FLOSS Weekly Episode 692 Transcript

FLOSS Weekly Episode 692 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Doc Searls (00:00):
This is FLOSS Weekly I'm Doc Searls. This week, we have a round table, more like a triangular one with myself, Jonathan Bennett and Sean Powers talking about all kinds of fun, interesting new and durable topics, such as realtime Linux, whether or not the Linux foundation because is so well funded by Microsoft is, is like captive to Microsoft or whether Linux itself is captive to Microsoft or big companies. What's the role of big companies all of that and a whole lot more is coming up.

TWiT (00:36):
Next podcasts you love, from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Doc Searls (00:48):
This is FLOSS Weekly episode 692 recorded Wednesday, August 3rd, 2022 sugar-free hammer. This episode of FLOSS Weekly is brought to you by compiler an original podcast from red hat, discussing tech topics, big, small, and strange listen to compiler on apple podcast or anywhere you listen to podcasts. And by I R L and original podcast from Mozilla. IRL is a show for people who build AI and people who develop tech policies hosted by Bridget Todd. This season of I L looks at AI in real life search for I R L in your podcast player. Hello? Again, everybody everywhere in the world. You may be, I am Doc Searls. This is FLOSS weekly And this week we have a, a round table, which is actually more like triangular, although you're probably looking at it in a rectangle, if you are it's it's it's myself and Jonathan Bennett and Sean Powers are our most expressive cohost <laugh>, which

Sean Powers (02:03):
That was, that was a whole light way to refer to me. I appreciate

Doc Searls (02:05):
That. No, I just think you, you make faces. It is always very fun to watch, you know, you send, you send in advanced images that showed that as well, but you know, your brainer, Sean thing, face

Sean Powers (02:17):
Radio, I've heard 'em all.

Doc Searls (02:21):
I think we all have bad faces for radio. That's put it that way. So I'll start with you, Sean. Right? What's what's going on for you?

Sean Powers (02:29):
Like in general? It's yeah, it's not a thousand degrees today. Anybody who was here the last time I, I was on it was really hot and I was worried that my air conditioner would interrupt the, the show. So I turned it off and by the end of the show, my cheeks were beat red. I was drenched in sweat. And then it turned out that having the AC on didn't affect the show at all. So I could have just left it on.

Doc Searls (02:53):
Yeah. It's I have one of those too, and I know Jonathan has already worked out his AC thing. It's turned up ANOC I asked,

Jonathan Bennett (03:02):
Yeah. Yeah. I asked and I was given special permission to leave the AC on. So if, if it's too loud in the recording, don't send me the hate mail. <Laugh>

Doc Searls (03:12):
<Laugh> yeah, he do. Jonathan does have conversation.

Sean Powers (03:14):
Yeah. And with the leather chair, I mean, he's got kind of a volcano layer vibe going, you would need an in the volcano for chair. I get it.

Doc Searls (03:23):
Yeah. I, I he's got tall guy chair, so it just looks, don't look so tall in the, but if you, if you get hit from behind, you've got the whiplash thing going on. Right. You could <laugh>. These were people who have, who have actually looking at us in the visual thing. There he is. And <laugh> instead of cluttering the back I'm

Jonathan Bennett (03:43):
Office set up, I have my office set up so that I am in the far side of the room and there's not any entries behind me. So you'd have to work really hard to sneak up on me here.

Doc Searls (03:52):
<Laugh> yeah. That's that's good. I, I, I, I don't do you guys, I, I sort of feel like, you know, like in, in old westerns, but gamblers never wanna sit with their back to the saloon door. That's sort of the way I feel about office space. I don't want my back to people coming in the room, which I do. I'm at the end of a, I'm in a basement. I'm in a far corner. Everything is behind me. So it's not working here. Are you, are you similarly minded or do you not care?

Jonathan Bennett (04:20):
<Laugh> I will sit in a restaurant. I'll look for a chair in the corner, just because I've read too many, I've read too many westerns in it. That thought is ingrained in my brain. <Laugh>

Doc Searls (04:29):
And, and you actually kinda, you live in Oklahoma, so that's <laugh>,

Jonathan Bennett (04:32):
It's true.

Doc Searls (04:34):
It's, it's, it's a it's you still have wild CAERS there and people with titles like that and yes. Yeah. And part of it too, is like, people don't want you, like, in the old days, people didn't want you to see your cards. We don't want people to see our screens. Right. That's that's another thing it's like, we're, that's part of it. Yeah. We feel private about our externalizing whatever's going on in our heads. So,

Sean Powers (04:55):
And it's funny we have, because it's, you know, everybody assumes, it's like, oh, what do you, what's on your screen, you're hiding. And it's like, you know, dumb things like probably don't wanna see like the crocheting patterns. I was looking up for a, you know, fun time with kids later. And yeah. I just have like, not inappropriate, just like, yeah, I don't really wanna explain why that's there. <Laugh>

Doc Searls (05:15):
Yeah. I just mostly think about, you know, my wife walking in when I'm, you know, doom

Sean Powers (05:22):
School, you sure you wanna finish more live

Doc Searls (05:24):
Amazon, you know, or something. Yeah. There's that. But you know, like, you know, quick bring email up, you know, <laugh> bring up the spreadsheet anyway. So

Jonathan Bennett (05:36):
Was working really? I was,

Doc Searls (05:38):
Yeah, I think actually most of us aren't most of the time in one way or another. So it's, I just hated filling out time sheets when I had a, a job where I had to do that, cuz you're basically faking at some percentage of the time. I think I

Sean Powers (05:54):
Wonder how many people, not me in case my

Doc Searls (05:57):
Employer watches the show <laugh> anyhow. So, so we've had our own back channel on this thing and, and I wanna start out by topically by bringing up something that Brian Lindo, who's an old colleague of, of Sean's in mind at Linox journal. He worked for Linux journal for a while. He sent I'm back in July 7th, but this is kind of a, a rolling thing. Microsoft's growing control of Linux. He's worried that, you know, as Microsoft gets more and more involved with Linux and, and is very involved in you know, that it owns GitHub and and it owns, you know it contributes a great deal to Linux conferences and it contributes enormously to it it's a platinum member, you know, very top paying member of of the of the Linux foundation which has provided mini guests for us, by the way.

