Context:

/r/ProgrammerHumor/ closed for a couple of days, then - “because mods have to listen to the community or otherwise they get replaced by more /u/Spez compliant” opened up again, and held a voting which new rules to enforce. The sub opened up with the new rule allTitlesMustBeCamelCase.

I made the first post about 15 minutes after the sub re-opened (because I’m in their discord, I was aware it opened up again, it wasn’t announced yet, I think) - and of course I just make a shit-post about John Olver since it’s the /r/pics (and a bunch of other) subreddits way to protesting the API changes.

It wasn’t even that good of a post to be honest, it got temporary taken down by the subs’ mods since they mentioned “it’s only anecdotally related [to programmer humor]” - but after messaging them explaining the context they put it back up. So it’s basically approved by the moderators of the subreddit. And not against the content policy of the sub

It got like 3k upvotes in about an hour, so I got a message from some bot that I was on the frontpage of /all/ as well. At the end of the day it had 13.5k upvotes

About 48 hours later I got an automated message:

Your account has been permanently suspended for breaking the rules. This account is permanently suspended due to violations of Reddit’s content policy

I posted an “appeal” basically just asking “Lol you banned me for posting John Oliver?”

And the only response I got was:

Thanks for submitting an appeal to the Reddit admin team. We have reviewed your request and unfortunately, your appeal will not be granted and your suspension will remain in place. For future reference, we recommend you to familiarize yourself with Reddit’s Content Policy. -Reddit Admin Team This is an automated message; responses will not be received by Reddit admins.

I posted another “appeal” yesterday asking “Could you clarify which Content Policy rule I broke?” To which they haven’t responded yet.

It’s the only post I made in the last 2 weeks, so there wasn’t any other reason to suddenly ban me besides this post…

My reddit account was 12 years old at this point. I was going to leave anyways because the Reddit client I use (sync) already announced it would be shutting down June 30 - so I don’t care that much that they banned me - just though it was a pretty weird approach from the Reddit Admins to start banning people for getting John Oliver on the front-page

  • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    01·
    1 year ago

    Over the years this dev definitely earned the community’s trust and I see no reason to assume he will pull sneaky shit now.

    The fact that he puts you in a position where you have to trust him makes him not trustworthy. There is no place for trust in computer security or privacy. If you have to trust something, it is bad for you. For example it would be ridiculous if encryption relied only on trust and nobody could verify that it’s actually secure. I’m not saying the developer is malicious, but he should know better than this (all programmers should).

    FOSS is awesome, but I kind of dislike the militant push towards it here on Lemmy. As soon as someone does not release their source code people go “But have you thought about open source?”, “Why not open source?”, “No source, no install” and the likes.

    Why do you dislike that? Do you not want to have control over your own devices and software that runs on them? Free and Open Source software gives you the freedom to study the program, modify it and distribute the original and any modifications you make to it. This way not only we can verify what the program does, but we can also change it to fit our needs. But also this makes it impractical to implement any malicious functionality, because users can easily remove it and share the modified version with others. So instead of the developer having power over users, the users are the ones in control. They can have privacy and security, which is impossible with proprietary software. That’s why proprietary software is unethical.

    • impulse@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      That is an awful way to go about it. Have you verified your bank’s computer systems? What about the servers your health data is stored on? I hope you use an Android AOSP ROM with a public source code. Do you even trust your microwave to not send death rays because of a malicious programmer?

      I don’t dislike it in general, I just think that FOSS is not a good fit for every project. A good and recent example: I work as a software engineer in a pretty niche market and my team and I have developed what we believe is a really neat algorithm for a pretty niche problem. There are already other players trying to replicate the solution, but thankfully they are falling short compared to our approach so far.

      Suppose instead of keeping the library proprietary we would make it open-source (and free). Well, now every competitor in the market just needs to look at our GitHub, and months of R&D budget would be basically wasted while at the same time, our competitors would get our IP handed on a silver plate.

      I’m pretty sure that Sync for Lemmy will have a pro version priced similarly to the Sync for Reddit pro version (~ $4.99 one-time). The dev would be stupid to release it as FOSS, if he intends to make money on premium features, when literally anyone with a computer and two brain cells could just compile the premium app from a public GitHub.

      Now take good examples of FOSS: Blender, Gimp, Inkscape, and the likes. The main difference is that there is no obvious monetization happening besides donations and sponsorships and for such passion projects FOSS is absolutely the way to go as you can pool in the knowledge of the community if your project generates enough traction. Blender wouldn’t be what it is today without all the volunteer devs contributing to it.

      • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Have you verified your bank’s computer systems?

        No, it doesn’t run on my computer, so that’s impossible.

        I hope you use an Android AOSP ROM with a public source code.

        I don’t use Android. I have a PinePhone - it runs GNU/Linux.

        Do you even trust your microwave to not send death rays because of a malicious programmer?

        I have to trust it, because if it has any firmware, the source code is not public. But I’m pretty sure there are standards for electromagnetic radiation, which are regulated by the government. It would be nice to be able to modify such firmware though and change how much the microwave beeps after it finishes. But anyway, the Free Software movement recognises that it is currently impossible to write replacements for all firmware for every possible device. So if a program isn’t running on a computer, it’s ok if it’s proprietary (for now at least).

        I work as a software engineer in a pretty niche market and my team and I have developed what we believe is a really neat algorithm for a pretty niche problem. There are already other players trying to replicate the solution, but thankfully they are falling short compared to our approach so far.

        You could release it under AGPL license. Since it’s a Copyleft license, your code couldn’t be used (legally) in proprietary software. If other companies wanted to use your code in their product, they would have to release the source code for the entire program (or they can pay you for MIT licensed version - this is called dual licensing). If they make improvements to your AGPL licensed code, they would have to release those changes. Win-win for the society. I don’t release my code under anything weaker than GPL. You don’t have to use permissive licenses and you probably shouldn’t.

        Think of all those companies developing almost the exact same thing you are and wasting time and money on it, while they could all contribute to your solution instead and spend the saved money on something more important. How many other areas of development are there where this happens?

        I’m pretty sure that Sync for Lemmy will have a pro version priced similarly to the Sync for Reddit pro version (~ $4.99 one-time). The dev would be stupid to release it as FOSS, if he intends to make money on premium features, when literally anyone with a computer and two brain cells could just compile the premium app from a public GitHub.

        I’m pretty sure nobody has to pay for any software ever. People choose to pay for it. Checkout the game Mindustry on Steam. It’s Libre Software, you can not only get the code for free from GitHub and compile it, but the author ever releases the builds there for free. Yet me and tons of other people still bought a copy.

        I think most people probably don’t even know what GitHub is, but yes the more technical users could compile it. That doesn’t mean none of them will buy it though.

        Blender, Gimp, Inkscape are developed by non-profits. But that doesn’t mean that commercial Libre software doesn’t exist or that it can’t exist.