Digital-Citizen

"I don't have stats but I'm incredibly confident that almost no users want hardware switches."

How "incredibly confident" can you be about this claim without published stats?

I would like hardware switches ala Purism's laptops but I see that Hacker News prioritizes steering discussions away from these switches (such as down-moderating the grandparent post for making a similar claim with no pointer to evidence but leaving your evidenceless post relatively highly moderated). I'm not sure if other people would have thought about having such switches therefore I'm not sure if they would value them or even consider asking vendors to include such switches.

You're missing the point (as are the moderators, apparently): trust is a factor only when it comes to proprietary software. If you have to "trust Apple" to deal with Apple software, then you've lost any reason to trust them as they've already shown that they ought not be trusted -- both in principle (by distributing proprietary software) and in specific examples as per https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html (only some of which aren't Apple's fault but merely run on Apple-made OSes, and some of which include bad business practices by Apple). Buying into claims ought not be needed and isn't needed except for proprietary software where such trust is apparently often misplaced. You can't tell if "the T2 chip is perfectly secure for this use case" because you don't know what runs on it. Apple claims a lot of things and one had good reason to believe Apple wouldn't, for instance, leave a remotely-exploitable vulnerability in iTunes unfixed for years after being notified about that vulnerability while governments exploited that vulnerability. But according to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8912714/Apple-iT... that's what Apple did.

If Apple distributed free software trusting Apple wouldn't enter into the discussion. We could inspect what Apple distributed, we'd be allowed to change what we don't like about the software Apple distributed to us, and we could distribute improved versions of that software to help others. No need to buy into uninspectable code we're not allowed to change or distribute further.

And the answer to the question you didn't answer which the original poster asked -- do you need a chip to do this task -- remains "no". Purism's hardware is proof by existence. With Purism's hardware switch there's no software involved to accomplish this feature and they (as far as I know) distribute a free software distro called "PureOS" (a GNU/Linux system) which also happens to have earned an FSF-approved distro entry.

We don't commonly have figures on that, however the combination of proprietary (non-free, user subjugating) OS and application software plus built-in camera/mic hardware doesn't bode well for one's privacy.

Ugliness is subjective. Where do you get the data to back up the claim that "the number of people [who] want this is ridiculously small"?

You don't need a chip for this. And to their credit Librem laptops have offered such a hardware switch for a while now (perhaps since they began selling laptops) with (as I understand it) no chipset involved.

Putting this functionality into a computer chip is ridiculous and unnecessary partially because there's no clear way for ordinary non-technical users to control that, and partially because this suggests that software (as I presume the software on this new chip will be alterable by Apple) can still affect whether the mic is hot. The headline "Apple's T2 chip will prevent hackers from eavesdropping on your microphone" should probably be interpreted to mean that Apple won't be prevented from listening in.

Camera access and wireless network access should also be physically disconnectable via a simple user-controlled piece of hardware which electrically disconnecting the on-board webcam and wireless network device from the rest of the system -- a slider or rocker switch. This too is something I understand Librem laptops offer but is uncommon elsewhere.

You're essentially giving us a tautology -- the claim is true because it's true -- about something non-obvious (based on what you say is an opinion) and not evidence-based. Plus you give us a tangent about what happens to those who don't do work they were hired to do which was never the point. You should be more careful about accepting opinion without evidence. There's nothing in "Paid security auditors must deliver vulnerability findings." that means auditors will go no further or are somehow structurally restricted from doing no more than you believe they do. Hence the need for evidence to back and clarify the assertion claimed.

People have been known to make serious errors in judgment before examining evidence because they felt so sure about their widely-shared opinion. Glenn Greenwald pointed this out in regards to Omar Mateen's killings in the Orlando, Florida nightclub ("Pulse") in https://theintercept.com/2018/03/05/as-the-trial-of-omar-mat...

"Mateen’s alleged motive in choosing Pulse — that he wanted to target and kill LGBTs due to some toxic mix of self-hatred over his own sexual orientation and his fealty to Islam — has been treated as unquestionably true in countless media accounts, statements from public officials, and ultimately in the public mind. But ample evidence now affirmatively casts serious doubt about whether there is any truth to this widely accepted belief about Mateen’s motives in attacking Pulse. While some of this conflicting evidence has been reported in the same media outlets that originally disseminated the narrative that Mateen sought to target the LGBT community, it has been downplayed to the point where few in the public are even aware that the original theories about Mateen’s motives have been undermined."

