One of my own, but posted elsewhere to explain various open source software licenses.

For this, I assume you understand what compilation is.

• MIT and Apache are “Do whatever you want with my code, just give credit with this license file”, but Apache is a bit more detailed and has a bit more on patent clause.
• GPL can be summarized into 2 provisions: “You have to share the source code alongside compiled executables” (.exe for windows), and “if your executables compile with GPL code, then the rest of the code that compiles also has to be GPL licensed” (Which is why some call it a viral license)
• However, the loophole with GPL code is that if you are running anything with GPL code running on a server, you are not distributing the executable if you are only accessing it through a web page, so you don’t have to share the source code, and AGPL closes that loophole by saying “You still have to share the source code for AGPL licensed programs if you are using it as a service”
• Companies hate GPL code since they can’t legally keep modified software close sourced, which means that Facebook won’t be able to develop proprietary extensions for AGPL licensed software like Lemmy or Mastodon.

Modified from what I've posted on our partners at No Stupid Questions:

I've felt that /r/eli5 was some of the best content in the Old Country, but somewhere along the way, it lost the fun aspect it once had. Everything there is so sanitized that it no longer has the feeling of community anymore.

In the age of large language models, getting a simplified summary of a complex idea is pretty much just a copypaste away, and I don't really see the need of having a place for what ELI5 currently is when it can be automated away, but I'm willing to admit that I may be wrong.

Now, the specific issues I have with ELI5 on reddit is that the mods there seem to make and enforce the rules arbitrarily and without any rationale, which just led to serious mod abuse. For example:

• Your answer can't be too short, that's too low effort.
• Your answer can't be too long, that's too specific.
• Your answer can't be for something someone asked before.
• Your answer can't be how you literally explain things to a real 5-year-old, despite that being the very name of the subreddit.

Just ridiculous. And I think we can all do better than that.

My ultimate goal would be having a place for people to explain things that would not be possible for machines, it should be entertaining to read as you learn, instead of making your eyes glaze over, because first and foremost, on Lemmy, we are rebuilding a place specifically for people to get engaged and inspired by each other, because that's what a community is.

(Hatefulness would NOT be tolerated, of course.)

There's overlap between our partners at "No Stupid Question" and "Now Lemmy Explain", of course, but I think the best way to explain it (or, Now Lemmy Explain: ) is that NSQ focuses on getting any answer to simple questions, while NLE focuses on getting simple answers to any question.

I'm mostly expecting that if this works out, NLE will probably be the more casual counterpart to NSQ on lemmy.world, which would be the reverse of the situation on reddit.

So, if you have any topic you'd like to have explained, please make a post there, and we'll all try our best to explain.

Lemme explain with subreddits.

You have /r/tech and /r/technology, right? Different subreddits, different communities. Somebody posts something on /r/tech and crossposts it to /r/technology. You’re subscribed to both. You now see the same link twice.

That’s exactly what’s happening here, cross-posting to different communities. It’s still the wild west out here, but I would expect a lot of these communities to solidify behind 2-3 “winners” over time, with the smaller ones becoming more niche.

@Barbarian@sh.itjust.works

A lot of mods are community founders. They care about their community, not reddit. Reddits just a middleman getting in the way.

Imagine a group of friends. Reddit is the friend with the best house for parties, but is kind of a dick. The mods are the social ones that brought this friend group together in the first place. Reddit is being stupid and making dumb rules that mostly hurt the mod. The mod is trying to either get reddit to relax the rules OR convince the rest of the friends to leave. Truthfully the friends should leave, but reddit's house is so nice and they’re comfortable. The mod could leave, but they’re afraid all that will result in is losing their entire friend group. The whole situation sucks all around.

by Greenskye@lemmy.world

As our community's name suggests, this is a place where "Lemmy" explains, and there are a lot of other places on Lemmy where people do a great job explaining things.

In the spirit of cooperation, here's Rule 5:

If you see someone else do a great job explaining a particular topic, you are encouraged to cross-post it here, but be sure to credit the original poster for their contributions.

