HE good news of the day is, RMS is open to feedback – including to criticism – on systemd.

I myself am not a fan of systemd, I think it exists for business reasons rather than for purely technical reasons. Considering the core developers, it’s not a hobbyist or community project.

A friend said to me: “I am not in the mailing list to which RMS sent that message. RMS does not see the forest for the trees. While, yes, the licensing is free, the code is written in such a way that only dedicated (paid) coders with the both the time and the will to sort through the intertwined, uncommented, interdependent base can even consider modifying it. Thus it is able to violate the spirit of software freedom by providing code which is unmodifiable in practice.”

One can modify it, like Linux, but one won’t manage to keep up with further changes and future versions (releases) . With many CVEs to address, any fork of Linux would quickly become obsolete.

Linux is legally “free software”, but in practice it has been sort of monopolies by a collective of large companies. There must be some term to describe such software or phenomenon.

“The license is only the necessary first step,” the friend said. “The code has to be written in such a way that it is also in practice, 1. [usable or] compilable by any reasonably skilled practitioners; 2. readable by any reasonably skilled practitioners; 3. actually modifiable without an unreasonably high barrier to entry…”

“Microsoft’s Poettering’s systemd fails on all three points.”

Wayland has extensions-type abilities, but so does X. So it does not quite change the fact that Wayland can only be developed by few people in a cabal of large companies. Salaried by particular interests.

There are examples of the same further away from the kernel stack and in userspace.

As the friend put it: “Some of the containers and other systems (BigBlueButton) fail on point #1 as well. Point 1 is a prerequisite for Freedom 0, the freedom to run the program for any purpose. Point 2 is a prerequisite to Freedom 1, the freedom to study how the program works and change it so it meets one’s computing wishes.”

At the end, it is all about users controlling their computing and being able to tailor program or rely on others doing so.

Continuing the above: “Overly loquacious, convoluted, uncommented, and interconnected code / modules violate that quite clearly. If one only looks at the license and nothing more then systemd is Free software. However, if one looks at how (if) it fulfills the goals of software freedom then it fails on all fronts. Microsoft must not be allowed to continue to game the licensing.”

“However, I no longer have links to any of the above observations.”

hese days I use two media players to play my CDs (mostly 1990s albums and collections). One is KDE’s Dragon Player (because it’s based on Qt), the other is VLC. The latter has a lot more functionality but higher RAM footprint. In the past I used even leaner applications to achieve the same functionality. Those are no longer compatible with this setup (a lot changes in 20+ years in this sector).

I might write a detailed analysis about this some time in the future in a more Linux-centric site, but I need a unique and useful angle. I don’t have that at the moment.

This past weekend:

he northern part of America (Canada, US and the rest) is really keen on GNU/Linux, maybe for cultural and language reasons.

See above how GNU/Linux usage has grown there, set aside ChromeOS and Android, which also use Linux.

N the modest local market we buy almost everything. We pay with cash, we enjoy every moment of it unless it’s rainy, and we can return things if they’re faulty (provided we know the vendor and choose a reliable one based on reputation/pedigree/word of mouth).

One thing I learned over the years is that forming personal connections/relations with vendors doesn’t just give you “free stuff”, it also gives you useful friendships, sometimes “free advice”.

I may need to find gift/s in market today (Sunday Market), then make 5 or 6 cards for Rianne, so I don’t expect many articles to be published throughout the day. I always enjoy writing unique things, but then again… “s/n ratio” (Signal-to-Noise Ratio) matters. Besides, it’s a Sunday!

Lately we’ve seen lots of VERY good news regarding Free software, not just taking into account the rapid growth of GNU/Linux this summer. Maybe the Summer Vacation (long break for Western nations in particular) gives people time and incentive to explore GNU/Linux, resulting in usage surges; I’ve just told a friend that I don’t wanna ‘miss’ those surges due to stories I can tell ‘later’ (no rush) – mostly the personal stories about lawfare, for those aren’t so time-sensitive anyhow.

I will improve “s/n ratio” here and in other sites. Maybe I’ll make “s/n ratio” a sort of New Year’s Resolution as well, some time in late December. A quota system (like “no more than 10 posts in this site per day”) would be too prohibitive and restrictive because numbers alone don’t say much and not all posts are similar in length/importance.

“He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared.” — Sun Tzu

T is 12 hours away from the Bournemouth match, the first league match for the coach (as coach of this particular team) and first official home game (even the friendlies were all away games thus far).

I am still watching closely some data related to adoption of GNU/Linux. It seems to be “winning” and this is the sort of moment we’ve waited for since decades ago.

When nations as large as China dump Microsoft/Windows the wind is in our sails.

have just taken a look at 12-month trends in Clownflare. It’s not hard to see how in the past year GNU/Linux steadily gained. Another year or two like this and the international average might show 10% or more for GNU/Linux.

In statCounter it already says 9% or more.

Orange = share of GNU/Linux.

spent a lot of time this morning looking through Cloudflare Radar to better understand OS trends worldwide.

Weekends are when most people do not work. This past weekend GNU/Linux was measured at over 8% but peaked at about 10%.

Cloudflare has vast data and given the scale of it all, it’s hard to dismiss as mere noise.