The point being that people formed their view before the evidence was in. After the evidence was examined people learned that their view was nowhere near as justified as they initially believed and told others. They should learn that it's not helpful to guess about why something happened without the evidence. Although what we're talking about in this thread could theoretically involve life and death matters (whereas the Pulse murders objectively do), I think there's something to learn in calling for evidence before formulating one's opinion. Something that blog post doesn't do and we'd be wise to not join the author in that framing of the issue.

The wider claim that "Open-source crypto is no better than closed-source crypto" points to a problem with both the philosophy behind the open source development methodology which makes promises which it can't always deliver such as "open-source software has fewer bugs than closed-source software because more people have access to OSS and to its code" (as the article author put it). And there are significant problems with the logic of the article.

This also points to why free software and open source aren't the same thing.

Free software makes no promise to fewer bugs or other development methodology claims. Free software argues that the inequity of software non-freedom is unethical; software non-freedom is no way to treat computer users. Software non-freedom works against users spirit of cooperation and community. It is precisely this focus on ethics that the open source developmental methodology was founded to run away from.

There are still show-stopper problems with the article's ridiculous claim: by definition nobody knows all that happens in so-called "closed source" software, better known as proprietary software. Any claims as to proprietary software security are unverifiable even if one is deeply familiar with a particular popular implementation of some proprietary software. So the title ("Open-source crypto is no better than closed-source crypto") immediately makes a claim it can't defend.

The article also claims, without evidence, that "Paid security audits help but won’t find all the bugs, as they tend to be broader than they are deep.". That's quite a claim made on behalf of "paid security audits" -- they're "broader than they are deep". I'm not entirely sure what that means, but there's nothing in the article to indicate where one can find that survey data needed to back up that claim.

Ultimately the article poses no challenge to a free software ethics-based understanding of proprietary software: no matter how difficult cryptography software is to fully understand, no matter how insecure current FLOSS cryptographic implementations are, that's no reason for equating software freedom with software non-freedom. Cryptographic software is no exception to the need for respecting computer user's software freedom. Software freedom lets us do as we wish with our copies of the published free software and thus control our computers and treat each other ethically. Software non-freedom invites dependency and apparently incentivizes malware (see https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/ for around 400 examples of proprietary malware). As that page says, the "initial injustice of proprietary software often leads to further injustices: malicious functionalities.".

Why? https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/ explains:

"Power corrupts; the proprietary program's developer is tempted to design the program to mistreat its users. (Software whose functioning mistreats the user is called malware.) Of course, the developer usually does not do this out of malice, but rather to profit more at the users' expense. That does not make it any less nasty or more legitimate.

Yielding to that temptation has become ever more frequent; nowadays it is standard practice. Modern proprietary software is typically a way to be had."

Totally electronic balloting is bad news but not what the article dismisses without evidence. I'm not for electronic tabulation by default nor do I see the need. Optically scanned voter-verifiable paper ballots will involve electronics but the tradeoff is that this arrangement conveys considerable advantages to certain voters.

I have no problem with doing either (so long as pre-arrangement never becomes mandatory), but that doesn't address fairness for illiterate voters at all. Also, it doesn't really tackle how a voter-verified paper ballot processing system that involves electronics is fairly described as "a disaster of security problems".

This article contradicts itself in at least one significant way without providing a real explanation for the contradiction.

Early on the article claims "Apple tells CNET that it won't delete your movies, either. At least, not ones you've downloaded.". But that's not a useful answer because it doesn't provide any real security about one's downloaded works.

Later CNET says "We can't be sure what will will happen if Disney -- or any other content provider -- "recalls" a digital purchase, as a publisher did with an ebook of George Orwell's 1984 on Amazon back in 2009.".

Keep in mind that Amazon made a similar pledge to what Apple reportedly told CNET. As Richard Stallman rightly points out in https://stallman.org/amazon.html "In response to criticism, Amazon promised it would never do this again unless ordered to by the state, which I find not very comforting.". In other words, Amazon tacitly acknowledges it retains the power to do this again.

It's far more useful to examine the situation along the lines of which party retains what power over the user, or to look at how much freedom users have in the situation.

Therefore the real hinge here (which goes completely unaddressed in the CNET article) is software freedom (the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software). If one uses free software to locate and read/play the work, then one has a chance to make sure that the free program won't betray their interests -- continuing to read/play the work at any time, for any reason, and do so without spying on or reporting the activity to others without explicit consent from the user.

