I hope forgetting the contributors’s code was an honest mistake. Unless there’s a CLA I’m not aware of.

GPL over AGPL is a strange choice to me for a collaboration service.

Users being able to enforce GPL compliance from companies would be a massive win for user software freedom. More eyeballs to find and more wallets to potentially take legal action, rather than just the dev holding the copyright.

Hopefully companies will take this as a reason to stop their flippant refusal to share the source code they modified from copyleft licensed code and less legal action is even required.

I despise this use of mod power in response to a protest. It’s our content to be sabotaged if we want - if Stack Overlords disagree then to hell with them.

I’ll add Stack Overflow to my personal ban list, just below Reddit.

Is the artifical segmentation pricing structure possible without lockout software? Software has wide applications but in the end this is about freedom.

I would like an EV but I want an old dumb car converted as I don’t want the modern car computing systems (unless there’s one that runs a free OS).

Perhaps typical people can more easily understand how a physical device might work. People probably understand gears and electricity more so than “software” (never even heard of source code or binaries).

If manufacturers made parts available for longer (or perhaps at all in some cases?) then 2nd-hand cars already make for a cheaper option.

I believe artificially limiting hardware is an unacceptable for a health society because proprietary software gives the developer power over their users. Even people with good intentions will be tempted to use that power at the user’s expense. A software update could suddenly make that 20 mil commute no longer possible unless you agree to pay more for some subscription, or accept a new terms of service where you agree to forced arbitration if you don’t want to lose access to even using your vehicle.

You don’t have to buy the car.

If it’s a profitable decision then it has the potential to become the de facto standard, so simply not buying it isn’t enough.

The manufacturer using software to lock use of hardware in people’s own cars is an attack on ownership rights.

“Software-locked” is a weird way to say you need to install Linux to get it all working properly.

Pay to disable a battery lifetime saver mode??

If I own the car then either those are all my cells or someone else has abandoned their property in my car.

Multiple streaming services existing isn’t the issue - content exclusivity to certain platforms makes it so. If content was on all platforms then it would just be a choice based on price and service features.

Dropball

Having control over other people’s computing gives you power over them: you can gain from their detriment. It’s not like everyone is uncaring or greedy but even people with good intentions do not have infinite willpower to resist temptation. When the user doesn’t like a change from an update their choice is usually to put up with it. Defending ads in a menu or opt-outs that should be opt-ins in hidden menus is less mental work than learning what an operating system is and that you can use a different one.

By sharing the source code instead you give up that power - if you fail to be good to the users then other devs can work on it without you.

This greatly affects the likelyhood of people choosing a particular OS later in life.

You don’t choose your childhood education. Microsoft and Apple offer schools deals to create adults dependent on it - after all they’ll be using it in work too.

If Google is broken up what changes? Are there going to two different companies creating a map app?

How do you qualify the security of a closed source code when you can’t verify it?

“Innovation” just means ways to milk people these days .

Will the replacement services be proprietary or open source/free software?