#free open source software

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The (other) problem with automatic conversion of free software to proprietary software

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/23/poison-pill/#kobayashied

Here's an interesting stunt: a project called Malus.sh will take your money, and in exchange, it will ingest any free/open source code you want, refactor that code using an LLM, and spit out a "clean room" version that is freed from all the obligations imposed by the original project's software license:

https://www.404media.co/this-ai-tool-rips-off-open-source-software-without-violating-copyright/?ref=daily-stories-newsletter

Malus was co-created by Mike Nolan, who "researches the political economy of open source software and currently works for the United Nations." Nolan told 404 Media's Emanuel Maiberg that he shipped Malus as a real, live-fire business that will exchange money for an AI service that destroys the commons as a way to alert the free software movement to a serious danger.

As Maiberg writes, Malus relies on a legal precedent set in 1982, in which IBM brought a copyright suit against a small upstart called Columbia Data Products for reverse-engineering an IBM software product. IBM's argument was that Columbia must have copied its code – the copyrightable part of a work of software – in order to reimplement the functionality of that code. Functions aren't copyrightable: copyright protects creative expressions, not the ideas that inspire those expressions. The idea of a computer program that performs a certain algorithm is not copyrightable, but the code that turns that idea into a computer program is copyrightable.

Columbia's successful defense against IBM involved using a "clean room" in which two isolated teams collaborated on the reimplementation. The first team examined the IBM program and wrote a specification for another program that would replicate its functionality. The second team received the specification and turned it into a computer program. The first team did handle IBM software, but they did not create a new work of software. The second team did create a new work of software, but they never handled any IBM code.

This is the model for Malus: it pairs two LLMs, the first of which analyzes a free software program and prepares a specification for a program that performs the identical function. The second program receives that specification and writes a new program.

The Malus FAQ performs a "be as evil as possible" explanation for the purpose of this exercise:

Our proprietary AI robots independently recreate any open source project from scratch. The result? Legally distinct code with corporate-friendly licensing. No attribution. No copyleft. No problems.

This business about "attribution" and "copyleft" is a reference to the terms imposed by some free software licenses. The purpose of free software is to create a commons of user-inspectable, user-modifiable software that anyone can use, improve, and distribute. To achieve this, many free software licenses impose obligations on the people who distribute their code: you are allowed to take the code, improve the code, give it away or sell it, but you have to let other people do the same.

Typically, you have to inform people when there's free software in a package you've distributed (attribution) and supply them with the "source code" (the part that humans read and write, which is then "compiled" into code that a computer can use) on demand, so they can make their own changes. This system of requiring other people to share the things they make out of the code you share with them is sometimes called "copyleft," because it uses copyright, which is normally a system for restricting re-use to require people not to restrict that use.

Companies love to use free software, but they don't like to share free software. Companies like Vizio raid the commons for software that is collectively created and maintained, then simply refuse to live up to their end of the bargain, violating the license terms and (incorrectly) assuming no one will sue them:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/20/vizio-vs-the-world/#dumbcast

Malus's promise, then, is that you can pay them to create fully functional reimplementations of any free/open source software package that your company can treat as proprietary, without any obligations to the commons. You won't even have to attribute the original software project that you knocked off!

This is the risk that Nolan and his partner are trying to awaken the free/open source community to: that our commons is about to be raided by selfish monsters who serve as gut-flora for the immortal colony organisms we call "limited liability corporations," who will steal everything we've built and destroy the social contract we live by.

This is a real problem, but not because of AI. We already have this situation, and it's really bad. Most of the foundational free software projects were created under older licenses that did not contemplate cloud computing and software as a service. The "copyleft" obligations of these licenses are triggered by the distribution of the software – that is, when I send you a copy of the code.