But if one uses proprietary (nonfree, user-subjugating) software to access a downloaded copy of the work, one's access to the work is in jeopardy. One can't be certain that copy will be readable/playable through that proprietary software. Perhaps the proprietary software will delete that copy of the work (putting aside what's legal or, more importantly, ethical for the moment, it is worth noting that proprietors retain the technical power to do exactly this in most people's common use of media). Perhaps the proprietary software will report on the user's attempt to read/play the work thus notifying someone what's being read/played and from where.

That sounds like a far better set of priorities than commonly gets raised in discussions like these.

Another benefit of electronic voting systems that mark and/or verify voter-verified paper ballots with the voter is allowing the blind and illiterate to vote alone and retain their privacy. Sighted literate voters take for granted that they don't have to reveal their vote to anyone else.

This doesn't get any discussion or support in the article (quite the contrary, there's some language about how such machines are second-best to voters marking their own ballots). The paragraph discounting "BMDs" (ballot-marking devices) contains no pointer to evidence to back the assertion that voters don't check their machine-marked voter-verifiable paper ballot. This is solved with voter education -- tell voters to verify their ballots no matter how they're marked. By the logic of this claim, it's worth pointing out that humans make mistakes writing on paper too. So better to have the voter verify their own ballot. There's also no evidence given of "the dispute-resolution mechanism" for a malicious or errant machine mismarking a ballot. This excuse seems particularly reaching to me as all roads lead to the same outcome -- the voter should spoil the ballot and get a new ballot. No proof is needed to justify spoiling the ballot because in the end they're not committing fraud. Even if the voter spoils multiple ballots, that's not a big deal. I'll need evidence to see that this is a serious concern but the article presents none.

There isn't a way to vet that software by using it, but there are other problems which are easily solved with software freedom (the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software for which complete source code and build instructions are a prerequisite): the ballot layout could require changes that were unanticipated by the program's developer. A new ballot layout could require changes in every computer that deals with the ballot in any capacity (producing the page description for printing, scanning ballots for voter verification and over/under counts for example).

We can't predict all of the problems that come up and that alone tells us we need to be in the best position to anticipate changes, hence respecting software freedom for all computer owners. Therefore not being able to inspect that the running voting machine is running trusted software is no reason to deny any computer own their software freedom. That's no justification for pushing voting districts into buying new voting equipment which ostensibly supports the needed change.

So in the end the solution remains the same: anyone who cares about software freedom (as we all should) would care that their voting machines run on free software.

According to https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8912714/Apple-i... "An unpatched security flaw in Apple’s iTunes software allowed intelligence agencies and police to hack into users’ computers for more than three years" which sounds serious to me if you're an iTunes user (as I guess many Mac and Windows users are).

But I think the real culprit is that all of the organizations the grandparent poster listed distribute proprietary software which is untrustworthy to begin with. Proprietary malware isn't hard to find (see https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/ for an organized set of links) whether it came with the OS pre-installed on the computer or installed later. So long as it adversely affects the user and leaves the user with no permission to inspect, alter, and share the software (only permission to run the malware) the situation is bad.

I'd say Brad Kuhn got it right in http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2016/08/13/does-not-kill.html including "[Y]our proprietary software has killed people, both quickly and slowly, and your attacks on GPLv3 and software freedom are not only unwarranted, they are clearly part of a political strategy to divert attention from your own industry's bad behavior and graft unfair blame onto FLOSS".

I think you'll find that those who seek to "use our community as a market but not contributing to it" (as the older essay https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.htm... points out) will namecall when they think it suits them. He's not the first to do this. Another proprietor called GNU/Linux (which they too called "Linux" perhaps to avoid drawing attention to software freedom by referring to GNU at all) "unAmerican" http://web.archive.org/web/20010508201537/http://news.cnet.c... and "a cancer" http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_c... . Now that proprietor wants us to believe they "[heart symbol] Open Source". Perhaps they do.

But the real harm here is the loss of software freedom for users of that program, not the cost of the program or some bad PR from its developer. That's what users rightly objected to and that's what is the incompatibility between free software and proprietary software. Unfortunately this also serves as another example of how someone talking about "open source" (Canonical in this case) pushes for a loss of software freedom--the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software built around an examination of how people treat each other ethically with regard to their computers.

