Re: Meltdown / Spectre

[Adonay Felipe Nogueira <adfeno@hyperbola.info>]

With regards to BSD-3-Clause-Clear and BSD-2-Clause-FreeBSD vs. GPL (and
variants), the latest version and "or-later" option of the latter allows
a chance to transfer the freedoms of the software to the end-users' copy
(it's not a perfect ingredient, because it depends on the rights holder
to enforce it but it's the necessary condition) while the former (the
BSD-likes) are too lax (the moment the rights holder decides to do
something, the person already lost the legal mechanisms that would allow
per to influence the derivative project's decision to guarantee that
end-users have their software freedom kept with the copy of the software
they have). Of course, this influence is best exercised with
collaboration for license compliance, and commitment from the
non-compliant to fix the issues. Besides, without the right amount of
regulation market moves faster than sustainability, and the permissive
nature of the first two licenses mentioned make a perfect tool for
opportunistic competitive behavior, in a century and with goods
where/which we can't spend time with Porterism nor with Social
Darwinisms.

As for the attempt to apply the same comparison to the possibility of a
microcode update: I guess it can be considered a matter of where one
wants to go. I see various projects which have some product which is
free/libre software, but have alternative products (from the same
origin) which do the same thing but which aren't free/libre, so for
those origins/projects I consider them a kind of "desperate attempt to
'reach out' to other people", even if it means not following the
free/libre software philosophy. Finally, I tend to not follow these
projects, nor recommend their free/libre products, because I find these
misleading.

2018-01-11T13:45:32-0600 Katherine Cox-Buday wrote:
> I really appreciate the viewpoints expressed here, thank you. It's a
> great reminder that software freedom doesn't exist in a vacuum, and that
> its intent is to do good. It's worth considering what that means in a
> more global context.
>
>
> I've been reading up on the philosophical differences between BSD and
> GNU licenses, and one of the points that's often made is that BSD is the
> freer of the two -- allowing users to do as they please -- but GNU
> expresses the most freedom globally and is therefore more ethical.
>
> It is a fun thought experiment to extrapolate and apply the same logic
> to this situation: what would express the most freedom globally:
> faithfully applying the GPL, or assisting users with securing their
> computing environments.
>
> Please note that I'm advocating any approach; only having a nice
> discussion with like-minded folks.

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