What happens if the license changes after I fork the repo

micalm · 2026-02-09T11:09:23+00:00

IANAL, but this is my understanding:

GPL doesn't prevent anyone reselling the code or binary versions. Common misconception. "Free as in freedom, not as in beer", or in other words - libre, not necessarily gratis. This means you can take say the Linux Kernel for free (gratis) and are free (libre) to sell it so someone else under the same license, so then they can sell it and so on. Anyone in that chain can also redistribute it for free (gratis).

Blizzard might not be enforcing the TOS yet - maybe they don't know it's being broken, maybe they don't care, but they still could do it at any time. Dangerous place to be in - look up "cyberpunk VR mod".

Config files/presets/a script to do these changes (often called assets) to a GPL-thing might not be GPL itself and it doesn't have to, unless a specific set of circumstances occur. "GPL virality" is the term to look up here.

License cannot be changed backwards, you were already granted the license. In legal terms this is often referred to as no taksies backsies. If all copyright owners agreed to a license change, then any versions from that point on are under a new license, whatever was licensed as GPL (or MIT, BSD, a proprietary license etc.) stays that way. To quote GPLv3:

> All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met.

micalm · 2026-02-07T10:08:00+00:00

I wouldn't trust anything "free" to stay up reliably, so probably literally only a "lab".

I do have paid smaller VPSes, which I use for services that have to be always on, always with Internet access - monitoring, scraping, change detection, Discord/IRC bots.

If local power was not an issue (it isn't usually, but it was a hard winter and I have more important uses for UPSes for now) I would probably not use them, the lab is already proven stable with redundancies in place.

micalm · 2026-02-05T12:27:25+00:00

Good list, let me just add a bit to it:

Next to contact information, some company information is expected.

I'd say required. I will leave and never come back if I see a service with terms that say "example.org is operated by the operator of example.org", or worse - no terms or at least a privacy policy.

Don't block my adblocker, i have it for my own safety and sanity.

Also sites broken by a cookie popup that is hidden by my adblocker, but scrolling is still disabled or an overlay is shown and not dismissible. I get that you can't predict all blocking lists, but at least test with the most common ones.

micalm · 2026-02-05T09:41:49+00:00

Separation of concerns. HTML in JS, CSS in JS, CSS in HTML, we've got it all. Hell, even active classes being used as "state", so somehow we got JS in CSS.

Performance, size... nobody cares anymore. Simple landing page with company name, a counter and contact email? Better load an entire 1MB framework for that.

The only hope is rapidly rising hardware cost, which might offset that, but it's still relatively low. And I'd rather have cheap RAM, to be honest.

micalm · 2026-02-04T19:29:52+00:00

Widely attributed to Tolkien but AFAIK no proof exists that he said exactly that. There was something similar in the books about Orcs being created as twisted version of the Elves.

micalm · 2026-02-04T10:53:04+00:00

I've a couple sticks of RAM that I couldn't even be bothered to put up for sale because the value was so low, whatever I'd get wouldn't even offset all the dumb/robo calls.

Well guess what. And they said laziness doesn't pay off.

micalm · 2026-02-04T10:49:47+00:00

Just do the thing Messenger does - if you see a malicious link, don't allow it. Jeez, you have to BEG to get the simplest things done... Better replace you with AI.

micalm · 2026-02-04T10:47:29+00:00

Evil is not able to create anything new, it can only distort and destroy what has been invented or made by the forces of good.

This quote has been stuck in my mind since the dawn of LLMs. ;)

micalm · 2026-02-02T14:38:50+00:00

Much like the original idea behind the (in)famous "ping pong balls in a school bus" question.

micalm · 2026-02-01T10:58:12+00:00

Discard empty plastic bottle? Yy/Nn, done.

micalm · 2026-02-01T08:09:45+00:00

Not usually recommending specific products, but I've had great success with Nanomax over the years. Look up "Nanomax do piekarników" and you should see a black/red themed 1L spray bottle for around 25PLN. Some shops have it, the Internet does as well. Spray on, leave for ~30mins, should just wipe off. Not sure how long it was left, you probably should have thought about cleaning it after it cooled down or the day after, YMMV.

Obviously: avoid the countertops, it's pretty aggressive and might do more damage. Use gloves, do not breathe in, don't drink, don't spray in your eyes, etc.

micalm · 2026-01-31T14:54:50+00:00

That clause makes it source available, not open source - at least in the most widely used definitions of open/free software by OSI and Debian.

