hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4603.txt

Episode: 4603
Title: On the Erosion of Freedom in Open Source Software
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4603/hpr4603.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:14:57 (official HPR transcript)

---

This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4603, for 2026-03-25
Today's show is entitled, "On the Erosion of Freedom in Open Source Software"
The host is HopperMCS and the duration is 00:17:31
The flag is Explicit, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "I discuss recent events and an unfortunate discovery while attempting to compile software."
Good morning HPR. It's sure been a minute since I recorded anything for you guys.
But I have some things I kind of want to talk about today. I'm a little bit calmer.
It's a really good day today. Data recording is March 11th.
I just got done signing an operating agreement with a new business partner.
My consultancy firm was just recognized as an LLC by the state.
It's a good day, man. It's a really, really good day.
But today I really kind of want to talk about the erosion of sorry about the filler words.
That's the other thing. I'm not editing this. I probably should edit it, but you know,
I only have so much time in the day.
And I'm also sorry about the might quality. I don't have the greatest mic.
My setup is kind of on the threats right now.
But the main thing I want to talk about today is the erosion of freedom and the open source software community.
Because I, it's kind of upsetting. You know, this may be a sort of shorter episode.
But I just find it very, very disturbing that we have multiple governments in the Western block.
And it doesn't really matter which side of the aisle you're on because they're all doing it.
They want to implement tracking at the operating system level that is just not okay, you know?
And so one of the things I look at here is the fourth amendment.
And I just cannot get past these people violating the fourth amendment the way they are.
And I'm sure you could probably make arguments that, you know, they're violating the first amendment by forcing you to write code that you didn't really want to write.
You can argue that there, I think I saw somebody say that it violates nine and ten, but I don't know how that works.
But it's just, it's not a good situation. And so I'm looking at debuffs, right, because that's how they want to do it.
And I'm looking at specifically California and Colorado because California and Colorado only require attestation, which is fine at face value.
But you look deeper into it and it's the ulterior motives, right?
I don't trust anybody saying, hey, we need everybody's ID and one giant database effectively.
And we want to separate everyone into two pools, kids and adults.
That's kind of my, my big brain, you know, I have a problem with this because right now, as it stands, I'm just going to be honest.
And I know this is, I'm going to mark this episode as an NSFW because it's, it is a touchy topic, but I really do think that there is a bunch of pedophiles with some money involved that are in government.
And it's the US, but it's probably not just the US, let's be real.
That want to, as far as I'm concerned, right, putting these two pools of IDs, you know, state IDs or whatever they start requiring, you know, New York requires apparently a driver's license or something like that, absolutely insane.
I really hope this shit gets shot down.
How much more easy do they need to make it to target kids, you know, it's like these, these laws, you can all, you can tell where they're going.
But it's, what's, what's that phrase, a wolf and sheep's clothing, right?
They're going to tell you, oh, it's for the safety of the kids, for the safety of the kids, we saw the abstine island stuff, right?
And again, that's why I'm marking this as NSFW, the amount of hatred that I feel for these people is absolutely unreal.
And I say this, knowing, I have a very calm tone, right?
But I am seeding right now.
It's bad, man.
It's bad.
And what agitate to me is the fact that this is tough, it is now affecting me because, you know, I grew up with Windows XP, right?
If, if that gives you a sort of, uh, I guess time frame, you know, of when I came up, right?
Windows XP was new.
It was probably only a couple years old when we got our family computer, very unfortunately, my, at the very computer that led to me getting into technology,
was initially specked out and mostly built by my uncle, who was being paid by my dad to build it, and then something happened with the original mobile.
It was a really, really old early 2000s MSI board from what I remember.
They, uh, sorry guys, I, I have untreated sleep apnea and my brain is just not working.
He got this case that had like dog ears on it. It was really cool.
And fully specked it up at the mobile fried.
And so he needed an extra 200, I think, from my father, who then joined his dad and they both really, really laid into my uncle.
And unfortunately, my uncle took his life.
So it's kind of, kind of like the closing time by semi sonic, you know, it's that, that one line that goes every new beginning comes from some other beginnings and, you know, that kind of kind of describes how I ended up in the software field to begin with.
And so I started young man, I was like six, you know, I was in kindergarten and that was the first time that I was able to really, really start learning how computers work.
And I'm not going to lie to you, it really pissed my parents off, you know, they really hated the fact that I would go in there.
They still, to this day, both of them are technologically illiterate.
And so they act like, you know, the word configuring is like a bad word, you know, like, oh, I don't want to configure this. I'm like, well, you're either going to configure it or it's going to remain broken and just not work, you know, take your pick.
But I digress. So I got in really, really young, really young. And that's why I want to talk today about this law and I want to talk today about another project that I was kind of kind of working around with.
Really, I'm disturbed by the way that things are going right now and I don't think it looks good and I don't think I really think that, you know, I'm looking at system 76 and I just can't respect them the way that I used to.
I get that you have to make money and I get that you have people working for you, but at some point there, there comes a hill that you need to be willing to kill on and that's this one.
There's there is no, oh, yeah, let's just let the court's handle it. No, this is a blatant violation of your rights. Everyone's rights.
Privacy is a human right. That is a hill that everybody who values freedom should be willing to kill on.
And I look at system 76 and they're just schmoozing it up with some of these guys in Colorado.
And these guys are giving them the, yeah, yeah, it's a fight. Just go away. Go away. We don't want you touching our privacy invasion laws. Go away.
