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> You're of course welcome to remove any clause from the GPL you wish. Linus Torvalds did just that when he licensed the kernel; the "or any later version" clause is removed.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/o...

You may NOT modify the license and still call it GPL, nor use the GPL preamble.

If you grep the license, the GPL.org copy,
( https://www.gnu.org/licenses/o... )
you'll see there IS no "or any later version" grant in the license. Nothing was removed. Rather, you'll find that suggestion as an option after "END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS", under "How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs". It's a suggestion on how one can use the license, and is not part of the license itself.

What does appear in the license (10) is an explanation of what if means IF a program specifies "or any later version":
--
If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.
--

Note first the first word "if". If the author choose to grant "or any later", the license says that means "either that version, or any later". Either, or. As in programming, in law "or" means something very different from "and". It does not mean "comply with this version AND every later version".
  You can choose to follow v2 OR v3, you aren't required to comply with the combined conditions of every later version ever produced.

So if you re-distribute some of our code that's "GPLv2 or any later version", you may follow v2, or you may follow v3, at your option. You can choose to follow both. The GPL FAQ explains this as well:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/o...
--
  When a program says âoeVersion 2 of the GPL or any later versionâ, users will always be permitted to use it, and even change it, according to the terms of GPL version 2â"even after later versions of the GPL are available
--

When it says "v2 or later ... permitted to use it, and even change it, according to the terms of GPL version 2", that means they have to follow all of the conditions of GPLv2, and there are no other conditions. They may elect v2 and ignore any other versions. One of the conditions of GPLv2 is that if you distribute a modified copy, you must distribute it under GPLv2.

So for any software under "GPLv2 or later", you can choose to accept the v2 license, and distribute your modified version under the v2 license. You need not follow a version you don't even know exists, and need not distribute your changes under later versions. You must put your modifications under the same license you're using to allow you to distribute it - which can be v2 OR something else.

> You're of course welcome to remove any clause from the GPL you wish. Linus Torvalds did just that when he licensed the kernel; the "or any later version" clause is removed.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/o...

You may NOT modify the license and still call it GPL, nor use the GPL preamble.

If you grep the license, the GPL.org copy,
( https://www.gnu.org/licenses/o... )
you'll see there IS no "or any later version" grant in the license. Nothing was removed. Rather, you'll find that suggestion as an option after "END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS", under "How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs". It's a suggestion on how one can use the license, and is not part of the license itself.

What does appear in the license (10) is an explanation of what if means IF a program specifies "or any later version":
--
If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.
--

Note first the first word "if". If the author choose to grant "or any later", the license says that means "either that version, or any later". Either, or. As in programming, in law "or" means something very different from "and". It does not mean "comply with this version AND every later version".
  You can choose to follow v2 OR v3, you aren't required to comply with the combined conditions of every later version ever produced.

So if you re-distribute some of our code that's "GPLv2 or any later version", you may follow v2, or you may follow v3, at your option. You can choose to follow both. The GPL FAQ explains this as well:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/o...
--
  When a program says âoeVersion 2 of the GPL or any later versionâ, users will always be permitted to use it, and even change it, according to the terms of GPL version 2â"even after later versions of the GPL are available
--

When it says "v2 or later ... permitted to use it, and even change it, according to the terms of GPL version 2", that means they have to follow all of the conditions of GPLv2, and there are no other conditions. They may elect v2 and ignore any other versions. One of the conditions of GPLv2 is that if you distribute a modified copy, you must distribute it under GPLv2.

So for any software under "GPLv2 or later", you can choose to accept the v2 license, and distribute your modified version under the v2 license. You need not follow a version you don't even know exists, and need not distribute your changes under later versions. You must put your modifications under the same license you're using to allow you to distribute it - which can be v2 OR something else.

> You're of course welcome to remove any clause from the GPL you wish. Linus Torvalds did just that when he licensed the kernel; the "or any later version" clause is removed.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/o...

You may NOT modify the license and still call it GPL, nor use the GPL preamble.

If you grep the license, the GPL.org copy,
( https://www.gnu.org/licenses/o... )
you'll see there IS no "or any later version" grant in the license. Nothing was removed. Rather, you'll find that suggestion as an option after "END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS", under "How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs". It's a suggestion on how one can use the license, and is not part of the license itself.

What does appear in the license (10) is an explanation of what if means IF a program specifies "or any later version":
--
If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.
--

Note first the first word "if". If the author choose to grant "or any later", the license says that means "either that version, or any later". Either, or. As in programming, in law "or" means something very different from "and". It does not mean "comply with this version AND every later version".
  You can choose to follow v2 OR v3, you aren't required to comply with the combined conditions of every later version ever produced.

So if you re-distribute some of our code that's "GPLv2 or any later version", you may follow v2, or you may follow v3, at your option. You can choose to follow both. The GPL FAQ explains this as well:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/o...
--
  When a program says âoeVersion 2 of the GPL or any later versionâ, users will always be permitted to use it, and even change it, according to the terms of GPL version 2â"even after later versions of the GPL are available
--

When it says "v2 or later ... permitted to use it, and even change it, according to the terms of GPL version 2", that means they have to follow all of the conditions of GPLv2, and there are no other conditions. They may elect v2 and ignore any other versions. One of the conditions of GPLv2 is that if you distribute a modified copy, you must distribute it under GPLv2.

So for any software under "GPLv2 or later", you can choose to accept the v2 license, and distribute your modified version under the v2 license. You need not follow a version you don't even know exists, and need not distribute your changes under later versions. You must put your modifications under the same license you're using to allow you to distribute it - which can be v2 OR something else.

Troll? Well, then, please answer this for me... If GPL3 is so easy to understand, why is the first link on the GPL3 page a link to "A Quick Guide to GPLv3?" https://www.gnu.org/licenses/g...

Why am I reminded of this:

The Right to Read by Richard Stallman

This article appeared in the February 1997 issue of Communications of the ACM (Volume 40, Number 2).

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...

But the open source movement is about choice.

No it isn't. I see this statement often and it's fundamentally incorrect. One has a choice insofar as to use F/OSS or not, but there's no movement to provide you with a plethora of alternatives to software that one doesn't like. In fact, the F/OSS movement is entirely about software development.

Example 1: The Open Source Initiative's mission statement

Mission

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a non-profit corporation with global scope formed to educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source and to build bridges among different constituencies in the open source community.

Open source enables a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is higher quality, better reliability, greater flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.

One of our most important activities is as a standards body, maintaining the Open Source Definition for the good of the community. The Open Source Initiative Approved License trademark and program creates a nexus of trust around which developers, users, corporations and governments can organize open source cooperation.

Nothing about enabling choice, here.

Example 2: The GNU Project philosophy page

Free software means that the software's users have freedom. (The issue is not about price.) We developed the GNU operating system so that users can have freedom in their computing.

Specifically, free software means users have the four essential freedoms: (0) to run the program, (1) to study and change the program in source code form, (2) to redistribute exact copies, and (3) to distribute modified versions.

GNU doesn't have a mission page, but the site talks about the Free Software philosophy and goes on to describe the 4 user freedoms that we all know and love. Nothing about providing users with choice.

So, please, stop perpetuating this myth. The whole F/OSS ethos is about software development, distribution and user rights. Nothing more.

To be fair, every major proprietor has distributed malware and people still do business with them (proprietary software is often malware) and even people who ought to know better still choose proprietary software despite that proprietary software is inherently untrustworthy. I agree with your sentiment that one shouldn't choose to be abused but I think the fix isn't to focus on a particular proprietor or even a set of proprietors, but to see that the system of non-freedom is the real problem.

Another proposal along similar lines is a property tax. Beginning several years after first publication of a work, a copyright owner assesses the value of the copyrights it owns and remits a fraction of that value to the Copyright Office every year. Anyone else can put a work in the eminent domain* by paying the copyright owner that amount. To prevent this sort of taking pursuant to the Fifth Amendment or foreign counterparts, a copyright owner can pay more tax on a higher self-assessed value.

Those who disagree with this proposal would probably end up using the term "intellectual property" less often as they begin to realize the difference between exclusive rights in land and a copyright.

When you download an app at F-Droid these are the usual terms and conditions.

I assure you that my software runs without bash, coreutils, etc. And can build against musl or glibc just as easily.

What your software depends on or can make use of in a different system has no bearing on the constitution of the one it runs on.

If your software is running on Linux, it is still “Linux” even if your software can also build and run on Windows, and regardless of how much of Linux it uses.

Likewise, a GNU system does not stop being “GNU” just because not all software running on it has a hard dependency on any of its GNU components, or uses only some of them (which is expected).

I guess if Stallman wanted people to use his brand name he should have made it part of the license of glibc.

See his own answers to these questions:

• Shouldn't you put something in the GNU GPL to require people to call the system “GNU”?
• Since you failed to put something in the GNU GPL to require people to call the system “GNU”, you deserve what happened; why are you complaining now?

I assure you that my software runs without bash, coreutils, etc. And can build against musl or glibc just as easily.

What your software depends on or can make use of in a different system has no bearing on the constitution of the one it runs on.

If your software is running on Linux, it is still “Linux” even if your software can also build and run on Windows, and regardless of how much of Linux it uses.

Likewise, a GNU system does not stop being “GNU” just because not all software running on it has a hard dependency on any of its GNU components, or uses only some of them (which is expected).

I guess if Stallman wanted people to use his brand name he should have made it part of the license of glibc.

See his own answers to these questions:

• Shouldn't you put something in the GNU GPL to require people to call the system “GNU”?
• Since you failed to put something in the GNU GPL to require people to call the system “GNU”, you deserve what happened; why are you complaining now?

For those who missed the joke: ed is the standard text editor.

I notice that you didn't list a desktop environment or web browser.

The parent did list GNOME. And there is IceCat.

I notice that you didn't list a desktop environment or web browser.

The parent did list GNOME. And there is IceCat.

The problem is that GNU elbowed its way into a lot of areas of the Operating System that its maintainers allowed but didn't really agree with.

This argument needs sources to back up your claims. It's easy to make claims on behalf of other people's projected behavior, not so easy to back up those claims and clarify your terms (saying "many of the "GNU" contributors and leaders would have just forked the projects", for instance, is not only making claims on behalf of others but vague; how many is many?). The quotes around the terms you use are unexplained as well; GNU is the name of the OS RMS started. Also, what operating system did "GNU elbow its way into"? The way Stallman tells it in his talks and writings, which seem to be backed by how things unfolded, he posted to Usenet announcing GNU on September 27, 1983 as a "a complete Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix)". Work on the GNU Project would actually begin in January, 1984 by pressing various programs into service as well as programs people wrote under the aegis of the GNU Project. He also clarified the philosophy of free software as his own work on the GNU Project continued.

How many people that have contributed to all of the components in Linux even knew that the FSF was the "owner" of the project?

I don't see how this question is relevant even if its terms weren't so ironically unclear. The Linux kernel is not owned by the Free Software Foundation and never has been. Perhaps you're unwittingly underscoring the very problem this /. thread brings up by using unclear terms (like "Linux" to mean an operating system instead of a kernel).

And what does it even mean for an open source project to be GNU or not? GNOME is the perfect example.

GNU predates the open source development methodology and the Open Source Initiative. GNU is one example of a free software OS. All of the software in GNU is free for the user to run, inspect, modify, and share. GNOME was initially a response to the non-freedom of KDE at the time KDE began. KDE had a nonfree dependency (Qt was proprietary software until mid-1999) so KDE was unsuitable for GNU. There was a project called the Harmony toolkit which aimed to provide an API-compatible replacement for Qt (so one could use Harmony instead of Qt) but when Qt was relicensed as free software this project was no longer needed.

The problem is that GNU elbowed its way into a lot of areas of the Operating System that its maintainers allowed but didn't really agree with.

This argument needs sources to back up your claims. It's easy to make claims on behalf of other people's projected behavior, not so easy to back up those claims and clarify your terms (saying "many of the "GNU" contributors and leaders would have just forked the projects", for instance, is not only making claims on behalf of others but vague; how many is many?). The quotes around the terms you use are unexplained as well; GNU is the name of the OS RMS started. Also, what operating system did "GNU elbow its way into"? The way Stallman tells it in his talks and writings, which seem to be backed by how things unfolded, he posted to Usenet announcing GNU on September 27, 1983 as a "a complete Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix)". Work on the GNU Project would actually begin in January, 1984 by pressing various programs into service as well as programs people wrote under the aegis of the GNU Project. He also clarified the philosophy of free software as his own work on the GNU Project continued.

How many people that have contributed to all of the components in Linux even knew that the FSF was the "owner" of the project?

I don't see how this question is relevant even if its terms weren't so ironically unclear. The Linux kernel is not owned by the Free Software Foundation and never has been. Perhaps you're unwittingly underscoring the very problem this /. thread brings up by using unclear terms (like "Linux" to mean an operating system instead of a kernel).

And what does it even mean for an open source project to be GNU or not? GNOME is the perfect example.

GNU predates the open source development methodology and the Open Source Initiative. GNU is one example of a free software OS. All of the software in GNU is free for the user to run, inspect, modify, and share. GNOME was initially a response to the non-freedom of KDE at the time KDE began. KDE had a nonfree dependency (Qt was proprietary software until mid-1999) so KDE was unsuitable for GNU. There was a project called the Harmony toolkit which aimed to provide an API-compatible replacement for Qt (so one could use Harmony instead of Qt) but when Qt was relicensed as free software this project was no longer needed.

If you're going to name via dependencies then why would you only list one of the dependencies in its name rather than all of them?