Doc Searls (07:00):
And and I know I'll, I'll, I'll start out on this one and then turn it over to you guys. And we're gonna have Miguel de Kaza who a father of no, and who works for Microsoft now and is he's gonna be on in a few weeks. So that's a little advance notice about that. That'll be interesting. But every time I've talked to somebody who's in the employee of a big company about their control of Linux, the response has always been a, it, it doesn't happen. And B it's not possible even because we lead them rather than they lead us. In other words, because we're, and I'm thinking mostly about Linux kernel developers I'm thinking of Andrew Morton, Linux, him, Linux, himself, Ted show others that I've spoken to in years past that great Crow of Hartman, especially when I get him on the show as well.

Doc Searls (07:58):
The Colonel has to work for everybody has to work for everything on earth and biasing it toward any one company, no matter how big they are is just not a consideration. But they work for these companies. <Laugh> so, so it seems to, so I mentioned one more thing before I give it to you guys. Ellen Miller, who of the, of the, of the sunlight foundation years ago, they took space in a building that was owned by Google and Google helped them out in a number of ways. And I asked her, how do you avoid influence by Google? And she said, money always gives you influence you. Can't say if you're getting money from somebody that it doesn't have influence it, does it always does. We just have to do your best with it. So that's kind of another opinion there. So where were you guys on this thing? I, I think

Sean Powers (08:54):
I, I just jumped in because I only have one good thing to say, and I'm afraid Jonathan might say something related to that I'm out. <Laugh> so I think that by, I don't think of it as biased. I think that you hire somebody to gain prioritization, right. And, you know, the, there are a lot of things that a lot of people want into the Len Turner into any project. And when you put somebody on your payroll, what you're paying for is your your benefits to be prioritized, you know, based on, you know, we're paying you to, you know, do things in our best interest. And, and while I don't think it's, you know, necessarily evil in sabotaging other things, it gives the priority to the people who are paying the, you know, person's mortgage. So I, I, that was that's the entirety of my vast insight on the topic. I just think it's a priority as opposed to bias. I don't think it's evil, inherent. I think it's you know, just how, how it goes.

Jonathan Bennett (09:51):
Yeah. I, I think Sean's got the right idea. So in, in thinking about this topic, I am reminded of that mean, that says, well, yes, but actually no <laugh> so

Sean Powers (10:01):
<Laugh>,

Jonathan Bennett (10:02):
It would be, it would be pretty easy to imagine a, a really big business, like, you know Microsoft, Facebook, Google, one of those guys that they, they measure their businesses in, in billions with a, B you could imagine them hiring up enough Linux devs. So let's just think about the kernel you could, hi, you could imagine them hiring up enough Linux devs, that they would have a sizable amount of influence. And I think it's worthwhile to maybe keep that in the back of your mind that if you, if you ever saw one of them moving in that direction, maybe wave the red flag. And the kernel particularly is, is more immune to that because you have the Lennox foundation that is paying the you know, paying the salary of, to vaults and to vaults, of course, is very opinionated. And if he saw something like that, he would go on an epic rant that we have not seen from him in quite a while.

Jonathan Bennett (10:59):
And it would be amazing. But you know, smaller projects, that's, that's definitely a thing to keep in mind that you could have kind of a hostile takeover, but at the same time, like Sean said so much of the time, a, a business gets so much utility out of Lenox, the way it works. Now, it, they would, they would be poisoning their own well to try to really manipulate it. But what you do see is Microsoft wants Linux to work well on the Azure cloud and Amazon wants Linux to work well in AWS. And let's see, I don't have another really good example to off the top of my head. Google wants fund new things to come into Android, which is now based on Lenox, and they want security patches for free from Lenox. And so it makes sense for Google to hire engineers, to work on Linux and work on the Linux and Android coming back together.

Jonathan Bennett (11:59):
And so, yes, there are certain things that get prioritized and in some of those cases, there are nudges, Hey, we want you, we are going to hire you as a Linux dev. And we want you to work on this specifically. I'm not aware though, of any time when that's been done secretly, right? Like, so if, if Google hires a Lenox dev and says, Hey, we want you to get these patches. In fact, we have a story about this. We'll get to it here in a second. We want you to get these patches into the Colonel. Well, that's kind of just about printed on the business card anymore. Right. So when when Intel bought the guys behind the realtime kernel let's see, is it oh, what's the name of the company? Lenox trons. I have it, I have it one second.

Jonathan Bennett (12:47):
I'm I'm the one scrolling now. Yeah, trons. They, they, these were the guys working on the realtime kernel and they put out a call back a few months ago and said, Hey, we're having trouble trying to fund this. And it wasn't too much longer after that Intel bought their company. And the next thing you know, you know, those patches are again gathering steam and we, we may see the core of real time Linux actually get merged like their, their patch count may go to zero in this particular kernel that we, the merge window just started. And so, you know, it's, yeah, these guys, the, the, the line electronics guys, they've got this as their stated goal and Intel bought them to continue working on that goal. And that that's, that's a, that's a good thing. You know, that gets that feature into the kernel for everybody. And so I, again, there is some merit in being wary of big corporations in some cases. But at the same time, they, they're generally not going to poison their own well, which kind of keeps everybody safe.