The Unsplash license contains the following:

"This license does not include the right to compile photos from Unsplash to replicate a similar or competing service."

Therefore use "for commercial and noncommercial purposes" is quite restricted to whatever Unsplash considers "a similar or competing service", a vague definition that could change at any time. The medium.com article you pointed to has a bad pointer[1] when it comes to explaining what this means. Unsplash decides what that means ad hoc so you don't really know what your rights are. If what comes under "photos published on Unsplash" could also be considered a computer program, the above quoted clause would render such a program to be nonfree software (see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html for a definition of free software).

CC0 has no clause comparable to the above quoted clause in the Unsplash license. Also, CC0 is a more thorough abdication of copyright power in copyright regimes where the public domain exists. Unlike the Unsplash license, CC0 uses licensing under a lax, permissive license as a fallback, not a primary mechanism for giving up one's copyright power in the work. This point is not given its due in the medium.com article you pointed us to. Finally, according to https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0 CC0 is a non-copyleft free software license when applied to computer software.

[1] https://community.unsplash.com/help-section/what-is-the-unsp... didn't work when I tried it.

This is also a non-issue as long demonstrated by Debian and GNU when they distributed Firefox and Thunderbird derivatives under different names with different logos. The section of that page under "Modifications" is quite clear on what needs to be done. Please don't try to invent non-existing difficulties. I realize HN is demonstrably averse to any serious discussion which centers on the importance of software freedom for its own sake but that's no reason to reject leveraging software freedom to improve one's own lot or help others.

That's a non-sequitur and not difficult: make the derivative, publish the derivative, and continue to publish the derivative without malware. You'll establish a history people can trust and earn users and search engine rankings in time.

If what you say is true a more productive approach is to make a derivative of the last known non-malware release of FileZilla with a new name. FileZilla's code respects your software freedom (FileZilla is licensed under the GNU GPL v2, last I knew), so there's no reason not to use that freedom to make a derivative which doesn't come with a tricky installer. Rejecting free software when improvements can be had is an overreaction that could lead to a reduction in software freedom which would obviously be bad. Free software is the path to being able to trust the software you run.

"Probably refers to"? That you don't know what "secure" refers to is itself a problem. But more problematic is anyone's defense of Google Chrome's architecture while overlooking that that architecture is implemented with secret software which you aren't allowed to vet, alter, or share with others (parts of software freedom).

This proprietary software apparently allowed for sending Google every URL a Chrome user types in (http://www.favbrowser.com/google-chrome-spyware-confirmed/) and making it easy for extensions to spy on Chrome users (https://labs.detectify.com/2015/07/28/how-i-disabled-your-ch...) which many Chrome extensions apparently do, or activating a Chrome user's microphone and sending the captured data to Google (https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2015/06/google-ch...). Hardly behavior users are likely to call "secure" because such behavior does not look out for the security of its users, but instead securing access to Chrome user's data.

From the article: "But [Firefox] became irrelevant after Google in 2008 released Chrome, a faster, more secure and versatile browser."

Google Chrome is proprietary software. There's no way to back up any claim of it being "secure" because there's no way to determine what proprietary programs do. Users lack the permission to inspect the program's source code, alter the program, or distribute altered versions.

Firefox, by comparison, was never proprietary. Users were and are free to run, inspect, share, and modify Firefox (with perhaps a minor naming hurdle that apparently isn't hard to overcome as Debian demonstrated for years). In fact, this is likely a reason why TorBrowser is based on Firefox. Software freedom isn't about guaranteeing the user security, it's about addressing the inequity between users and developers inherent in non-free software. The technical advantages or disadvantages come and go and are apparently only as far as developers want to take them. People can and do learn to become software developers. And free software's technical merit can be improved by anyone willing to do the work. So we can add impressive technical features to free software. But we have no way to make proprietary software free. So the path to getting software we can evaluate against a claim of "security" and back up that claim starts and ends with software freedom.

The real lesson here isn't forum shopping -- moving one's digital work to another singular place is repeating the error of the past: any singular forum invites censorship or an outcome that is indistinguishable from censorship.

The answer is to distribute one's digital work widely across multiple means including those that don't need JS. Don't push people to run needless JS via PeerTube (Blender's PeerTube page is useless with JS turned off which is actually a step down from what YouTube allowed for some videos).