Thoughts?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/583669

Why YSK: Because intuitive explanations are few and far between, and the technical explanations often present too many "trees" and not enough "forest", which is just how technically-minded people are trained to approach things. Forests are, after all, made of trees, and it's not their fault we don't care about individual "trees". This then, is my unprofessional attempt to consolidate everything I've read over the past three days into one, easy-to-understand explanation of how all this shit works in lay-person's terms. Due to my amateur background, I may have details incorrect, and I would request that anyone who catches anywhere where I have made a mistake, even a small detail, to please correct me. I will also include a few links to my best sources at the bottom. tl;dr style explanations will be included after every paragraph in parenthesis. So, let's begin:

Imagine you have reddit. Fantastic, it's a giant forum composed of a whole bunch of smaller, sub-forums. But let's take this one step further. Why have just one reddit? Why can't we have lots of reddits, each capable of having its own complete set of subs, where each reddit is independent of every other one and has its own web address? Okay, let's do this, and push it to the extreme. Let's make it so everyone can make their own reddit, even individuals. So you, if you wanted, could set up your own complete reddit, with just you in it. You could have all the subs, r/TIL, r/TIHI, r/pics, etc etc, all with just you in them. You have total control! But you have no content and are probably pretty lonely, right? We'll get to that. Let's call this Self-Hosting though.

(So, we now have a situation where many whole reddits can individually exist, each in the vacuum of space.)

Now let's fix that content and loneliness problem. What if we allowed each reddit to communicate and share content with every other reddit, similar to how subs can communicate with each other? Boom. We just created a spider-webbed network, of countless individual reddits, each composed of subs, that can now all share content back and forth. Let's call this big spiderweb an over-reddit, to contrast it with subreddits.

(Now instead of a two-tier system of isolated reddits and their subs, we have a three-tier system, of over-reddit [the "Lemmy-verse"], reddits [Lemmys or Instances or Servers], and subs [communities or sub-lemmies].)

But, we actually have a technical problem. How do these individual reddits find each other? How do they know the other ones even exist? They could be on servers on opposite sides of the planet, with random web addresses. Obviously we can't just guess. So, okay, let's let users solve this for us via crowd-sourced labor. We don't have to find all the reddits for them. Let's just design the system so that the reddits only find out about each other after any random-ass user introduces them to each other. We'll call this batching, they can do it with the reddit search bar. Then, we'll wait for that random-ass user to actually subscribe to any new sub/community over there, which they'll only do if it's any good. Once this is done, now the two reddits and that one sub become connected, not just for that user, but their whole reddit userbase too. The rando doing the search and subscribing simply introduced two good reddits to each other. Now that they know about each other though, they'll share content back and forth freely, with comments, votes and posts all being visible to both reddits. Let's call this "federating with each other". It's not too different from neurons in the brain reaching out to each other, really.

(To find and connect the disparate, scattered reddits into our over-reddit, we use crowd-sourced labor.)

Well, that's it. That's the Lemmy-verse. But what about this Fediverse? Well, okay, remember what we did with reddit, and giving it a third tier of over-reddit? Let's do the same exact thing with twitter, facebook, youtube and every other thing we can pull out of our asses. Let's let all of them share and access each other's content with the exact same structure and system, so now you, hanging out in your reddit, can get all the tweets too. We've made a fourth tier now. The Fediverse, which is most comparable to the internet itself, and includes the Mastadon-verse, the PeerTube-verse, etc etc.

(Why stop there...? reddit is chump change, let's just do this to everything.)

So, that's it in a nutshell. That's how this shit works. And the next time someone says it's like email, I'm going to climb through their computer screen and smack them. It's only like email at that technical, "trees" level, and when you go up to the more intuitive "forest" level, this just serves to confuse the ever-living hell out of everyone.

(I'm a bit of a dick.)

One last detail: Admins can whitelist (allow-list) or blacklist (shadowban) other Instances/servers. As an example, one of the other largest Instances has blacklisted (shadowbanned) us here at lemmy.world, because we were producing too much spam. As a result, until they undo this, all of us here are shadowbanned from their Instance/server. We can see their content, they can't see ours. This enables them to control how much connection they have to the rest of the Fediverse.

(Let's not forget to give admins the power to stop people from other places bothering them, if they do not approve of the content. Very important feature.)

Sources: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/01-getting-started.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmy_(software) https://github.com/amirzaidi/lemmy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36387939

Again, if I've made any errors, regardless of how small, please let me know below. This is intended to be another reference material for lay-people, so accuracy is important. However, outside of major errors, I will not be editing this post to correct it, as I would prefer any corrections to be delivered from the full perspective of someone's individual expertise, instead of being translated into my own words.

(I don't actually know what I'm talking about. Scroll down for people who do.)

Hope this helps.

edit for grammar/cleanup

If this community gets bigger, we're going to need a community icon and banner. So, please put your idea in the comments below, and the highest upvoted ones will be the new community icon/banner for the next few months. (Again, within reason of course)