Captain Beyond

IMO insisting that free software options be “no-AI” while accepting proprietary stuff is backwards. In the proprietary world it’s the norm that as the end-user you aren’t entitled to know how the software is built, because that’s considered a secret. Your favorite proprietary developers could be using “AI” and you’re not supposed to know about it. In the proprietary world as long as it looks good and does what you want it to do it doesn’t matter how it’s implemented.

If you’re insisting on being free of “AI” then as a consequence you have to insist on at least source-availability. As far as I know Obsidian isn’t even that.

AI is the compiler of natural language.

That’s a very worrisome position. If “AI is the compiler” that means the source code is your prompts/chats and the stuff in the repo is just build artifacts.

Unfortunately Obsidian is proprietary

Raspberry pi also started including DRM in their (non-free) firmware that restricts RAM upgrades. If you upgrade the RAM the firmware will either refuse to use the additional RAM or simply refuse to boot at all.

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/2026-raspberry-pi

Fortunately it also has a fairly sensible non-free software policy

The only non-free software permitted in AlpineBSD is the netbsd-firmware package, which contains binary blobs for NetBSD drivers.

(Although part of me feels like reverse-engineering binary blobs might in fact be a valid use case for LLM’s)

Braxman is apparently considered sus but I’m interested in this if only for the keyboard.

That said this landing page could be better.

“claude make a webpage about our degoogled android operating system that has no google and runs apps without google. make sure to mention that our degoogled os doesn’t have google. make no mistakes.”

Grayjay is source-available proprietary software. https://isitreallyfoss.com/projects/grayjay/

Their replacement for gboard is another proprietary app. A real FOSS alternative that seems popular is Heliboard, but it requires a proprietary blob for swipe typing (although apparently they are working on replacing that with a free alternative). I’m fond of Unexpected Keyboard.

You are correct that simply saying “this is open source” without specifying a license is generally not enough to actually ensure the four freedoms, however in the case of TempleOS Terry Davis specifically wrote on his website that it is public domain (the link is to an archive, to demonstrate that it was not added after his death, but it’s still there).

The public domain is a concept in copyright law where a work has no copyright holder, either because the copyright expired or because (in TempleOS’s case) the copyright was voluntarily relinquished. However, note that it’s entirely jurisdiction-dependent (for example, it’s not always even possible to relinquish a copyright, and copyright expiration also varies by jurisdiction). As copyright is a state-granted monopoly on distribution rights, if no one has that monopoly, there are no restrictions on copying and hence the freedom to modify and distribute the source code is available to all. Note that copyright is automatic upon the creation of a work and does not need to be registered, so either an explicit declaration from the author or knowledge that the copyright term is expired is needed to know something is in the public domain.

In short, if something is in the public domain (as the preferred form for modification i.e. source code) it is free software and open source, but the idea that public domain is somehow incompatible with FOSS is a somewhat reoccurring talking point that came up very recently. I don’t know where this came from but I imagine it has something to do with the discourse on copyright on LLM generated work.

However, it’s usually best to use an explicit license so you can affirm your intent to release the software as free.

FSF recognizes public domain as a category of free software (although, in their pedantry, they are quick to point out that it is not a “license”):

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#PublicDomain

OSI says more or less the same thing although they also elaborate on the actual legal complications of the public domain, and recommend explicitly using a license if possible:

https://opensource.org/faq#public-domain

TBF he’s correct on that one, Linux actually is just the kernel and the OS normally built around it is the project he started ~7 years before Linux was ever a thing. Given his OS project had a political/ethical message that Linux completely disregards, it’s completely understandable he might be a tad irked that his work is lumped in under the kernel guy’s.

Even if it sounds silly to us “normal users” if you put yourself in his head it makes sense.

I like Unexpected Keyboard, it’s really intuitive once you get the hang of the swipe motions. I used to use Anysoft Keyboard but it became unusable with one of the more recent updates so I had to look for a new keyboard and found this one to my liking.

It’s not open source. The open source definition is about more than being able to see source code. The usual term for the latter is “source-available” which tells you nothing about what you’re actually able to do with it.

Another term I use is “proprietary source available software” (PSAS) as a mirror to “free, open source software” (FOSS). Note that the “free” in that term refers to free software (libre) not free-of-cost (gratis). The free software definition and open source definition generally overlap so most licenses that are one will also be the other. In other words, “open source but not FOSS” is not a thing (and is generally a misnomer for PSAS).

As an analogy, you wouldn’t say a store is “open” just because you can look in the windows and see things.

From my perspective “slopcode/vibecode” means entirely (or mostly) generated, which is different than a human-maintained project that includes bits of generated code. As a rule I’m very skeptical of the former and give the benefit of the doubt to the latter especially if it’s an established project.

I’d be fine with removal or mandatory disclosure, but the latter would probably be easier to implement if there was a way to filter them out.

Unfortunately a lot of people these days tend to conflate “private” or “not google” with “FOSS.” It’s one of the reasons I’m very adamant about not watering down the definition of FOSS, free software, or open source.

This isn’t even remotely comparable. Firefox’s “AI features” are bloat and should be offered as extensions (if at all) and not part of the browser but they aren’t “forcing” users to use them. They’re just optional features the user is allowed to make use of. They don’t do anything unless the user opts to use them, and they can be toggled off completely in settings.

Whereas not only is it impossible (or at least designed to be impossible) to actually remove Edge, outside of the European region version Windows actually will always open Edge for certain links (notably those from the news widget in the taskbar) and it’s not only impossible to configure this from Windows but Microsoft has shipped updates specifically to block third-party apps that work around it. This is aside from the various dark patterns encouraging users to switch back to Edge as the default browser.

I mean, it’s a FOSS community and the OP asked for FOSS. With FOSS the user has the four freedoms, the first of which (freedom zero) is unconditional. If something is FOSS it’s taken for granted that you can “run the program as you wish, for any purpose.”

In other words part of the point of FOSS is that the user doesn’t have to worry about whether the rightsholder approves of their use of the software. They have a copy and so they can use it because it is free software.

Edit: I remembered the keyboard specifically has an exception allowing for commercial use, but the point stands. If something is described as FOSS, open source, or free software then the expectation is that the user has those four freedoms. I think it’s worth it to stand up for the free software definition on principle even though I imagine most of us wouldn’t need to sell copies of a keyboard app.

It’s not on F-Droid because it is proprietary.

https://isitreallyfoss.com/projects/futo-keyboard/

D’oh, should have looked under licenses. That’s usually the first place I look lol. Thanks for being forthright about this.

I see some other proprietary source available licenses like BSL and FSL there too.

Unfortunately this seems to be service as a software substitute it would be really nice to have this as a free software program that can be run locally.

Interestingly if you run this detector on itself (as it invites you to do) you get a funny easter egg response that includes the statement “VibeDetect is an open-source tool built with Next.js and TypeScript. The code is available on GitHub — check it yourself to see how it works” along with a link labelled “View on GitHub (if it exists)” that goes to “github.com” with no repository. So I’m not sure what to make of that.

For my part I was unable to find the source code for this on GitHub searching with DuckDuckGo or Kagi. The site itself offers no information on who built it, either.