He/him. Chinese born, Canadian citizen. University student studying environmental science, hobbyist programmer. Leftist (exact ideology undecided).
I think so, since Voyager is purely a test instance while lemmy.ml is a mainline instance.
Here’s the thing, the ultimate meaning of the license isn’t up to the authors, it’s up to the courts, and they can interpret it however they want. This was mentioned in the article I linked, which mentions that even though the authors tried to debunk worries in a FAQ, not even they know how the license would be really be interpreted, and the author’s intentions are irrelevant to judges, only the license text itself matters.
Interesting, but now you have to wonder if the SSPL would even be allowed to be used on shared/VPS hosts since some of their software is proprietary.
Hell, what about the BIOS of the motherboard? Microcode in the processor? The code in the micro controller than runs the power supply?
Honestly, I like the SSPL as a philosophy, essentially forcing the entire ecosystem to be FOSS if they want to use a particular project, but it’s kind of made unusable by the fact that non-free software has infected everything, and in many cases, with no alternative.
Keep in mind that every dumb phone to my knowledge uses fully proprietary and non-user-replacable software. IMO that’s worse than running an AOSP Android ROM.
It is also capable of connecting to cellular data or Wi-Fi in most cases. There is also no device encryption, and it’s trivial for a regular person with only moderate knowledge to extract every file from them if they have the physical device (no need for expensive hacking tools).
Something I’ve been thinking about: are there any fully libre server operating systems? Most Linux distros have some proprietary blobs, especially drivers, and under the strictest interpretation, that wouldn’t be compatible with the SSPL. All the more reasons for the Linux community to reject proprietary drivers honestly.
Also, you’re supposed to hash passwords, which turns them into a set length. So you only really need to worry about uploading and hashing passwords on login, so as long as someone doesn’t have a gigabyte long password, I don’t see the problem.