WASHINGTON — In a move that sent shockwaves through the tech industry, former President Donald Trump signed an executive order today declaring all open-source code “un-American” and making its creation, distribution, or use punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison. “Nobody knew code could be free. It’s terrible, folks. Terrible,” Trump declared from his Mar-a-Lago residence. “Real Americans pay for their software, and they pay big league. That’s what made this country great.” The controversial order, scrawled in gold Sharpie on the back of a McDonald’s receipt, specifically targets what Trump called “socialist programmer communes” like GitHub and Linux. It requires all software to be developed behind closed doors and sold at “whatever price the market can bear, plus 50%.” Tech industry leaders were quick to respond, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reportedly doing backflips in his office while shouting “Windows forever!” Meanwhile, Linux creator Linus Torvalds was last seen attempting to seek political asylum in Finland, muttering something about “git push” and “force shutdown -h now.” The order has created particular confusion in the government sector, where thousands of federal websites running on open-source software suddenly became illegal. The White House’s own website temporarily displayed a blue screen of death with the message “ERROR: FREEDOM.EXE NOT FOUND.” “This is a great day for American software,” said Trump’s newly appointed Chief of Proprietary Code Enforcement, a sentient copy of Windows Vista. “We’re going to make coding great again by putting it behind the biggest, most beautiful paywalls you’ve ever seen.” At press time, a underground resistance movement of developers had already formed, sharing code snippets via an elaborate network of Morse code signals sent through reprogrammed coffee makers.
Bit this onion hard let me tell you
why is this believable. literally had to check the community.
Yeah this might be the first time I ate the onion.
It’s just an error on the date, just wait a few weeks
At this point, I think it’s the Onion’s active strategy. Release the news a month in advance and hope it’ll prevent it from happening somehow.
It ain’t working
Same, first time I was tricked by one of these headlines this year. I had to recheck the source because it sounded real for a minute.
Because we live in the stupidest of timelines. Courtesy of your average stupid as fuck American voter and non-voter.
Not to mention the “good” party who couldn’t even be bothered to pretend to be leftists this time around
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Jesus fucking christ, fuck you for the heart attack I just got 😂
Same. It took me a bit too long to realise the satire.
What world do we live in where we actually think this is possible!?!
I fully ate the onion on this one. 100% believable headline.
I would’ve if the logo wasn’t on the posts, super noticeable. I might miss the community name just written out but that logo ruins any chance I could eat the onion on here.
The tell on this joke (aside from it being the onion community) was trump actually knowing or caring about open source.
Damn, got me.
Third time today they have got me with the onion, it’s all too believable.
It’s really not believable. Critical thinking is lost. I’m no Trump fan, but comeon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump
Yes, critical thinking is lost in the signing of plainly illegal and otherwise impractical and damaging executive orders.
Some things are too sacred to joke about.
I ate the onion so bad on that headline!
Fucking Onion headline got me again, I legitimately believed this until I saw where it was posted haha
same. I don’t like that reality is that level of insanity.
I went looking for corroborating stories before I noticed one of them was Onion…
Fuck guys you got me. I read half that before I saw it was the onion.
These are turning into jump scares.
Cool profile picture!
Thanks, cooked it up when I was figuring out Ai stuff.
I don’t laugh at the Onion anymore sadly, I only let out a sigh of relief.
We live in such a post-satire world now, this felt totally realistic. Got me too for a second.
Holy shit I didn’t see the onion logo for a sec, don’t DO that to me lmao
Ok, I bit this onion. 10/10
Making open source illegal? Probably not.
Removing the copyleft licensing to allow corporate entities to take ownership of open source code? Absolutely - in fact, I don’t think it’s premature to assume that most creative commons and open source licensing cases will fail in court in a Trump administration.
So in a world where licenses become meaningless in the US, how should we proceed? I’m happy to “pirate” what used to be open since the source is available. Do we just try to anonymize developer identities and everything becomes “published in the EU” ;) , because that’s fine with me.
in a world where licenses are meaningless you have either just killed the economy stone fucking dead or you have effectively abolished copyright as a whole.
The oligarch corpos are not subject to the same rule of law. They can steal your work, and you will sent to the gulag for not giving your code to them sooner.
Let’ssss goooooo!
I’m worried that when it comes to it Trump’s appointed supreme court will invalidate the GPL.
They absolutely will. Can you imagine how much money Linux would be worth if everyone who uses it had to pay a licensing fee to Oracle? There’s a reason Ellison is on the Trump train - there’s a lot of gravy available to him once open source protections go away, and he’s been fighting this battle for 10 years. Expect Google v. Oracle to go the way of the Roe v. Wade.
Well, in a truly and legitimately harrowing way, I can see a world where a certain neo-nazi South African billionaire tech-fraud idiot is putting this idea in his ear.
On the other hand, it would nuke the US economy to do this, so that makes it a little less likely
And that nazi’s cars use a shit ton of open-source software
I have no expectation he is capable of understanding that
Since when has nuking the US economy been a problem? He’s literally doing that to the country right now.
Why do people keep acting like anything he does makes logical sense? At this point the dumbest man alive has still been able to find plenty of idiots who fall for his obviously bad nonsense and who will act like he’s “smart enough not to do [thing he has already done, is doing, or will do] at least!”.
How’s the saying go? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me five-hundred times and you can sure as shit I’m a US citizen!”