But cloud services don't have to send you the code: when you run Adobe Creative Cloud or Google Docs, the most important code is all resident on corporate servers, and never sent to you, which means that you are not entitled to a copy of the new software that has been built atop of our commons. In other words, big companies have "software freedom" (the freedom to use, modify and improve software) and we've got "open source" (the impoverished right to look at the versions of these packages that are sitting on services like Github – itself a division of Microsoft):

https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/libreplanet-2018-keynote

Then there's "tivoization," a tactic for stealing from the commons that wasn't quite invented by Tivo, though they were one of its most notorious abusers. Tivoization happens when you distribute free software as part of a hardware device, then use "digital locks" (sometimes called "technical protection measures") to prevent the owner of this device from running a modified version of the code. With tivoization, I can sell you a device running free software and I can comply with the license by giving you the code, but if you change the code and try to get the device to run it, it will refuse. What's more, "anti-circumention" laws like Section 1201 of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act make it a felony to tamper with these digital locks, so it becomes a crime to use modified software on your own device:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/16/whittle-a-webserver/#mere-ornaments

There's no question that the tech industry would devour the free software commons if they were allowed to, and the AI threat that Nolan raises with Malus seems alarming, but while there's something to worry about there, I think the risk is being substantially overstated.

That's because copyleft licenses – and indeed, all software licenses – are copyright licenses, and software written by AI is not eligible for a copyright, because nothing made by AI is eligible for copyright:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/03/its-a-trap-2/#inheres-at-the-moment-of-fixation

Copyright is awarded solely to works of human authorship. This fact has been repeatedly affirmed by the US Copyright Office, which has fought appeals of this principle all the way to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case. That's because the principle that copyright is strictly reserved for human creativity isn't remotely controversial in legal circles. This is just how copyright works.

Which means that the "be evil" version of Malus's business model has a fatal flaw. While the code that Malus produces is indeed "legally distinct" with "no attribution" and "no copyleft," it's not true that there are "no problems." That's because Malus's code doesn't have "corporate-friendly licensing." Far from it: Malus's code has no licensing, because it is born in the public domain and cannot be copyrighted.

In other words, if you're a corporation hoping to use Malus to knock off a free software project so that you can adapt it and distribute it without having to make your modifications available, Malus's code will not suit your needs. If you give me code that Malus produced, you can't stop me from doing anything I want with it. I can sell it. I can give it away. I can make a competing product that reproduces all of your code and sell it at a 99% discount. There's nothing you can do to stop me, any more than you could stop me from giving away the text of a Shakespeare play you sold me. You can't stick a license agreement or terms of service between me and the product that binds me to pretend that your public domain software is copyrighted – that's also not allowed under copyright.

Does that mean that Malus is a meaningless stunt? No, because this automated reimplementation does create some risks to our software commons. A troll who doesn't care about selling software could clone every popular free software project and make public domain versions that would be confusing and maybe demoralizing. Combining these clean-room reimplementations with cloud software or tivoization could create hybrid forms of commons-enclosure that are more virulent than the current strains.

But reimplementation itself is not a risk to free software. Reimplementation is the bedrock of free software. GNU/Linux itself is a reimplementation of AT&T Unix. Free software authors re-implement each other's code all the time, often because they think the license the original code was released under sucks. Literally the coolest free software thing I've seen in the past 12 months included a reimplementation of Raspberry Pi's PIO module to escape from its bullshit patent encumbrances:

https://youtu.be/BbWWGkyIBGM?si=vO5zLH3OG5JLW7OP&t=2253

Reimplementation is good, actually. And honestly, if corporations are foolish enough to reimplement their code using an LLM, and in so doing, create a vast new commons of public domain software, well, that's not exactly the freesoftwarepocalypse, is it?

Image:

Muhammad Mahdi Karim (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_Wildebeest,_Ngorongoro.jpg

GNU FDL https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3.html

[ecrivainsolitaire]

So you want tech corporations to Fuck Off

Cover: Stolen from Business Insider, because fuck them.

Everyone is sick of enshittification. Subscriptions everywhere, rampant data theft, AI in things that don't need AI for people who didn't ask for AI. It's frustrating to use your computer anymore. And yet, you need it for everything. We cannot give up our tools, and we should not be forced to. So let's see what's the easiest, fastest path to get as far from these corporate leeches as possible.

