While DRM is the bane of everybody there are cases where trust and integrity is important and it’s an intriguing look into how hard it is to manage.

Nah, when the user wants to ensure trust and integrity in his own system, it works just fine. The problem comes when the user who needs to be able to access the data is simultaneously the adversary who needs to be stopped from accessing the data.

In other words, it’s one of those situations where the fact that it’s hard to manage is a gigantic clue that it’s wrongheaded to try to do so in the first place.

According to the Open Source Initiative (the folks who control whether things can be officially certified as “open source”), it basically is the same thing as Free Software. In fact, their definition was copied and pasted from the Debian Free Software guidelines.

Trust me, you don’t want to be trying to maintain legacy Jython code at this point, let alone use it for anything new. All the “normal” Python infrastructure like Pip etc. has moved on and broken compatibility, so you’d have to find and maintain locally the last working compatible version of every single package you use. I suppose you could use Java libraries, but the impedance mismatch trying to use LBYL explicitly typed stuff in EAFP python is terrible. It’s just a horrible mess.

is Jython still a thing?

No. (Source: I had to try to keep its zombie corpse shuffling along at my last job.)

Only the latter definition is valid!

You can still view the source code. That’s what open source is.

No, it’s not. It only counts if it provides the four freedoms listed here:

• 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.

And before you say “but that’s the definition of ‘Free Software’, not ‘Open Source’,” even the latter, misguided as it is, at least still requires freedom 0!

There is no such thing as “conditionally open source.” The license terms you describe are just “not open source.”

If they actually gave a shit about commercial entities contributing back, they should’ve gone AGPL3. This is just a money grab and yet another example of how permissive licensing isn’t good enough and everything should be copyleft.

It certainly didn’t stop Other Linus!

Trusting official installation instructions from the software developer might be a step or two down from trusting your distro’s package maintainers, but it’s still several steps up from trusting random advice from a forum or chatroom.

And with the possible exception of Ken Thompson or Ben Eater, we’ve all got to trust somebody.

WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed. This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!

You are about to do something potentially harmful. To continue type in the phrase ‘Yes, do as I say!’

User: gleefully types in the phrase

If I have to install it myself instead of being able to assume it’s on the system by default, that’s a Problem.

Python is secretly a functional-paradigm language. If you’re not making liberal use of comprehensions instead of loops (especially loops with LBYL conditions in them), you’re doing it wrong.

JavaScript is very much not the second best language for anything.

JavaScript came about because it was the only choice in the context for which it was designed, and then it metasticized into other contexts because devs that used it got Stockholm syndrome.

Leavenworth seems like it would work out just fine.

At the time, their actions were largely dismissed as an elaborate political cosplay. But it eventually became clear that this was part of an orchestrated plan.

Speak for yourself, CNN! Your enlightened centrist dipshit asses might’ve been fooled, but that does not mean those of us who aren’t brainless were!

You’re “downloading an app” anyway, even if it’s JavaScript running in a browser. How do you think the client-side code gets to the client‽

But yes, I think we need a new version of something like Java Web Start, except with the ability to steam parts of itself as-needed instead of having to download the entire .jar before being able to run. If you’re going to have an app, have an app that has proper libraries for the UI etc. instead of hacking everything on top of a whole bunch of DOM cruft!

I guess WebAssembly is a step in the right direction, but it’s still too tied to the document viewer known as a “web browser,” for no good reason.

Yet another bad consequence of building our cities wrong. If we fixed the zoning code to make them walkable, we wouldn’t “need” traffic stops in the first place.

It’s amazing how car dependency is an underlying causal factor in nearly every problem in the US, from climate change, to obesity, to the housing crisis, to apparently even police misconduct.

Good thing web pages are supposed to be documents and not “applications,” then!

If you want a goddamn application, go resurrect Java Web Start or something.

How do I upvote this more than once?

Web pages are supposed to be hypertext documents, not “interactive… UIs!”