Revocation of Doom GPL, A Possibility?

[yum13241]

So that's why everyone on TV seems to be a Sheeple. /s\


In all seriousness, if you consider macOS to be the best OS humanity has ever made you're gullible.

[Rachael]

Well, at least it doesn't have telemetry invading all parts of the OS that you are unable to turn off.

And the OS continues to function even if you don't provide an Apple ID to sign in. To be fair Windows does too, but it's quite a process to even get that with Windows 11 Home, and is even more steps than it needs to be with Win11 Pro.

[yum13241]

Well, at least it doesn't have telemetry invading all parts of the OS that you are unable to turn off.

*Laughs in Windows mod ISOs and Linux, but mainly Linux.

And the OS continues to function even if you don't provide an Apple ID to sign in. To be fair Windows does too, but it's quite a process to even get that with Windows 11 Home, and is even more steps than it needs to be with Win11 Pro.

People actually use that piece of shit? I'm not surprised.

Linux ftw. No telemetry (Canonical tried and failed), no nonsense, it usually Just Fscking Works (except if you use NGREEDIA hardware, luckily it's getting better). Linux has just recently passed macOS in developer user share. The Steam Deck runs Linux, and runs GZDoom. Brutal Doom (and/or The Monstrous Weapons Mod) on the go, yay! (Don't combine both, I don't even play BD that much lol)

[Rachael]

Yes, people actually use that "piece of shit" and have legitimate reasons to.

Linux is not the God of OS's - especially with its user unfriendliness - something that Mac OS and Windows excel at by comparison. You don't have to choose a distro - driver support is far superior for a far wider range of hardware in Windows and isn't even a concern for Mac OS unless you're building a Hackintosh - and desktop components are far less glitchy in both Windows and Mac OS. (To be fair, Windows has more glitches than Mac OS does on the desktop front, but compared to Linux, it's still quite an improvement) - Also, library support is far superior on Windows and Mac OS because applications often bundle their own non-system libraries with their distribution - whereas with Linux, one upgrade could potentially spell disaster as a single point of failure from a bad update push, with the insistence by core OS users and many third-party developers that *all* libraries must be system-wide. (AppImage and FlatPak didn't become popular just because they looked like cool tools - they addressed a very *very* sore weakness with the OS - out of Linux, Mac, and Windows, Linux is the only one that needs such tools!!!)

Let's just face it - Linux is way too fussy for most people, as are a lot of the really fanatical users of it, so honestly I don't blame them for using Windows or Mac.

No OS is perfect - all have their weaknesses, and with that come their strengths, as well. If you want customization and the ability to say what goes into your system and where - Linux is the prime choice. If you want something that's simple, solid, reliable, and (mostly) respects your privacy, Mac OS is great. If you're not too concerned with privacy and want things to "just work" without hassle, and offers compatibility on a massive scale with both its historical API's still being maintained and wide subsystem support to run a diverse range of applications, Windows is the prime candidate. Almost everything works in Windows - and often, that even includes things not made for it.

I love Linux too and use it every day - but - don't shit on people for using Windows or Mac. It's attitudes like that which decrease the adoption of Linux and indirectly make it a worse OS to use overall, with the lack of popularity and support from potential developers that you are chasing off.

[yum13241]

I can't tell you how much cruft Windows 11 has. (Seriously, who uses dialer.exe anymore? Why did they have to make the "Settings" app, Control Panel was literally fluent with the File Explorer, W11 is just W10 with a fresh coat of paint and that crappy center taskbar that you have to activate windows to get rid of, no Macroshaft, I don't want to use Microsoft Edge, and I don't want OneDrive.
macOS has a history of breaking stuff actually. Ask Graf. Why the fsck did they have to switch to their own snowflake architecture?

And don't think about building a Hackintosh, some people will deny you tech support not because it is a very weird setup, but on the premise of morals.


macOS, I don't want to use iCloud, Airdrop, et.al, and I DON'T WANT vague error messages.


As the family IT guy I simply cannot deal with the vague error messages Macs give. Once someone wanted me to create a new user, which I tried to do, before it errored out in Arabic (client had their language set to that) "Failed to create user". Why? Not even usermod and the like worked. The App Store mods (Crapple) are draconian, Apple frankly is just annoying to deal with. Most of the issues I have with macOS are with Apple itself. If you took macOS, de-appled it (and didn't get caught by the FBI), and told me it was a Linux distro I'd believe you. The macOS window controls frankly suck, if I wanted to hid the menu bar I'd press F11, not the green button. Also why is there no option to reverse the window controls?


Unrelated rant:

WHY THE FUCK does every interface on the face of the Earth decide to flip itself around the if the user picks an RTL language? That's not how GUI design works. Imagine having Google Chrome flip around its window buttons and the rest of the OS doesn't! (seen first hand on a family member's machine) that's be inconsistent and annoying as FUCK. Just because someone decides to pick an RTL language doesn't mean you should flip everything else around and surprise the user. At that point make shutdown turn on the computer and turn on shut it off then. Thankfully these shenanigans won't happen in GZDoom since Arabic support is impossible.