Instead host copies of the work in many other places such as places that don't require JS like archive.org (no JS needed, easy downloading and embedding anywhere). And encourage people to distribute copies in ad-hoc informal networks without tracking or JS.

So Microsoft is highlighting the value of software freedom and the harm of software non-freedom: we're all granted permission to port free software (as Microsoft claims to have done with the Linux kernel, BusyBox, and more) but only Microsoft -- the proprietor -- is allowed to port Windows.

So long as we value software freedom we can take steps to defend software freedom and continue to see practical gains. But proprietary software leads us to a dead-end waiting for a willing proprietor to do something for us (and thus providing a result we cannot trust).

It wasn't necessary (people who weren't going to buy the program still got a copy via file sharing, and as I point out later DRM chiefly hurts those who cooperate with the abuser/publisher). And Steam is not your friend (as it is proprietary which is untrustworthy by default, and we see now with Steam being made not to work fully for older OSes instead of liberating Steam to let people port and maintain it for whatever system they want to run).

DRM was profoundly bad for the user and reinforced the class structure of proprietary software -- those who got to control your computer versus you. This class difference has far worse effects now because computers are so prevalent and the data they hold is so much more important than what we had available to a game on the old 8-bit computers. Sometimes the data on a modern computer is a matter of life & death, or access to that data allows a ne'er-do-well to make someone become insolvent, and other seriously horrible outcomes.

The lesson is that proprietary software users have been taken advantage of by a system intent on deceiving them. You can see a bit of the ill effect of this in the language the article uses: "copy protection" frames the issue from the proprietor's viewpoint because their interests are being "protected". The much larger class of users and their interests, even decades later, are subordinated. I see the software 4am seeks to remove as removing anti-copying routines or removing copying prevention, something beneficial to everyone.

The chief underlying problem here is proprietary (non-free, user-subjugating) software. Software you're not allowed to run, inspect, modify, or share (also known as 'software freedom'). Proprietary software is licensed and distributed to keep you from running the program despite you acquiring the software in a legitimate way. This software is meant to keep you from treating your friends as friends by sharing a copy, inspecting the program to see what it does, and distributed to prevent you from modifying your copy the program should you wish to for any reason.

I came to realize this with the Commodore 64: A video game called Elite on the C-64 had an anti-copying scheme so clumsy and prone to problems it drove me to understand what was really going on. Today we'd properly call this DRM—digital restrictions management (expanded that way because I take the side of the user class, not the publisher class) which was only visited upon those who obtained their copy of the program in a way the publisher found acceptable. Typically this meant buying a copy, but I later came to understand some copies were distributed gratis. The packaged game came with media, a manual, and a flat plastic device with a see-through window. The device could be bent so it resembled a table like an inverted letter "U". On starting the game, the user was shown some blocky image that looked incomprehensible. When the plastic device was folded, placed on the monitor at the proper distance (via the "legs" of the device), and peered through one could see the blocky image turn into something readable. If I recall correctly, the readable image was a page number reference in the manual one was expected to look up and type in the proper word to get past this stage of the loading program.

After I did this a couple of times it dawned on me that those who engage in filesharing and treating friends like friends (sometimes propagandistically called "pirates") never have to put up with this. Only the people who used the publisher-distributed copy did. And most of those users had paid for this treatment.

Those who shared copies were doing us all a favor: they let us try programs before buying a copy, they let us run copies that didn't have what we now call DRM; the anti-copying code had been stripped away. They let us have copies that one could copy in an ordinary fashion, no need for special copiers (such as "nibblers", or any copier that knew how to get past the errors which were deliberately added to the disk to defeat the standard file and disk copiers). There was no need to work around the issue by using audio tapes instead of disks (since audio tapes didn't have copy-prevention added to the media). These so-called "pirates" were doing us a service, a service I might have paid for if offered the opportunity to pay a publisher for a headache-free copy of the program.

Later I obtained a memory snapshotting cartridge called "Isepic" which let me make my own copy of the RAM-resident portion of the game. Isepic produced a copy which loaded faster, never prompted me for the manual lookup, and played identically to the other copy loaded from the distributor's media (no surprise there, it was the same code being loaded into memory). I never loaded the distributor's media again. But this got me to thinking about all the other programs (not just games) that treated the users this way across all the computers I had used. And I began to realize that this was a scam perpetrated on the people who treated the publishers the best. We were literally exchanging our money for being treated badly. And this harm pushed on the users was indiscriminate, everyone who got a copy in the typical way was mistreated.