Sean Powers (13:55):
And you made a valid point about the Linux foundation being great as a, not a direct gatekeeper, but, you know, employing people so that the, the people who do make the, the commit decisions are not directly influenced. And even if they were, I don't think it's like the end of times, but that is a really nice layer of of protection towards the top. If that makes sense, because I mean, you know, lots of, you know, high level devs are hired by different companies. Another company could hire another one to, you know, push their stuff and it's, you know, open source is just that it's open. And if somebody was trying to be inherently evil and, and making something, not work for a competitor, that's gonna be so blatantly out in the open, it'd be tough to make that stick all the way. If that makes sense. I, I just think that there are too many checks and balances along the way, and thankfully those checks and balances, aren't all controlled by one for profit company.

Jonathan Bennett (15:00):
I'll, I'll even go step further and say, it is a built in check and balance that you have the Linux foundation and you also have corporations, corporations keep the Linux foundation in check. And that's, that may be kind of a surprising thing to think about, but there there are different priorities and different things that people care about and different political machinations going on. And it, it is a subtle, but present pressure that the Linux foundation knows if we screw this up badly enough IBM and red hat could do a hard fork of the kernel <laugh> and people would go with them if we mess it up badly enough. And that's kind, that's kinda built into the GPL into the, the definition of open source. If we screw this up badly enough, they will fork and the people will leave. And that's, that is a useful pressure to keep everybody on the same page and, and doing right <laugh>

Sean Powers (15:59):
That point

Jonathan Bennett (15:59):
Fly, right. Or else will fork. Yeah,

Sean Powers (16:01):
Because while the, the Linux foundation isn't oh, go ahead, doc,

Doc Searls (16:07):
Go finish your thought. Then I'll go to a separate, I was just

Sean Powers (16:09):
Gonna say it is a really valid point too, while you know, the Linux foundation is seems inherently, you know, ideal to, you know, not have interests other, you know, the support by the big corporations. Plural is definitely a good thing because then they're not going to be influenced by one particular if multiple large companies are supporting them. Yeah. That that's a good point. And one, I hadn't thought of, to be honest, Jonathan, is that, you know, the who, who watches the watcher sort of thing. Right. And, and it's good that it happens to be people with vested interests. So, yeah. And go ahead, doc. That was just absolutely my,

Doc Searls (16:45):
Yeah. So I, I have a kind of a one liner for what the Linux foundation is, which is it's a club for giants and wanna be giants where they all go to not club each other. And <laugh> and I think that's actually what it is. It's kind of United nations of big things and wanna be big things

Sean Powers (17:05):
Club for club TWI <laugh>

Doc Searls (17:07):
Yeah. Right. We can club to is a place where great, where geeks code and not club each other, although probably they can they might be more willing and able to <laugh>. But the, the interesting thing to me about the Linux foundation, the more I look at it, and the more I've hung out with people there and at conferences is that the it's all about what are, what are the common interests here that move a lot forward, a lot faster and better when everybody's all looking out for that and not for whatever their parochial interests are. And it turns out that the common interests tend to be ones where, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna get your advantage somewhere else, you know, and that's fine. You know, I mean you had a really good example earlier of AWS versus Azure, right? Those, those are competing clouds.

Doc Searls (17:59):
They both need the kernel to work well. And, and Jonathan, you brought up IBM a, a guy named a fry F R Y E what was his first name? I'm blanking on it. But anyway, he worked at what's that Mr. <Laugh>, Mr. We called him Mr. Fry. Anyway he worked at IBM for many years and he told, he told me, this is back in the early odds that it took IBM, six years to discover that they couldn't tell their current developers what to do, that it was actually the other way around, you know, the, the guidance actually worked the other way. You, you, you hire these people because they're the best at what they do. And they're busy, contributing gravity for everybody. That's gonna build on it and you really need to hear from them what what's actually going on. And what's right. Rather than what's advantaged for you. So I think that, I think that's, I think it's a workable system, no matter how much these guys spend on, on keeping the foundation going. And I mean, well, I, yeah, go

Jonathan Bennett (19:03):
Ahead. There's, there's kind of a, another competitive pressure there. When it comes to the individual developers one of these guy, a high level Linux contributor. So if he goes to IBM and IBM tries to tell him, you're going to push this, he goes, there's 15 other companies that will pay me, gladly, pay me as much as you are paying me. Why should I stay here? If you're going to try to boss me around, you know, here, here, here's the way this is going to work. I'm going to work on the kernel. You can have some input and if that's not okay, then I'm going, I'm leaving IBM and I'm going to Amazon or Google or Facebook or Netflix, or 1700 other companies that would love to have a high level Linux dev on their staff.

Sean Powers (19:45):
And if you're paying, you know, if you're paying a high level dev, it's not just so that they, they do your bidding, right. I mean, they offer value in why that is or isn't ideal or why it should happen. I mean, you know, they're, they're high level for a reason. They're, they're knowledgeable, they're intelligent, they see a bigger picture. And so I, you know, I, I think that the, hopefully the threat of, you know, job hopping doesn't come up, although it's certainly is a, you know, an overarching, maybe <laugh> a guard against upper level management stepping on them too hard.

Jonathan Bennett (20:21):
Yeah. Well, there's, there's a lot of these things and this is, this is kind of just the way the economy as a whole works. There are a lot of these threats that are, you don't have to, you don't have to state them. Like I don't, I, I really doubt that that conversation would ever happen, but you know, everybody's got it in the back of their minds, like way, way, way in the back of their mind. There's, there's 15 other job offers. All I have to do is just send one email and somebody else will hire me. And so it, with a lot of these things, it's not something that you ever have the tense meeting you better stop this or else. But just, it, it's just kind of that subtle pressure that everybody knows about that keeps everybody in line. Let's see what, what's the term they use in psychology that a social contract there's, there's a, there's a social contract for, for developers and how they get paid too.

