And coming up next also: Yes, environmental issues are included within engagement. The more "we" as global society focus only on "online" web-installations, -services and -appliances, the more disastrous the outcome. Reasoning: More servers for more data with more energy-consumption. So blocking those called "modern websites" is active protection, not only for data and privacy but also for the environment. I thought a longer time ago that GNU/Linux might help therefore, reviving and holding older systems for longer period of time. But this thoughts are gone with the bitter, sweet recognition that this gone since 2019 around. We can watch now on a daily base more projects arise with more bloated usage on all levels: social, technical and economical. Projects and people choose to adopt only without further questioning. Time to go, time for a change and / or for the first time to hold on.

Yes, Hyperbola is NOT serving always the newest packages. But this is meant intentional and I fear personal, that we won't see more light coming when we don't do something about the consumption of energy. Energy and electricity is coming not only from some sockets, some power outlets. When we do not stop, we have to pay a bitter price for our ignorance. So, sorry to say but from my viewpoint, if people just consume without question - alike Spotify, Netflix and whatever else - they are not helping for the moment to solve the issues. If people tend to buy hardware every year just because they need more graphic-power, same way. We could find solutions, but social issues are not be solved technical alike technical issues are not the solution for everything.

Does GNU/Linux offer the possibility to have really older systems and devices running? Not really any longer. The (not-official) promise - yes, it was indeed never given that way - is in our days more and more breaking. You want to have an older nvidia-graphicsadapter? Well, if you have some luck you can use nouveau while Nvidia is not offering support and even system-distributions only offer some "legacy" drivers or perhaps nouveau. But with that not enough: You would need also the possible infrastructure and support from the kernel and when this is going missing and removed? Exactly, being stucked on a Linux-kernel while people around always state the "upgrade"-mantra because otherwise you may guilty your computer is misused.

Sorry, that's not working that. Yes, there are surely other possibilities nevertheless around. But there are flaws in the comments done like the mentioned promise: "You have an older or outdated system? Use GNU/Linux." No, please be more accurate and not working as the kernel itself get more and more thrown out drivers. You remember? "Move fast, destroy things." The logic is failed from beginning to the end and GNU/Linux is the same with its approach now.

Also to underline from our point of view: Making free, libre software and culture sustainable means political analysis and understanding. Far from that point the FSF and FSFE rejected many times doing that, pointing out even just only code free and libre licensed is "sufficient".

Okay, and how do we want to learn so we can reject various alarming signals? Like telemetry-inclusions in different projects? Centralizing architectures in so-called "decentralized" projects? How do we want to go against hatred and harassment against minorities? And especially: Every democracy has one clear element naming it "limitation on term of office". Let us think again: How long are some people in charge to represent projects and organizations? Power needs to be shared, people needs to get possibilities for emancipation. Political analysis and history of the movement is needed instead to fail for foul promises and short-sighted phrases.

The common fail of "open-source" thinking: Having two perspectives ... in the one hand the "free software" and the other hand the "architect for software". Sorry people, this is NOT working. In the end free, libre software is always the section loosing as we humans will always choose the common thinking for convinience and egoism. But okay? Libreboot booting up Windows: https://mas.to/@libreleah/111711874705451258

And the outcome: https://mas.to/@libreleah/111720274391379764

Cool (sarcasm), Libreboot is now able to boot non-free operating-system. So what was the original intention? Can anybody repeat this, because I remember so bad ... ah yes: Free, libre software or something like that. Wasn't it, or was it? Sorry, but no. Exactly here it is shown. Yes, people can play, people can also document. But we all know the outcome. Has anybody more freedom, security and privacy out of this? Anybody? Or was it just for the ego of some people? But we can clearly see here, where this is going. Free, libre software being made "fluid". Not through Libreboot alone, but this is just another nail in long prepared coffin.

Sure to get not wrong: That's not Leah's decision and not her intention. But the world is in a hurry as it seems, better said our "human world" and I see us more into the need to recognize and stop for some time to reflect more. So also the original tester: More about a "proof of concept", not anything more. The fear here is nevertheless the same as before others arise: The "proof of concept" gets to a common usage and Leah's intention is getting under the wheels.

