinating! I look forward to next installment. https://j...

• Post #3823223

  Folks here might be interested in this post I just made to the copyleft-@next@fedi.copyleft.org mailing list — covering many issues including: * Do we still need weak #copyleft at all? * How do we deal with companies who use strong copyleft as a bait-and-switch? * The so-called¹ “FOSS sustainability” problem. https://lists.copyleft.org/pipermail/next/2026q3/000091.html ¹ In the age of #LLM-gen-AI, ppl still use the word “sustainable” to refer to #FOSS developers not getting paid enough is...

• Post #2534755

  🤦…have you followed this mess with #Onlyoffice's inappropriate behavior toward #Nextcloud? I've been researching it for 3 weeks. TL;DR: #Ascensio (Onlyoffice's licensor) is YA company to purposely misuse AGPLv3§7! Thank goodness for AGPLv3§7¶4, but as always, one must be courageous to remove a “further restriction” & redistribute. & thanks to Nextcloud for forking to #EuroOffice. Now, we should all come to their aid. https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2026/ap...

• Post #2049504

  👀 … https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2026/apr/15/eternal-november-generative-ai-llm/ …my colleague Denver Gingerich writes: newcomers' extensive reliance on LLM-backed generative AI is comparable to the Eternal September onslaught to USENET in 1993. I was on USENET extensively then; I confirm the disruption was indeed similar. I urge you to read his essay, think about it, & join Denver, me, & others at the following datetimes… $ date -d '2026-04-21 15:00 UTC&a...

• Post #2005194

  Have you (like me) been thinking constantly about what the #FOSS community should do about #LLM-backed generative #AI code-assist systems? Join me, @ossguy, @karen and others *right now* on a video chat to talk about it: https://bbb-new.sfconservancy.org/rooms/welcome-llm-gen-ai-users-to-foss/join #OpenSource #FreeSoftware #SoftwareFreedom #SFC

• Post #1904070

  Am I the only person who, after 30 years of using `/bin/ln`, *still* gets its arguments backwards? If I type: $ ln -s x y My mind is always thinking: “I want a symlink where x ⇒ y”, and as such I incorrectly put the destination *before* the source. I am sure `ln` is this way in #POSIX to match the behavior of `cp` & `mv`. The latter two are intuitive to me because I read it as “copy/move x to y”. $ ls -l y lrwxrwxrwx 1 bkuhn bkuhn 1 May 2 14:39 y -> x “y ⇒ x” … See!?!?!...

• Post #1643478

  I may not get this quote quite right so paraphrasing: Zoe Khan <https://zoebkahn.github.io/> examined the problem of integrating expertise to create complex systems, and software (unlike plane construction) basically never does this, and key expertise is just ignored. Zoe was talking about CS generally, but she could just have easily being describing what's going on in #FOSS specifically — & particularly FOSS licensing & #copyleft. https://www.undonecs.org...

• Post #1168661

  All #FOSS developers need therapy. No, I'm serious. We *must* end petty one-up-manship & virtuoso knowledge-signalling. A few years ago, one of the most prominent #OpenSource developers of our age gleefully told me how he dressed down a young, inexperienced junior developer at a code review at his company. WTF!?! Deal with your insecurity about yourself & don't roll your 💩 downhill to the next generation. For me, only in my 0x32's am I able to brush that...

• Post #1150661

  Websites often pressure users to change browsers needlessly. I run Firefox ESR 128.14.0. https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/128.14.0/releasenotes/ says it's nary 3 months old. Yet my bank says: > “Your browser is no longer supported. For…improved security, update to…latest version.” Reading bank's FAQ it's b/c they only support last 2 #Firefox releases (ignoring ESRs). Web designers once aspired to “graceful degradation” — but that principle slowly declined i...

• Post #1027930

  The year I was born: my mother was not allowed to have a driver's license unless my father signed for it. Similarly, she was not allowed to have a credit card in her own name. This isn't ancient history. This was in my lifetime. Relatedly, my great grandmother whom I knew and met, was not permitted to vote until she was in her late 30s.

• Post #1027929

  @ykhong I always where a good and face mask and hold up my RFID blocking wallet in front of camera until I've walked passed it fully.

• Post #1027928

  I get these weird moments where for days I'll only eat one type of food. For a week, I would only eat Indian food. Now I won't eat anything but Ethiopian food for the last 3 days. Anyone else get this?

• Post #1027927

  Most won't remember but before the desert of No New Trek in the 2000s, there was talk of _Dawson's Trek_ , that would be based at Star Fleet Academy and about the youngest folks in Trek. I actually think _Star Trek: Academy_ is executing well on that dream. But I also feel so old that I do not connect with the lives of the young portrayed therein. But I hope it does bring a new generation to believe in what Trek meant to 2 generations of geeks. #StarTrek

• Post #995377

  ∃ now multiple examples of #FOSS activists who — instead of focusing on the difficult policy questions raised by #LLM-backed #AI — busy themselves creating elaborate hoax websites. I supposed these individuals think they are “helping with humor”. However, the amount of mental bandwidth & public answers that those of us doing the *actual* policy work must spend responding *takes our limited time away from legitimate work*. In fact, these hoaxes serve #BigTech because of the resource in...

