Notices by aeva (aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place), page 2

@mrcopilot ok so here's a contrived example: let's say someone makes a game that has an unmodified GPL dependency, and they distribute the game with the game's source code, but because they don't understand how licenses work they put their own source code under CC-BY-NC-ND which forbids modification, commercial use, and doesn't grant any useful rights specific to software. That's several GPL violations despite their source code being available to the public.

@mrcopilot so in theory the copyright holder for whatever GPL library that game used could sue in hopes of getting the code released under a compatible license or to get the game pulled from distribution or collect damages or whatever else it is that people who file lawsuits hope to achieve

@LunaFoxgirlVT yes that's great but that's still a fairly garden variety example of viral license compliance litigation for the purpose of (among other things) making code available to the general public that was not previously available to the general public, is it not?

@LunaFoxgirlVT right so was the source code available and simply under an incompatible license or was the source code also not available?

@LunaFoxgirlVT that would be an example of what I mean by involving source code availability

A funny bit of trivia from the GPL's wikipedia page: Area Man Violates Own License

A question for open source licensing nerds out there: has anyone ever been taken to court over a GPL violation for anything other than the requirements involving the mere availability of source code?

@mcc I think there's a reference implementation for javascript written in javascript, so that's like half the way there right

@mcc yes, if my dodgy memory is to be trusted

@mcc I'll see if I can find it after dinner

@mcc also this very real book might just say how to write one yourself

@mcc great news! to my astonishment, there are multiple javascript interpreters written in javascript, and also apparently many more written in other languages! maybe one will fit your niche? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ECMAScript_engines

Amiga was a good name for a computer. It makes two important things clear:

1. computer is girl

2. computer is friend

The thing I worry about most with all the AI stuff is how long it'll be until it's used to enforce regressive censorship laws or worse.

The thing where Samsung phones can't photograph the real moon seems laughable, and Tumblr's automatic censorship push a few years ago was a disaster, but I think it's only a matter of time until you can't get a computer that can display a picture of a boob because half the states in the US made it illegal.

@LunaFoxgirlVT @eniko aaaaw QBASIC I love you

Before anyone else pesters me: I'm presently only interested in programming languages that are old enough to drink, thank you.

@eniko to my knowledge COBOL has never wronged me

every time I get excited about another systems programming language I inevitably get bummed out when I remember that any step away from C or C++ is likely also a step away from the Bell Labs dream of making video games that run on those fancy lil boxes that plug into your TV

I love the term "software archaeology" because it implies the existence of subfields such as "software experimental archaeology" (attempting to reconstruct and demonstrate how people once built software) and "software paleoethnobotany" (quantifying what botanicals were culturally significant to software and the broader historic implications to the societies that wrote it), but also the existence of the broader field "software anthropology" and its offshoot "software sociology", and

I'm a bit curious to try out the D programming language (hereby known as "the D") for its metaprogramming and memory safety features, in large part because it can be seamlessly compiled into C++ programs, but I'm a bit hesitant to use any exotic configurations like that in any of my serious projects.

One of the memory safety features I'm interested in is automatic garbage collection, which they boast outperforms manual memory management due to reduced heap allocations.