As far as I understand it, Richard Stallman has gotten his view about linking from FSF’s lawyers, who has advised the FSF about what does and does not count as a “derived work”, in the sense of US copyright law.
If you want to argue that the FSF’s lawyers are wrong, please provide more detailed, and hopefully referenced, arguments (as opposed to plain assertions).
FSF has opinions but not case law - anyone else's opinion is as valid, there's no citation because no court has ruled that dynamic linking is or isn't a derivative work.
You have to construct your own view based on existing statute and vaguely related cases.
Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., 593 U.S. 1 (2021) is not a pro-FSF opinion.
Whether linking (dynamic or not) is a derivative work is defined by things like incorporation, similarity, and creative expression.
I think the FSF view is unreasonably confident in its public opinions where the current law is that each potential infraction is going to be decided on a case by case basis. Read 17 USC 101 for yourself and square that with FSF/Stallman opinions.
There's too much nuance to have a stance about what happens when you link a program. "It depends" is the only thing you can say.
I would point towards Oracle v. Rimini, where the Ninth Circuit has specifically ruled (inside a complex and yet-unresolved case) that a system built to interoperate with a copyrighted program does not constitute a derivative work of that program. (https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2024/12/16/2...)
They reference a less on point but better known case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Galoob_Toys,_Inc._v._Nin...., for some reason you have to manually add the period at the end of the link) about whether NES cheat cartridges were copyright infringement. If a work that directly links to and interoperates with a program is a derivative work of that program, the Game Genie really was illegal after all. To me that doesn't seem right, and given the FSF's general opinion on console restrictions (https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2025/winter/new-nintendo-drm-ba...) I kinda feel like they'd have to agree.
They're not logistic, this is a species of nonsense claim that irks me even more than claiming "capabilities gains are exponential, singularity 2026!"; it actually includes the exponential-gains claim and then tries to tack on epicycles to preempt the lack of singularities.
Remember, a logistic curve is an exponential (so, roughly, a process whose outputs feed its growth, the classic example being population growth, where more population makes more population) with a carrying capacity (the classic example is again population, where you need to eat to be able to reproduce).
Singularity 2026 is open and honest, wearing its heart on its sleeve. It's a much more respectable wrong position.
The latter is possibly just a Git feature that should come into existence (it's annoying to have to make sure your hook is robust against this). But I think "being a package manager" is what they think the main point is.
That's their choice, don't try to pressure them to self-dox. What is wrong with you / the "JJ Discord server"? Please identify yourself and everyone there so I can be sure to up my paranoia around each of you.
I think you misunderstood. I didn't ask for their name. Luckily the author didn't seem to misunderstand.
As for information about me, you can search the internet for my username. Let me know if you don't find anything and I can try to help. I'm not going to share information about others on the Discord server.
I think you're a person behaving in a very socially harmful way, purportedly representing a group of such people. I think this based on the actual words you wrote. You're not behaving harmfully because you don't want to use software without the author's dox, you can have any preferences you like, but because you think your desire not to use it without the author's dox gives you any standing to impose demands on another person.
"I didn't ask for their name" is a ridiculous reply. You asked for some unspecified degree of personal information. Luckily the author didn't bow to your pressure but just said "I'm a software developer", which we already knew because of the developed software.
Why don't I have standing to demand people's dox as some random idiot Internet commenter? Answer this question and then turn your answer around on yourself. Then, maybe, apologize? Or don't, if you have some other way to psychologically ensure you won't go around demanding people's information in the future.
Maybe there's some other subtext here that I'm completely unaware of, but based on what I've read here, I gotta say that this is an impressive level of hostility, even by internet standards.
The post also mentions this is only a problem because of closed source, I think "I want to keep my government identity private, but here's the source code" would be a fair compromise.
If one wants to be extra "there's nothing up my sleeve" they could also publish instructions for how to do reproducible builds for the compiled artifacts (which does require publishing the source code however).
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