It's a matter of correlation. If a system has the dependency that forms part of a platform's name, then it's far more likely than not that the system has, or that its administrator can practically install, common dependencies of other applications for the same platform. By this measure, perhaps GNU is most central to server applications and programming tools designed for Linux, and X Window System to desktop GUI apps. Hence the names "GNU/Linux" and "X11/Linux" to contrast with "Android/Linux".

And what constitutes a GNU/Linux system?

Free Software Foundation acknowledges use of Linux apart from the GNU OS while intentionally declining to give a precise definition. This has led David Johnson to write an article titled "By Any Other Name" making the reduction to absurdity argument you may have been anticipating, largely by replacing GNU with an adaptation of the FreeBSD userland. But my personal definition, based on correlation with installable dependencies, is GNU Coreutils plus two other major components of GNU, such as Bash, GCC, glibc, and Emacs. This means that Cygwin, MinGW with MSYS, and Microsoft WSL are GNU/Windows, and a full installation of DJGPP is GNU/MS-DOS or GNU/FreeDOS.

And further to your question does an application written for the GNU C runtime not run on bionic for example or do you need to include that as part of your naming convention?

Some applications are specialized to run on glibc, the implementation of the C language and POSIX standard library included with GNU. Others will run on any reasonable implementation of the C library that provides varying level of support for POSIX, such as Bionic. But many applications built for Bionic have a more central dependency they can cite, namely the Android userspace.

Stallman is an asshole. He's well paid, but expects the rest of the world to do everything related to software for free (he doesn't understand the concept that the average coder can't live off of just donating code).

Liar.

I'm tired of the "Gnu/Linux" discussion too.

No you're not. That's why you're continuing the discussion and asking people questions which further the discussion.

For Richard Stallman and the FSF leaders, free software is very much political. [...] For Linus Torvalds and the "open source" folks generally, it's not really political, it's simply a way of producing quality software, a good way to produce software which has several advantages.

You appear to be using the word "political" to advance your own views without defining what you think the word political means. Software certainly is political; as with so many things brought up on these corporate repeater sites Stallman was right (and typically people need a lot of time to come around to understanding that he got there well before the people you're allowed to hear from on corporate media).

Frankly, your overmoderated post is all too typical of what passes for acceptable on sites like these: You also don't specify which "qualities" in software are being addressed when you try the reductionist approach by saying "simply a way of producing quality software". Which qualities are you talking about? After all, what's considered a valuable quality to someone looking to preserve their freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify the software on their computer often is the opposite of what a spy considers mandatory or what a DRM scheme requires to effectively restrict the user. Lots of proprietary software people run every day is malware when considered from the perspective of the user. These are political choices that are increasingly part of everyone's everyday life, regardless of whether they'd call that politics.

When people call an OS by its kernel's name they're being remarkably inconsistent (other widely-used OSes aren't called this way; they get called by the names their proprietors assign to the OS), technically inaccurate (Linux has always been a kernel and never a complete OS), and for all the claims of being practical they're choosing a remarkably impractical nomenclature. A binary that runs on one architecture of an OS (be it GNU/Linux, Busybox/Linux, or something else) won't necessarily run on another system that also uses the Linux kernel. People led to believe that these systems are all "Linux" might believe otherwise because that's what the ill-chosen name plainly indicates.

When it comes to the difference between the older free software social movement and younger open source developmental methodology, they're sometimes quite compatible (as Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source" has pointed out for a decade, people who agree with either philosophy "can and do work together on some practical projects". But they are distinct philosophies that sometimes reach radically different conclusions: free software never concludes that proprietary software is acceptable because proprietary software does not respect a user's software freedom. Open source development methodology was apparently designed to be thrown away or ignored when inconvenient because software developed not using that methodology (such as proprietary software) is accepted. Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software has pointed this out for many years in the section named "Different Values Can Lead to Similar Conclusions...but Not Always".

I'm tired of the "Gnu/Linux" discussion too.

No you're not. That's why you're continuing the discussion and asking people questions which further the discussion.

For Richard Stallman and the FSF leaders, free software is very much political. [...] For Linus Torvalds and the "open source" folks generally, it's not really political, it's simply a way of producing quality software, a good way to produce software which has several advantages.

You appear to be using the word "political" to advance your own views without defining what you think the word political means. Software certainly is political; as with so many things brought up on these corporate repeater sites Stallman was right (and typically people need a lot of time to come around to understanding that he got there well before the people you're allowed to hear from on corporate media).

Frankly, your overmoderated post is all too typical of what passes for acceptable on sites like these: You also don't specify which "qualities" in software are being addressed when you try the reductionist approach by saying "simply a way of producing quality software". Which qualities are you talking about? After all, what's considered a valuable quality to someone looking to preserve their freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify the software on their computer often is the opposite of what a spy considers mandatory or what a DRM scheme requires to effectively restrict the user. Lots of proprietary software people run every day is malware when considered from the perspective of the user. These are political choices that are increasingly part of everyone's everyday life, regardless of whether they'd call that politics.

When people call an OS by its kernel's name they're being remarkably inconsistent (other widely-used OSes aren't called this way; they get called by the names their proprietors assign to the OS), technically inaccurate (Linux has always been a kernel and never a complete OS), and for all the claims of being practical they're choosing a remarkably impractical nomenclature. A binary that runs on one architecture of an OS (be it GNU/Linux, Busybox/Linux, or something else) won't necessarily run on another system that also uses the Linux kernel. People led to believe that these systems are all "Linux" might believe otherwise because that's what the ill-chosen name plainly indicates.

When it comes to the difference between the older free software social movement and younger open source developmental methodology, they're sometimes quite compatible (as Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source" has pointed out for a decade, people who agree with either philosophy "can and do work together on some practical projects". But they are distinct philosophies that sometimes reach radically different conclusions: free software never concludes that proprietary software is acceptable because proprietary software does not respect a user's software freedom. Open source development methodology was apparently designed to be thrown away or ignored when inconvenient because software developed not using that methodology (such as proprietary software) is accepted. Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software has pointed this out for many years in the section named "Different Values Can Lead to Similar Conclusions...but Not Always".

"I need to ask you - how many people do you think are using the GNU tools on a modern Linux?"

Probably almost all.
Just look at the GNU software listing.

First of all, even with just 5 of those ("bash", "gtk+", "gnome", "emacs", "gimp") you have most end-users.
Most developers with "make", "autoconf", "automake", "gcc", "gdb" and "patch".
Then there's all the stuff used on the console, such as "which", "time", "sed", "screen", "tar", "gzip", "wget", "grep" and "less".
Lots of font/print stuff, such as "unifont", "intlfonts", "freefont", "aspell", "spell", "fontutils" and "ghostscript".

And if somehow you think you don't use any of these, what about "glib", "libc", "binutils", "coreutils", "diffutils", "findutils", "fdisk", "gettext", "gnupg", "gnutls", "grub", "libtool", "mailman", "nano", "ncurses", "parted", "sharutils", "sysutils" and "texinfo"?

