Do you plan on writing about the other lessons you learned, which you mentioned in the README? As a big fan of your software and writing for many years, I would deeply appreciate your perspective using these tools!
Day laborers are an independent labor force who do construction, landscaping, and other manual work for a negotiated cash rate. In Los Angeles they hang out in public spaces in groups, often near hardware stores, to make themselves easy to find and hire.
You’re not wrong, but arguments like this ignore the point. For many authors and maintainers, ‘free software’ and ‘open source’ as traditionally defined result in unsustainable outcomes. The original article cites articles explaining several such issues.
Many people in the software industry are looking for new licensing models that take these systemic issues into account. It’s the ecosystem evolving to address current conditions. This should be expected and welcomed, but instead the idea is consistently written off by folks who would rather live by the old rules. The commons continues to suffer for it.
> For many authors and maintainers, ‘free software’ and ‘open source’ as traditionally defined result in unsustainable outcomes.
I'm very grateful for all this free software, but if a maintainer doesn't think what they are doing is sustainable then they need to stop doing it. That isn't much of a revelation. And if people want to release software that can only be used by people on their ideological wavelength then they can do that, but:
- The projects are probably not going to find much popularity.
- In many ways it is a remarkably entitled position; after all my dishwashing machine doesn't test my moral purity before cleaning my dishes. Why should my software?
- Any ideology that centres on identifying "the bad guys" is too naive to hold a community together without becoming unbelievably corrupt and an insult to whatever ideals the original believers had.
Those "many people" can go ahead and come up with their own brand name for their "new licensing models" instead of hijacking existing ones. The only reason they so insistently want to re-define "free software" and "open source" to include their licenses is to ride on the goodwill associated with them for personal profit; they criticize free riders while themselves attempting to hitch a free ride on the FOSS label.
It's entryism, "long march through the institutions", etc. Glad we're slowly waking up to the far-leftism that's left many software projects and communities dead in its wake.
And the point should be ignored even more. Free software is a fairly specific thing, trying to co-opt it into something it isn't makes you the bad actor
Make your own idea instead of stealing and leeching off the success of others. Thats frankly disrespectful to even have the gall to do this. You definitely don't deserve ruining another's image for your idea of how society should work.
This is precisely what the author is attempting to do.
> I know my goal: shift the default in open source from “it’s free for anyone to use” to “please don’t use this if you’re evil”. I don’t just want to do this for my little project; I want to slowly change the discourse. I’m not sure how to do that effectively, if it’s even possible.
> I remain unconvinced at the societal value of “freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose”, often called freedom 0. I don’t want to donate my work to the bad guys!
They never use the term “free software” to describe their goals. To the extent they use the term “open source” it’s in the lowercase informal form. How else should they describe their ideas if not using this terminology?
There are lots of alternative movements to Free Software and Open Source, like Ethical Computing, Fair Source etc. Use one of those, or the more generic "source available" term.
Wild experience building a PC today and discovering the prices are less competitive with Macs than they’ve always been. Building a well-appointed gaming/production/CAD rig is suddenly very expensive between RAM, GPU, and nvme prices being so high.
Basically every integrated circuit is exempt from retaliatory tariffs, current custom MacBook Pros are shipping from China direct: which tariffs are you referring to?
I can‘t imagine Apple doesn‘t have capacity booked well in advance, and their suppliers aren‘t going to stiff them because they‘d lose those long-term contracts. Sure, if the shortage lasts a year or more, there‘ll be issues, but if it‘s short term they might be fine.
Gamers Nexus is reporting increasing DDR4 prices, but it’s unclear to what extent it’s driven by the DDR5 market. DDR4 production is expected to be slowing anyway given the move to DDR5.
Meta point: why does that matter? They launch 90% of the demand for payload to orbit. Some of that demand is from a vertically integrated part of the company. It is still part of industrial demand, given that Starlink is profitable already.
The launch count of SpaceX per year compared to the rest of the world is quite large.
SpaceX in 2025 has launched 134 times. Everyone else in the entire world has launched 115 times combined, including other US companies. SpaceX launches a lot of stuff very often.
EDIT: Originally meant to do 2024 but accidentally read the wrong bar. Regardless, this holds for most years.
They're booked out years in advance only in the sense that bookings are sorted out years before the payload is ready to fly. SpaceX has emphasized that they're capable of swapping out Starlink launches with a commercial payload if needed on short notice.