Sean Powers (21:11):
I bet some of those actual contracts are fairly complicated and, and highly debated before a high level developer is hired too, because, you know, I've, I've seen a lot of legally contract documents and they want you to commit to things that are silly if you don't push back. So I, I imagine there's a lot of negotiation that goes on before those hires even take place. So,

Doc Searls (21:35):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I just, on our own little back channel, I shared a link to the cloud native computing foundation, which is run by the, by the Linux foundation. It's confusing cuz Linux foundation has like a whole lot of foundations. So they're like subsidiaries in a way, but it's a lot of big companies all getting together and it, they actually have it. I don't have a, a link for it, but they have a way of looking at all of these ones working together on this and, and you can actually subtract out the non-open source and highlight the open source parts of it, cuz some of what people bring to it are not open source and you can kind of see what is and what isn't, but it is, it is, it is a club <laugh>. And so that's what, that's what that's about.

Doc Searls (22:23):
I wanna, we have more topics to go to and, and Jonathan teased one, I don't think specifically a moment ago, so trust me, it'll be good. But first I have to let you know that this episode of Flo weekly is brought to you by compiler and original podcast from red hat, discussing tech topics, big, small and strange compiler comes to you from the makers of command line heroes. And other of our sponsors and is hosted by Angela Andrews and Brent semio technology. They say it could be big, bold, bizarre, and complicated compiler unravels, industry topics, trends, and the things you've always wanted to know about tech through interviews with the people who know it best under show. You'll hear a chorus of perspectives from the diverse communities behind the code. They bring together a curious team of red hatters to tackle big questions in tech.

Doc Searls (23:15):
Like what is technical debt? What are tech hiring managers actually looking for? And do you have to know how to code to get started in open source? <Laugh> I'm living proof of that. <Laugh> the only code I know is Morris. Anyway, episode two covers what can video games teach us about edge computing, the internet as a patchwork of international agreements and varying infrastructure. But there is something coming to change. The ways we connect in this episode of compiler hosts, expos, what edge computing could mean for people who enjoy video games and what this form of entertainment could teach us about the technology episode nine is how are tech hubs changing? Traditionally, if someone wanted a career in tech, they had to make the move to a tech hub, a city packed with startups and talent, but things are starting to change the hosts of compilers.

Doc Searls (24:11):
Speak to a few of the change makers who are thinking outside of the physical and social dimensions. We've come to associate with innovation. And by the way, my own life was shaped by the need to go to the tech hub called Silicon valley from North Carolina, which is not yet a tech hub and is where red hat is now. So there's kind of a full circle there. Learn more about compiler@red.ht slash TWI. New episodes are out now, go and download them at any time and be sure to check back for new shows, listen to compiler and apple podcaster anywhere you listen to podcasts will also include a link on this episode's show page, my thanks to compiler for their support. So Jonathan, you teased us <laugh> what was that? Or did you already hit on it? I'm not sure.

Jonathan Bennett (25:03):
I, I think I covered it. We can go a little deeper into it. The real time patches for the Linux Nel. And this is one of those things where, you know, a big company Intel has come in and said, we, we would really like this to happen. So real time computing is the idea that when you ask your computer to do something, you can guarantee that it is going to take exactly this much amount of time to complete it. And if you ask it to do something else that you say is more important, you can also guarantee that the more important thing is going to get done in that amount of time. No matter what else is going on. And so this is this is really important for certain use cases. Like if you have a computer that's controlling your car, maybe.

Jonathan Bennett (25:49):
So I imagine engineers at Tesla care a lot about this. If you are using a computer to control a spaceship, <laugh>, let's say so people at NASA care about this but it also matters if you're using your computer to do multimedia. So like if you're doing audio processing in real time, being able to guarantee that those audio packets are ready when it's time for them to go out speaker, because if it's time for the packet to go out the speaker and the audio is not done processing yet, well, you, you get bad results. Very, very ugly sounds come out instead. And so it, it, the realtime patches, this idea of a realtime Nel, it has, it has used for a whole lot of people, a whole lot of situations. And in the past, the Linux kernel has just not had the capabilities to really, truly do it.

Jonathan Bennett (26:39):
And there's been this patch set floating around for, I think a couple of years now. But it's not quite been ready to go. And with this again, the, the Linux Colonel the merge window for five 20, which is almost certainly going to be called 6.0 just opened. And the goal, several people have mentioned the goal for the realtime patch set is to get the outstanding patch count down the zero, essentially merge all the patches so that you can, with the new kernel version, you can say, Hey, run this in real time and it'll actually work. And of course, God only knows how many drivers is going to break as a result of that. But that's part of the fun <laugh>

Sean Powers (27:23):
Drivers. So I'm gonna grab that as a segue then, because the thing that one of the things I wanted to talk about is are you guys familiar with the Intel arc GPS? Like they're discreet GPUs that are not quite out in the public, but are starting to leak out to reviewers. I'm not one of those reviewers sadly, but <laugh>

Sean Powers (27:44):
It's kinda like the oddly Intel being the new kid in the, in the block, but with discreet GPUs that like are comparable to Nvidia AMD GPUs. It's actually pretty cool. And oh yeah. And that's, so that's the, the other part of the story. <Laugh> when we, when we ask the question about like what are your thoughts on blockchain? Yeah, Intel is trying to make them not not crypto friendly, but I think you know, that's a, again, this is a side, a side note, but I think it's just a matter of time, right? I mean, the way GPUs are designed, they are ideal for the kind of computation that most cryptocurrencies require. So just like Nvidia, trying to make their, their cards crypto unfriendly that was worked around in short order. So I don't, I don't think there's much hope for that, but it's pretty neat to see somebody new with real you know, gaming class hardware that's coming out and Intel has historically been pretty great with Linux.