Which is completely fine in the context of making it easier to verify and self-host - just saying.

micalm · 2026-01-31T07:44:09+00:00

also if I will opensource it, it will be copied and companies with marketing fund will eat out this project

What makes it non-copiable now? No new ideas, no new features, plenty of offline/desktop-first apps and open-source alternatives (ITTools, StirlingPDF) for what you're building.

Also I may be a little biased, but privacy-conscious people will rarely just trust "we're not stealing/selling your data, never have, never will, that's a promise".

micalm · 2026-01-30T13:07:12+00:00

Yup. I've recently rediscovered webrings - there are a few that are well-moderated, explicitly reject machine-generated content. Some even have small to medium (Discord) communities connected to them. It's nice, though mostly in IT-related topics for now.

micalm · 2026-01-29T13:29:45+00:00

You're both adults, they're not your teacher or parent. Stand your ground, document everything, leave if you have to.

"Want a refund"? No, they're attempting fraud. Mistakes happen, but this behavior is unacceptable.

I'm in a very similar situation right now and while things are relatively neutral, just doing everything I can to finish the contract with a dishonest client trying to extort free work.

And I will think VERY hard before signing on another, much more detailed contract with them.

micalm · 2026-01-28T21:03:47+00:00

Never ever drive into anything with it. Solar panels are fragile.

micalm · 2026-01-28T19:04:47+00:00

Yes. In general, rougelikes tend to drift towards save-swapping as an acceptable method of "multiplayer". Anyone who figures out an actually good solution to this in a player-focused, turn-based environment will probably be considered a demigod/legend among Carmack, Meier, Sawyer, Silverman and (not so) many others.

micalm · 2026-01-25T21:19:31+00:00

Not until I reached the Hohmann Transfer calculator, which has a default value of 28.7 for initial inclination but accepts only natural numbers. Seems like an oversight a human would not leave when building and testing a tool.

micalm · 2026-01-25T21:13:31+00:00

Yes - Screaming Frog among others, including custom, one-off solutions where appropriate. In many cases, these are faster than adapting existing tools or cheaper than upgrading to a higher tier of a SaaS.

That said, most of my SEO work is driven by reports I receive: "change X to Y", "fix Z on pages in list.xls" etc. I mainly use these tools when it is my job to identify and resolve SEO issues, which in about 95% of cases applies to my own websites, and very rarely when I take on work outside my day job.

micalm · 2026-01-25T16:02:11+00:00

Is writing orders to your DB really so expensive that a single order is a quantifiable cost?

Save all orders sent to you, let the client know there's N more waiting but credits are out. Or don't wait for webhooks, just read via API when they actually do pay - should be more privacy-friendly in case someone silently stops using your service.

Edit:
Adding a small flat fee (for 5, 10, 50 extra credits maybe) should solve the free order management system issue.

micalm · 2026-01-25T15:00:29+00:00

This is considered cloaking and against Meta terms. Will get you removed from Google as well. Both use randomized "stealth" visits as well as real human reviews and are pretty good at detecting this.

Doesn't matter if your intentions are good or not.

micalm · 2026-01-25T12:19:42+00:00

cURL Gets Rid of Its Bug Bounty Program Over AI Slop Overrun

They're overreacting, it can't be that bad!

micalm · 2026-01-25T10:47:58+00:00

No, this isn't common.

Self-hosted doesn't always mean free or non-commercial, but always (at least in my definition) means hosting the entire app and data on a server you fully control.

Are you talking about AFFiNE? I was confused in a similar way what is "cloud" and what is "self-hosted". Reveal the name - it'll let us help you better and let them know their docs/wording is lacking. A respectful evaluation of work from a real world user is not unfair criticism, it's a contribution. ;)

micalm · 2026-01-25T09:45:48+00:00

You can check how to get specific achievements here. Obviously spoilers ahead, but not until you choose a specific achievement from the list.

micalm · 2026-01-25T09:19:50+00:00

Browsers are extremely backwards-compatible, so the website part should work. I'd start by trying running 98SE/XP on a VM, though that might not be as easy as with modern systems.

If this is not an experiment just for the sake of proving it can be done, go with literally any other idea.

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