There was one more issue to wrestle with: proprietary software. This was an issue even the filesharers couldn't really contend with. Almost all of the software I saw anyone use on the C-64 was proprietary: users weren't allowed to do things we wanted to do: understand how the program worked, share copies, modify the program, or (in some cases) even run the program whenever we wanted. At best, the filesharers could grapple with runtime limits: Want to play 'Elite' from the publisher's media without the plastic device? Too bad; that plastic device and loading routine is DRM to stop one from running the program (meaning that even if you copy the media you'll probably make a copy you can't really use). It's not likely one will be able to look at the screen and manually decode the image, by design. Tough on the paying users, easy on the users who know how to share with each other. But this won't help you with the other freedoms of free software.

As a practical matter we didn't face some very serious problems with always-networked computers: We didn't have our C-64s constantly on, we didn't store sensitive credentials on the C-64, and we didn't connect them to networks most of the time. So we didn't have the privacy-busting ramifications proprietary software poses for ordinary computer users today (for example, FlightSimLabs was caught distributing software that covertly copied users' website credentials to FlightSimLabs. Copying people's credentials to websites ought to be criminal; this is very likely to include copying credentials to medical, banking, and work-related websites). What if that flight simulator company doesn't keep the lid on whatever they illicitly copied from the users? Remember that FlightSimLabs did this indiscriminately: They did this to all of their users; there's no reason to believe they won't mistreat a paying user. FlightSimLabs lied to all their users by misrepresenting what that flight simulator does—I'll bet that people who got a copy thought they were getting a flight simulator, not a credentials copier.

In the end I came to recognize that the heart of this issue where the computer owner has less power over their computer than an organization that convinces the user to run their software is the main issue of software freedom. Software proprietors have unjust power over the users. The only way to break that power and keep people opting for freedom is to teach people to value software freedom for its own sake, and then choose free software consistently: play free software games, run free software apps for other jobs, and install and use free software operating systems. You'll have to have the spine to say 'no' to a lot of what is advertised, but you'll retain control of your data and your computer and it's a lot less likely you'll ever bump into DRM. Free software DRM is ineffective—edit out the DRM code and run that version instead. You also get to treat your friends in a way that is natural to do with digital computers—sharing copies of published software.

I take it as sign of failing moderation that the parent comment was moderated down and rendered harder to read by default. It's quite right--music copyright licensing is not foreseeably an issue of life and death. Any music copyright holder depending on that income can try and get another paying job, even a non-musical job to earn money. I'm not a fan of that approach (for reasons outside the scope of this discussion) but it is more practical than waiting for a license check and starving. Planting seeds, harvesting plants for food, and replanting the seeds that naturally grow was a process big agriculture had to spend effort to stymie because the natural way got in the way of profits. That's harmful to us all.

Also, the grandparent article is conflating copyright and patent laws in the language of "intellectual property" and ought not be allowed to go without comment. These laws work very differently, cost different amounts of money to acquire and defend, and conflating them is a sign of ignorance or a sham. These laws have far more separating them than they share (one sentence in the US Constitution). https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Intellect... explains more in-depth.

The claim misunderstands how software is different from services, so it's really a nonsensical statement. Also both Google and Microsoft distribute nonfree (proprietary, user-subjugating) software and spy on their users activities.

The freedom of free software one runs on their own computer means it doesn't matter who holds the copyright to the software. If the copyright holder does something you don't like you have a copy you are free to run, inspect, modify, and share.

Remotely hosted services are a different consideration than free software (see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/network-services-arent-free-o... for more). With remotely hosted services the user doesn't typically have a copy of the service software. So free software concerns are for the service provider. We hope the service provider runs only free software for their own sake, they deserve to control their own computers just as we deserve to control our computers.

In the particular case of free software and discussions you will publish publicly, you should consider https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html -- the GNU Project's ethical repo criteria. This was written well before Microsoft was known to have any interest in buying GitHub, possibly during the time when Microsoft was chastising "open source" software for existing (and still despising strongly-copylefted free software) and before their current "Microsoft [heart] open source" publicity campaign. Thus there's no chance GitHub's failing evaluation is based any ad hominem such as whether Google is somehow scarier than Microsoft.

The X11 license (MIT has used multiple licenses so there is no single "MIT license") does say "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software." but not doing so is not theft.