Now ask yourself again...

"I need to ask you - how many people do you think are using the GNU tools on a modern Linux?"

Everyone, probably?

It's actually a FREE SOFTWARE project, not an OPEN SOURCE project, as he would tell you if he read your comment. ;) But

Contributions made to upstream glibc have their copyright attributed to the FSF once they are turned over to the FSF via a copyright assignment form. See: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/w...

Since Stallman is the President of the FSF, he basically has direct authority to modify the version of glibc on the FSF's servers, because he is the highest authority of the non-profit organization that owns that copyright.

What Stallman *can't* do, due to the license that he wrote and gave to glibc, is stop you or anyone else from modifying any aspect of that code once you download it. And he isn't trying to do that here. So indeed, a fork of glibc (which has happened before and was successful; see eglibc, whose changes were eventually merged upstream) would be the only way to have a publicly-recognized copy with this modification. But it wouldn't be *the* *upstream* glibc anymore, even if you called your repo "glibc".

Stallman also technically has the authority to change the copyright license on FSF's version of glibc to any other license, which he did when they made it LGPL v2.1+. Effectively, instead of glibc just being only available under the "Library General Public License v2" (an older version of the license), it can now be released under LGPLv2.1 *or* LGPLv3 by downstream distributors. But that license change only occurred because Stallman assented to it. He could change it to plain old GPLv3 if he wanted, or he could declare the FSF's copy to be proprietary software if he wanted - he's allowed to do that under copyright law. But that still wouldn't modify the license of any copies that were previously distributed.

Your namecalling notwithstanding, Brad Kuhn has already covered this as well and there's nothing particularly special about the examples you list. Apple certainly stands out because of Apple's irrational hatred of being a GPL licensee (which dates back to how NeXT treated NeXT OS users with their Objective-C additions to GCC, referenced in Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism). Kuhn pointed out something that might be the case now: there are non-free add-ons for that compiler. As these add-ons gain popularity developers become dependent on their functionality. Kuhn has said that there could come a time when such dependence means that practical use of that compiler will almost require using these non-free add-ons as well. This means spreading more software non-freedom to more computer users. I imagine that won't be much of a problem for any OS that accepts non-free software (say by distributing non-free kernel modules, or encouraging users to install non-free applications) because such choices indicate they've already chosen to become dependent on non-free software.

I found your comment difficult to read because of the lack of sentence-initial capital letters, quotation marks, and line breaks.

Ok, first stop using MD5? that sounds like a start.

RFC 2069 specifies that HTTP digest authentication shall use MD5. Switching from MD5 to anything else would require the use of JavaScript. The use of JavaScript would require counterpart functionality in the noscript element.

second, encypted session(lets get as secure as we can before we do any auth)

TLS. I'm with you so far.

Server says how do you expect me to believe you, here is an algorithm.. the same as the one you signed up with(you can even do a rolling algo with a flag in the database per user) also heres a salt to use.

What you describe is in essence what I described earlier as "Some zero-knowledge proof means", for which I warned: "This fails if the user has turned off automatic execution of script in the browser." Here's how the next step would play out in detail:

Client says "I am running the LibreJS extension. Before I run any code, I'll need to see that code's copyright license to ensure that my user has the right to audit the algorithm you are sending, in order to ensure that your program isn't unduly intrusive on my user's privacy or otherwise malicious, and share the results of this audit." Quoting FSF's Free Software Definition, the user will need the following rights:

• The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

The GNU General Public License defines a work's "source code" as "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it." A minified or obfuscated form of a script is instead called "object code", even if it is in superficially the same syntax as source code.

I found your comment difficult to read because of the lack of sentence-initial capital letters, quotation marks, and line breaks.

Ok, first stop using MD5? that sounds like a start.

RFC 2069 specifies that HTTP digest authentication shall use MD5. Switching from MD5 to anything else would require the use of JavaScript. The use of JavaScript would require counterpart functionality in the noscript element.

second, encypted session(lets get as secure as we can before we do any auth)

TLS. I'm with you so far.

Server says how do you expect me to believe you, here is an algorithm.. the same as the one you signed up with(you can even do a rolling algo with a flag in the database per user) also heres a salt to use.

What you describe is in essence what I described earlier as "Some zero-knowledge proof means", for which I warned: "This fails if the user has turned off automatic execution of script in the browser." Here's how the next step would play out in detail:

Client says "I am running the LibreJS extension. Before I run any code, I'll need to see that code's copyright license to ensure that my user has the right to audit the algorithm you are sending, in order to ensure that your program isn't unduly intrusive on my user's privacy or otherwise malicious, and share the results of this audit." Quoting FSF's Free Software Definition, the user will need the following rights:

• The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

The GNU General Public License defines a work's "source code" as "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it." A minified or obfuscated form of a script is instead called "object code", even if it is in superficially the same syntax as source code.

"JavaScript is enabled, but I use LibreJS to block proprietary script. Can you send me a copy of the authentication script's unobfuscated, unminified source code under a free software license so that I (or another member) can perform a code review before executing it?"

If the answer is no, then this is why GitHub has been rated F for requiring execution of proprietary script.

"JavaScript is enabled, but I use LibreJS to block proprietary script. Can you send me a copy of the authentication script's unobfuscated, unminified source code under a free software license so that I (or another member) can perform a code review before executing it?"

If the answer is no, then this is why GitHub has been rated F for requiring execution of proprietary script.

"JavaScript is enabled, but I use LibreJS to block proprietary script. Can you send me a copy of the authentication script's unobfuscated, unminified source code under a free software license so that I (or another member) can perform a code review before executing it?"

If the answer is no, then this is why GitHub has been rated F for requiring execution of proprietary script.

Richard Stallman has long pointed out the contradiction between how the word "hacker" was used ("playful cleverness") dating back to the 1960's and how it is used by mainstream media dating back to the 1980's ("security breaker").

I didn't misunderstand; you didn't demonstrate hyperbole in the way you think you did. Your one-sided application of the term hyperbole is telling and inverted ("the whole free software movement as a whole" is not undermined, but the power proprietors wield to take advantage of computer users causes all proprietary software to come under suspicion by default precisely because we can't tell what's really going on, improve, or share modified proprietary software regardless of our skill and motivation). https://gnu.org/malware has plenty of examples of proprietary malware that work precisely because that software doesn't respect a user's software freedom; as that page says,

Power corrupts; the proprietary program's developer is tempted to design the program to mistreat its users. (Software whose functioning mistreats the user is called malware.) Of course, the developer usually does not do this out of malice, but rather to profit more at the users' expense. That does not make it any less nasty or more legitimate. Yielding to that temptation has become ever more frequent; nowadays it is standard practice. Modern proprietary software is typically a way to be had.