With more Linux-only implementations we have also more issues with frameworks like GTK+ on-going. Not only D-Bus being enforced: Now it is also Vulkan seen as the "future" and leaving OpenGL more and more behind marked as "very old":

https://www.phoronix.com/news/GTK-State … -Renderers

GNU/Linux and Linux in common is going to be more and more a severe problem instead of a solution. It was told as solution for so many people and nowadays is oriented only on "modern" solution leaving all others behind or enforce to buy newest hardware. Sorry, but that is no solution: There are enough people, who cannot afford that. And stating that "very old" for hardware is marking that also is "useless" without stating direct.

So many projects are going in that direction, and yet people lament corporate influence and orientation with a surprised face-expression. Please see through that: That's why Hyperbola is oriented only on community-projects and also why Hyperbola ask for working with. Demanding from a very small team to write and serve "ready-to-use" articles is not working in a community-perspective. Support together means also to state and work together, to write articles, collect information and tryout. Writing guidelines just from theories is not working.

And exactly that is neither the FSF nor GNU doing in all parts. Yes, they support some parts but when you ask for making bloated libraries and components towards that exactly what they should be - optional - you see where this is going. Hyperbola has used gettext-tiny for exactly that: Because GNU gettext is per clear definition accepting and adapting environment-variables being defined optional. But as members asked gettext and its maintainers for possible making different problematic languages optional the answer was clear: Not caring.

There are several more examples: Like endless debates with the FSF about licensing-issues with different project, naming some like Rust, PHP and OpenJDK. What was the result? The same again, with the addition as people made fun out of Hyperbola and people behind. Reaction as grown-ups? Surely not really. Even not to be called "childish" as children have a clear and common understanding to act without issues each other. But here comes the point: Being taught on-going to act only in competition ends up in what the wording "childish" is meant and that is what the FSF and GNU are doing. They are the ones getting "handcuffs" as you are forced to use Linux-specific frameworks on non-Linux environments. They are the ones not getting the point and not caring enough so there is left enough room for others like corporations and companies filling the empty spaces with false definitions. The weak point of free, libre software is the point of a long time denying any kind of analyses for the historical roots and political clea positions for free, libre software.

And from my point: Free, libre software deserves better treatment. Showing people possible solutions? Yes. But also supporting people on projects while at the current point they are left alone.

Interesting when Hyperbola gets accused for so-called erratic decision-making while it is clear to see that really all possible is done to preserve and manage a stable system-base for every release. Let's look elsewhere, for example on Alpine and PostmarketOS. PostmarketOS is clearly going towards systemd as they now showed within their announcment. The reasoning? Polyfills are not capable to work as dropin-replacements, so KDE or others would run better.

This taken a follow-up came afterwards from Ariadne Conill, including to call different other implementations "pet init system". Annotation from me in this: Please do not jump into those discussion-spaces and harass others or spread insults on whatever base.

This brings several conclusions:

- As mentioned the big desktop-environments like KDE, Gnome, Xfce, Mate and others are not oriented to offer any other interface for different and smaller implementations. They just do not work without systemd.
- System-maintainers like Ariadne Conill and the team behind PostmarketOS react here as they have a hard decision to make: Either leaving the big desktop-environments full behind or take the bitter pill.

In general it is the same as the debates before about OpenSSL and LibreSSL. At one point people take much ahead, really want to create an alternative. After a period of time it is clear to see that Linux and the corporate implementations have the longer hand. systemd is one corporate implementations and it is just seen as "mature" without seeing also the social and ethical components and issues coming with. Linux is not oriented to be a partner for technical emancipation and for people in favor of small and minimalistic implementations. Yes sure thing: It is not that corporations and companies are funding much into the development, but this makes the outcome even more worse. All the work is misused even more and nevertheless people cheer up for all so-called progress.