Important note: some of you may read this and go "actually this is a better solution if you're willing to compromise on bla bla bla". Congratulations, that means you don't need this article. I am going to assume that my ideal reader is someone who uses computers and phones as tools, they have full autonomy over what tools to use, and want to spend as little time and effort setting everything up as they can. This website is already too full of impatience about transitioning, we don't need to add to the fire. If you try one of these solutions and it doesn't work for you, by all means come back and tell us what alternative you found that's better.

1. Fuck Windows. Fuck Apple. Use Linux Mint.

Source: OMG Ubuntu

I'm not going to give you the speech. There's many versions of Linux, yes. Do they all have their pros and cons? Yes. Do you care right now? No. Linux Mint is the 101 version, the easiest to move towards. After some playing around you may decide you want something different, and you can research that on your own time. Our priority here is to get you away from Copilot and Edge and background processes that kill your electric bill.

Linux will force you to learn a little coding. That is normal and good. Installing it can be annoying, but once you set it up you will realise how much better your life is now that your computer fans aren't trying to lift off in the background all the time. If you game, good news: SteamOS is a Linux distribution, which means anything you can run on a Steam Deck runs on any Linux Mint PC because Valve hates Windows as much as we do. For more specific software needs, keep reading.

2. Replace GMail with Proton Mail to get most of their suite equivalents.

This is the most temporary replacement in this list. Proton is still a for profit company, and it will probably get enshittified as well. What it does offer is a lot less invasiveness over your private data. They won't use your files to train AI, they won't send ad companies your search information, and importantly, they won't fold to whatever the Trump administration comes up with next week. I'm not endorsing their business practices but it does reduce the amount of creep Google has over all our lives, and I'm all for that.

3. Remove Microsoft from your life with Free Open Source Software (FOSS)

There was a time when Microsoft was the only safe choice for productivity software. That time was decades ago. You no longer need to depend on their bloatware and spy programs to do school or office work. Take a pick.

4. Get Adobe out of your creative work so they don't keep feeding off your art.

No one likes Adobe. No one wants Adobe. No one should have to pay for software they hate. Good news, now you no longer have to.

5. Android and iPhone are no longer your only options.

If you already have a functional phone, by all means take care of it. But eventually, you will have to replace it. When that moment happens, here's a guide with alternatives to check out. GrapheneOS is the best so far; start there if you don't know how. You can buy FOSS phones or you can load a new OS on your existing one; do that at your own risk.

6. Stream your own files with Jellyfin and chill

This is the one that takes the most setup, and the most compromise. Unless you have an existing collection of DVDs or a ton of cash, your only realistic choice is to pirate whatever you want to watch. If this is a moral compromise you're not comfortable with, here's a proposal: keep paying for your subscriptions, and just pirate the shows from the services you pay for and watch the high quality version on your own. It doesn't really hurt the company if you're paying for the service anyway; in fact they probably welcome users who just give them money and don't waste their bandwidth. But once you set up a streaming server, you never have to worry about your favourite show being taken down or reaching the screen limit for your devices.

7. Run your local AI without relying on data centres

We won't go back to a world without AI. Luckily, AI has gotten so much smaller and more efficient, you don't actually have to subscribe to anything for the most advanced models anymore. You can download them to your computer and run them directly on your RAM, and they take no more energy than a modern video game. I just installed the latest Gemma model; it weighs 9Gb and runs just a tad slower than the online version. Everyone pretending these still consume more power than a university is either ignorant or lying, which means absolutely no one should be paying for an OpenAI subscription.

8. Other software you may need

There's no way to cover everything in one post, but this should be a good start for almost everyone. I just want to see a world where five companies playing hot potato with a hundred billion dollars don't paralyse the entire tech industry every time they want a bonus. Now please go out there and spread the word of our lord and saviour Tux the penguin.

[amalgamasreal]

Personal InfoSec Post Updated

Been awhile since I've had one of these posts part trois: but I figure with all that's going on in the world it's time to make another one and get some stuff out there for people. A lot of the information I'm going to go over you can find here:

Ad-Free Privacy Tool/Service Recommendations - Privacy Guides

A complete list of the privacy tools, services, software, and hardware recommended by the Privacy Guides community.