F9 launches are available anytime a customer wants them. SpaceX will bump down a Starlink launch to accommodate a paying customer, All they would really need would be the payload assembly time?
I spent a couple years in Europe and found that most local news websites in the US blocked access entirely. My guess was that they all share IT resources / policies of the conglomerate news corp, who decided it would be cheaper to simply ignore traffic from GDRP countries.
I have the same experience. I assumed it was a mix of (as you say) not wanting to deal with EU rules, but also not wanting to deal with licensing concerns (eg "do I have the right to show this media in this country").
Part of why I assumed the latter is that sports, in particular, had a high occurrence of "this content isn't available where you are" blocks.
How much sail area would it take to move a 20000 TEU ship at, let's say, even 12 kts? How tall would the masts have to be? Would they fit under bridges? You guys are talking about total fantasies here.
But you don't need 12kts, right? The ocean logistics is ~only about costs, as evidenced by the reduction in travel speed. That being said, cost is currently not dominated by fuel cost either. That means unless you reduce crewing requirements or build cost, there is probably not much savings that will pencil out. Plus you'd need more ships and the physical capacity to build more is limited
> How much sail area would it take to move a 20000 TEU ship at, let's say, even 12 kts? How tall would the masts have to be? Would they fit under bridges?
For ocean-going ships, isn't 99.x% of the trip in the open ocean? If so, what limit is there on sail dimensions? It's a genuine question; if coastal infrastructure isn't the limit, what is the next limitation.
They could lower sails, and use a motor and/or smaller sails, around coastal infrastructure.
The power required would be the same as that provided by the bunker fuel engines in common use. Modern, computer controlled sails are efficient and very powerful. It’s obviously working for this ship, which is a conservative build.
> The power required would be the same as that provided by the bunker fuel engines in common use
And that is a lot of power! Emma Mærsk has an engine output around 80-90MW.
The largest off shore wind turbine today is 26MW with a rotor diameter north of 300m/1000ft(!!). Common (modern) offshore wind turbines today are about 10-15MW with rotor diameters of ~220m/720ft.
I will not conclude it is impossible at this end of the scale, but you need a huge foil area to match such engine output.
You do realize that none of those ships could get into any port, right? We've made modifications to accommodate that.
I tend to agree with you that putting a fixed sail on top of a container vessel won't fly.
Maybe ships would need to be smaller. I think the size of ships was mostly increased because it makes it more efficient. But if fuel is free, you could have smaller ships take direct routes instead of the layovers we do now. That might compensate for time lost as well due to lower speed.
If it isn’t cheaper it isn’t on the board for the next decade or two outside niche routes. The hard part is in making it economically viable. We already know sailboats work.
That’s a decision we, as a civilization, need to make. I personally hope we manage to enact transnational policies that effectively price environmental and social externalities in my lifetime. Or else witness “free market” capitalism continue to degrade our planet and the lives of millions of less privileged people.
> That’s a decision we, as a civilization, need to make. I personally hope we manage to enact transnational policies that effectively price environmental and social externalities in my lifetime. Or else witness “free market” capitalism continue to degrade our planet and the lives of millions of less privileged people.
Name one decision that the entire human civilization has ever consciously made
There are very many. Sovereignty of nation-states, the international passport system, international standards for airplanes/airports/flight operations, Unicode, every other IT standard, every ISO standard, outlawing aggressive warfare, the international financial system, the UN, the Law of the Sea, compact discs, time keeping (60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hrs, 7 days, etc.), time zones, calendar, names of celestial objects, names of elements, international science research, Enlightenment scholarship, ........
That really big question for society is how to force GHG emissions externalities to the polluters. In the current political climate it doesn't appear possible...
> how to force GHG emissions externalities to the polluters
Not happening for decades. Not until America’s boomers, Xi and his wolf warriors and Putin and his circle are dead.
Solar is a success because it’s economically viable. We need more solutions like that. Not conference presentations wrapping a regressive carbon tax as a sailboat.
Solar wasn't economical until China made the strategic decision to invest into cutting solar costs and scaling production up. Putin isn't relevant, nobody really listens to him (the reason why he is so mad). It's really the American boomers who are happy the cook the planet to own the libs.
Taxing CO2 isn't regressive - poor people don't fly to vacations or commute in unnecessarily large single-occupancy trucks.
It certainly is. Everything poor people need is manufactured and delivered with fossil fuels. Rich people could afford extra costs for carbon without blinking.