To recall Hyperbolas position: It is just quite simple as we do not want to use systemd as a de-facto declared, so-called standard. We want a simple but yet open designed system, including also a corresponding service-management after initialization. We dislike bloated, over-engineered implementations like systemd. Yes, over time projects change, get their problems away and more. This does not make our essential points about systemd going away: We just do not want to use it. But the essential point here also in the debates show up again: People do not see that the de-facto declaration as "standard" gives systemd too much power on behalf of its structure. It is not a common project like the others in comparison, it is not possible to compare smaller init-implementations or service-managements towards systemd as it has grown beyond. This is a danger and high risk. And towards the bigger systems: The bigger it gets the sooner the decisions are no longer oriented towards free and libre software and community projects. It is a point only to give awaitings and here are more people responsible, also the free and libre community awaiting "more convinience". And most of the Linux-only frameworks are only consisting the so-called "bitter pill". This means everyone is left with only the choice done by others.

And the next project changing the license into non-free: Redis is changing its approach. Besides the vague term "open-source" being always in use this demonstrates clear and straight why Hyperbola has removed redis as package and listed this also as incompatible.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/21/redis … y-database
https://fossforce.com/2024/03/redis-goe … y-started/

We will for sure see forks incoming, but all of them do not solve the elemental problem free, libre culture and software is within. The complete misunderstanding about misusage from companies, including for sure now Redis but also all the rest.

Interesting sidenote here is also that exactly FOSS Force - pretending for "Keeping tech free" - has clearly ruined free, libre software and culture over a long period of time. How this come? Well, clear to see within articles for example like "Keep Linux just Linux" and using vague terminology for "open-source". So exactly here is one (but not the only one) point: No further work of analysis how free software work and why it should be even kept more like that way based on altruism as everything is political. We can see more and more how "open-source" as vague term is ruining all.

To note that there is an issue with the perspective of "system-distribution" in general. The current debate about KeePassXC shows quite good in what relation some upstream-maintainers see system-distributions and in general also free software. Here to read: https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepa … sues/10725

To summarize: As KeePassXC offers further options the package-maintainer on Debian removed them in the generic package and created another one named keepassxc-full for Debian Unstable. We are talking here about a state being not released as "stable". And what to read? While the thread started it was a bit heated but not too much. And the more it went forward the more unfriendly it gets, to quote:

I have removed the strong language and phrase in respect of our social contract. But all in all this shows quite good: Upstream and maintainers only want the system-distributions to ship what they conclude and release. The point is going worse and worse the more it gets discussed. Why then releasing software as free, permissive and libre licensed, when you are not okay when others modify the code to ship a different one? Yes, people will create issues. But there are multiple problems:

- Why is it seen like people can demand 24/7-support every time? Free software includes also the Do It Yourself-point for sure.
- Why even more going on trademarks instead to ask what is most important? Working software for sure, but also working together on working software.
- Why people think all has to be "gratis" and demand so-called "modern solution"? The wording "modern solution" is a vague term, same as "modern hardware". It is individual seen and therefore no generic definition.

As long as this is not reflected more in depth this problem will grow even more. And it is clearly wrong: Why should system-projects not have the same rights to modify code and maintain their own? Under that point free, libre software was even made possible. And with this arrogance and ignorance growing now we risk the whole sphere. As Hyperbola had also comparable problems with minetest-maintainers stating we should not remove essential "features". Therefore we have removed minetest as package finally. Yes, that kind of discussion was not even near that heated. But it is a question to be seen and the reasoning for Hyperbola also to reduce more and more, likewise modify what we can and no: We do not care about asking upstream with endless discussions. When a package is not working or failing in newer releases, we will go for removal.

Yes, the current discussion could have been done quite different, from all sides. But insulting the package-maintainer? Demanding indirect his removal from the team or at minimum from the position to maintain keepassxc (some users did in that debate)? To quote:

Sorry, that is not working. And yes, maintainers of packages have also the right for their own perspective. They are not machines and robots, only there to follow commands from users and upstream. Really no! At a point that debate was closed before it got even more worse. But the damage is already done: Do you really think people will package software when they are at risk being harassed that open? Free software is working only with handshake, but not with this harsh driven course. This is a toxic course for sure. And dear maintainers from KeePassXC: You have a responsibility to protect every individual, also the criticized maintainer from Debian. Just because of the criticism this is not a carte blanche to reduce that to some "individual messages" or even later on state:

