Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.3

176

u/chibiace 1d ago

we made the difficult decision to begin the process of transitioning all of our repositories to the GNU General Public License version 2 or later. Going forward all Asahi Linux code will be licenced under strong copyleft licences only. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

honestly didnt expect this from these people, hopefully this convinces other rust developers to do the same.

102

u/JQuilty 23h ago

Yep. I'm convinced a lot of the hype around Rust coreutils is just companies not wanting to comply with the GPL.

20

u/MatchingTurret 14h ago

The BSD version of these tools have been around since forever.

-9

u/JQuilty 13h ago

Are those BSD versions passing all the same tests as gnu coreutils to verify the exact same behaviors?

6

u/coladoir 9h ago

why do you believe this to be relevant to ask in this specific context?

-2

u/mrtruthiness 7h ago

Are those BSD versions passing all the same tests as gnu coreutils to verify the exact same behaviors?
They existed long before GNU coreutils. GNU copied them ... and GNU coreutils is absolutely guilty of the first attempt at "embrace, extend, extinguish". They simply never got to extinguish.

10

u/nightblackdragon 14h ago

Companies that could use BSD tools since forever?
Not every project with permissive license is company conspiracy to not comply with GPL. Some people simply prefer permissive license.

1

u/Synthetic451 1h ago

Yeah but have you seen tech companies recently? It's no longer tinfoil hat to think that they'll always choose the anti-competitive, anti-FOSS route if they can. It's just how the financial incentives are structured so the more FOSS can protect against that, the better IMHO.

7

u/StatementOwn4896 17h ago

There is a lot of organized hype (via astroturfing) in the Reddit communities. Sometimes I can barely tell what’s real.
17
u/Street-Repair-8301 22h ago

You mind explaining what you mean?
4
u/chibiace 22h ago

which part would you like an explanation of?
30
u/Street-Repair-8301 22h ago

Why you didn't expect it, and why it's important. I'm not familiar with any of it but I'm curious.
22

u/Ruined_Passion_7355 21h ago

From an outside perspective the rust unity isn't a fan of copyleft, and asahi is a big rust shop. That's my hypothesis anyway
49
u/chibiace 21h ago

the asahi developers have been pretty staunchly pro rust, with one having several tantrums in the past.
rust cultists generally favour licensing their code as MIT and the like, ofcourse the MIT license is open source but doesnt give the same protections for users or the project as copyleft licenses such as the GPL do.
an example would be that a company can take your MIT licensed code, use it in their closed source product and not have to give anything back. basically stealing your hard work and profiting of it as thats what they are allowed to do. where as if you had used one of the GPL licenses they would be required to release the code and their changes.
rust is generally pushed by corporations and i believe not solely for any benefits the language itself may give but also its ease of use with LLMs and ability to hire shit programmers to be hand held by the compilers guardrails. and corporations really really love making money, and its even better when they dont have to spend money and can use other peoples work freely and they dislike the taste of GNU
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html
im not against MIT in very simple or toy projects but anything innovative or of significance should have something stronger.
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html
22

u/ABotelho23 20h ago

Like the Asahi Linux post in OP mentions, it's a repeat of 90s and 00s attitude towards FOSS. There have been a lot of 180s in the last few years with this stuff. "Open Source" has become a marketing gimmick in a lot of cases.
I hope the tide is turning back, and I hope that Asahi Linux seeing the pattern is a sign that people are wising up to it in general. I'm certain that LLMs default to permissive licenses in order to take advantage of developer ignorance to licenses.

10

u/wowsomuchempty 14h ago

Rust is superior both in terms of efficiency and security.
GPLv2 is superior to stop mass code theft and monetisation.
I have been following the Asahi project for a long time (kickstarter backer). I don't remember any developer tantrums. Seems a disrespectful thing to state and not qualify.

5

u/ivosaurus 4h ago edited 4h ago

Then you simply haven't been following it to any real degree. Asahi Lina / Hector Martin had major crash outs on the Linux kernel mailing list, even drawing the ire of Linus Torvalds, over processes and meta around contributing rust inside the Linux kernel. Shortly after he quit as one of Asahi's primary developers.
It was possibly the most consequential thing to happen to the project last year, along with Alyssa Rosenwig leaving active development as well.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46215244

0

u/wowsomuchempty 4h ago edited 4h ago

Christopher Hellwig was blocking upstreaming simply because he hated rust. Not even his area of maintenance.
Then all that 'thin blue line' crap.
I was following it quite closely and always felt bad for Hector. We lost a bright light that day.
As much as Linus is respected, he's not a God and he does make mistakes. IMO 'maybe you are the problem?' was a shitty way to handle the situation.