Also, you oversimplify what's going on with Facebook: the harm of Facebook's data collection is partially attributable to proprietary software. There are other methods by which Facebook harms people (both its users and non-users) that don't involve proprietary software, so there's plenty of good reason not to trust spying services like Facebook. Depending on the method, software licenses might not be relevant at all. But software licenses don't all treat users the same way even if they all hinge on copyright law, therefore there's nothing compelling anyone to view all licenses the same way.

Not only are your values perverted (another poster rightly points out that you can't take it with you) what's left behind is a bad way to treat people—proprietary software is rightly identified as user-subjugating by rms. Technical achievement and business deals come and go, but treating people ethically sticks with people for a long time and sets a great example for how we can run a society that we can live with.

In fact, Steve Jobs (while heading up NeXT) was the first commercial copyright infringer of GCC, then known as the GNU C Compiler later the GNU Compiler Collection when it compiled a lot more languages than just C. NeXT needed a compiler, GCC did the job, and NeXT wrote Objective-C support for GCC then chose to distribute only object code for NeXT's GCC variant. This was a clear violation of the GNU GPL v2 (the relevant GCC license at the time) as there was no complete corresponding source code on offer or copy distributed alongside the binaries. Someone from the FSF (I'm not sure who, Eben Moglen perhaps?) had a talk with NeXT and after some discussions (which I'm guessing were quite unpleasant for Jobs and NeXT's lawyers to hear) NeXT ended up doing what they should have done from the start: shipping complete corresponding source code to their variant of GCC with the GCC binaries. The copy I saw was in a box of Extended Density (2.88MB) floppy disks.

Brad Kuhn, former FSF Executive Director current President and Distinguished Technologist at the Software Freedom Conservancy, has told this story before and he (probably rightly) speculates this is what drove Apple to become the irrational GPL-hater they are today: NeXT got caught treating their users badly, violating GCC's license, and subverting a license designed to let them do what they needed while also treating the users justly. This is why Apple is moving toward a non-copylefted compiler (which Kuhn speculates they'll someday stop contributing to when it becomes good enough for them to use without caring about contributing back). This is why Apple switched away from the (I'm told better functioning) Samba to some proprietary SMB implementation for MacOS X. I'm told some other GPL-covered software on MacOS X remains out of date; if that's so, this is probably why. And it's telling that Apple is no rush to replace CUPS as they did Samba and GCC—Apple bought Easy Software (which wrote CUPS) thus making Apple CUPS' copyright holder so Apple went from being a GPL licensee to being a GPL licensor. This also helps illustrate why Apple's view of the GPL is irrational: GPL-covered programs were perfectly good for them throughout NeXT and Apple's early days with MacOS X, and the GPL is apparently remains a fine license when licensing to others. But share and share alike is apparently not the way they want to treat their users for plenty of other software they distribute.

"I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with. I usually fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program (see https://git.savannah.gnu.org/g...) that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me. Then I look at them using a web browser, unless it is easy to see the text in the HTML page directly. I usually try lynx first, then a graphical browser if the page needs it (using konqueror, which won't fetch from other sites in such a situation). "

"I usually use a string between two tin cans, for offline web browsing, but the cans are hand-forged in public forges according to freely available schematics and the string is assembled my me from the lint from my clothes dryer." -- Sound like Stallman.

"We need a law...there's no reason we should let them exist if the price is knowing everything about us."

So Richard Stallman wants to ban websites that allow you to enter information about yourself. Facebook is just one of millions of sites where you can add personal information. It just happens to be the most used.

Most people don't want to go through the weird wget nonsense that Stallman uses https://stallman.org/stallman-...
"I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with. I usually fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program (see https://git.savannah.gnu.org/g...) that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me. Then I look at them using a web browser, unless it is easy to see the text in the HTML page directly. I usually try lynx first, then a graphical browser if the page needs it (using konqueror, which won't fetch from other sites in such a situation). "

Stop wasting time trying to label something. Open Source, Freeware, and Shareware are nothing but buzz words trying to describe things that are dynamic in nature and changing all the time.

That's true. That's why "Open Source" is meaningless (The OSI encourages its meaninglessness by conflating various licenses which are in fact different) and why "Free Software" is what is needed for user freedom.

Open source software started out as a moral crusade...

No it didn't. The free software movement started over a decade before open source and began as an ethics-based social movement which was also apparently economically viable for some including founder Stallman and some businesses such as Red Hat and Cygnus. But free software never framed the issues it addresses around a business-first philosophy.

Later after seeing how software freedom posed a threat to proprietary software control over the user, the open source development methodology was developed as a reaction that would try to reframe the issue away from caring about a user's software freedom and into a means of convincing developers to license their work to allow for nonfree derivatives (or at the least not draw strong distinctions between freedom-preserving "copyleft" licenses and "non-copyleft" licenses that don't try to preserve software freedom, hence the lack of clear distinction between these licenses in the OSI's license list). That focus aims to benefit the open source's primary audience: businesses. This development methodology is a disposable front by which its advocates endorse the idea that following their development methodology will make software more powerful and reliable. But this isn't always true, and some proprietary software is already powerful and reliable leaving "open source" as no real challenge to proprietary control over the user. But it was never meant to be such a challenge, so this philosophy's proponents don't consider this to be a problem.

The GNU Project recognized this reality long ago and wrote about it in a couple of essays (older, newer). Here's a relevant excerpt from the newer essay pointing out how a free software activist and an open source enthusiast react to learning about a powerful, reliable proprietary program:

The idea of open source is that allowing users to change and redistribute the software will make it more powerful and reliable. But this is not guaranteed. Developers of proprietary software are not necessarily incompetent. Sometimes they produce a program that is powerful and reliable, even though it does not respect the users' freedom. Free software activists and open source enthusiasts will react very differently to that.

A pure open source enthusiast, one that is not at all influenced by the ideals of free software, will say, "I am surprised you were able to make the program work so well without using our development model, but you did. How can I get a copy?" This attitude will reward schemes that take away our freedom, leading to its loss.

The free software activist will say, "Your program is very attractive, but I value my freedom more. So I reject your program. I will get my work done some other way, and support a project to develop a free replacement." If we value our freedom, we can act to maintain and defend it.

Linus Torvalds' use and endorsement of Bitkeeper years ago is an example of the open source enthusiast. He clearly rejects software freedom (read just about anything he says on the topic) and shows his disdain to users of his fork of the Linux kernel as well; that fork of the Linux kernel contains non-free software. The GNU Linux-libre fork of the Linux kernel removes non-free software, providing a kernel one can (ironically) distribute in full compliance with the license under which the kernel Linux is distributed—the GNU GPLv2.

Open source software started out as a moral crusade...

No it didn't. The free software movement started over a decade before open source and began as an ethics-based social movement which was also apparently economically viable for some including founder Stallman and some businesses such as Red Hat and Cygnus. But free software never framed the issues it addresses around a business-first philosophy.