Healthy discourse? There was no excuse given for the insults, the harassment and the harsh language noted. And this is "healthy"? Wow, just ... wow - and not the amused or fluffy one. And yes: The word "crap" is also not the best choice in the end, because that got the discussion further heated. Sure thing, that users should choose. But when a package wants exactly that one way and has no intentions for others, it should be better users compile it always on their own. And coming back to the handshake: Package-maintainers are not better than everyone else, so why not going into a direct discussion and support? Demanding the so-called "status quo" and going enraged, harassing a person finally and insulting? Really: Why? The initial answer from the package-maintainer was same not perfect as "crap" is surely a very harsh description. But there is always a story and yes: I also call some parts of software "crap" myself, because they are going into a direction I do not see without risks. But while we have for sure serious issues with harsh wordings, the description "crap" is nearly not that dramatic as others being used in that long discussion.

More and more projects are either using absolute bloated vcs-management frameworks like Gitlab or directly migrate towards Github, which is just another centralized, closed and non-free hub owned by no one else as Microsoft. All of this is no good development: Even though Gitlab maybe somewhat free and permissive licensed, it is not barrier free and efforts much JavaScript callbacks. Is that needed? Surely not, but it looks "fancy". Seems that's all nowadays, but let's look just close enough: Do we really need even more of Github and Gitlab? Hyperbola exactly tries to minimize the efforts using Github like just downloading the needed tarballs marked stable for compilation. In fact the whole focus of the free, libre software should be again questioned in our days and time. Is that really the forthcoming vision? Fancy websites and interfaces? Convinient features, sure, but for a price to pay and exactly an argument to leave GNU/Linux.

Yes, Hyperbola is using therefore cgit: https://git.hyperbola.info:50100/
And yes, the conclusions are exact fitting. Especially the GNU-ecosystem has also failed to take a stance against those trends for years and instead adopting more and more interfaces from non-free services or even accepting non-free services for the own project-workflow - like discord.

As Hyperbola is now in the process to remove the package mariadb finally while the organization behind was now bought by an investor (see here: https://mariadb.com/newsroom/press-rele … new-ceo/). It would very important for the FSF and others to look on their definition of what free, libre software really is.

The FSF is listing mariadb as "free software": https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/MariaDB

But while technical correct, there is also an ethical question behind. So let's have a look at the sponsors behind: https://mariadb.org/about/
Oh fine: IBM, Tencent, Amazon and more. So please ask again: Besides technical grounds, what about ethics and moral? Or are those trustworthy partners? I think we should ask again and have severe doubts. Many of them have approved NOT being trustworthy.

Dear FSF and contributors: The package and project mariadb is technical speaking perhaps fitting somewhat "open". But it is neither free nor it is libre defined from the moral and ethical standpoint. They offer the "community-edition" and state clearly:

"We ensure the MariaDB Server code base remains open for usage and contributions on technical merits. [...] We provide continuity to the MariaDB Server ecosystem, independent of any commercial entities."

But in fact the way is not good forward: An investor like K1 would do the opposite as there is no interest in moral and ethics, in free information. Why? Because this is no selling-point. Money is made with information and most the time with it behind walls and barriers, not with free and libre defined information for all beings the same. That's the reasoning for Hyperbola to remove mariadb and with it all dependencies. We make no differences between "community edition" and "enterprise edition", we do not want to tolerate such. Especially also: Getting in touch throughout "slack" is not the way to go directly towards the community of MariaDB. As "slack" is not free, libre software and nevertheless ... seems not to matter. Neither for many people outside assuming something "open" nor for the FSF itself. Think again as all of this is a damaged approach.

Yes, FSF: You can list mariadb as free, permissive licensed. Technical speaking this is correct. If this is all what matters, sure. But for a movement forward, a movement with a history to look on ethics and moral in the past, this is a poor result. And this won't get any better. Yes, sure: Many projects only support this one DBMS, no other. But do we really want to tolerate more illusions instead of clear facts? Yes, all of them can be forked: mysql, mariadb and others ... but there are no forks complete managed by the community. It is just that: The generic statement that this is "theoretically" possible. If that's all? Poor result.