mastodon 4.7.3Software freedom activist since 1992. Copyleft theorist & FOSS policy wonk. Expert in FOSS non-profit structures.
Views expressed herein are mine & not necessarily those of any organization w/ which I'm affiliated.
Fediverse “claim to fame”: Invented “Affero clause” of #Mastodon's license: https://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2007/11/21/stet-and-agplv3
1ˢᵗ #Linux: 0.99pl12
1ˢᵗ #Debian: 🧊🥔
Pronouns: he/them
#copyleft, #ethics for #LLMGenAI, #FOSS, #FreeSoftware, #OpenSource, #AGPLv3, #GPL, #LGPL
🏳️🌈
Am I the only person who, after 30 years of using /bin/ln, still gets its arguments backwards?
If I type: $ ln -s x y
My mind is always thinking: “I want a symlink where x ⇒ y”, and as such I incorrectly put the destination before the source.
I am sure ln is this way in #POSIX to match the behavior of cp & mv. The latter two are intuitive to me because I read it as “copy/move x to y”.
$ ls -l y
lrwxrwxrwx 1 bkuhn bkuhn 1 May 2 14:39 y -> x
“y ⇒ x” … See!?!?!
In a policy statement¹, @conservancy@social.sfconservancy.org said:
“#FOSS projects should not shun contributors who choose to use LLM-gen-AI systems.”
@dalias@hachyderm.io' reply:
“LOL WTF NOPE. 🤡”
While it was surely unintentional, your reply is quite similar to the cruelty of traditional #FreeSoftware rhetoric — wherein we shunned people for using #Apple & #Microsoft. Such users deserve sympathy and help toward more software freedom.
Same goes for #LLM-backed generative #AI users.
¹ https://sfconservancy.org/llm-gen-ai/llm-backed-generative-ai-recommendations.html
Folks here might be interested in this post I just made to the copyleft-@next@fedi.copyleft.org mailing list — covering many issues including:
¹ In the age of #LLM-gen-AI, ppl still use the word “sustainable” to refer to #FOSS developers not getting paid enough is #disturbing.
Have you (like me) been thinking constantly about what the #FOSS community should do about #LLM-backed generative #AI code-assist systems?
Join me, @ossguy@fedi.copyleft.org, @karen@floss.social and others *right now* on a video chat to talk about it:
https://bbb-new.sfconservancy.org/rooms/welcome-llm-gen-ai-users-to-foss/join
@lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me wrote:
“With -s I'd more compare the behavior [of /bin/ln -s] to chmod/chown given it's non-mangled and so relative to the symlink location, you write the link target (1) into a symlink file (2).”
That's a good point. Ultimately, a symlink is not really a file in the way humans think of them. (And literally is not a “regular” file under #POSIX).
