2x02: Failed to Capture

Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, your fortnightly recommended dose of vitamins and minerals. Featuring a still virulently ill Jono, the uttering of the phrase "FreeBSD" in these hallowed halls, and:

  • [00:02:26] In the news this week, the Guardian wrongly declare WhatsApp to have a "back door" and get huge pushback from security experts demanding a retraction, Google is big enough to develop a trusted hardware solution for internal use only and isn't going to sell it, possibly heralding a new era of hardware that nobody will be able to buy, and Facebook are doing something with VR thus confirming one of Jono's predictions and he almost dies of smugness
  • [00:13:00] We review the ACPAD, which calls itself "the electronic orchestra for your guitar" after its successful Kickstarter; what's it all about?
  • [00:27:30] Is ChromeOS "desktop Linux"? We asked this question in the last show, and it's a bigger one than we might think. If it is, do Chromebook successes count as "the year of the Linux desktop"? If it isn't, is it a threat? A rival or a friend? Should we buy a Chromebook?
  • [00:50:07] People are using the GPL less and permissive licenses more; this isn't just a feeling, it's confirmed by research. Why is this? Is it a problem? And do we think that anyone should care?

Also, Bad Voltage are returning to SCALE in Pasadena in March for a live show! Keep your ears open for more details, and buy your SCALE tickets now!

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True dat. True dat.

I appreciate @sil being a surrogate for the part of the audience that doesn’t understand audio stuff, because each of those segments might as well be gibberish for me otherwise. Thanks!

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What? @jonobacon didn’t include Eddie Van Halen in his list of guitarist? :smile:

That Acpad video is really cool. And I did enjoy the review itself. However, the conclusions of the BV gang seemed spot on. Just curious, Jono, with your acoustic guitar, have you delved into classical or flamenco work? I always have enjoyed Carlos Montoya and the like. Or even Chet Atkins and Les Paul. Some thirty years ago, I was hanging out in the barn of this guy as he was practicing for his metal band. I was flipping through a guitar magazine, and in there, Chet Atkins had a lesson page. I asked him if he could play that. He declined.

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One of the reasons Apache 2 is used a lot by larger companies is the compatibility with CLAs so the external developers need to effectively hand the code over the the entity (usually to a foundation). This is different to DCOs that the Linux Kernel and other GPL projects typically use, I’ve found upper management at companies I have spoken to are not fond of them.

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I think a big part of why people are choosing permissive licences is that they are truly free unlike the GPL which restricts certain (evil) freedoms and is therefore not properly free.

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Haven’t got to the end of the segment yet, but with regards to the ChromeOS being a Linux desktop:

In my opinion, if I can’t install kate/gedit/[insert random ubiquitous FLOSS package here], it isn’t “desktop Linux”. That doesn’t strictly make it bad or whatever, but at that point it’s obviously as different from the rest.

In my opinion ChromeOS is not a desktop linux. Maybe in the sense of the words, but not what people mean when they say ‘desktop linux’.

The licensing is really the unpleasant part of releasing software. I love open-source and the communities. I even want my software to be public available but I don’t want to deal with licenses. But this doesn’t stop me from puttingy stuff to github.

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Sing it, brother.

Sing it, brother.

Personally I don’t really mind whether or not ChromeOS counts as a desktop Linux or not. If it does then I suspect Android also counts which massively inflates the figures (you can run it on a laptop). The important take away is the Linux kernel has won in many areas, several of which crossover.

As long as a good desktop Linux exists I can use on my laptop to develop on and use a terminal on then I’m happy. Fedora/Gnome fits the bill for me.

I loved that paper sizes got a mention. Every now and again I mention it in discussions but I had no idea you guys were still talking about it.

Is Chrome a Linux Desktop?

It’s has a desktop and a Linux kernel so in one very limited sense yes. It is also open source in the sense that you can get access to the code. But, It is only interested in a very limited set of hardware and does not appear to be interested in community collaboration.

This doesn’t fit my version of Linux but I am of the FOSS philosophy as I suspect are the presenters. My daughter uses an Ubuntu laptop but couldn’t care less about any of that she has a laptop with a Web browser, office suite and graphics software. She wouldn’t care if this was a MAC, Windows, Linux, Chrome or anything else as long as it does the job. Most users use Windows because that’s on the PC when they buy it, not out of any Microsoft loyalty.

And to be fair why should we expect anything else?

@sil to my shame I had not heard about the Guardian misrepresenting WhatsApp can you provide links to both the Guardian’s original article and rebuttals?

I’m very much a fan of the Guardian as one of the worlds best news sources but obviously when they mess up we need to pull them up on this.

There are several other news sources where I it’s safest to assume everything they say is just made up expletive deleted. The Whitehouse is one such source for me at the moment

Security researchers call for Guardian to retract false WhatsApp "backdoor" story | TechCrunch summarises and links to both sides of the story, I think.

The good thing about this is that people that don’t like computers are blaming Windows. If any Linux distribution was installed, they would blame that :smiley:

the Acpad isn’t really that revolutionary it is just a lot smaller and digital compared to a 1970s mellotron which was like a piano and used tapes. Granted those cost even more moeny.
Although if you want playing actually two different instruments live this is a quite interesting story on wikipedia of an organist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Banton. He played bass with his feet. Although listening to jono mangle trying to play a pipe organ on guitar would be wierd.

Understatement of the year. :slight_smile: