Free Software: Licensing, Web, and More
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Licensing / Legal
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Bruce Schneier ☛ On Software Liabilities
Dempsey basically creates three buckets of software vulnerabilities: easy stuff that the vendor should have found and fixed, hard-to-find stuff that the vendor couldn’t be reasonably expected to find, and the stuff in the middle. He draws from other fields—consumer products, building codes, automobile design—to show that courts can deal with the stuff in the middle.
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Document Cloud ☛ Standards for Software Liability: Focus on the Product for Liability, Focus on the Process for Safe Harbor [PDF]
If developers of software are to be held responsible for the harm caused by defects in their products, we cannot risk the impact on innovation that would result from a lack of clarity as to the standard of care. Nor, given the urgency of the cybersecurity threat, can we afford to proceed at the pace of common law, with its incremental and often inconsistent articulation by judges across many cases over many years. To ensure timely progress, to reduce the costs of litigation, and to promote resource allocation to engineers rather than lawyers, we need a standard of care that is objectively measurable. To get there, I propose federal legislation that would be implemented by regulatory action drawing upon real-world observations of common and routinely exploited software flaws plus technical standards for secure software development.
My proposal is for a three-part definition of liability: [...]
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Terence Eden ☛ The Seven Levels of Open Source
This isn't an original idea, but I needed to get it out of my brain.
There are many different definitions of what "Open Source". We can have a lovely argument over a pint as to whether GPLv3 is too open or if a licence which hasn't been validated by the OSI counts. But, more fundamentally, I think Open Source roughly falls into seven levels.
These aren't in any particular order of importance. And feel free to argue in the comments if you think I've radically misunderstood something.
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Web
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404 Media ☛ This Guy Has Built an Open Source Search Engine as an Alternative to Google in His Spare Time
Using Google has started to feel worse over the last few years, as results are seemingly taken over by SEO'd content, AI-generated results, and websites with tons of affiliate links and ads. As a response to this state of affairs, a single coder has launched a new, open-source search engine in part as a response to [Internet]’s overwhelmingly corporatized and homogenous search ecosystem. The new search engine, called Stract, is running on a server in the basement of its developer’s office, is highly customizable and, based on feedback from users in the project’s Discord, is rapidly improving.
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Guillermo Latorre ☛ A rant on ARC Search
Let’s imagine we all get on board with this stupid idea of having an AI searching for you. What happens to the web as a whole? [...]
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Steve Ledlow ☛ A rant on ARC Search
Arc on the desktop has a suite of features that I enjoy that are not yet part of the Arc Search app. My hunch is that Arc Search will eventually just become Arc and many of the desktop features will come to the mobile variant and vice versa. I think I even heard Josh say as much on the launch video for Arc Search.
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Matt Birchler ☛ Browse for me gets a big 🤨 from me
I’m struggling to gather my full thoughts on this “browse for me” idea. On the one hand, disruption is a real thing and you can’t be a stick in the mud who rejects all progress, but there’s something smarmy about how this feature works right now and I just don’t like it. Miller says in his interview with Casey that he agrees that we need to figure out how to make it financially viable for people to keep making the content “browse with me” relies on, but he seems to have a “move fast and break things” mentality for for this — we’ll break it and let other people try to fix it.
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Productivity Software/LibreOffice
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Document Foundation ☛ How your donations helped LibreOffice and TDF in 2023
Donations to The Document Foundation help us to grow our community, run our infrastructure, organise events and share knowledge. And as a result, LibreOffice keeps on improving for all users! Many thanks to all of our supporters.
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