Bonum Certa Men Certa

Features Considered Harmful

Article by figosdev

Stop



Summary: "But the benefits of Free software, free candy and new features are all meaningless, if the user isn't in control."

I'm a fan of BASIC. In fact, my favourite modern language, now 5 years old, was originally named after Basic. While Dijkstra is famous for hating on the language, it was his editor (Wirth, I believe) who incited decades of clickbait titles by working the infamous line attributed to Dijkstra into the top of his article.



I do not hate Dijkstra in return. In fact, his stance on Basic was reasonable enough, so long as we are talking about the actual arguments he made -- which applied more to the original line-numbered versions of Basic than today's versions, which look like Pascal by comparison. Basic was good enough as a first language for Linus Torvalds. Dijkstra actually had a number of great ideas that Basic once lacked. And in more ways than one, it doesn't bother me that software evolves.

Whether it was his intention to save Basic or get people to use a better language instead, Basic itself isn't harmful. Some of its features may lead to worse programming, but I think Torvalds (as a coder) proves that using it doesn't necessarily prevent you from gaining good programming skills. Some languages indeed will teach better discipline, but if you're determined to be lazy, you'll probably find (or create) tools that suit your preferences.

I am not against features, per se. I'm also against prohibition and the drug war. But the great harm done by heroin cannot be dismissed -- it kills people, and although there is no law that says you must try heroin, getting away from it isn't always as simple as "just don't use it". Fortunately, while I did find Basic somewhat addictive in practice, I have not tried heroin. Though I've certainly lived in places where it was a problem. In fact, it's a problem that tends to increase when the alternatives are fought harder against.

GitHub could arguably be the heroin of the Free software world. We know the harm it does, we've been warned about it for years, there's absolutely no mandate to use it at all -- yet people keep finding themselves addicted to it. GitHub isn't known so much for killing people, but it poses a great threat to projects that use it. What GitHub actually kills, is software freedom.

I've written a lot about GitHub lately, but in this article it is just one example of a larger problem. Like with Basic, it is not "GitHub" itself, but some of its features that we should worry about. And the warnings against it have come from Torvalds and Stallman alike.

The complaints from Torvalds against GitHub are closer to Dijkstra's complaints about Basic -- GitHub encourages bad practices in Git management, and breaks existing features. It trains you to be a worse Git user. I think this is a minor problem next to the others. But just as Dijkstra is a pioneer of structured programming, Torvalds is the original author of Git. That makes the critique much more notable.

The fact that GitHub breaks Git the way that it does, fits in with a larger complaint of my own -- even if Torvalds decides (or is paid to) change his mind about it. It was developed by Chris Wanstrath, but it was developed along lines that are not entirely different from Microsoft's EEE tactics -- which today I will offer a new acronym and description for:

1. Steal 2. Add Bloat 3. Original Trashed

It's difficult conceptually to "steal" Free software, because it (sort of, effectively) belongs to everyone. It's not always Public Domain -- copyleft is meant to prevent that. The only way you can "steal" free software is by taking it from everyone and restricting it again. That's like "stealing" the ocean or the sky, and putting it somewhere that people can't get to it. But this is what non-free software does. (You could also simply go against the license terms, but I doubt Stallman would go for the word "stealing" or "theft" as a first choice to describe non-compliance).

I came up with this SABOTage acronym when I was going to sleep, and originally it was Steal, Add Bloat, Attack -- I guess spelling isn't a strong point when I'm tired. But this is what people do even in the Free software world today; they take away compatibility (as GitHub did with some Git features Torvalds thinks should work properly), they add stuff that is easier for a large corporation to host (Gitlab too, is terribly bloated I'm afraid -- but it can be self-hosted at least) and they attack the original -- by dragging everyone into GitHub (as it's "better").

I really do understand the appeal of GitHub -- I'm a former user as well. While the complaints of Torvalds are relevant to this discussion, the complaints by Richard Stallman are more important to me. In 2015, he said to GNUstep developers:

"GitHub does things that are quite bad for free software and is not interested in changing them. If you want to move off Savannah, please pick some other place."

This led to a shallow debate on the merits of GitHub vs. alternatives, and Stallman argued that GitHub negatively affects the license choices people make. One person replied that he was having an unrealistic expectation of GitHub, but this was the thing -- we can make it about the design of GitHub, or we can look at the effects. In effect, GitHub successfully gets people away from making good choices.

It also includes non-free Javascript, which many people are willing to forgive or overlook sometimes. But this discussion was about code hosting for the GNU Project itself! If any project should not rely on GitHub and non-free Javascript, it's the GNU project.