Yeah, yeah, we'll do what you say, but go away and, you know, not really. So, you know, and that's just my opinion, the opinions are like assholes, you know, everybody has them, but I just, I'm, I'm irritated.
I'm irritated and I'm sure the lot of people listening to this have probably come to similar conclusions.
I don't know that anything I'm saying here is new, but I got to get it out there, man.
The second thing is that I ran into an interesting case of embrace extent extinguish and happened a few years ago under my nose and I didn't realize it was happening.
Now, something I've noticed about the false community is that half of them are okay with properly licensed code in C sharp and the other half are like, oh, that's cancer, you know.
I'm just going to say if I have to choose an object oriented managed language, right, I don't care for Ruby or Python and I don't care for Java. I've worked with C sharp.
I've worked with the above mentioned and just personally, I prefer C sharp, you know, that's just that's just how I am.
I get the Microsoft, sorry, Microsoft is F and terrible, man. It's, it's bad.
You know, I question how long.net core is going to go before they start just putting un, what's the word I'm looking for here.
Unvetted AI swap code into it. That's, that's my main concern, you know, and at that point I would just stick to older versions and not worry about newer language revisions, but I used to use mono develop in high school and it was a big part of we had there was a guy named Mark Suter and I don't know if he's still there. I hope he's doing well, you know, great guy.
He, he was probably one of the most interesting teachers I've ever met and one of the few teachers I had in public school that I actually respected.
But I will say that he ran a programming and video game development class, you know, he would teach you the basics of programming and then he would then
chuck you into something like unity or unreal, which is, you know, it's great, you know, it's teaching you skills and I think that more people like him need to exist in the education system and unfortunately people are too busy focusing on a mitochondria instead of, you know, useful skills and I know that's a meme, but it's also, you know, having been through 10 years ago.
It's the truth and so I used mono develop both as part of unity and standalone to, you know, really teach myself the language and I wanted to see what happened to it and so.
I'm standing, right. There's a long line of stuff happening from.
So Miguel de Acazza, the guy that started genome.
Then went on to work at Novel where he developed an open source implementation of C sharp and dot net and all that called mono.
Novel folded, got to got bought out twice and somewhere around that time.
Excuse me.
They switched, you know, copyright of mono over to Miguel's company and there, it was called Zemian, I believe.
And then something happened and then Zemian became Xamarin.
Microsoft bought Xamarin.
And with it, they bought Miguel and all of the stuff.
And so I tried to compile mono develop seven, thinking that the tarball would have everything included that needed to be, you know, developed or not developed by compile.
And interestingly, I found two things, one innocuous, right, my get is no longer a thing.
It's, it's not hosted anymore, it's understandable, you know, stuff like that happens all the time, right.
Those dependencies needed to compile.
They could be found elsewhere, you know, and I was able, I was actually able to achieve that.
The other half of the dependencies, and this is where embrace extent extinguish, you know, or at least the comparison to comes from, we're hidden behind an azure wall.
I immediately was hit in the face by a username and password prompt.
For a back end azure service that I don't even know if exists anymore, but they hid when Microsoft bought out Xamarin.
They hid a lot of the stuff needed to actually compile mono develop behind a wall, it's an off wall.
And so I'm looking at this like, this is what happened, right, it was an open source project got taken over by Microsoft, they added to it, they added features to it.
And then they put half the project behind an authorization wall that the user, you know, outside users can't compile from.
And that about kills it, you know, that's it.
All she wrote.
And so I'm kind of irritated about it, you know, and I get, I get the most people like, yeah, who cares, gauges is Microsoft, you know, of dot net sucks, yeah, I get that.
And I guess if that's your opinion, I don't really know what to tell you, I guess this episode just isn't for you, you know, but for me it's it's deeper than the dot net stuff, it's it's not about what the software was about.
Excuse me, the original goal of the software.
Then getting bought out and just half that being put behind a wall intentionally, just so that people can't use it.
And so I'm looking into what's needed because.
I kind of want to use this as an opportunity to learn the avalanche framework and I have issues with how they're.
Requiring jet brains in order to do it. I'm sorry, but I just can't be bothered to pay.
I can't remember it was like 79 or something like that for writer. I'm sure writer is a great tool, but.
You know, I'm I'm not really on board with this is an open source product and then we recommend that you use a proprietary IDE, I'm just I'm not on board with that.
And so avalanche is a C sharp project mono develop is also technically supposed to be a C sharp project.
I figured why not try to.
Keep it in the family quote unquote and use the two related and so come to find out mono itself is owned by wine now, which is interesting.
But I don't know man, I just I needed to get that off my chest because I'm I'm irritated about both things.
The the laws and stuff and just the general state of freedom being actively eroded, I look at a bone to replace and core details with what was it called you, you tell us just terrible man, it's terrible.
But I, I don't know man, but thanks for tuning in, this is a relatively short episode, I just needed a rant man, I've been meaning to get this off my chest.
Once things that my consultancy firm pairs of get started hopefully I will have more to share about the actual substant of engineering stuff that I'm working on because we've we've got a couple of things and in the works here me and my business partner Adam Ron, we are going to develop a couple of tools and I I can't wait to share them because it's you know some of some of the hobby is people are really going to like this stuff.
I can't say much about it, but it's going to be fun man, but thanks for tuning in and I'm out.
You have been listening to the Hacker Public Radio podcast, at hackerpublicradio.org.
Today's show was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast, then visit the HPR site to find out how easy it really is.
Hosting for HPR has been kindly provided by anhonesthost.com, the Internet Archive, rsync.net, and the HPR Community Content Delivery Network.
Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.