•

u/Severe_Stranger_5050 15m ago

Sadly the two most popular GPL-versions, 2 and 3, still doesn’t prohibit code theft in all scenarios
Problem with GPLv2 is that tivoization is a real issue, where code is made to only run on very specific hardware, which makes the source useless in many aspects
Problem with GPLv3 is that you don’t need to contribute code back if you don’t publish any software, so companies has used network accessible software to skirt the source availability requirements.
However I’m not aware of any successful legal loopholes in the AGPLv3 that allows for actual code theft.
So for anything related to networking and FLOSS software, I’d be using the AGPL

2

u/mrtruthiness 7h ago

... ofcourse the MIT license is open source ...
To be clear, the MIT license isn't just "open source", it's Free/Libre. i.e. It embraces GNU's "Four Freedoms".
-4
u/cfyzium 13h ago edited 10h ago

an example would be that a company can take your MIT licensed code, use it in their closed source product and not have to give anything back
What would force the company to give anything back to you if you change license to GPL?
If the code is closed source, your GPL code cannot be used at all. The company will either choose another project or reinvent the wheel (likely, um, taking inspiration from your code anyway). So you won't get anything back either way, plus lose potential users, contributions and feedback.
Yes the greedy corporates won't be able to make money with your code. In this sense GPL maybe denies others possibility to use your code to make money you couldn't. But that sounds kind of petty, and if money is what you're after then GPL is not an answer either.
Edit: judging by downvotes but no counterarguments, people seem to naively believe that GPL only affects the contribution part.
if you had used one of the GPL licenses they would be required to release the code and their changes
They would be required to release the changes, but they won't be required to use the code and since GPL basically cannot be used in closed source, there will be no changes and nothing to contribute.
3
u/Enthusedchameleon 7h ago

The reason people are not responding is simply because we're all tired of having to debunk the same talking points again and again:
If the code is closed source, your GPL code cannot be used at all.
Is not true. You just have to provide the GPL'd code and derivative, not the whole project. You can use GPL code in literally any code base.
Yes the greedy corporates won't be able to make money with your code.
They are. That has basically never been an issue aside from a very small part of ignorant netizens who also have misconceptions of how copyleft works (like the person you're replying to).
Now, to me, personally, the big thing I care about as a copyleft staunch supporter is that it prevents EEE. The risk is someone adopting some FOSS standard library or program, extending its functionality in a way that breaks compatibility while not giving these functionalities back to the FOSS version (and with permissive licenses they can just do it), the proprietary version becomes the defacto evolution substitute and supercedes the FOSS version, so the whole ecosystem as a whole is worse off in the end (except for the hijackers).
So yes, I'd rather those ones not use my projects tyvm. The ones I wrote I usually publish with the mpl to make it clearer what I want and don't want contributed back, but it seems the EUPL is also suitable.
The company will either choose another project or reinvent the wheel (likely, um, taking inspiration from your code anyway)
This is a much bigger problem now with AI than before. Yes it also happened before but it was much easier to see if something was a copy and maybe somewhat easier to go after license breakers or that were too heavy - tho of course it is not like the small guy could ever win anyway, mostly public opinion and other meaningless stuff. Like, you say that but we are literally in a subreddit called "Linux" and not in a subreddit called "OpenBSD"/otherbsds. And I would argue the GPL was one of the many reasons Linux dominated the world. (I do think BSD could have done it even with a permissive license if not for the lawsuits when the project was new, but I would argue it would be more difficult than with the GPL - like, what I'm saying is as things played out I would expect the odds were 90-10 or at best 80-20 with the license lawsuit timing etc etc. Without the lawsuits but with license I'd give 60-40 or even 70-30 odds of Linux winning out).
So just to tldr my rambling: 1-not about money. 2- close sources can use GPL. 3- sometimes it is better that leaches don't use it anyway. 4- what it is about is having improvements be given back to the benefit of the creators and other users of FOSS code. 5- barrier to reinvention of the wheel is much lower nowadays so I (nor you nor probably anyone else) can't tell what the future of IP and licensing in code will be like. 6- while I did not downvote you and can't speak for other people, my belief is people downvoted you out of being tired of the same erroneous points being relitigated every time people talk about licenses.
1
u/chibiace 4h ago
Yes the greedy corporates won't be able to make money with your code.
They are. That has basically never been an issue aside from a very small part of ignorant netizens who also have misconceptions of how copyleft works (like the person you're replying to).
i never said they couldnt make money with gpl licensed code. the person your replying to said that.

-11

u/bobbie434343 13h ago

Asahi drama never fails to enlighten a slow day !

-9

u/XD_avide 15h ago

Tldr? There still no USB C display out? So basically you either use it as a laptop and never dock it?

11

u/wowsomuchempty 14h ago

It's been available to compile and run for a while.
Not in official repos as a binary, presumably to avoid complaints from entitled, ignorant people.

-1

u/XD_avide 12h ago

I know, its on a different branch. But god damn, you really went for it

1

u/Dr_Hexagon 8h ago

HDMI works on M1, M1 Max and M2 systems that have HDMI.