"But it still works if you turn Javascript off" they said... again, this is one situation where many of us are willing to overlook non-free Javascript: if the website still works when you disable it. This is still wildly inappropriate for the GNU Project to endorse, because they're still encouraging users to run it.

Other than the fact that running and promoting only Free software (yes, I'm familiar with Stallman's latest article on the topic) is one of the goals of the GNU Project, I think there are worse things about GitHub. And I think that GNU projects that continue to use it unapologetically, such as GNU Radio and GNUstep, are proving that their developers DON'T care about your freedom, and do not represent (nor achieve) the goals of the GNU Project.

And the fact that Microsoft has spent decades trying to co-opt and control Free software? Who honestly cares about that?

But I am aware that such Microsoft-neutral or Pro-Microsoft developers are not necessarily agreed with by every developer on these projects. In the instance of GNUstep, we are talking about the leader of the project who doesn't care about your freedom.

I did say that GitHub was just an example; it's a very big example, though not the only one. Microsoft is taking over Python as well. And the way it's taking over Python does have the aim (and the success) in dragging it into the GitHub trap, because GitHub is perfect for that sort of thing -- but the tactics being used would hurt Python with or without GitHub as well. It conquers projects the same way as empires conquer nations -- by planting flags in whatever they want to own:

This Techrights article is from 2010, and though they have done this farther back than that, and continue to do the same, Microsoft is still planting flags all over the place. It wants to run your conferences. It wants to host your code. It wants you to agree to its terms. It wants you to adjust your development to its heavily contrived, self-serving "standards" from OOXML all the way back to Rich Text Format.

Again and again, Microsoft "Steals" or "Steers" the development process itself so it can gain control (pronounced: "ownership") of the software. It is a gradual process, where Microsoft has more and more influence until they dominate the project and with it, the user. This is similar to the process where cults (or drug addiction) take over people's lives, and similar to the process where narcissists interfere in the lives of others -- by staking a claim and gradually dominating the person or project.

Then they Add Bloat -- more features. GitHub is friendly to use, you don't have to care about how Git works to use it (this is true of many GitHub clones as well, as even I do not really care how Git works very much. It took a long time for someone to even drag me towards GitHub for code hosting, until they were acquired and I stopped using it) and due to its GLOBAL size, nobody can or ought to reproduce its network effects.

I understand the draw of network effects. That's why larger federated instances of code hosts are going to be more popular than smaller instances. We really need a mix -- smaller instances to be easy to host and autonomous, larger instances to draw people away from even more gigantic code silos. We can't get away from network effects (just like the War on Drugs will never work) but we can make them easier and less troublesome (or safer) to deal with.

Finally, the Original is trashed, and the SABOTage is complete. This has happened with Python against Python 2, despite protests from seasoned and professional developers, it was deliberately attempted with Systemd against not just sysvinit but ALL alternatives -- Free software acts like proprietary software when it treats the existence of alternatives as a problem to be solved. I personally never trust a project with developers as arrogant as that.

I should thank Roy for inspiring this article, today he made what I consider a minor error in sharing this:

"Kushal Das: A few new generation command line tools" #cli #freesw #gnu #linux

"New generation" indeed. (Original Trashed). Let's look at what these "new generation" command line tools are like:

"...ripgrep was the first Rust tool I started using daily as a replacement for grep"

Great! a GitHub-based tool written in Rust, which is also GitHub-based. Not unlike this illustrative effort to recreated GNU coreutils in Rust: https://github.com/uutils/coreutils

"Cross-platform Rust rewrite of the GNU coreutils" -- and what's the license?

"uutils/coreutils is licensed under the MIT License"

"A short and simple permissive license with conditions only requiring preservation of copyright and license notices. Licensed works, modifications, and larger works may be distributed under different terms and without source code."

"And without source code." Steal, Add Bloat, Original Trashed.

But there are still more little goodies from GitCrap that inspired this article:

"...exa is the replacement for ls."

Oh good, I was hoping to replace a standard GNU tool with something from Microsoft GitHub. Wonderful.

"...bat is the one stop replacement for cat and less."

It's difficult for me to get excited about these "next generation" tools, when I spent several years working to GET AWAY from Microsoft, and they want me to get all my software from GitHub. If I wanted to get all my software from Microsoft and the rest of GIAFAM, I'd just use Windows.

And speaking of, the coup continues this week, with the new COO at Microzilla: Adam Seligman -- "formerly of Google, Salesforce, and Microsoft."