Later after seeing how software freedom posed a threat to proprietary software control over the user, the open source development methodology was developed as a reaction that would try to reframe the issue away from caring about a user's software freedom and into a means of convincing developers to license their work to allow for nonfree derivatives (or at the least not draw strong distinctions between freedom-preserving "copyleft" licenses and "non-copyleft" licenses that don't try to preserve software freedom, hence the lack of clear distinction between these licenses in the OSI's license list). That focus aims to benefit the open source's primary audience: businesses. This development methodology is a disposable front by which its advocates endorse the idea that following their development methodology will make software more powerful and reliable. But this isn't always true, and some proprietary software is already powerful and reliable leaving "open source" as no real challenge to proprietary control over the user. But it was never meant to be such a challenge, so this philosophy's proponents don't consider this to be a problem.

The GNU Project recognized this reality long ago and wrote about it in a couple of essays (older, newer). Here's a relevant excerpt from the newer essay pointing out how a free software activist and an open source enthusiast react to learning about a powerful, reliable proprietary program:

The idea of open source is that allowing users to change and redistribute the software will make it more powerful and reliable. But this is not guaranteed. Developers of proprietary software are not necessarily incompetent. Sometimes they produce a program that is powerful and reliable, even though it does not respect the users' freedom. Free software activists and open source enthusiasts will react very differently to that.

A pure open source enthusiast, one that is not at all influenced by the ideals of free software, will say, "I am surprised you were able to make the program work so well without using our development model, but you did. How can I get a copy?" This attitude will reward schemes that take away our freedom, leading to its loss.

The free software activist will say, "Your program is very attractive, but I value my freedom more. So I reject your program. I will get my work done some other way, and support a project to develop a free replacement." If we value our freedom, we can act to maintain and defend it.

Linus Torvalds' use and endorsement of Bitkeeper years ago is an example of the open source enthusiast. He clearly rejects software freedom (read just about anything he says on the topic) and shows his disdain to users of his fork of the Linux kernel as well; that fork of the Linux kernel contains non-free software. The GNU Linux-libre fork of the Linux kernel removes non-free software, providing a kernel one can (ironically) distribute in full compliance with the license under which the kernel Linux is distributed—the GNU GPLv2.

There is no web version of it to use on a computer.

While true that's an incredibly weak criticism of Hello (nee Orkut). In time that could change, and this critique would suggest that somehow makes Hello worth considering.

A more thoroughgoing critique is that Hello just another central-point-of-censorship/tracker regardless of what their current terms of service and/or developer promises say. Switching from Facebook to this or some workalike is switching masters or switching parties who spy on you, not getting away from being spied upon. Google's saying used to be "Don't be evil" but as far as we know Google always spied on their users, Google distributes proprietary malware, and Google pushes other central/single-point-of-censorship services that could be done in a privacy and freedom-respecting way (such as free software-based, decentralized, real-time chat). The fix for this is possible but not in line with any business built to be yet-another spying service. This a far better reason to reject Hello and to reject anything else with the same centralized architecture.

And free software doesn't even discriminate against business decisions. Contrary to some of the FUD posted on sites like /., free software licenses (even strongly-copylefted free software licenses such as the GNU GPL) don't prohibit money-making. But the free software movement doesn't consider business interests above all else, nor should it. The free software movement is (as the parent, sadly anonymous, poster said) an ethics-based social movement. The principal decision concerns how to treat others properly with digital computers. If one finds a way to do make a business while doing that, great. The free software movement is on record for decades telling people to charge as much money as one can make in that endeavor. Cygnus found a way to do that for many years providing improvements to GCC, then Red Hat bought that company. But there are other ways to make money and, frankly, capitalism doesn't allow most people to spend their time doing what they enjoy or find interesting.

But the open source development methodology and Open Source Initiative were not founded to promote ethical examination; quite the opposite. That group sought to remove ethics from their pitch to businesses and even nay say any framing of the issues around ethics. For many years they told the world a free software focus was "ideological tub-thumping" (as if their views are not an ideology or having an ideology is itself somehow objectionable). They saw free software framing and licenses as competing with the interests of their business proprietor friends and sought to intervene by posing as well-meaning beneficiaries but consistently encourage non-copylefted free software where the chief benefactors are proprietors (such as Apple and Qualcomm with LLVM which is rapidly becoming a nonfree compiler due to the nonfree software one needs to make practical use of the compiler). Today some "open source" proponents strongly argue one should not defend their license choice, and thus render software licensed under the GPL or AGPL into a work licensed under CC0 (which forgoes all rights in the work).

Encouraging people not to distinguish among approved licenses is another problem the OSI fosters. A lack of critical consideration creates the impression that one license is just as good as another, so people pick among licenses on other criteria such as brevity of license or perceived simplicity of the license (shorter licenses are often deceptively simpler; the new BSD and MIT X11 license don't handle software idea patents and thus can present practical problems for derivatives, something monied proprietors count on). The FSF, in contrast, helps people understand the difference between licenses including their practical consequences and when to make compromises.

It's no coincidence or accident that the overwhelmingly corporate computer press mentions the name "open source" so much and rarely frames anything around software freedom. That comes as a direct result of whose interests are being served by the two philosophies. Free software doesn't nay say business but doesn't give up software freedom to promote business desires. Open source proponents frequently drop their entire development methodology in the face of powerful, reliable proprietary software (such as the recent case of Red Hat endorsing the use of Microsoft's patent-covered and proprietary software, running GNU/kWindows or a GNU-based VM atop Windows as Microsoft has promoted, or Linus Torvalds' use and endorsement of Bitkeeper years ago which ended up being a reason why we have Git today). Years ago (circa 2007), the FSF published "Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software", a follow-up and improvement on an even older essay "Why 'Free Software' is better than 'Open Source'". The n

And free software doesn't even discriminate against business decisions. Contrary to some of the FUD posted on sites like /., free software licenses (even strongly-copylefted free software licenses such as the GNU GPL) don't prohibit money-making. But the free software movement doesn't consider business interests above all else, nor should it. The free software movement is (as the parent, sadly anonymous, poster said) an ethics-based social movement. The principal decision concerns how to treat others properly with digital computers. If one finds a way to do make a business while doing that, great. The free software movement is on record for decades telling people to charge as much money as one can make in that endeavor. Cygnus found a way to do that for many years providing improvements to GCC, then Red Hat bought that company. But there are other ways to make money and, frankly, capitalism doesn't allow most people to spend their time doing what they enjoy or find interesting.

