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“just open sourced someone else’s code ama” - a case study in fucking around and finding out (coolmathgam.es)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by self@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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from the linked github thread:

Your project is in violation of the AGPL, and you have stated this is intentional and you have no plans to open source it. This is breaking the law, and as such I've began to help you with the first steps of re-open sourcing the plugin.

the project author (who gets paid for violating the AGPL via patreon) responds like a mediocre crypto grifter and insists their violation of the law be debated on the discord they control (where their shitty community can shout down the reporter):

While keeping code private doesn't guarantee security, it does make it harder for bad actors to keep up with changes. You are welcome to debate this matter in the MakePlace discord: https://discord.com/invite/YuvcPzCuhq If you are able to convince the MakePlace community that keeping the code open-source is better, I will respect the wishes of the community.

aaaand the smackdown:

Respectfully, I won't attempt to "debate" or "convince" anyone; I'm leaving this pull request and my fork here for others to see and use. It is not a matter of "better"; you are violating a software license and the law. It does not "make it harder" for anyone; Harmony hooking exists, IL modification exists, you can modify plugins from other plugins.

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[-] pja@awful.systems 31 points 11 months ago

Discord is terrible. But it’s also easy to set up & easy wins out over good but annoying every time.

[-] binboupan@lemm.ee 36 points 11 months ago

My biggest issue with Discord is that most discussion boards moved there and it's ridiculously hard to find anything there. Plus it's a privacy nightmare..

[-] pja@awful.systems 35 points 11 months ago

Yup. Discoverability in Discord servers is dire. The privacy issues are the bonus shit topping.

“How dare you not read through six months of discussion threads in order to find the last time your question was answered” is such a great way to welcome newbies to a project.

Discord is actually pretty good at the thing it was designed for: realtime comms between friends, both text & voice. It’s terrible at everything else & I wish people would stop using it, but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen any time soon.

[-] self@awful.systems 11 points 11 months ago

what do you mean you don’t want to beg answers out of the most hostile parts of an inevitably toxic, entrenched discord community just to know how to fire up the expensive open source hardware you’ve purchased? oh the search feature discord is actively making worse didn’t surface any answers? then suffer

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

*scene*

...It's Fine, Guize. discord totally won't hold all this history and context for ransom the moment it suits their income model or it feels convenient to do so, they're not like Slack. look at all these free features! we need to learn nothing from the past!

god.... I just want to enjoy being able to post gifs during this conference? what's so hard to understand?! ....gah, stop overreacting so much...

*/scene*

(just in case it's hard to tell, I'm rather not a fan of this state of affairs)

[e: lemmy ate my scenetags [e2: wow it has really shitty filters for this]]

[-] self@awful.systems 8 points 11 months ago

but the alternatives don’t have the group voice chat and screen sharing and nazis I use for gaming. therefore I will continue to use discord for everything, especially the non-gaming stuff it sucks at

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 9 points 11 months ago

I remember sorta kinda getting back into lulnix maybe 15 years ago? something like that, and being astounded that people were expected to ask and get answers on IRC. Discord is just an extension of that .

Oh yeah and almost all those projects on IRC got hosed by the Andrew Lee takeover of Freenode.

[-] Dkarma@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

I'm curious about this...got a link where I can read up?

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 7 points 11 months ago
[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 3 points 11 months ago

Ah thanks I was also curious, but not curious enough to ask.

[-] Dkarma@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

Thanks. This is pretty crazy.

Someone “accidentally” blocks a CIDR /16 block.

Haha. This made me crack up.

[-] self@awful.systems 2 points 11 months ago

this seems like an even earlier, worse, and faster enshittification than what happened to reddit, but nobody learned from it

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 4 points 11 months ago

It was super-niched, effectively no-one gives a shit about IRC.

[-] earthquake@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago

I'm not aware of any complete histories, but these two articles have the gist of it, while unfortunately missing out on a LOT of the weird things that Andrew Lee said while doing it:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/freenode-irc-has-been-taken-over-by-the-crown-prince-of-korea/

https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/26/freenode_irc_takeover/

[-] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 3 points 11 months ago

Ctrl + F is hard

Seriously though it is frustrating because it's not web search discoverable at all (unlike the web forums of old) and discords search function is very hit or miss in my experience.

[-] locallynonlinear@awful.systems 9 points 11 months ago

Maybe unpopular take here, but I love discord as an excellent fit for specific use cases. I think plenty of groups that should be web forums use discord wrong, but for several of my favorite communities:

  1. They are better smaller, I don't necessarily want or need them to be discoverable aside from word of mouth.
  2. They are better without search history, because the discussion is more ephemeral and personal instead of assuming that anyone is digging history in after hours
  3. Ad hoc voice chat rooms is a useful boon because of exactly 1 and 2.
  4. No ads. Yes I understand the privacy issues, but I would still prefer to have opt in subscriptions, no ads, and my chats are harvested than many alternatives for small communities that need to subsidize costs. (Again fediverse, if not ads, requires a buy in in terms of technical operational costs)
  5. Trivial to build specialized addons in the case your community has a need.

Good examples for me are: Friend of Friend Groups for organizing dinners or parties Online gaming communities Book clubs Co-worker chat alternative to slack

[-] corbin@awful.systems 3 points 11 months ago

I'm a little surprised that people feel like Discord does a good job of (4) and (5). On (4), Discord's ToS used to permit Discord to resell your personal data in bulk (and still might allow it; haven't read the ToS in a while), all guilds are co-located in a single database, and rumor is that three-letter agencies are allowed to make relatively complex queries against that database. On (5), Discord is well-known to ban alternative clients, hacked clients, API clients, extensions, addons, and even chatbots, without any due process or recourse.

Like, yes, it's a nice service, but is it really that much nicer than Mumble or IRC?

this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
176 points (100.0% liked)

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