GREAT! That's also how they gradually took over Nokia, Apache Software Foundation and became the boss of Linus. [Editor's note: Even the COO of GitHub now bosses Linus]

Of course I don't really blame Roy for sharing that link -- there are several ways he ends up with stuff like that, and just as often it comes with a warning or complaint that it needs to #deletegithub. And if this article helps, the link surely inspired it. Much worse than the link itself is the mess that it leads to.

Here's something else to consider -- the way that websites subtly (and sometimes innocently) add to the problem with handy Share icons (which I'm not entirely against). A colleague informs me that one of the things that draws people to GitHub is the way that other websites make it easier to integrate with it. I can't fault his logic, he's right. But here's the reality of that. Such tie-in features will always be implemented for the largest option first, and typically the largest option only.

They're not going to bother reinforcing smaller choices usually, they're going to reinforce the largest one. So this practice itself -- while technically and theoretically neutral (as it could offer several options for code repos) actually encourages monopoly in practice most of the time. I'm not really against the practice -- I'm against its outcome. Which means we should be sceptical or think critically about the practice as well.

There's a meme about creepy vans with "FREE CANDY" painted on the side, which I took one of the photos from and edited it so that it said "FEATURES" instead. This is more or less how I feel about new features in general, given my experience with their abuse in development, marketing and the takeover of formerly good software projects.

People then accuse me of being against features, of course. As with the Dijkstra article, the real problem isn't Basic itself. The problem isn't features per se (though they do play a very key role in this problem) and I'm not really against features -- or candy, for that matter.

I'm against these things being used as bait, to entrap people in an unpleasant situation that makes escape difficult. You know, "lock-in". Don't get in the van -- don't even go NEAR the van.

Candy is nice, and some features are nice too. But we would all be better off if we could get the candy safely, and delete the creepy horrible van that comes with it. That's true whether the creepy van is GitHub, or surveillance by GIAFAM, or a Leviathan "init" system, or just breaking decades of perfectly good Python code, to try to force people to develop differently because Google or Microsoft (who both have had heavy influence over newer Python development) want to try to force you to -- all while using "free" software.

If all that makes free software "free" is the license -- (yes, it's the primary and key part, it's a necessary ingredient) then putting "free" software on GitHub shouldn't be a problem, right? Not if you're running LibreJS, at least.

In practice, "Free in license only" ignores the fact that if software is effectively free, the user is also effectively free. If free software development gets dragged into doing the bidding of non-free software companies and starts creating lock-in for the user, even if it's external or peripheral, then they simply found an effective way around the true goal of the license. They did it with Tivoisation, so we know that it's possible. They've done this in a number of ways, and they're doing it now.

If people are trying to make the user less free, and they're effectively making the user less free, maybe the license isn't an effective monolithic solution. The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance. They never said "The cost of freedom is slapping a free license on things", as far as I know. (Of course it helps). This really isn't a straw man, so much as a rebuttal to the extremely glib take on software freedom in general that permeates development communities these days.

But the benefits of Free software, free candy and new features are all meaningless, if the user isn't in control.

Don't get in the van.

"The freedom to NOT run the software, to be free to avoid vendor lock-in through appropriate modularization/encapsulation and minimized dependencies; meaning any free software can be replaced with a user’s preferred alternatives (freedom 4)." – Peter Boughton

Long live rms, and happy hacking.

Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Recent Techrights' Posts

Next Month 'New Techrights' Turns Two
Next month, on the fourth week, it'll be 2 years since the migration
Online Safety Act Tries to Accomplish the Impossible
All I can say is, "good luck with that!"
 
