this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2022
18 points (73.7% liked)

Technology

34409 readers
856 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.


Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.


Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I've been a long-time Elon skeptic. But if he does this, I'm open to being an Elon fan.

all 38 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] DerPapa69@lemmy.ml 20 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

The guy might be a radical libertarian, rich ghoul who got his wealth on the back of apartheid, tried to ruin a genuine heroe's life by calling them a paedophile and may or may not be responsible for a couple of coups in countries ravaged by imperialism, but if he does the open source with the Twitter he's literally the best person of all time!!!!1 /s

[–] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Don't stop bad people from doing the right thing

[–] MerchantsOfMisery@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

Sometimes I think it's worth asking ourselves why a bad person is claiming they want to do a good thing, instead of getting fixated on their statement about wanting to do a good thing. Musk didn't make this statement because he genuinely believes is, he's asking the question because he knows this sort of thing improves his PR.

[–] isleofmist@lemmy.ml -4 points 2 years ago
[–] isleofmist@lemmy.ml -1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

He's not a good person. But Elon Musk is a wrecking ball, going through the system and demolishing it. If he buys Twitter and open sources it, then the world will be a slightly better place.

[–] sexy_peach@feddit.de 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That's not gonna happen though

[–] isleofmist@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Even the panic this offer caused among blue ticks is worth it :) I'm enjoying the Schadenfreude.

[–] MerchantsOfMisery@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

Elon Musk is going through the system and demolishing it?

Give me a break. The guy is going with the system and embracing it. I swear, sometimes the stuff people say about Musk is just so absurd...

[–] TheConquestOfBed@lemmy.ml 19 points 2 years ago

Fuck Twitter 📵🐦

Elephant Twitter is already open source. 🐘

[–] Catradora_Stalinism@lemmy.ml 14 points 2 years ago

I'll believe it when I see it, and will give no shits if he does. Fuck Elon. Fuck billionaires.

[–] QuentinCallaghan@sopuli.xyz 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

"Even a broken clock is right two times a day."

[–] isleofmist@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Not if it's a digital clock :)

[–] Helix@feddit.de 1 points 2 years ago

The Tesla CyberClock! Indestructible

[–] gun@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago

why the downvotes? I thought this was funny

[–] jokeyrhyme@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 years ago

He won't open-source it once he realises that the alleged anti-billionaire "bias" is not in the code

[–] mekhos@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It won't happen, twitters prepping its own poison pill

[–] gun@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago

I've heard this strategy breaks fiduciary responsibility. So if they do this, there's a possibility twitter gets sued by some of their shareholders.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Since big corporations, like Google, M$, Facebook and Amazon have appropriated the FOSS market, it is more and more irrelevant if a software or service is FOSS or not and it only matters if it is distributed by independent devs or not. It doesn't help me if I use a FOSS service, if it's also controlled by BigBrother, remember Android is also FOSS, just like all the spyAPIs from Google, M$, Facebook and Amazon, included in many OpenSource services and software. With this it is irrelevant whether Twitter is FOSS or not, as a normal user (the most) without enough knowledge to fork it or check the script to see which companies are included to monitor and profile users.

[–] isleofmist@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Android is not really FOSS though. Google took the Linux kernel and a few other things to give themselves a headstart, and then built a closed source userspace on top of it.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It is, but as I said before, it contains a lot of googleAPIs to control it's use, they are also all FOSS. This is the irony in FOSS of these companies undermining the original philosophy of OpenSource