• Post #984728

  Once I was diagnosed with #diabetes, I knew juice was out of the picture as a regular beverage. What I decided was that I won't drink any juice that I didn't squeeze myself with a hand juicer. For the moment, this is a great trade off. After two oranges, I have a glass and only drink that much. When I bought orange juice by the carton, it was only too easy to drink a few glasses worth.

• Post #907706

  I mentioned #FOSS folks had a “Chicken Little” response re: #AgeVerification laws like #CAAB1403: https://fedi.copyleft.org/@bkuhn/116222097251047944 …but those aren't the only acorns that lead folks to say the sky's falling. It's many #FreeSoftware policy issues, including #LLM-backed #AI, #CRA in the EU, etc. One (of many) tough things about times like this — when governments & Courts are in chaos — is so much is simply *not known*. The hacker desire to “know th...

• Post #907705

  I just feel odd. I don't know how to describe it otherwise. Could it be I'm too old to effect change in the world — as it now moves faster than my aging brain can fathom? If so, why do people 20+ years older than me control all the reins of power? To quote _It's a Wonderful Life_, youth is wasted on the wrong people.

• Post #907704

  I often discuss in therapy the problems we face in #FOSS w/ #LLM-backed #AI (no surprise there). My therapist told me today that one of her colleagues who was early in focusing on LGBTQIA+ therapy is ending their 20 year practice. In their top 3 reasons? AI. My therapist also noted that she appreciates that I'm now one of her few patients who doesn't come to her with “Well, I asked AI & it said…” slop. LLMs may have value for medical uses, but warmed over Eliza does no...

• Post #855330

  Folks asked me about #chardet #LGPL situation. @corbet (on @lwn) published https://lwn.net/Articles/1061534/ it; everyone should read that. Afterwards, take a 👀 at my comment on chardet's issue tracker: https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/355#issuecomment-4145369025 TL;DR: I'm leading an effort at @conservancy to analyze this situation. The results will be published. It will take a long time — for good reason. Meanwhile, anyone using chardet commercially should call thei...

• Post #792917

  I'm starting to feel the #Epstein Related Work cringe (to coin a term to go alongside #EpsteinClass). I freeze up when I see someone citing the scientific work of people we now know hung out with Epstein. I miss the 2019-2025 blissful ignorance when I could fool myself into thinking it was *just* Minksy who was, as the MIT report called him, “Epstein's best friend”. But it's so many of my once-heroes. I saw the best minds of my generation hang out on a sexual predator...

• Post #792916

  & *now* the talk I've been excitedly waiting for all of UndoneCS. 🤩 “Undone Codes: Ethics in the ACM 1966-1992” by Jacob Bruggeman and Megan Finn. If you are into FOSS ethics and software freedom and rights, see if you can join the live stream (note: it's on proprietary platform). Extended Abstract: https://www.undonecs.org/2026/abstracts/UndoneCS26_abstract_35.pdf #UndoneCS #ACM #ethics #SoftwareFreedom #OpenSource #FreeSoftware #copyleft

• Post #792915

  I was so busy 😍'ing over Jacob Bruggman and Megan Finn's talk that I forgot to mention here how equally amazing the following talk was: “Undone Canadian CS Ethics: Real-world Moral Dilemmas and Responsibilities” by Mohamed Abdalla Abstract: https://www.undonecs.org/2026/abstracts/UndoneCS26_abstract_9.pdf Sad news from Mohammed's talk: his study showed overwhelming majority of CS students/graduates surveyed just don't care about the morality of what Big Tech i...

• Post #792914

  👩‍🎤…I still got some #punk rock cred! So, it's last session after 3 days of #UndoneCS. I admit I zoned out, had trouble concentrating on Nils Bonfils' talk “Cultivating a Historicist Sensibility through Permacomputing”. Through my mind haze, I hear Nils say the word “#anarchist”, then, “#anticapitalist”. Suddenly I'm wide awake & completely focused. #PunksNotDead I'm glad too as this #permacomputing stuff is extremely interesting & definitely import...

• Post #792913

  I definitely liked #Luxembourg, but airport has a uniquely bad security. I've 20yr experience flying out of Schengen. I had all liquids out & visible, laptop out of bag by itself — all the rest. As I await my bags, another geeky person says:“well, I have to repack my bags”. Then, they grab mine. They completely unpack my bag & run through every item inside alone. Then, the explosive test each item. Security tells me:“you shouldn't travel w/ so many electronics!”🙄

• Post #780696

  My whole career, I've written carefully with nuance and sought to communicate clarity and truth rather than rabble-rousing FUD. I suspect that means I'll continue to toil in relative obscurity — only the bombastic get views in the New World Order. 🫤