They Tell Us That "Cloud Storage" is Safe and Robust to Incidents Like Fires
Do you have backups? Where are they and who controls them?
"Allowing SDL to default to Wayland caused a number of customer issues so keep the default at X11 for now"
2025 is another year of Wayland ambitions. It's also a year of self-fulfilling prophecies.
In The United Kingdom (UK), Microsoft Search (Bing) Falls to All-Time Low
Grow? What grow??? It's collapsing.
GNU/Linux Reaches 5% in Oman
Some GNU/Linux distros are made in Oman
Google's "AI Mode" is a Pathetic Joke Prematurely Introduced in the UK (Like "Bard", Which Sank the Company's Shares)
what Google "thinks" about PCLinuxOS
What the Free Software Foundation Started Four Decades Ago is Becoming Mainstream
"Four decades; Four freedoms; For all users"
Doing a Better Job at Labelling Slop Images
we'll label screenshots that contain slop, typically with red-coloured text overlay
Social Control Media is Out of Style
What's your excuse for wasting time on (or in) it?
Maldives: GNU/Linux at All-Time High, Windows at New Lows
data from statCounter shows a reassuring trend
Efficiency is Good, So Why Won't Governments Cull LLM Companies Using Stronger, Stringent Policies?
Like every bubble that ever existed, including some recent ones, an end will come
The Defunct Site LinuxConfig Has Published a Fake Article About Richard Stallman Using LLM Slop, Which Stallman Calls "Bullshit Generator"
Worse yet, it is writing using a "Bullshit Generator" (the term used by Stallman) about Stallman's health
Microsoft Windows Falls to All-Time Lows in Morocco and Algeria
About 70% or even less
StopGenAI in the Cyber Show (C|S)
covering a theme that we too covered a lot lately
Gemini Links 03/08/2025: Once-a-Decade Couch Shopping and Blessings in Disguise
Links for the day
Links 03/08/2025: Political Catch-up, Global Warming, and Hunger
Links for the day
Brittany Day Entered LLM Slop Into LinuxSecurity.com and Something Hilarious Happened: The Site is "Exploited"
The brainless, effortless copypasta of "slop artists" shows its limits
Links 03/08/2025: Microsoft Exchange 0-day Exploited and Avoidable Nuclear Escalation
Links for the day
Definitely Not a Ponzi Scheme
Bitcoin v Microsoft
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a Billionaires' Lobby
Billionaires that control tech companies
Microsoft Borrows 3 Billion Dollars Per Month, a Company Truly Worth Trillions Would Not Do This
if Windows (and Office) "market share" fell from about 90% to barely 30%, how come Microsoft is now "valued" at 20 times more?
It's Even Worse Than Microsoft Lunduke Puts It; GNOME is SLAPPing Journalists
In our experience, GNOME is so malicious - some elements of it in particular - that it would launch multiple simultaneous SLAPP campaigns not only against journalists but also their spouses
GNU/Linux Adoption Reaches All-Time Highs in Chile, statCounter Indicates
This month marks 4 years since Vista 11 came out (as a fake "leak") and some surveys still measure its adoption at less than 40%
Slop Will Not Change the World
Some of us grow up sooner and leave that nonsense behind (or altogether avoid/skip it)
Gemini Links 03/08/2025: Nostalgia and TOFU
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 02, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, August 02, 2025
Google Throwing Out the Search Engine With the Bathwater is a Complete and Utter 'Shi---ow' as the Company Drowns in Debt, Layoffs, and Worse
The mainstream media almost never mentions GAFAM debt
Operating Systems' Statistics in New Zealand: GNU/Linux Up, Windows Down to All-Time Lows
Remember all this when the media says that Microsoft became like 10 times more valuable in those 15 years (from 400 billion to 4,000 billion in alleged "worth")
Microsoft Windows "Market Share" Measured Around 2.7% in Iraq, Plunges to 6.5% in Saudi Arabia
Microsoft isn't on the agenda in Iraq
GNU/Linux Share in Sweden Has Doubled Since PewDiePie, A Swede, Recommended It
months ago he moved to GNU/Linux, then told others to consider doing the same
GNU/Linux Hits Record High in Portugal
GNU/Linux picking up in Portugal
Gemini Protocol is Not Dying, It's Growing
When people say things like "Gemini Protocol is dying" the data does not support them
GNU/Linux is Thriving This Summer
It is meanwhile acknowledged, even by Microsoft pushers, that many GNU/Linux PCs will get sabotaged next month
The End of Microsoft's Reign in Spain: Windows Falls to All-Time Lows in Spanish Web Traffic
Windows sank to new lows in Spain
The Bots Never Sleep: In The Weekends, Slopfarms Dominate Google News, Majority of Entries in Google Are Fake Articles About 'Linux'
Google is fast becoming an ocean of plagiarism; the same goes for Google News, which was supposed to have extra quality control
Russia's Yandex Has Caught Up With Bing in Terms of "Market Share"
Microsoft has been firing loads of Bing workers for over 2 years already
Canada: GNU/Linux Up to Records Highs, Windows Down to Record Lows