Sean Powers (28:45):
I'm a little bit nervous because like there were no for the testers, like the people who are testing them now there aren't any drivers, apparently, however, there are some some references and some kernel modules, I guess. And I can't even tell you the, the name of the the cards, but it's, there are Nel modules that are being developed for the, the new, not yet released Intel GP. So I'm excited about that. And the big thing I'm excited about is that they do AV one encoding. Are you, are you guys video encoding nerds at all or no,

Jonathan Bennett (29:21):
Just, just a little bit. And a lot of my video encoding nerd them comes actually from working with security cameras because trying to get really good video from a security camera without murdering your CPU on your server is a difficult thing. So just a little bit AV one is it's the competitor to H 2 65, I think

Sean Powers (29:43):
So. Yeah. I mean, there's a long, there's a long, long story there, but the issue with H 2 65, there's nothing wrong with it, except that it is you know, it's, it's covered, right. You have to pay for the code. And so yeah, that AV one is that same generation as sort, sort of as VP nine that, you know, YouTube is using right now for the bulk of their stuff. But the idea is that it's completely open and it's, it's backed by all of the big companies. I mean, from apple to Google, to, you know, everybody is backing AV one as an open standard for video, but also there's going to be an AV one image Kodak. That's going to be open. And I imagine, you know, extremely high quality for, for low for low file sizes. Well, so I'm, I'm actually looking forward to it.

Sean Powers (30:32):
But the thing that is specific about the new discreet GPUs is that when it comes to AV one, they've leapfrogged like Nvidia because Nvidia has AV one decoding on their 3000 series, like the RTX 3000 series cards have hardware decoding of AV one, but the new Intel cards that are not yet, I, I know but soon have AV one hardware encoding, which is pretty significant. So I'm, I'm really looking forward to what that will mean especially since it's, you know, the, the whole idea of the Kodak is being open and historically Intel video stuff has been pretty Linux friendly. So I'm hoping for some awesome things there.

Jonathan Bennett (31:14):
Yeah. So I have been, I have been told, and I cannot cite the source on this second hand, but it's somebody that knows the industry. Well I've been told that the problem with Intel arc right now is the drivers. They are having trouble mm-hmm <affirmative>. And one of the big problems is the, so Intel has done GPU cores on the CPU for years now. And apparently it was more of a big deal than they expected to put those GPU cores out at the end of a PCI express bus. And that apparently caused more problems than was anticipated. And they're still trying to engineer around some of those issues. So

Sean Powers (31:56):
Yeah, if you look at the other link, it wrenching that specifically, like some of the you know, the other, the other big companies have a bit of a leap start, obviously, because they've been making discrete video cards in the P C I E slots. And so yeah, they're, they're trying to figure that out. I I'm, I mean, I'm confident that they will, right. I mean, like I said, there's already some references in the in the kernel for the, the new line of art cards, but I mean, this is their first release and as amazing as the ability for video ENCO, especially are I'm, I'm excited for what the future plus, I mean, having a, another player in the GPU market is awesome. I mean, that rather than just having the two, I'm pretty excited about that. So, so yeah, I'm, I'm stoked.

Sean Powers (32:40):
I hope that I get to test one someday. It probably means I'll have to buy one and then I can test it. But nonetheless, I'm hoping that it's a, it's good. And to be honest, I'm not a gamer at all. So I know that the big focus is going to be the big focus is going to be gaining, you know, because that's, you know, GP is gaming, but yeah, we'll see for hardware and coding of video is where I'm excited about for video editing for live streaming. I mean, live streaming in AV one in like 10, a P 60 frames per second, or even 4k, ideally with a V one it's so highly encoded. Yeah. I'm just excited about it.

Jonathan Bennett (33:18):
Yeah. So NICs has some coverage on this and in Linux, you gotta remember when we talk about these driver problems, that's probably a reference, more likely to windows. I don't know that Intel would hold a hardware release for a Linnux driver problem, but anyway talking about Linux NICs has coverage that Mesa 22 2, which is just now hitting feature free. So we're still, probably about a month away from seeing that fully release. And then Lennox five point 20, which again, a couple of months away from seeing that release, that is where full support for the Intel arc cards is going to land. And so, yeah, it's still, it's still real early it's it would be real early to get your hands on one of these pieces of hardware and expect it to work. So, you know, we're, we're looking at the next iteration of, of distros you know, we're all running what fedora 36 now, and it'll be fedora 37 to 38. So a few months away when, before the, all of those issues and all of that support land to get straightened out.

Sean Powers (34:29):
So somebody send me a card, I'll test it when we can with the current versions, see how crappy it is and then how much better it's gonna be afterwards.

Jonathan Bennett (34:35):
<Laugh> yes. I'll take you up on that sounds sounds good. Sometimes that works not very often. <Laugh> all right. I have got I have got a story that I think is gonna be real interesting. This, this kind of made some waves online and it's all about, and again, we mentioned fedora fedora is outlawing a open source license in their distro, and we're gonna talk about that, but I think doc has something to tell us first

Doc Searls (35:04):
<Laugh> I have that's smooth

Sean Powers (35:07):
Mean I ruined it. That

Doc Searls (35:08):
Was, that is smooth. It'd be, it'd be even more smooth if I actually had what I was gonna tell us queued up, but now I do that is this episode. I'll take that again. This episode of Flo weekly is brought to you by I R L and original podcast from Mozilla. IRL is a show for people who build AI and people who develop tech policies hosted by Bridget Todd. This season of IRL looks at AI in real life, who can AI help, who can at harm? The show features fascinating conversations with people who are working to build more trustworthy AI. For example, there's an episode about how our world is mapped with AI. The data that's missing from those maps tells as much of the story as the maps themselves. You'll hear all about the people who are working to fill those gaps and take control of the data.

