Matthew Garrett

The proposal talks a lot about using btrfs features, but there doesn't appear to be anything based on that.

However if you look at the design goals, most of them have been implemented, although there is not yet wide usage.

The best way to try this out in a runable desktop OS is probably Silverblue.

https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/

> We want a unified scheme, how we can install and update OS images, user apps, runtimes and frameworks.

The storage backend for this is OSTree, using HTTP as the transport; it's analogous to Git for binary files and does not require special filesystem features, only hardlinks.

https://ostree.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

> We want a unified scheme how you can relatively freely mix OS images, apps, runtimes and frameworks on the same system.

Flatpak provides the abstraction layer for this; the base OS can be anything and the applications use only libraries from a Flatpak runtime; by default, Flatpak uses OSTree to store applications.

Snap is similar, although it requires AppArmor, so can't run on many popular distros, and I think there's only one runtime that you're required to use, so no "mix and match".

Docker is similar, although it can't handle desktop applications in a sensible manner (no sandbox).

> We want a fully trusted system, where cryptographic verification of all executed code can be done, all the way to the firmware, as standard feature of the system.

There are several points here:

* firmware/pre-boot: [Edit: TPM can…

I'm sorry, I was overreaching. Your reply seemed to support the OPs idea that Adria Richards was harassed for no reason by "MRA losers".

>These are the people I'm talking about - the ones who've largely left this place behind because the tone of the community has shifted to one where any talk of race, gender, or even age (or in fact any talk of institutional problems in the industry) is automatically the work of professional victims (and a largely fictional narrative of a "social justice warrior") out to oppress techies.

I won't deny that the MRA side is often reactionary, but you must admit that the "social justice" side is just as bad. The internet of today is designed for reactionism, makes it so easy to react and so easy to find controversial conversations.

This is something I've noticed a lot - both sides are as bad as each other. Both claim to be better people, but both are so mired in faeces that they haven't even noticed they're throwing it themselves. (I've been up for 36 hours that's the best I can come up with).

> (and a largely fictional narrative of a "social justice warrior")

That's a very opinionated statement. Unfortunately, few agree on the definition of SJW, so everyone makes up their own. Pretending that there isn't a clique of 'progressives' in the tech world doing their best to cause trouble is just fantasy. Look at Adria's creepshot/dog whistling, the elevatorgate thing, that time Ben Noordhuis was forced out of the Node community because of a SJW…

The video starts off with a factual error:

> MIT fired him from his job as a professor at the university

He had no such job - he in fact emphatically left MIT employment (as research staff, he was never a professor) before starting GNU so that MIT wouldn't have a copyright claim on his work. He had an office at MIT, nonetheless, because he had politically powerful friends.

See https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.en.html: "In January 1984 I quit my job at MIT and began writing GNU software. Leaving MIT was necessary so that MIT would not be able to interfere with distributing GNU as free software. If I had remained on the staff, MIT could have claimed to own the work, and could have imposed their own distribution terms, or even turned the work into a proprietary software package. I had no intention of doing a large amount of work only to see it become useless for its intended purpose: creating a new software-sharing community. However, Professor Winston, then the head of the MIT AI Lab, kindly invited me to keep using the lab's facilities."

The speaker goes on to make these comments about what cancel culture teaches:

> The other thing that cancel culture teaches that there's no forgiveness about anything, right? The minute you make a mistake, you are forever shunned by everyone else, and - that's wrong, that's completely antithetical to everything the free software movement is about.

That's an excellent sign that what happened to RMS is not cancel culture - multiple…

> Here is all of the stuff, filtered through Wikipedia's editorial process that is intended to eliminate unfounded personal opinion, stuff from unidentifiable sources, nonsense, and bias. Look, it isn't a hate parade; therefore there is no hate parade as M. Shuttleworth claimed.

Actually, that Wikipedia link is not meant as evidence against Shutterworth's comments or in defense of my own. It's provided merely as context to those who are just now hearing about this situation.

No, my comment regarding the lack of a hate parade is supported only by common sense. A position easily taken once one digs a bit deeper into this subject. You should click through some of the actual references mentioned in (and outside of) that Wikipedia article:

Matthew Garrett's comments,
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/25376.html

Bradley Kuhn's comments,
http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/07/07/harmony-harmful.html

Jonathan Riddell's comments,
https://blogs.kde.org/2013/06/26/kubuntu-wont-be-switching-mir-or-xmir

Aaron Seigo's comments,
https://plus.google.com/+AaronSeigo/posts/76Nd9RSTZWp

Then, tell me if these opinions or the community comments they generated actually seem hateful.

In fact, the only substantial hate generated by this debacle was really in response to Canonical's unfounded swipe at Wayland, which was later retracted, and Shutterworth branding of opponents as "The Open Source Tea Party". And even that level of grandstanding only generated a modicum of hate from the community in…

Something that I would offer that, though Purism does advertise, I do wish they would hit it home more, they give a lot to the FOSS community. No really, they give back A LOT.

- Phosh, their phone shell, it being worked into upstream GNOME, and libhandy, which they started, is in upstream gtk4. GNOME Calls used to be a Purism app, now it is a GNOME app being maintained primarily by Purism.

- Several of their full time staff are Debian Maintainers and Debian Developers. One of the full time staff is a Mobian Developer and is very active in maintaining/developing Mobian.

- Purism has made a lot of effort to ensure that their applications and framework is available to the Pinephone, and to the greater community. Purism's work has helped advanced the Pinephone many times over.

- Several Purism employees are active in the Pinephone community, and help out not only the devs, but users who need help!

- For those that know my work (I have been working on MMS and VVM for the Pinephone/Librem 5), the Purism developers took a lot of time to help and mentor me so that I could get these features out there. They simply did not have to do that, but they did. I simply do not think those features would be available at all if it weren't for their help. (To those devs, I won't name you as I don't know if you want to be named, but you know who you are, You have my sincere gratitude.)

- Their Coreboot efforts has enabled others to port coreboot to other laptops. Here is one example:…

> HN doesn't have a universal opinion about anything.

That's a matter of perspective. I don't think a literal interpretation is useful. There will always be some troll promoting vile or insane things for attention (among other reasons). Functionally? The internet tends to ensure there is always some zeitgeist. Eg https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/28232.html

The world is a big pile of topics, including recent events and discoveries. Users don't see the most sacred cows or derided topics, because they are not promoted, flagged or otherwise down in the pile. This is common among most modern internet communities, as opposed to flat hierarchy formats like newsgroups.

> HN commenters overall have pretty diverse opinions about those things

I'm not as sure about that as you are, looking at another topic that's in the top 20 today - from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39851564

* Snapchat has a long history of accusations regarding the damage to youth

* I have no love for social media companies, but as a citizen of Ontario this is also not what I want my tax dollars going towards.

* There's a lot more to be pissed off about, like the OTPP pissing away $95MM on FTX. (the closest thing to a defense, is whataboutism here)

* If you work for/with these platforms, you are the baddie

* Because no adult wants to provide ID to access normal websites with tracking tied unambiguously to their govt ID

etc.

[Edit] Not without irony, this Policing story was flagged.