So if you'd like to just click the link and ignore the rest of the post that's fine, I strongly recommend checking out the Privacy Guides. Browsers: With the recent updates and trend towards AI in a number of browsers we’re going to need to update this list. I had previously recommended Firefox but sadly they have fallen to the enemy. At this point my list of trusted browsers has changed to, in order: Vivaldi, Helium, Mullvad, and Ungoogled Chromium. Browser Extensions:

uBlock Origin: content blocker that blocks ads, trackers, and fingerprinting scripts. Notable for being the only ad blocker that still works on Youtube.

Privacy Badger: Content blocker that specifically blocks trackers and fingerprinting scripts. This one will catch things that uBlock doesn't catch but does not work for ads.

Bitwarden: Password vaulting software, don't trust the password saving features of your browsers, this has multiple layers of security to prevent your passwords from being stolen.

VPN: Note: VPN software doesn't make you anonymous, no matter what your favorite youtuber tells you, but it does make it harder for your data to be tracked and it makes it less open for whatever public network you're presently connected to.

Mullvad VPN: Is a fast and inexpensive VPN with a serious focus on transparency and security. They have been in operation since 2009. Mullvad is based in Sweden and offers a 30-day money-back guarantee for payment methods that allow it.

IVPN: Has servers in 41 countries. Picking a VPN provider with a server nearest to you will reduce latency of the network traffic you send. This is because of a shorter route (fewer hops) to the destination.

Email Provider: Note: By now you've probably realized that Gmail, Outlook, and basically all of the major "free" e-mail service providers are scraping your e-mail data to use for ad data. There are more secure services that can get you away from that but if you'd like the same storage levels you have on Gmail/Ol utlook.com you'll need to pay.

Tuta: Secure, end-to-end encrypted, been around a very long time, and offers a free option up to 1gb.

Mailbox.org: Is an email service with a focus on being secure, ad-free, and privately powered by 100% eco-friendly energy. They have been in operation since 2014. Mailbox.org is based in Berlin, Germany. Accounts start with up to 2GB storage, which can be upgraded as needed.

Email Client:

Thunderbird: a free, open-source, cross-platform email, newsgroup, news feed, and chat (XMPP, IRC, Matrix) client developed by the Thunderbird community, and previously by the Mozilla Foundation.

FairMail (Android Only): minimal, open-source email app which uses open standards (IMAP, SMTP, OpenPGP), has several out of the box privacy features, and minimizes data and battery usage.

Cloud Storage:

Tresorit: Encrypted cloud storage owned by the national postal service of Switzerland. Received MULTIPLE awards for their security stats.

Peergos: decentralized and open-source, allows for you to set up your own cloud storage, but will require a certain level of expertise.

Microsoft Office Replacements:

LibreOffice: free and open-source, updates regularly, and has the majority of the same functions as base level Microsoft Office.

OnlyOffice: cloud-based, free

FreeOffice: Personal licenses are free, probably the closest to a fully office suite replacement.

Chat Clients: Note: As you've heard SMS and even WhatsApp and some other popular chat clients are basically open season right now. These are a couple of options to replace those. Note2: Signal has had some reports of security flaws, the service it was built on was originally built for the US Government, and it is based within the CONUS thus is susceptible to US subpoenas. Take that as you will.

Signal: Provides IM and calling securely and encrypted, has multiple layers of data hardening to prevent intrusion and exfil of data.

Molly (Android OS only): Alternative client to Signal. Routes communications through the TOR Network.

Briar: Encrypted IM client that connects to other clients through the TOR Network, can also chat via wifi or bluetooth.

SimpleX: Truly anonymous account creation, fully encrypted end to end, available for Android and iOS.

Now for the last bit, I know that the majority of people are on Windows or macOS, but with Windows 10 sunsetting if you can get on Linux I would strongly recommend it. pop_OS, Ubuntu, Fedora, Zorin and Mint are super easy distros to use and install. They all have very easy to follow instructions on how to install them on your PC and if you'd like to just test them out all you need is a thumb drive to boot off of to run in demo mode. For more secure distributions for the more advanced users the options are: Whonix, Tails (Live USB only), and Qubes OS.