The grandparent poster is correct -- copyright infringement is not theft and the two ought not be conflated. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Theft explains why: "Under the US legal system, copyright infringement is not theft. Laws about theft are not applicable to copyright infringement (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vo...). The supporters of repressive copyright are making an appeal to authority—and misrepresenting what authority says.".

The GNU Project also recommends pointing people who misuse the word "theft" in this way to https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/04/harper-lee-kil... -- "which shows what can properly be described as 'copyright theft.'".

Please don't join people in getting this wrong. Even some of the most hostile abusers of that conflation have recanted (the MPAA was denied use of that conflation per https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-banned-from-using-piracy-and-t... and the MPAA's Chris Dodd admitted that conflation was wrong according to https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-piracy-is-not-theft-after-all-...).

The copyright holder in this case has options including suing, but calling what happened as "theft" is not an option and is unlikely to get anywhere with a judge.

I think that's entirely possible and likely to happen if not with Tesla than with some other proprietor. We've already seen something like this happen with a flight simulator (the proprietor indiscriminately distributed password-reading malware to all of their users as part of the standard install, and alleges that they only used the power of that malware against those who shared copies with others. Those users were smeared with the propaganda term "pirates"). It happens with each DRM story (for example: Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator X, Swat 4, Sniper Elite, Hidden and Dangerous 2, Wings of War, Star Wars: Battlefront are no longer able to find and/or host multiplayer games. Proprietor, UK game developer Rebellion, tried to pass blame for this off onto their provider GLU Mobile instead of recognizing how they set the stage for this to happen early on by selling their users free software which would have allowed users to host their own multiplayer servers or pick another server).

I hope Tesla releases free software for all of the software in Tesla vehicles and thus frees Tesla car owners to protect themselves from precisely what you describe.

The only thing I think might play out differently: the proprietor won't be so forthcoming about why as you describe. The use of structurally abusive power (such as pulling people's purchased books from their eBook readers via DRM as was done with "1984") often happens with no explanation and some users are naive enough to not demand better.

That's the power of proprietary software and a big part of the practical reason why we should all value software freedom for its own sake, run free software systems, and champion software freedom to others.

Indeed, "if you apply General Curtis Le May to a situation and you get havoc, well, that s what you called General LeMay in for" (to use an Eben Moglen quote out of the context in which he said it); if you host a device in your home running proprietary software you ought not be surprised that it is spying on you and the proprietors determine what to do with that data, not you.

We must not forget another critical component of all this: these always-on listening devices run on proprietary (nonfree, user-subjugating) software. Therefore the user has no permission to: inspect what it does, modify it to do only what the user wants (or, since most computer users aren't programmers, get someone technical they trust to perform such modifications for them), run the modified software in their device, and distribute copies of the improved software to help their community.

If these devices ran on free software (software that respected the user's freedom to run, inspect, modify, and share) the more technical among us could help them. But as it is even the most technically-minded willing person cannot legally do this work to help them.

As Eben Moglen reminded us after the Snowden revelations came out: It's critical that we don't fall into the trap of saying something akin to 'those kids take too many darn pictures' like concluding that we just can't have these devices or their services at all. We can have all of their alleged conveniences but only if we have free software implementations.

It wouldn't have taken much more time for you to back your point with examples so we'd have some idea of what you're talking about. Please also explain the ideology of how proprietary software is not worth fighting with a practical implementation and ethical discussion.

Most of the time when people object to GNU or rms they fail to convey that they understand what software freedom is or how continually relevant software freedom is today. I'd bet that the majority of threads on these (overwhelmingly corporate) repeater sites are easily handled by stressing how important a user's software freedom is. Every DRM, proprietary software (Windows ignores user settings, this new device from $VENDOR spies on its users, etc.) is easily dismissed by getting into the same discussion about how software freedom would allow the user to alter the software, protect their privacy, treat their friends and neighbors better by sharing improved versions of the software, inspect and modify the software (or have someone they trust do it for them), and run the programs when they want (instead of losing access when a proprietor feels like ending "support"). Snowden readily credits free software for his success in leaking sensitive NSA documents to us all (docs which still make media stories years later). Three cheers for software freedom, rms, and Snowden!

Posts like the parent post tell me sites like these are the thing losing relevance by showing how ineffective public moderation is and how unacceptable it is to dare to say something not echoed in corporate tech media.