Microsoft already announcing some plans to shut down Vista 11
Gemini Links 02/08/2025: Transducers in Typed Racket and American ISPs
Links for the day
Links 02/08/2025: Microsoft Already Kills Vista 11 SE, Smartphone Sales Down, Truth Gets "You're Fired!" in the US
Links for the day
Video: The Rise of GNU/Linux and Free Software as Seen by RMS in 2004
DTP's founder argued that when Windows goes below 85% "market share", it'll lose its grip in the monopoly sense
Russia: GNU/Linux Rises to Highest Adoption Level Since Invasion of Ukraine
Moving up in the north
Microsoft's Latest Financial Report: We "Gained" 300 Million Dollars in "Goodwill" and Liabilities Grew by 32 Billion Dollars
Microsoft's debt has reached an all-time high
The Register US = The Register MS
Formerly The Register UK
Weeks After Microsoft Shut Down Its Operations in Pakistan Windows Falls to All-Time Lows
Only less than a month ago it was quietly revealed, based on laid-off staff, that Microsoft shut down in Pakistan
Criminal Behaviour is the Standard Operating Procedure at Microsoft
In the future I'll be able to tell how, when dealing with SLAPPs from Microsofters, their Microsoft services failed me and sometimes even blocked my contacts
GNU/Linux Rises to All-Time Highs in Europe
many people will get fired for buying Microsoft
All-Time Highs for GNU/Linux on the Client Desktop/Laptop, Based on Steam Survey
GNU/Linux rose to 2.89% in Steam
Links 02/08/2025: Blaugust 2025 and "Russia Declares Navalny Memoir ‘Extremist’"
Links for the day
Free Software is Not a Business Model
Go ahead, ask your friend, "how do you plan to monetise your children?"
When (Almost) One-Man Operations Are Disguised as Medium-Sized Companies
the CEO hides in the US (hiding from his ex-wives, 4 daughters from those wives, and Sirius staff that he defrauded)
LLM Slop Harms Real Literature, Real Web Sites, Real Journalism
LLM slop is a parasite and it'll run out of legitimate outputs
Upcoming OSI Scandal Series
The OSI is a rogue actor because it serves Microsoft in exchange for money
Slopwatch: The Issue Persists, But the Consensus in the Media Changes as Google Enrages It With LLM Plagiarism
We've meanwhile assessed the latest output from Linuxiac
Microsoft Actually in Trouble, Microsofters Unable to Obey Judges' Orders
For the second time in a week, Microsofters are unable to obey orders
IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 01, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, August 01, 2025
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Links 02/08/2025: İstanbul Retail Inflation Reaches 42.48%, US FBI Opens Office in New Zealand
Links for the day
Gemini Links 02/08/2025: ZFS, LLM Hype, and Fake Modules
Links for the day
Links 01/08/2025: Health, Conflict, and Attacks on Freedom of the Press
Links for the day
Microsoft's Debt Exploded by 15.4 Billion Dollars in the Past 9 Months Alone (Despite All the Layoffs)
As of minutes ago, at 6PM on a Friday, the numbers are made public
Meeting (Webchat) With Maria Arranz Gomez, Florian Grundies, Jürgen Janda and Konstantinos Kortsaris Confronts EPO Management About Breaking Promises and Crushing Workers
The lack of consistent messages suggests plans other than what's advertised and the lack of consultation (secrecy) likewise
Links 01/08/2025: "The Great British Firewall" and U.S. Army Sponsors Palantir
Links for the day
For Second Day in a Row, Top Story in The Register MS is "Microsoft Says"
The editor in chief exercises control over everybody else
LLMs as Attack Method Against Free Software and Programming
DDoS in "hey hi" (slop) clothing
Stability and Reliability, Backward Compatibility
I don't fancy relying on social control media as "sources"
What "the News" Looks Like in 2025
The "says" (or "sez") phenomenon
History Will Be Distorted, Sometimes Intentionally, Under the Guise of Intelligence (Manipulated/Curated Slop)
Militarised misinformation or military-grade chaff is a national security threat, even domestically
Financial Engineering Companies: A Company Worth 4 Trillion Dollars Would Not Borrow 100+ Billion Dollars at Interest Rates Like Today's
Many headlines perpetuate the lie Microsoft had just 2 waves of layoffs
Microsoft is Googlebombing "Linux" While Paying Former News Sites to Publish SPAM
How much lower will IDG sink?
Google as a 'Bullshit Generator' Disguised as Intelligence
It'll probably cause Google to get sued a lot, both by individuals and companies
As Expected, Google in the UK Now Experiments With Slop Instead of Web Search
At this point more people ought to stop and think: Does Google's search engine deserve trust?
The Data You Don't Give Away is Your Advantage
stop sharing data that does not need to be shared
Being Obedient or Doing the Right Thing
The world always changes for the better because of people who think "Outside the Box", not the cogs
Gemini Links 01/08/2025: Happy Hacking Keyboards and New Gemini Arrivals
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 31, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 31, 2025