But the open source development methodology and Open Source Initiative were not founded to promote ethical examination; quite the opposite. That group sought to remove ethics from their pitch to businesses and even nay say any framing of the issues around ethics. For many years they told the world a free software focus was "ideological tub-thumping" (as if their views are not an ideology or having an ideology is itself somehow objectionable). They saw free software framing and licenses as competing with the interests of their business proprietor friends and sought to intervene by posing as well-meaning beneficiaries but consistently encourage non-copylefted free software where the chief benefactors are proprietors (such as Apple and Qualcomm with LLVM which is rapidly becoming a nonfree compiler due to the nonfree software one needs to make practical use of the compiler). Today some "open source" proponents strongly argue one should not defend their license choice, and thus render software licensed under the GPL or AGPL into a work licensed under CC0 (which forgoes all rights in the work).

Encouraging people not to distinguish among approved licenses is another problem the OSI fosters. A lack of critical consideration creates the impression that one license is just as good as another, so people pick among licenses on other criteria such as brevity of license or perceived simplicity of the license (shorter licenses are often deceptively simpler; the new BSD and MIT X11 license don't handle software idea patents and thus can present practical problems for derivatives, something monied proprietors count on). The FSF, in contrast, helps people understand the difference between licenses including their practical consequences and when to make compromises.

It's no coincidence or accident that the overwhelmingly corporate computer press mentions the name "open source" so much and rarely frames anything around software freedom. That comes as a direct result of whose interests are being served by the two philosophies. Free software doesn't nay say business but doesn't give up software freedom to promote business desires. Open source proponents frequently drop their entire development methodology in the face of powerful, reliable proprietary software (such as the recent case of Red Hat endorsing the use of Microsoft's patent-covered and proprietary software, running GNU/kWindows or a GNU-based VM atop Windows as Microsoft has promoted, or Linus Torvalds' use and endorsement of Bitkeeper years ago which ended up being a reason why we have Git today). Years ago (circa 2007), the FSF published "Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software", a follow-up and improvement on an even older essay "Why 'Free Software' is better than 'Open Source'". The n

And free software doesn't even discriminate against business decisions. Contrary to some of the FUD posted on sites like /., free software licenses (even strongly-copylefted free software licenses such as the GNU GPL) don't prohibit money-making. But the free software movement doesn't consider business interests above all else, nor should it. The free software movement is (as the parent, sadly anonymous, poster said) an ethics-based social movement. The principal decision concerns how to treat others properly with digital computers. If one finds a way to do make a business while doing that, great. The free software movement is on record for decades telling people to charge as much money as one can make in that endeavor. Cygnus found a way to do that for many years providing improvements to GCC, then Red Hat bought that company. But there are other ways to make money and, frankly, capitalism doesn't allow most people to spend their time doing what they enjoy or find interesting.

But the open source development methodology and Open Source Initiative were not founded to promote ethical examination; quite the opposite. That group sought to remove ethics from their pitch to businesses and even nay say any framing of the issues around ethics. For many years they told the world a free software focus was "ideological tub-thumping" (as if their views are not an ideology or having an ideology is itself somehow objectionable). They saw free software framing and licenses as competing with the interests of their business proprietor friends and sought to intervene by posing as well-meaning beneficiaries but consistently encourage non-copylefted free software where the chief benefactors are proprietors (such as Apple and Qualcomm with LLVM which is rapidly becoming a nonfree compiler due to the nonfree software one needs to make practical use of the compiler). Today some "open source" proponents strongly argue one should not defend their license choice, and thus render software licensed under the GPL or AGPL into a work licensed under CC0 (which forgoes all rights in the work).

Encouraging people not to distinguish among approved licenses is another problem the OSI fosters. A lack of critical consideration creates the impression that one license is just as good as another, so people pick among licenses on other criteria such as brevity of license or perceived simplicity of the license (shorter licenses are often deceptively simpler; the new BSD and MIT X11 license don't handle software idea patents and thus can present practical problems for derivatives, something monied proprietors count on). The FSF, in contrast, helps people understand the difference between licenses including their practical consequences and when to make compromises.

It's no coincidence or accident that the overwhelmingly corporate computer press mentions the name "open source" so much and rarely frames anything around software freedom. That comes as a direct result of whose interests are being served by the two philosophies. Free software doesn't nay say business but doesn't give up software freedom to promote business desires. Open source proponents frequently drop their entire development methodology in the face of powerful, reliable proprietary software (such as the recent case of Red Hat endorsing the use of Microsoft's patent-covered and proprietary software, running GNU/kWindows or a GNU-based VM atop Windows as Microsoft has promoted, or Linus Torvalds' use and endorsement of Bitkeeper years ago which ended up being a reason why we have Git today). Years ago (circa 2007), the FSF published "Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software", a follow-up and improvement on an even older essay "Why 'Free Software' is better than 'Open Source'". The n

And free software doesn't even discriminate against business decisions. Contrary to some of the FUD posted on sites like /., free software licenses (even strongly-copylefted free software licenses such as the GNU GPL) don't prohibit money-making. But the free software movement doesn't consider business interests above all else, nor should it. The free software movement is (as the parent, sadly anonymous, poster said) an ethics-based social movement. The principal decision concerns how to treat others properly with digital computers. If one finds a way to do make a business while doing that, great. The free software movement is on record for decades telling people to charge as much money as one can make in that endeavor. Cygnus found a way to do that for many years providing improvements to GCC, then Red Hat bought that company. But there are other ways to make money and, frankly, capitalism doesn't allow most people to spend their time doing what they enjoy or find interesting.

But the open source development methodology and Open Source Initiative were not founded to promote ethical examination; quite the opposite. That group sought to remove ethics from their pitch to businesses and even nay say any framing of the issues around ethics. For many years they told the world a free software focus was "ideological tub-thumping" (as if their views are not an ideology or having an ideology is itself somehow objectionable). They saw free software framing and licenses as competing with the interests of their business proprietor friends and sought to intervene by posing as well-meaning beneficiaries but consistently encourage non-copylefted free software where the chief benefactors are proprietors (such as Apple and Qualcomm with LLVM which is rapidly becoming a nonfree compiler due to the nonfree software one needs to make practical use of the compiler). Today some "open source" proponents strongly argue one should not defend their license choice, and thus render software licensed under the GPL or AGPL into a work licensed under CC0 (which forgoes all rights in the work).

Encouraging people not to distinguish among approved licenses is another problem the OSI fosters. A lack of critical consideration creates the impression that one license is just as good as another, so people pick among licenses on other criteria such as brevity of license or perceived simplicity of the license (shorter licenses are often deceptively simpler; the new BSD and MIT X11 license don't handle software idea patents and thus can present practical problems for derivatives, something monied proprietors count on). The FSF, in contrast, helps people understand the difference between licenses including their practical consequences and when to make compromises.