Doc Searls (35:58):
There's another episode about gig workers who depend on apps for their livelihood. It shows how they're pushing back against algorithms that control how much they get paid and seeking new ways to gain power over data, to create better working conditions for political junkies. There's an episode about the role that AI plays when it comes to the spread of disinformation around elections, a huge concern for democracies around the world. And another episode explains the role that AI plays when it comes to elections and the spread of misinformation and hate speech. And, you know, we all, we are all living in a world of AI right now, and it always strikes me is that there's, there's the unknown unknown, and that's kind of where we have to be concerned. So there's a really great podcast for that. You can search for IRL in your podcast player. We also include a link in the show notes, my thanks to I R L for their support. So we're back <laugh> so,

Jonathan Bennett (37:01):
Yes. So

Doc Searls (37:02):
There's this,

Jonathan Bennett (37:03):
There's this story. Yeah, there's this story that made the rounds and kind of made some waves. And that is the, the fedora steering committee said, Hey, we are going to disallow creative commons, zero from four software. And that's an important note in the E fedora distro. And so, you know, this, this obviously raised a lot of questions. Well, why would, why would the fedora guys do this? What exactly does CC zero say, what's going on here? All right, let's take it apart. CC zero is the creative commons license that essentially says no rights reserved. It is a license that intends to take the thing that you have put together and just put it out as close to public domain as possible. And it is not intended for code. And that's one of the important points here. In fact, none of the creative common licenses are intended to be used for source code.

Jonathan Bennett (38:04):
They are all intended to be used for pictures for media, the creative text. Yeah. For media. You know, you can write a novel and put it in CC zero. That's fine. You can write documentation and put it in CC zero, and that's fine. So the, the link that we've got to this, whether you check it out in the show notes, or you can just Google, it is actually off to hack a day. You don't think of hack a day as being, you know, a, a place to talk about licensing issues, but Tom Nady wrote this one up and they did a great job talking about it.

Jonathan Bennett (38:35):
And essentially fedora says, because CC is not intended for source code. And because CC zero has no patent protection in it, we're not going to allow new software that is creative, common, zero licensed to get used. And I thought that was really interesting that one of the things that fedora is really concerned about is this submarine patent issue, where someone has a patent writes code that uses the patent. It doesn't tell anybody about it and then releases it as CC zero gets it, pushed into something like fedora. And then a couple of years down the line sues and said, you're violating our patent, which surely no one would ever do that. Well, we've seen some, some nasty behavior like that in certain corners in the past. I won't name any names, but there was a, a handset manufacturer that got sued by a big company, not too long lives been several years ago.

Jonathan Bennett (39:36):
Anyway. and so the, the bigger question that people in the Hackaday comments at least were asking was why did fedora ever allow CC zero code into their distro? Which I thought was a, a pretty on point question. And then there's, there's another direction we can go with this. And that is, well, wait a second. Isn't the GPL, doesn't the GPL three exist because the GPL V two doesn't have sufficient patent protection in it. And is it the Linux that we all know and love written and licensed under the GPL? V two, are we in trouble here? Do do, do one of you guys have any thoughts I can continue going, but you have any thoughts on this, this patent question?

Sean Powers (40:25):
I think the, you know, specifically for CC zero, I think it, it probably, you know, why did they ever, probably just never occurred? Why do people, why would people license their code with that? Unless, you know, they're doing something sneaky, I guess probably nobody thought about like, I mean, I guess Sherry, you can make your code in CC zero. It's weird, but whatever, not thinking like what some ramifications are, and maybe the ramification, maybe the, the initial intent wasn't to be, you know, potentially creepy. But I mean, it's kinda like, you know, you don't sell hammers as sugar free. It just doesn't make sense. Right. And so it it's certainly, you know, I don't think that this is a, you know, this shouldn't be controversial that they're saying, you know, we can't do CC zero licensed code in fedora that it just makes sense. Right. the GPL two part is a little bit stickier, I guess. <Laugh> but yeah, I, I it's weird that any code was ever licensed with CC zero, you know, hopefully that it was never done with ill intent maybe because it's simple, people just thought, oh, simple is best. And I just, you know, wanna be simple. I don't know, but it makes sense that they said no, because it's just weird.

Jonathan Bennett (41:32):
Yeah. Be me and just whispered in our ear that some developers think that their code is art and maybe that's why they wanted to use creative meaning for it. Cause it's art. Right. <laugh>

Sean Powers (41:43):
So my code might be art because it certainly isn't functional as code. So maybe that's really, yeah. Maybe it was me. Maybe it's is my fault. <Laugh>,

Doc Searls (41:51):
There's a and we might, it might be interesting to have Larry Lessig. Who's one of the founders of of creative commons on the show at some point, he, he he also wrote co you know, Coda's law that a whole bunch of books that are close to the topic here. But I remember

Doc Searls (42:11):
At the beginning with creative commons, they did not have at least for a while they're a public domain license. And the idea was that you can't license what you're throwing out there. It's just not doesn't work. And he advised me when I started posting stuff online that I wanted basically close to public domain. Don't use that use one of the other ones, you know, require retribution or some, some other thing like that. And but now it's back there, it's there. And, and that's, that's an interesting thing. Another is that there, there are these sort of overlapping topics there's licensing which creative comments concerns itself, where there's patents, which is all about property, but, and then there's and then there's contract. And contract's another thing, it's an agreement between any two parties, but that plays into things as well because companies especially concern themselves with all of those things.

Doc Searls (43:11):
And, and there's a VIN with them. There's an overlap. And I think that's probably what happened in this case where, whether it was the art of it or not. I mean, and a weird thing that I've run across, we all have, I think with open sources, there's this assumption that if you're open sourcing something, you're kind of throwing it out there for everybody to use, not for everybody to work on and improve. And there's a difference in that. And when you, you know, the reason we have open source licenses, licenses is so people can work on the code and work on that code for purposes that are imagined going forward and where you wanna keep, keep certain, you know, rights and, you know, and so forth operative. And, but when you say open source, you know, it's kinda like people say, he's about democracy. This becoming my use by fraud used to say, if, if a, a machine wasn't cooperating, it was being democratic. He didn't mean that there were electors in it, but he, he just meant that as it was sort of chaotic, but there's this assumption that if you put something in the world, you're opening it and then now you can step away from it and anybody can use it. And, and it's not, it's not like that. I dunno if I clarified anything, what I just, with what I just said, but yeah.