(If you wanna know why I mention Arabic a lot, it's because I live in Jordan, and that's the official language, even though my English is much better than my Arabic, and pretty much everyone has their decided set to Arabic, which is understandable, so what I usually do is I set it to English, work my magic, then set it back. BONUS: NO FLIPPED GUIs!)

Once again, D_COUNTD (Countdown %o Death [Of The Universe]) is playing, with all the cheesy MS GS WS (Microsoft GS wavetable) .

[Chris]

However, sometimes proper nouns get used to refer to a common noun. "Hand me a Kleenex".

I, myself, find this bad, as it would be hard to promote better alternatives or just call it by what it's called.

By the time this happens, they're not being referred to by brand or promoting any particular brand. Genericide is a term for when a brand name becomes a generic word people use for the type of product instead of the specific brand of product. When you say "hand me a kleenex", people don't think "Kleenex-brand tissue paper", they just think "tissue paper" whether it's kleenex brand or not. Aspirin, escalator, and trampoline are among brand names that have been genericized, as well as popcicle and ping-pong. Companies lose their trademarks when this happens, and is why you'll sometimes see companies run campaigns to strengthen brand recognition with the word (e.g. Adobe putting out statements like "don't say 'photoshopped', say 'enhanced using Adobe® Photoshop® software'"; that just rolls off the tongue, don't it).

[Rachael]

Legal Eagle did a video about the fuckery that started this whole discussion to begin with - I haven't watched it yet so I don't know how deep a dive he does into it, but his videos are almost always really good, so I'm recommending it here anyway. I'll watch it when I have time today.

[yum13241]

WotC released a statement.

Reasonable minds can differ.

[Rachael]

Incidentally - JSS did a video too.

[Chris]

I suppose it's relevant to note in WotC's response:

Content already released under 1.0a will also remain unaffected.

Whether or not they were originally trying to pull the rug out from under OGL 1.0a content is of course open for debate, but as of this response, they say they aren't trying to revoke the old license from anything already released under it.

[fakemai]

There is nothing new under the sun. The Linux kernel also had contributors looking at revoking their code somewhat recently over its CoC (read: good code is what matters, not whether the author has Finnish management by perkele, kills his wife, or even thinks [Godwin's Law] is his idol). Also, Debian's unofficial "tentacles of evil" test.

[Rachael]

The Linux kernel also had contributors looking at revoking their code somewhat recently over its CoC

If this is true, I very strongly disagree with that CoC stance and would think twice before contributing to the Linux Kernel - this is the polar opposite of what has drew ire for CoC's in the past, most of them being far more left-leaning and drawing criticism from that, instead. In general I think it's best to adopt a fairly politically-agnostic stance of "do no evil and do not unto others what you would not want done to you". Oh, and, "the end-user is king/queen of the castle". (Which is far more important for an open source kernel than it is for a game engine such as GZDoom)

That being said, however, CoC be damned, the license is ultimately the force of law that matters here. The GPL protects the Linux Kernel maintainers in this instance (as shitty as they may be for adopting that CoC), so the contributors' best recourse for this action is to simply stop contributing. Once your code is released under the GPL it cannot be revoked - even if it is a minor contribution to a bigger project beyond your control. Only said project can decide what to do with your code, and remove it, if they feel willing to acquiesce to your request. However, with a shitty CoC like that, it won't take long before the numbers of dropped contributors gets to a point where they may need to reconsider and revise their stance. In fact, it's quite likely to get forked.

[Chris]

If this is true, I very strongly disagree with that CoC stance and would think twice before contributing to the Linux Kernel - this is the polar opposite of what has drew ire for CoC's in the past, most of them being far more left-leaning and drawing criticism from that, instead.

I think that's backwards. From what I remember of the drama, people were worried that the Linux kernel was "going woke" by adopting a similar left-leaning CoC, at the same time that Linus was being asked to see someone for anger management over the way he sometimes berates maintainers when they mess up, while at the same time people found out that his daughter is a feminist activist. All this happening at the same time caused some contributors to want to pull back over fears that the kernel development would become less focused on accepting good code from seasoned developers and more focused on accepting questionable code from minorities, with Linus not being able to demand good code.

Which, as far as I know, none of those fears came to pass. There hasn't been any significant change in code quality or acceptance standards for the kernel that I know of.

[Rachael]

Ah, it seemed kind of crazy and off-brand for a project like that to want to pick up a pro-Nazi stance. Yes - that explanation makes a lot more sense - and would definitely elicit the kinds of reactions described. Most of what I said still stands though - those who disagree with it can only withhold future contributions and appeal to the maintainers to have their code removed if it matters that much to them. A successful fork is far far less likely, though.

[yum13241]

A successful fork is far far less likely, though.

Especially since most people won't care, and there is potential for confusion.

Flatpaks prevent most, if not all dependency issues.

I respond with this:


(not a shameless plug, I am not Brodie)