On a personal note I use Arch Linux, but I WOULD NOT recommend this be anyone's first distro as it requires at least a base level understanding of Linux and liberal use of the Arch Linux Wiki. If you game through Steam their Proton emulator in compatibility mode and the Heroic Game Launcher for GoG, Epic, and Amazon Games works wonders, I'm presently playing a major studio game that released in 2025 with no Linux support on it and once I got my drivers installed it's looked great. There are some learning curves to get around, but the benefit of the Linux community is that there's always people out there willing to help. I hope some of this information helps you and look out for yourself, it's starting to look scarier than normal out there.

[kickair8p]

Image description: Hexagon tiles with a truchet-like pattern in rainbow colors make random-looking serpentine paths. End image description.

Seamless loop animation, no generative AI used. Animated loops can cause motion sickness, effects shouldn't rise to the level of needing an epilepsy warning. Made by KickAir 8p with Blender and GIMP, both free open-source software. CC0 Public Domain, want take have.

Details on the inspiration for this and how this type of effect is achieved here. In that example I used Blender’s geometry nodes to make a random hexagon grid — for this I individually rotated each of the 48 tiles in the array. FYI that just one of the ribbon paths runs continuously through the animation. Thanks again to everyone signal boosting my questions, answering, and helping out.

Crossposted to Pillowfort and Dreamwidth.

[type-token-graphics]

Hello Tumblr! I'm a 2D/3D computer graphics artist making vibrant procedural animations. I use Blender (hurray for free open source software! <3) and all of my art is made by my human self! You may see the term "generative" art, this refers to using visually interesting mathematics and algorithms to create art. I love math and programming, but I've always felt unproductive in the field because I cared more about what looks pretty and fascinating. Now I realize that math and programming can be beautiful without any purpose other than the act of creating and admiring!

I'd love for you to join me in appreciating these kinds of creations <3

[silentstaresfanficandfanart]

tutorial on the side bar to make it work on Android too!

Home

This is a little handy dandy VideoGame tuber (like as in its a vtuber made in a video game engine!) thing you can use to make your own vgtub

Well isin't this awesome! I've figured out how to make stars vgtuber work on android, or at least on my phone! added a little tutorial on the side bar explaining how it works! pops up in front of everything too! with transparency (though it's still slightly darkened for some reason?) And I added some other new features like the color picker for the back ground for example!

I also added a second camera and if you want it to focus on your characters face you're going to have to aim the closeup cam at them manually before saving and using the program

note that on android instead of using it as an apk you have to use it in the program at the moment due to the fact I have no idea how to get the apk to work lol ill have to figure that out eventually. anyways, if you want a free open source solution to vtubing and want the same level of freedom a video game does, or want to turn any 3d model into your vtuber, or 2d images, Stars VGtuber has got your back! remember you can also request features in the comments! and if you manage to get face tracking in, let me know! and maybe we can fork the project so people can use it. for now it's got voice activated talking. have fun my little stars!

[qilin-r]

i bought a new pc and i'm currently going through the phase of reinstalling/reassessing what programs i use

I was about to pull the trigger on installing FL again but i've decided im going to try and learn a new DAW. my approach to music production this time around is going to be relying purely on FOSS and free vsts so I'm leaning towards Ardour. I have this vague idea that it might be cool to prove you can make interesting digital music without spending any money.

the only problem is: i don't know how to write interesting or good music in the first place lol, but we'll get there. music making is just a fun experiment for me either way.

anyway, on the off chance anyone with an interest in FOSS sees this, any recommendations? generally speaking too, not just in regards to audio. i've already picked up krita, gimp and libreoffice. even if it's highly specialised, i'd like to hear about it anyway; messing around with software i don't understand is all i ever used to do as a kid and i strongly feel it's one of the best ways to learn things.

[brynstellaris]

The GNU mascot is just Richard Stallman's fursona.