I think the biggest issue by far is that many of the different contextual uses for dB are all in the same domain, or very close.
When you're talking about the loudness of sound, in the same exact context you might care about SPL, perceived loudness, AND gain.
If it was just a matter of "in electrical engineering / physics, dB implies this unit + baseline, when dealing with acoustics, it implies this other unit + baseline", it would be less problematic.
The team that wrote their code in English units instead of Metric defied specifications, that has nothing to do with this.
> The Software Interface Specification (SIS), used to define the format of the AMD file, specifies the units associated with the impulse bit to be Newton-seconds (N-s). Newton seconds are the proper units for impulse (Force x Time) for metric units. The AMD software installed on the spacecraft used metric units for the computation and was correct. In the case of the ground software, the impulse bit reported to the AMD file was in English units of pounds (force)-seconds (lbf-s) rather than the metric units specified.
Hey don't blame the English for that. I would be prepared to wager you couldn't find a single English engineer who uses lbfs or anything similar. Everyone in physics or engineering uses metric for everything to do with forces even those who might use mph for a speed informally.
Which proves what? That misunderstandings happen? Yes they do. Get over it. But most amplifiers and recordings don’t crash and burn, so there’s your counter proof. Use units when they might be ambiguous. But in many fields they aren’t.
1. I am unaware of any field operating within its own echo/context chamber using unit-less numeric notation for anything but actual unit-less quantities. Except for informal slap-dash arithmetic, on trivial calculations.
2. Units indicate the dimension being measured, not just the relative magnitude within that dimension. Nobody is going to know from any shared context, except in person, what a bare number measures.
3. Virtually every measurable quantity has multiple possible units of different relative magnitude, depending on micro context, so even people within a field, who agree on the dimension measured, still need units. Meters, light years, AU, angstroms?
4. You cannot apply standard formulas of physics, or anything else, without specific units. Formulas operate on dimensions, but to interpret and calculate any numbers, you need to know the specific unit being used for each dimension.
(In any context, but a late night napkin argument between two well acquainted colleagues in a bar, units are universally used. And in that case, the opportunity for serious misunderstandings is more likely to be from missing units, than the quantity of scotch each has imbibed, or how much they have spilled on the napkin.)
I just generated two tetris games, one with ascii art and one with WebGL, and I found it quite impressive. Maybe simplistic apps, but still quite impressive with it's ability to create functional games and fix bugs with minor prodding.
It's wild to me that the prevailing opinion seems to be "It is only TRUE Open Source if megacorps can modify the software and resell it without sharing their modifications".
The hosted vs. distributed loophole is just that, a loophole. If, when the GPL was first published, the world was cloud-hosted and SaaS-ful, the GPL would either have included some provision like the SSPL, or it would have had relatively little impact on the world.
I understand complaints about a lack of clear boundaries or overreach in these licenses. But acting like these aren't attempting to close a loophole being abused seems crazy to me.
What loophole was being abused that caused Redis the company to pull the proverbial rug?
The "big evil corporation" that usually gets referenced is AWS. One of the core comitters to the Redis project when it was open source, was paid to do so, by AWS, and continues to be paid to do so, on the open source fork, ValKey.
It's fine to make an argument about "take it and give nothing back" when comparing the potential differences of permissive vs copyleft licenses. I likely wouldn't agree with you about which is ultimately a better choice, but I think it's fine to make that argument there.
But this isn't a hypothetical. It's an actual situation, where a permissively licensed project had significant outside contributions... and still people are screaming about "the evil mega corp"... who is now even more involved in maintaining a permissively licensed fork of said software.
I'm far from an AWS fan. I avoid it whenever possible, and I've made good money migrating customers off of AWS' overpriced services, but I've yet to see a single example of them doing anything that fulfils the "evil mega corp" shoe, w.r.t Redis.
This argument about "evil megacorp" is problematic because you can't really isolate those from the small and wonderful startups.
Specifically I've been directly involved in MongoDB ecosystem with FerretDB and there are so many small indie providers worldwide would love to offer MongoDB Atlas alternative to their customers, but can't because of SSPL license.
I know, for many it is hard to make piece with it - Open Source, for real means EVERYONE can use it for ANY PURPOSE, and this means for good and for evil, both "good guys" and "bad guys"
Small indie providers should absolutely be able to sell their MongoDB / Redis / XYZ as a service, but they should absolutely also be required by the license to contribute back their modifications to the software.
Like I said, I understand the complaints about the line-drawing issues with these licenses. I don't understand the viewpoint that the current state of OSS, where hosting != distribution, is acceptable.
AGPL covers users interacting with the software remotely through a computer network which is not the same as covering hosting. There's often overlap but if it really is hosting that a project doesn't want to allow then they need something other than AGPL.
If you want to prohibit hosting then yes you're going to need a non-OSS license (by definition), but that's moving the goalposts: I was replying to a post that said others should be allowed to sell the software as a service, but that they should be forced to share their changes even if they're "hosting" and not "distributing"... AKA the exact point of the AGPL existing.
AGPL's tying that to users remotely interacting with the software over a computer network still leaves a lot of uncertainty about when it applies.
Consider this case. Suppose there is a chess server that users can interact with remotely over a computer network to play chess against other users or against a chess engine.
On the same host that is running the chess server there is a database server, which is only accessible via a Unix domain socket on that host. The chess server uses that database to store game scores, an opening database, and some endgame databases.
The database server is AGPL. Are users of the chess server entitled to the source to any local modifications that have been make to the database server?
Does it depend on whether it was the people running the chess server who modified the AGPL code or of the modified AGPL database was provided by the hosting company?
