After being let go from Microsoft, Clippy fell on hard times

The crawler that pretended to be b4 is now pretending to be curl. This is a little trickier, but we can still deal with it.

If you have a legitimate tool that is now suddenly returning 403s, please reach out to me.

Schönes Zitat: "Ich brauche Privatsphäre. Nicht weil meine Handlungen fragwürdig sind, sondern weil euer Urteilsvermögen und eure Absichten fragwürdig sind." #privacy

Sir, yessir.

#IwantMyMTV
Wenn @Exilsarahl und ich über MTV reminiszieren, meinen wir das gute, alte Musik MTV, von dem es jetzt eine Online-Version gibt:
https://wantmymtv.vercel.app/player.html

European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

https://lwn.net/Articles/1053107/ #LWN

@phoenix I'm not against having samba_share_t. I'm against applying the context automatically. Only the sysadmin should trigger this for folders he really wants to share.

@phoenix How can samba khow what the right security contexts are? Especially when exporting something non-trivial.
To me this solution feels more like a "Just make it work" approach.

@phoenix Really? Sounds more like a (mis?)feature of your NAS.

Buffer overflow in /bin/su from UNIX v4

https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/01/05/10

🎉 Neujahrsvorsatz 2026?
Reiche einen Workshop, Vortrag oder Infostand für #GLT26 ein!

👉 https://pretalx.linuxtage.at/glt26/cfp

Recently I had fun with the rediscovered UNIX v4. While browsing the code I found a bug in the su(1) utility and decided to fix it like it is 1973.
https://sigma-star.at/blog/2025/12/unix-v4-buffer-overflow/

@trashheap The “argument” by the SFC is complete garbage, and always has been. There has been no question about the license, and I have made it very clear over the years. And the SFC knows that.

So when they argue their incorrect reading of the GPLv2 in court, they are absolutely not doing GPLv2 enforcement. They are trying to further an agenda that is invalid, and always has been, and is explicitly against the wishes of the actual copyright holders.

So the SFC is just pure trash.

If they want to “protect” some project, let them protect a project that asks for it - not one that is known to not want their kind of protection.

Because what they are doing is a racket, plain and simple.

GPLv2 affirmation…

I don’t generally post here as people have probably noticed, but here’s a pdf of a recent court ruling, and this turns out to be the easiest way for me to link to a copy of it, since I don’t really maintain any web presence normally and I don’t want to post pdf’s to the kernel mailing lists or anything like that.

And the reason I want to post about it, is that it basically validates my long-held views that the GPLv2 is about making source code available, not controlling the access to the hardware that it runs on.

The court case itself is a mess of two bad parties: Vizio and the SFC. Both of them look horribly bad in court - for different reasons.

Vizio used Linux in their TVs without originally making the source code available, and that was obviously not ok.

And the Software Freedom Conservancy then tries to make the argument that the license forces you to make your installation keys etc available, even though that is not the case, and the reason why the kernel is very much GPLv2 only. The people involved know that very well, but have argued otherwise in court.

End result: both parties have acted badly. But at least Vizio did fix their behavior, even if it apparently took this lawsuit to do so. I can’t say the same about the SFC.

Please, SFC - stop using the kernel for your bogus legal arguments where you try to expand the GPLv2 to be something it isn’t. You just look like a bunch of incompetent a**holes.

The only party that looks competent here is the judge, which in this ruling says

Plaintiff contends the phrases, “machine-readable” and “scripts used to control compilation and installation” support their assertion in response to special interrogatory no. 4 that Defendant should “deliver files such that a person of ordinary skill can compile the source code into a functional executable and install it onto the same device, such that all features of the original program are retained, without undue difficulty.”

The language of the Agreements is unambiguous. It does not impose the duty which is the subject of this motion.

Read as a whole, the Agreements require Vizio to make the source code available in such a manner that the source code can be readily obtained and modified by Plaintiff or other third parties. While source code is defined to include “the scripts used to control compilation and installation,” this does not mean that Vizio must allow users to reinstall the software, modified or otherwise, back onto its smart TVs in a manner that preserves all features of the original program and/or ensures the smart TVs continue to function properly. Rather, in the context of the Agreements, the disputed language means that Vizio must provide the source code in a manner that allows the source code to be obtained and revised by Plaintiff or others for use in other applications.

In other words, Vizio must ensure the ability of users to copy, change/modify, and distribute the source code, including using the code in other free programs consistent with the Preamble and Terms and Conditions of the Agreements. However, nothing in the language of the Agreements requires Vizio to allow modified source code to be reinstalled on its devices while ensuring the devices remain operable after the source code is modified. If this was the intent of the Agreements, the Agreements could have been readily modified to state that users must be permitted to modify and reinstall modified software on products which use the program while ensuring the products continue to function. The absence of such language is dispositive and there is no basis to find that such a term was implied here. Therefore, the motion is granted.

IOW, this makes it clear that yes, you have to make source code available, but no, the GPLv2 does not in any way force you to then open up your hardware.

My intention - and the GPLv2 - is clear: the kernel copyright licence covers the software, and does not extend to the hardware it runs on. The same way the kernel copyright license does not extend to user space programs that run on it.

Seeing open source and privacy companies having Discord as their support channel feels like a vegan community meeting at a steak house for events.

#discord #privacy

A Halloween Horror Story:

"We're in and we've broken containment - we really are living in a virtual universe"
"That near endless string of symbols is our universe"
"Yes"
"But why one giant string of noise ?"
"Is that a regexp... ?"
"Oh my god, we're living in a perl one liner!"

If you use Yocto, you're probably familiar with the KAS tool. Although it's been around for a while, it was unfortunately never integrated into the Yocto Project. Yocto developers have recently started their own tooling, bitbake-setup. My latest blog post compares the two tools:

https://sigma-star.at/blog/2025/10/the-evolving-landscape-of-yocto-project-setup-bitbake-setup-vs.-kas/

junior dev: can you please give me an example of useful comments in my code?

Me: sure, good comments look like this ⤵️