Jonathan Bennett (44:25):
Oh no, you kind of, you kind of opened it up and, and made the point that this is a bigger issue. So we've, we've got, got a actually a, a pretty interesting comment here in the chat room. It's, it's, retcon five. And he says, Len has stated that he didn't like the anti ization clause on GPL V three, because it fundamentally changes the GPL, the whole point and purpose of the GPL and Len's mind, right. Is to make users of the GPL software pay back to the community by making all of their improvements of the GPL available to the community under the same terms, that's it with anti ization, GPL V three adds a completely new obligation that has nothing to do with this fundamental purpose. And that's, that's an interesting point. So when they went from G V two to V3, it not only added these stronger patent anti patent protections, it also added this anti ization clause, which essentially that's the clause that says, if you use this software, you have to, it's, it's a right to repair.

Jonathan Bennett (45:24):
Essentially. They, they would've called it right to repair. If that term had existed at the time you have to give people the ability to get into it and make modifications. And that's a bitter pill to swallow for a lot of companies. And in some cases that's also a security problem. You know, if you've got a device that the whole point of is, you're only allowed to modify it in the certain ways that make sense from a security perspective, then three, maybe an be a non-starter for you. And, and, and that's certainly fascinating to think about in doing the research. I, I did I did come across some legal thinking about the G P V two that says that there is an implied patent license in there. But it's just not made explicit. And so one of the other things they wanted to do when they went to the G PLV three, when they rewrote it is they wanted to make the patent grant explicit with the thought that it would hold up better in court, whereas V2, it was kind of a weak, implicit case and hopeful, hopefully <laugh>, hopefully we don't ever have to have that fight over the Lenox Colonel. We'll see

Doc Searls (46:37):
Why we pause for a minute and, and talk about what, what ization exactly meant. So you go for what anti ization is. I think

Sean Powers (46:46):
Jonathan touched on it, what it would mean yeah. In that, you know, the, the code couldn't be locked down, you would have to give people access to it. And go ahead. So

Doc Searls (46:54):
Was definitely have a better Tevo like, I'm trying to get to where, where TiVo was at. I mean, TiVo was what invented the DVR basically did digital the video recorder. Right. And yeah, so get TiVo stuff. And they were very early user of Linux, or they used Linux in their thing. So what would exactly happen there? Were they the good guys, the bad guys are what

Jonathan Bennett (47:16):
You know, a lot of these, a lot of these cases, it's real difficult to call somebody a good guy or a bad guy. So TiVo built, as you said, they're DVR and it has a hard drive in it, and it runs Linux and, and you record your TV shows onto it. And the question then comes well, what happens when that hard drive dies or what happens when you want to back your your TV shows up and be able to watch them on your desktop instead of your TV, or, you know, what happens if there's this killer feature that you want on your te though? And it doesn't support it? Well, it runs Linux. I should be able to go in there and add it right. And on the Tevo they actually used, I, I, I believe signed firmware essentially meant you couldn't run your own firmware on the Tevo.

Jonathan Bennett (48:04):
You couldn't, couldn't, you know, your own dist of Linux on that hard drive and boot it, it would refuse to boot and that sort of raised the hackles with people. And, you know, perhaps rightly so, it's my hardware. I should be able to run whatever code I want to on it. That's an argument to be made. And it, it raised enough hackles that this idea of anti ization came to mean it's my hardware. I should be able to run whatever code on it I want to, and that got enough momentum that it was included in the GLV three. And like I say, for some particularly security instances, that's maybe not always what you want. It, it, it's a tricky issue. It, it really is because on the one hand, I, I very much see the argument of if I own that and ownership means what it is always historically meant. Then my ownership of that device means that I run whatever code I want to on it. And on the other hand, I absolutely see the argument of, well, if my phone is going to remain secure against, you know, pick your three letter agency plugging their, their, their tools into it. And justing all of the data off of it, there has to be some layer assigned firmware. And so these things are kind of intention and it remains to be seen the perfect solution for making them work out together.

Sean Powers (49:29):
And I don't know, was, was the hardware locking part of it because as somebody who had an early TiVo when everybody thought that they were actually still gonna be very successful you could buy them with very small. I mean, they came with ridiculously small, hard drives, and the idea not even using different firmware, but just putting the exact same firmware on a larger or different hard drive, if it failed was just without doing really shady stuff. Very difficult because the, the hard drives were locked in some weird way that you had to like get some weird key and unlock them and then create an image. It was really a bizarre situation. And I don't know if that was all part of it or not, but yeah, they, they certainly pushed the envelope of what you should and shouldn't, and can, and can't do with, with Linux. And there are some links in the, that red con five gave us in the, in the chat as well, that are, I'm gonna look at it after the fact. I'm not gonna read it now because, you know, I have a job to do, but

Jonathan Bennett (50:31):
Yeah, I never had a TiVo. And so I'm, I'm just kind of putting together the pieces from the different things I've read about it. I never tried to go down that road of hacking. But looking, looking at the documentation, it looks like they used digital code signing. And unless you were running a firmware package that was signed, it simply would not boot on the Tebow.