It's no coincidence or accident that the overwhelmingly corporate computer press mentions the name "open source" so much and rarely frames anything around software freedom. That comes as a direct result of whose interests are being served by the two philosophies. Free software doesn't nay say business but doesn't give up software freedom to promote business desires. Open source proponents frequently drop their entire development methodology in the face of powerful, reliable proprietary software (such as the recent case of Red Hat endorsing the use of Microsoft's patent-covered and proprietary software, running GNU/kWindows or a GNU-based VM atop Windows as Microsoft has promoted, or Linus Torvalds' use and endorsement of Bitkeeper years ago which ended up being a reason why we have Git today). Years ago (circa 2007), the FSF published "Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software", a follow-up and improvement on an even older essay "Why 'Free Software' is better than 'Open Source'". The n

Actually the browser's author or what that author does is both inaccurate (Google is not just about advertising) and irrelevant. If Google Chrome were published as free software—software that respected a user's freedom to run, inspect, modify, and share published software—users could inspect the source code, change what they didn't like, run the variant they prefer, and share their improved version. Users don't have these freedoms with Google Chrome, Chrome is proprietary (nonfree, user-subjugating) software.

So users have to decide to reject the software or have blind faith that Google will do right by them and believe that it is in Google's interest to "boost user privacy" at all. The mechanism by which Google purports to do this is irrelevant because Google got to where it is by spying on and censoring users. Proprietary software is often malware and Google's proprietary software is no exception.

Actually the browser's author or what that author does is both inaccurate (Google is not just about advertising) and irrelevant. If Google Chrome were published as free software—software that respected a user's freedom to run, inspect, modify, and share published software—users could inspect the source code, change what they didn't like, run the variant they prefer, and share their improved version. Users don't have these freedoms with Google Chrome, Chrome is proprietary (nonfree, user-subjugating) software.

So users have to decide to reject the software or have blind faith that Google will do right by them and believe that it is in Google's interest to "boost user privacy" at all. The mechanism by which Google purports to do this is irrelevant because Google got to where it is by spying on and censoring users. Proprietary software is often malware and Google's proprietary software is no exception.

Biometrics are a tool for controlling the public. They identify criminals, refugees, anyone crossing a border or making trouble who needs to be tracked and held accountable. Their main feature is that the holder of them can't fake them, change them, or hide them. It's a great evil to build ecosystems and infrastructure that offer up this power of authoritarian statehood to petty merchants and coupon-issuers.

Apologists for fingerprint scanners on phones said from the beginning, "the fingerprint never leaves the device." Intuition is the wrong way to think about privacy. You need to use attack models. If you allow a bank, a credit card, or a music-playing app to demand fingerprint enrolment, even if they don't get to see the fingerprint itself they get great power over the user because they can count the number of unique fingerprints claiming to be "the user" and demand the count equal one, which is almost the same as having the fingerprint itself. In that sense, the fingerprint is leaving the phone.

I know one of the "rules" is not to share passwords, but that imagines a non-adversarial relationship between the user and the web service that's not realistic, or even typical, today. The ability to share passwords is a key civil liberty described as a last ballwark against the dystopia in "The Right to Read."

How many apps does one person need?!

One?

“Consume”

“Consume” refers to what we do with food: we ingest it, after which the food as such no longer exists. By analogy, we employ the same word for other products whose use uses them up. Applying it to durable goods, such as clothing or appliances, is a stretch. Applying it to published works (programs, recordings on a disk or in a file, books on paper or in a file), whose nature is to last indefinitely and which can be run, played or read any number of times, is stretching the word so far that it snaps. Playing a recording, or running a program, does not consume it.

Those who use “consume” in this context will say they don't mean it literally. What, then, does it mean? It means to regard copies of software and other works from a narrow economistic point of view. “Consume” is associated with the economics of material commodities, such as the fuel or electricity that a car uses up. Gasoline is a commodity, and so is electricity. Commodities are fungible: there is nothing special about a drop of gasoline that your car burns today versus another drop that it burned last week.

Do we want people to think of writings (software, news, any other kind) as a commodity, with the assumption that there is nothing special about any one story, article, program, or song? Should we treat them as fungible? That is the twisted viewpoint of an economist, or the accountant of a publishing company. It is no surprise that proprietary software would like you to think of the use of software as a commodity. Their twisted viewpoint comes through clearly in this article, which also refers to publications as “content.”

The narrow thinking associated with the idea that we “consume content” paves the way for laws such as the DMCA that forbid users to break the Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) facilities in digital devices. If users think what they do with these devices is “consume,” they may see such restrictions as natural.

It also encourages the acceptation of “streaming” services, which use DRM to perversely limit listening to music so that it fits the assumptions of the word “consume.”

Why is this perverse usage spreading? Some may feel that the term sounds sophisticated, but rejecting it with cogent reasons can appear even more sophisticated. Others may be acting from business interests (their own, or their employers'). Their use of the term in prestigious forums gives the impression that it's the “correct” term.

To speak of “consuming” music, fiction, or any other artistic works is to treat them as products rather than as art. If you don't want to spread that attitude, you would do well to avoid using the term “consume” for them. What to use instead? We prefer specific verbs such as “listen to”, “watch”, “read” or “look at”, since they help to restrain the tendency to overgeneralize.

When it is absolutely necessary to generalize about all kinds of works and all media, we recommend “experience” or “give attention to” for an artistic work or a work to present a point of view, and “use” for a practically useful work.

From: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html

First I'd prefer to dispense with some misconceptions inherent in your wording, namely that viewing a work somehow "consumes" it, or that works of authorship are "content" to fill a box.

With that out of the way, how should one legally contribute without running the risk of accidentally plagiarizing someone else's work by creating your own work that ends up being too similar?

...and the one security pros often recommend...

Don't let allegations of popularity (regardless of whether they're true) hamper better thinking. Any so-called "security pro" that pushes for proprietary software is unfit to be called a computer "security professional". Proprietary (non-free, user-subjugating) software is never under the control of the user. It doesn't matter what the program purports to do, how popular someone claims it is, or who made the program. A lack of software freedom for the user is untrustworthy by default. And trusting a massive spy operation (such as Google certainly is) should make the software suspect as well.

With free software one doesn't need to trust the software—if you doubt the software in any way, you can inspect it to see what it does (or get someone you trust to do this for you), edit the software to suit your needs (or get someone to do this for you), and run the variant of the code you vetted and edited. Computer users have to fall back on trust when they're left without the information they need to make an informed judgment (precisely the judgment free software allows the user to make and proprietary software prevents users from making).

Different writers use the terms "personal server" and especially "cloud" to refer to different things. Would you consider leasing a virtual private server (VPS) from a VPS provider as "personal server" or "cloud"?

For use of a home server to be practical, both a home ISP's acceptable use policy and its technical architecture have to allow it. An AUP that bans home servers is unacceptable, and inbound connections require a dedicated (even if dynamic) IP address as opposed to a carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT) layer. Good luck moving both you and your contacts to a location where a home ISP allows the use of home servers.

if you're going to use my work in a commercial product, I fully expect to be paid.

Consider a case in which your work will be distributed as free software and/or free cultural works. By these definitions, downstream reusers of free software and free cultural works have the right to distribute copies for a fee. From what initial source of revenue should your payment come?