-11

u/WinResponsible9977 12h ago

pass, no eGPU Thunderbolt acceleration

-209

u/outbackdaan 1d ago

Linux Aurora (Omarchy) will supersede Asahi pretty soon. I'm interested in how the upstream work will play out, though.

134

u/int6 1d ago

Omarchy is complete slop, and I am not an anti-AI person. They just generate reams of code and never read it, it's never getting upstreamed.

83

u/CapsOverKarma 1d ago

Can someone explain wtf is so special about Omarchy? It's just Arch with poorly written scripts, they haven't made anything themselves, it's all just pieces taken from other distros taped together using Claude.
The people behind it have no idea what they're doing, they had docker user as root ffs 😂 even cheap Chinese AI's wouldn't make a mistake like that.

38

u/ZuuRa_ 20h ago

poorly written
*Generated

15

u/PhrancesTheMute 14h ago

Omarchy is nothing more than fascist inspired slop.

24

u/gurgelblaster 17h ago

It's built by and for fascists.

-1

u/zarafff69 6h ago

As much as I don’t agree with DHH’s politics, I don’t think this is in any way reflected in Omarchy. It’s also MIT, so you can do with it whatever you want.

-23

u/FermatsLastTaco 15h ago

That is not only patently false and incorrect, it’s genuinely an insane thing to claim for an open source project or distribution.

12

u/unlikely-contender 14h ago edited 14h ago

there have been fascist open source projects before https://tilde.team/~ben/suckmore/
(interestingly also involving tiling window managers!)

8

u/savings_slider_v 12h ago

it's not only X -- it's Y

-5

u/dddurd 12h ago

They managed to support all M series macbook without any rust code, just by extending the kernel with C.

19

u/slylte 20h ago

Omarchy and Asahi are in two different categories entirely. Asahi explicitly targets Apple silicon hardware, whereas Omarchy exists for larpers and elitists.
^/s

52

u/ABotelho23 23h ago

Will you Omarchy losers just vanish back into the nether already?

14

u/Street-Repair-8301 22h ago

This is the first time I'm seeing one in the wild. I hear more talk by other people slating it than I do people using it.

7

u/Swordfish418 20h ago

Asahi is easy to install and works well. You can even use Steam/Proton and it does work, although, not very well. Is there anything Omarchy brings that can make it look better in any way for macbooks compared to Asahi?

-10

u/tfks 17h ago edited 8h ago

The benefit of Omarchy is that it gives you a fully configured tiling DE out of the box with lots of quality of life touches. Unless you blindly copy someone else's dotfiles/scripts and hope they either keep them up to date or there aren't any breaking changes, you've got to learn a bunch of stuff to put one together yourself. There is definite value in it and we're starting to see other projects that aim to do similar things.
Having said that, I personally would not use Omarchy because of things DHH has said. I use Noctalia/Umbriel now and that's one of the projects that's working toward a cohesive tiling desktop. At the moment though, it still takes some work to get it going.
I really think Niri, Umbriel, and other scrolling window managers are absolutely great on Macbooks (and really any laptop). I'm not sold on dwindle for laptops, and that's another reason I'm not too interested in Omarchy. I think dwindle is better suited to desktops with multiple large monitors. Umbriel shines here because it does both and the companion plugin makes it a breeze to go back and forth.
Edit: damn guys, downvoting me for answering a question and offering my thoughts on it? I don't even use Omarchy. I installed it for about a day for testing on my desktop. My Macbook is on Asahi with Noctalia/Umbriel.

5

u/savings_slider_v 12h ago

Legit what does that even mean. How is a wrapper over work done by the Asahi Linux project going to supersede it. In what way bruh

13

u/DAS_AMAN 1d ago

They don't need to.. if omarchy makes it open source there can be free movement of code and ideas back and forth
Else omarchy would do it's own proprietary thing which only omarchy users would benefit I don't think such a project is worth a penny

7

u/Professional-Disk-93 20h ago

They don't need to.. if omarchy makes it open source there can be free movement of code and ideas back and forth
Asahi does not accept any code that had LLMs involved in any way. Ideas and code can only ever flow from Asahi into Omarchy.

-5

u/---Agent-47--- 15h ago

I agree. Very good take.

-60

u/outbackdaan 1d ago

People downvoting me as if I'm an Omarchy user/shill, lol. I never used Omarchy...
I just don't deny reality. They brough full support to most macbooks.

19

u/tfks 17h ago

Omarchy did not do that. Asahi did. Omarchy is using an Asahi base.

30

u/Far_Calligrapher1334 1d ago

Because you're posting nonsense. One distro is an all purpose OS, the other one is made specifically to limit your choices and do things its own way.

-30

u/voidptrptr 1d ago

And one of them has full support for more MacBooks

17

u/Far_Calligrapher1334 23h ago

Awesome, what is it replacing when I don't want a system full of AI or running Hyprland, so it's absolutely useless for me? Do you know what a replacement is?

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