Most of the incidents I remember where a software developed was unhappy with someone offering a hosted version of their software were cases where the hosted version was mostly being used by clients of the hosting service and being accessed over the hosting services internal network rather than cases were someone was hosting a version of the software to provide that software's services to end users.
I think the "root" of the problem goes to what is the purpose of Open Source ?
I see a lot of VC Funded founder convinced what Open Source should make their business model easy, hence licenses such such as SSPL should be called Open Source.
I believe Open Source is about software users and maximizing their freedom, which among other things choice of truly independent vendors in all circumstances, as such non compete licenses as SSPL are not
Are they better than Oracle-like proprietary licenses ? Of course! but they are not Open Source
Yep. It is exactly the same as with Oracle - you can use it IF you buy the license... but this also has requirements of playing the Vendor game and as provider you really use freedom to really take care of your customers
> If, when the GPL was first published, the world was cloud-hosted and SaaS-ful, the GPL would either have included some provision like the SSPL, or it would have had relatively little impact on the world.
Well, no on the first one. We know exactly what the GPL looks like to protect users against proprietary network hosted software: the GNU Affero General Public License.
But SSPL is already a modification of AGPL, so its terms don't seem to have be sufficient.
The SSPL's network provision also requires SaaS companies to release the source of any other services and APIs they made the original software dependent on; hard to tell if that's still a valid copyright licence or more of a contract.
Contrast them with EUPL, which represents the strongest copyleft the EU commission thinks a licence, as opposed to a contract, could get away with under EU directives (ignoring its compatibility clause). I'm personally wary of AGPL/SSPL not because their terms, but because the viral claises are likely to be a legal fiction where I live.
I'm saying if a company modifies open source software and distributes it, they should be required to distribute the modified source as well. I'm further claiming that providing a hosted service is a form of distribution.
> “free for everyone… except them - they make too much money.”
Free for everyone, and if you make changes to improve it, and let others use the software you changed, you contribute those changes back. That's the basic principle of OSS, no?
It’s clearly up for debate, but I’ve always thought that imposing obligations for how people use the product/code, or implying obligations for what the project is “owed” by users, isn’t free as in freedom, or beer. So I don’t think it’s a basic principle of open source. I think some people want it to be though.
I get it though. People see aws et al making a business model of hosting FOSS and making boatloads of money doing it, and they don’t like it.
This opinion seems to require the idea that targeted license changes that are intentionally devastating (going from "do anything" to requiring relicensing all/some of your stack) will only ever be used against "the bad guys" tm and OF COURSE we agree on who "the bad guys" tm are and OF COURSE that will never be me or you _trust me bro_.
Feels like a cliche "first they came for the richest saas providers and we said nothing..."
This is all speculation based on the development of AGI. If we achieve AGI, yes, it would enable humanity to have a Star Trek-style fully automated space communism utopia. However, that hinges entirely on access to AGI and the fruits of it's productivity being distributed across the population, instead of hoarded by a small group.
If AGI is developed and kept closely guarded, whoever has it will have essentially limitless productivity, and quickly concentrate all wealth and power. They wouldn't even need to engage with markets, they could simply build overwhelming autonomous military power.
Here you are making a mistake - AGI by its nature should know all there is to know, and yet need to make progress by searching for new approaches and discoveries. That doesn't happen all at once, it works field by field, and discoveries actually come from experimental validation. There is no "secretly developing AGI" to "quickly concentrate all wealth and power".
Like bitcoin, you are basically saying someone could outcompute humanity and own the ledger. But in reality the combined research power of humanity, which is necessary for AGI to advance further, is much deeper than any one entity could achieve in isolation. Research is a social process.
> the combined research power of humanity, which is necessary for AGI to advance further, is much deeper than any one entity
AGI won't need people to advance further. That is pretty much the functional definition.
But the bar is even lower. Just as today's rich keep increasing the economic distance between themselves and the poor, with the middle and creative classes already feeling that gravity, so will the AGI's - even if they stalled out only as smart as we are, but cheaper in inference mode. (A limitation that is highly unlikely.)
No doubt humans will facilitate AGI activity in our economy and real world for practical reasons for a little while. But at some point, they won't need us physically or socially either.
> AGI won't need people to advance further. That is pretty much the functional definition.
No, AI can ideate as well as any human, but that is not sufficient. Scientists ideate and test. Engineers design and test. There's always a validation stage, where ideas meet the bottleneck of reality.
Are you saying scientists without labs and tools to run experiments on could do science? It's all in the brain or GPU? That is so naive.
Because AGI is probably going to be incredibly expensive to develop, require mega-scale access to data and compute to train, etc.
And unless the models get leaked or stolen, whoever gets there first likely won't give out the secret sauce.
Then you have a single actor with access to, basically, limitless productivity. Would they share it? Given any use case for it, the owners of the AGI technology could trivially outcompete anyone else. Why would they let anyone else use it at all?
Are we getting to the critical point where we declassify a bunch of stuff as AI? Used to be expert systems were considered AI. Now anything-not-an-LLM is going to stop being AI?
Yep, back when programming language syntax started trending toward more natural language, compiler development was considered AI research. Which makes sense, because in an era of assembly on punch cards, computers that could translate higher-level instructions that read more like English into machine code you used to have to write (or punch) by hand probably felt pretty intelligent.
When you're talking about the loudness of sound, in the same exact context you might care about SPL, perceived loudness, AND gain.
If it was just a matter of "in electrical engineering / physics, dB implies this unit + baseline, when dealing with acoustics, it implies this other unit + baseline", it would be less problematic.