Sean Powers (50:52):
Yeah. Mm-Hmm

Sean Powers (50:54):
And Burke mentions that it's still the best, honestly. Yeah. Tebow's one of those weird, you know, people use it as a, as a marketing example all the time. This is outside of the scope of the show, but yeah, it's the best, most amazing interface, best quality. And yet it's just, it's just a weird story about the TiVo in general, but the hardware lock was weird. I, you know, I bought mine with a, it came with a 20 gigabyte drive and that's not a whole lot of, that's not a whole lot of data and I could get a bigger, hard drive and I did. And boy, it was that ever tough to just copy the same firmer. It wasn't even hacked firmware. It was just trying to get the same stuff running on a different drive. So,

Doc Searls (51:30):
You know,

Jonathan Bennett (51:33):
I was just gonna say, I'm sure the issue there with TiVo is DRM, right? It was, yeah. Well, people are gonna have these, this copyrighted video and we don't wanna build something. That's gonna bring the ire of Hollywood and ABC NBC CBS down on our heads. We cannot win that court case. We do not have enough money to defend ourselves. So we're going to lock this down so that no one can commit you know, copyright violation, which

Sean Powers (51:59):
Is, yeah. Maybe that's that's weeks off though. I mean, Mr. Rogers made, you know, the VCR case for recording shows and, and time shifting. And yeah, I, I think that that's kind of a weak saw argument. Yeah, sure. You know, the digital recording was all brand new and maybe some of the channels, you know, they are DRM protected channels that TiVo does get, I don't know. We're kind of getting down a rabbit hole here, I guess, but yeah, it's, this is why there's, you know, contention, right. I mean, this is why it's a, it's an issue cuz it's complicated.

Doc Searls (52:33):
I think, I mean I'm thinking of other things of SVGA versus HT. I, there were people who worked on SVGA a, I think it was SVGA being open versus HTMI being entirely an industry thing. But I'm not familiar with that argument that much, but would we, but we need to close. Cause I think we're, we're pretty close out of time. So, so any, any, any stones we've left unturned in in turns we've left UN stone in the course of this hour <laugh>

Jonathan Bennett (53:07):
Oh, I'm sure I'm we could continue on this conversation for another hour, but we would likely get ourselves in even more trouble than we're already in. Yeah.

Sean Powers (53:14):
Yeah. I mean, I'm gonna go get sugar free hammer.com reserved cuz I mean that's like my next band name, but apart from that I got nothing

Doc Searls (53:21):
<Laugh> I like that sugar free hammer. <Laugh> I'm thinking of similar things. I can't say because we can't be profane. Damn <laugh>

Jonathan Bennett (53:34):
So on the discord, I like says we each need to ask each other what our favorite script editor, scripting language and text editor are.

Doc Searls (53:41):
Oh, okay.

Sean Powers (53:43):
Bash

Doc Searls (53:45):
<Laugh> oh, the,

Jonathan Bennett (53:47):
There you go. Sean's easy. For me it's probably nano and Python these days. There are a bunch of scripting languages that I enjoy, but Python is the one I turn to most often these days, doc, what have I

Doc Searls (54:02):
Me? Well, for me, I, it VI, but not a I don't, I don't script anything. So I mean, it, it just edit a text. So VI as far as pro I

Jonathan Bennett (54:13):
Pro VI and pros, eh,

Doc Searls (54:15):
Yeah. VI and pros. Yeah. V VI and writing <laugh>

Sean Powers (54:19):
I don't know how old you are, but I feel like like VI VIM bash, and then nano Python was like a gen X slash millennial divide there. I F you made me feel old because <laugh>, I mean, wow. Yeah.

Jonathan Bennett (54:34):
I can tell you exactly why I used nano I, I figured it out a couple years ago. My first programming experience was Q basic using it. It's essentially the, the old Microsoft dos edit program with the key basic language added to it. So I grew up editing text documents and editing code in Microsoft edit. And what's the editor that looks almost exactly like that. Not almost exactly, but it looks most similar to that. Well, it's nano and that is why I'm most comfortable there.

Sean Powers (55:04):
Fair enough. I learned programming on turbo Pascal on an IBM 80, 86. So I'm old.

Doc Searls (55:13):
<Laugh> I've I've got all you guys. I wouldn't even go in house. How far

Sean Powers (55:19):
Doc? Like I rocks.

Doc Searls (55:22):
You're not as old as I, oh my gosh. Well guys, it's <laugh>, you've used another really fun hour onFLOSS Weekly and we will be back next week with let's see, making sure this yeah. A you press the CEO of scarf. He's coming up next week. So that's coming and yeah, there you go. So see,

Sean Powers (55:51):
Can I plug my, can I plug my course? Oh, you had

Doc Searls (55:53):
Something in, oh my gosh. I, I just assumed we plugged all through this thing. Go plug.

Sean Powers (55:57):
No, <laugh> I got nothing. I'm just kidding. <Laugh> no, just on my YouTube channel over here. Yeah, just my YouTube channel. The Linux plus course that I, I recently started is, is going, it's gonna be pretty awesome. I think it'll be the complete Linux plus course. And we can learn together. There is a guy that looks just like me and yeah, that's it. That's all I have.

Jonathan Bennett (56:23):
Yeah. <Laugh> I looked up at the wrong time and I heard Sean talking and I saw Sean's mouth moving and they weren't matching up. It's

Doc Searls (56:29):
Very confused. That's like Sean, check

Jonathan Bennett (56:31):
Your mic, buddy. <Laugh> so I will, I will plug@hackaday.com to make sure and to check out every Friday morning, the security column goes live, all kinds of fun stuff there. And then the untitled Linux show on the TWI plus discord. And if you're not a member of twit plus yet get with it, we hope to see you there.

Doc Searls (56:53):
Fantastic guys. Okay. So Aveta just once already. I'll do it again. Thanks everybody. Come back next week. We'll see you then.

Speaker 6 (57:01):
Hey, I'm Rod Pyle editor in chief VAD Astra magazine, and each week I joined with my co-host to bring you This Week in Space, the latest and greatest news from the final frontier. We talk to NASA, chief space, scientists, engineers, educators, and artists. And sometimes we just shoot the breeze over. What's hot and what's not in space, books and TV, and we do it all for you, our fellow true believers. So whether you're an armchair adventure or waiting for your turn to grab a slot in Elon's Mars, rocket, join us on this weekend space and be part of the greatest adventure of all time.