Thank you for the suggestion. It's an interesting project, but I'm more comfortable writing Rust code. Also I still have a lot to do for the library I'm maintaining. The libei and Wayland support is still experimental and buggy and I need to get better integration tests working. So much to do, so little time :-)
I mentioned unionization on my personal social media account and was approached by legal that I should “consider my public statements about my job carefully.”
It is well known that Amazon hires organizations like the Pinkertons to break up unionization efforts at all levels, even going as far as to bait union supporters into signing fake union interest forms on false pretense and then attrition-fire individuals who signed by giving them no hours, pushing them into ineffective or frustrating conditions, PIPs, etc.
This is false, and one of the simultaneous boons and banes of the GPL family of licenses.
LGPL compliance is achieved purely by providing a copy of your version of the source code; if no modifications have been made to the LGPL portion, a simple link to upstream is sufficient, otherwise a “reasonable” means of getting the same code (full tarball, diff against upstream at some point in time, etc) is needed. The LGPL (and GPL overall) does not make any provision that the user MUST be able to replace the object binary, only that source is provided to enable doing so if you break whatever tamper seals are there for yourself.
Please don't make claims like "this is false" if you aren't familiar with the licenses you're commenting on.
Section 4e of the LGPLv3 says that one of the conditions for conveying a "combined work" (such as a proprietary application that links with an LGPLv3 library) is "Provide Installation Information, but only if you would otherwise be required to provide such information under section 6 of the GNU GPL, and only to the extent that such information is necessary to install and execute a modified version of the Combined Work produced by recombining or relinking the Application with a modified version of the Linked Version."
The relevant quote from Section 6 of the GPLv3 is:
> “Installation Information” for a User Product means any methods, procedures, authorization keys, or other information required to install and execute modified versions of a covered work in that User Product from a modified version of its Corresponding Source. The information must suffice to ensure that the continued functioning of the modified object code is in no case prevented or interfered with solely because modification has been made.
> If you convey an object code work under this section in, or with, or specifically for use in, a User Product, and the conveying occurs as part of a transaction in which the right of possession and use of the User Product is transferred to the recipient in perpetuity or for a fixed term (regardless of how the transaction is characterized), the Corresponding Source conveyed under this section must be accompanied by the Installation Information. But this requirement does not apply if neither you nor any third party retains the ability to install modified object code on the User Product (for example, the work has been installed in ROM).
In summary, if you ship a device that is physically capable of running modified code, you must give users the ability to both link the LGPL'd library with your proprietary code and to write the resulting modified firmware to the device.
Counterpoint: Microsoft. A large portion of Microsoft has been WFH Hybrid to 100% remote. The teams that have not encouraged WFH+Remote have been the ones responsible for the worst choices thus far (the Copilot button, Recall, etc.)
As someone who previously worked in an XML-heavy environment, I would rather have an NFL linebacker dropkick me in the head than deal with XML again. Tim Bray himself has had doubts [1] at one point.
XML is too big of a hammer for the space it fills.
Many have their hands tied. In the biopharma industry, there are strict NDAs and well enforced noncompetes that make it hard to move throughout the industry and sometimes even talk about the work.
I work today with someone who interned with Gilead. According to him, his NDA lasts until 2099 and covers "Anything and everything said, heard, seen, imagined or done" while under their employ that hasn't been made 100% public. His resume has just one line entry: "Intern, lab tech. Details NDA."
I work for a competitor for Gilead and we certainly don't apply these sorts of constraints on our interns. I just worked on a recommendation letter that describes his work in detail (while not containing anything truly proprietary).
In the long run, pirated copies of Windows are noise level: The vast majority of people are going to get a license via an OEM (which survives reinstallation), businesses aren't going to risk running unlicensed windows machines (especially if they're paying for it elsewhere) and have easy means to acquire OEM licensed machines that are supported by the OEM for parts & service, and people who run an up to date but pirate-licensed copy of Windows are at least running an up to date version instead of sitting on an EOL copy that is barely getting security updates.
Allowing piracy at that level is actively safer in the long run.
I suppose the other aspect is the gradual death of the white-box PC shop.
The large OEMs have contracts to pay 9 cents per license.
They'll never crack the individual enthusiast building his own PC from Newegg parts and installing a hack, but he's small potatoes.
But back in the day, there there was a fair chance your local midsize business, government, university, didn't necessarily buy from Dell or HP-- they bidded out a few hundred PCs to a local shop, which had both the motivation and technical knowledge to use the same license key on each one, and the scale where it could represent significant lost revenue.
Introducing activation was probably a significant sabotage for them. Although I'd suspect the stick on license certificate was almost as big a deal in that regard.
It should be noted that unless you've modified an Xbox One, from what I understand you cannot stop it from auto updating unless you permanently disconnect it from the internet (which will cause your licenses to eventually expire, in the year timespan or so), new launch games won't run (they're tied to a minimum version of the OS).
I agree that the device updating without your consent should be illegal, but new games requiring the updates seems fair enough: the Xbox can still run all of the games it was advertised to be able to do so at launch, and if game developers could not rely on the presence of system updates, Microsoft would just release an entirely new, incompatible Xbox instead. I think that updates are fine so long as you can update and roll back whenever you want to.
The PSP had firmware updates as well, and certain games strongly encouraged you to do so. But many had a workaround: The firmware loaded from the UMD itself. This meant your minimum firmware version could be rolled back, or that in some cases you didn't need to update and then rollback at all, as it was all loaded from the UMD. No matter what though, Sony mandated that all games support a minimum version. The last minimum version I remember was 3.00 from 2007 that introduced MemoryStick verification as an alternative to UMD verification because the PlayStation Store necessitated the ability to run without UMDs, and the final firmware update being 6.60 from 2011.
We could easily go back to installing firmware on-disc or in-download and only calling it at runtime. We won't because devs are in a desperate and futile campaign to outrun console modding (and to some extent piracy) they can't control. With consoles moving to common PC hardware rather than custom hardware like Flipper or Cell they're just going to get broken into faster and faster, so the only bet is harsher and harsher DRM on the software side. AMD straight up sold PlayStation 5 defects as the AMD 4700S "all in one" board.
The CFAA's broad enough so as to allow a lot of creative interpretation. A journalist using view source was breaking the CFAA was one district attorneys view.
This is the only carve out I could find for manufacturers of computers:
> No action may be brought under this subsection for the negligent design or manufacture of computer hardware, computer software, or firmware.
I guess Microsoft could argue their entire operating system business, app store, and update infrastructure are intentionally negligent, and so not covered.
I’d think a reasonable court would say that it’s working as designed, and therefore not covered by the carve out.
The same is the case with the Xbox Series X/S. I was shown three options for the last update: [Update Now] [Continue Offline without Updating] [Shut Down Xbox].
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