.https://source.android.com/setup/build/downloading

[–] stopit@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think as for philosophy, Open Source really doesn't have one - it is just show the code. People like throwing around the term "FOSS" but Free Software and Open Source Software are two entirely different movements.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Agree, OpenSource no neccessary is also free, it can also be paid software/services. For example ProtonVPN is OpenSource, but the free versión has only few servers and is restricted to one PC or Mobile, because servers cost money. The sense of OpenSource is to make it easy to share and develope a new product, but the great error of most FOSS fans is to believe that FOSS is sinonym of security and privacy. It isn't not more than in other soft and depends only of the intentions of the devs or the company behind it. A product, also FOSS is only so good as the maintance of it and the support community, nothing more dangerous as a FOSS discontinued or with a deficent maintance, als a hacker can see the source code and contamine it or see security holes, without the need to disensable it first. I like and prefer FOSS, but I also don't say that a product is crap when it isn't FOSS. For a normal user is more important to read TOS and PP of anything he use, to avoid ugly surprises. I don't mind using a reputable freeware with a good privacy policy, if it offers better features than FOSS alternatives. For example, a good software such as the famous IrfanView (unfortunately only for Windows, although it works well with Wine in Linux), does not have an real equivalent in functionality in the FOSS alternatives, well, Nomacs Image Lounge is the closest. Fanatism is the biggest error also in this ambit, where only count the common sense.

[–] stopit@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Free Software also isn't necessarily gratis!! Free as in freedom, not free beer (even though usually free beer too). eg...Linux would be more open source (even though it has a free license) / linux-libre would be free.

It is not a synonym of security per se, but free software can be audited if you have the desire and know how - open source can mostly be audited, however there is still often "binary blobs" as is the case with vanilla Linux.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You probably know from other posts of mine that I use Vivaldi as the main browser, it's distributed as freeware, because it's not entirely OpenSource, the UI scripts are Vivaldi's proprietary, but it's not like Chrome, where only the Chromium part is OpenSource and the rest closed source no auditable, in Vivaldi 100% of the script is auditable and the proprietary part can be modified by the user, in the community they even teach how (although of course at their own risk), but only for personal use, Google and others cannot fork it for their own browsers. I think it is a reasonable measure to survive for a small cooperative in a market saturated with Chromiums, which are also used by the largest in this market (Google and M$), nothing to do with freedom It is at this point that the OpenSource designation becomes quite relative and irrelevant, in a market of over 100 browser forks and another 70 already discontinued, obsolete or abandoned projects. That is to say, in a software market saturated with one type of product, being OpenSource, this meaning now only acquires a purely academic status, nothing to do with freedom. Les in a market stagnant with only three engines since 20 years. Same with the search engines, the best most stables privacy focused are almost proprietary services (Startpage, DDG, Qwant, Andi, Lilo and a lot of others), well, there are also OpenSource engines, like SearX instances (Metasearch) or Whoogle (Google Engine), but there are teh need to use public instances if you don't have a own server and the results are very deficient, mostly te image search don't work well.

[–] stopit@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

But, my point was OSI was NEVER about freedom or anything other than source code. Free Software is the political of the two VERY different movements. You could argue that Free Software (not gratis, freeware or whatever else you bring up - yuck!) has become irrelevant - but not to me :)

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

I understand, but what I mean is that in some products with more than 100 forks, it becomes somewhat irrelevant if you have the source or not, independent of this, as I mencioned before, in the case of the freeware browser Vivaldi, offers political more freedom for the user as some so called FOSS browser, forked and controled by Google and others.

I mean, that the philosophy and meaning of FOSS in recent years, since the big monopolies, such as Google, M$, Facebook, Amazon, etc, have appropriated it, has been quite distorted, especially in mass products, independent of paid or not. For a normal user it is irrelevant whether they can download the source code or not, if for 99,9% of them it is the same as an old Chinese document. In other words, freedom basically depends on other factors, starting with the conditions of use, a strong community and the company's ethics regarding the user.

[–] angarabebesi@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago

I hate twitter, it's the cesspool of the internet. But open-sourcing the algo might make it a little better.

[–] electrodynamica@mander.xyz 5 points 2 years ago

Not only should all feed algos be transparent, a user should be able to select or customize their algo.

[–] weex@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Not just open source but optional as well. It won't happen because it would hurt the bottom line but I'm glad it's being talked about.

[–] iam0day@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago
[–] AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Then do it. You have majority ownership don't you? Otherwise you're just spewing hot air.

[–] gun@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 years ago

He doesn't have majority ownership. Vanguard capital and Saudi Arabia are buying more shares to hold on to a majority, and the board of twitter is doing a poison pill to devalue his shares. It's anyone's guess who wins.

[–] angarabebesi@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

He owns around 9%. It's not even close to being majority.