Comment by sugarpimpdorsey

3 days ago

Every time I see one of these I think it's a malicious redirect to some pervert-dwelling imageboard.

On that note, is kernel.org really using this for free and not the paid version without the anime? Linux Foundation really that desperate for cash after they gas up all the BMW's?

It's crazy (especially considering anime is more popular now than ever; netflix alone is making billions a year on anime) that people see a completely innocent little anime picture and immediately think "pervent-dwelling imageboard".

Huh, why would they need the unbranded version? The branded version works just fine. It's usually easier to deploy ordinary open source software than it is for software that needs to be licensed, because you don't need special download pages or license keys.

If it makes sense for an organization to donate to a project they rely on, then they should just donate. No need to debrand if it's not strictly required, all that would do is give the upstream project less exposure. For design reasons maybe? But LKML isn't "designed" at all, it has always exposed the raw ugly interface of mailing list software.

Also, this brand does have trust. Sure, I'm annoyed by these PoW captcha pages, but I'm a lot more likely to enable Javascript if it's the Anubis character, than if it is debranded. If it is debranded, it could be any of the privacy-invasive captcha vendors, but if it's Anubis, I know exactly what code is going to run.

  • If i saw an anime pic show up, thatd be a flag. I only know of Anubis’ existence and use of anime from hn.

    It is only trusted by a small subset of people who are in the know. It is not about “anime bad” but that a large chunk of the population isnt into it for whatever reason.

    I love anime but it can also be cringe. I find this cringe as it seems many others do too.

[flagged]

  • > Anubis is a clone of Kiwiflare, not an original work, so you're actually sort of half-right:

    Interesting. That itself appears to be a clone of haproxy-protection. I know there has also been an nginx module that does the same for some time. Either way, proof-of-work is by this point not novel.

    Everyone seems to have overlooked the more substantive point of my comment which is that it appears kernel.org cheaped out and is using the free version of Anubis, instead of paying up to support the developer for his work. You know they have the money to do it.

    In 2024 the Linux Foundation reported $299.7M in expenses, with $22.7M of that going toward project infrastructure and $15.2M on "event services" (I guess making sure the cotton candy machines and sno-cone makers were working at conferences).

    My point is, cough up a few bucks for a license you chiselers.

    • > Everyone seems to have overlooked the more substantive point of my comment which is that it appears kernel.org cheaped out and is using the free version of Anubis, instead of paying up to support the developer for his work. You know they have the money to do it. > > In 2024 the Linux Foundation reported $299.7M in expenses, with $22.7M of that going toward project infrastructure and $15.2M on "event services" (I guess making sure the cotton candy machines and sno-cone makers were working at conferences). > > My point is, cough up a few bucks for a license you chiselers.

      Several points:

      - there is no license to pay. This is free (as in open source and as in beer) software. There is commercial support if you feel you need it and sponsoring options however. Sponsoring is not paying a license.

      - Sometimes it takes so long to get approval for a sponsor that large org member give up.

      - Obviously kernel.org is using an old release of anubis so they likely observed a huge spike in bandwith used at some point and used anubis, solving the problem immediately. I don't remember anubis proposing a paid license at the time of the early releases. I may be wrong but it may be that kernel.org admins have never heard of the possibly of sponsoring nor are they interested in support.

      - you don't have to pay anythinf to change/remove the image and the people who implemented this clearly do not care as they didn't do it.

      - do we have evidence that the anubis developer ever donated directly or indirectly to Linus Torvalds and the thousands of developers who worked on the kernel?

  • Anubis has nothing to do with Kiwiflare, there's no connection at all. It's not the same codebase, and the inspiration for Anubis comes from Hashcash (1997) and numerous other examples of web PoW that predate Kiwiflare, which perhaps tens of thousands of websites were already using as an established technique. What makes you think it is a clone of it?

  • Can somebody please explain why was this comment flagged to death? I seem to be missing something

    • Possibly because it links to kiwifarms (nasty website to say the least)

    • Well, it's both complete misinformation and attempts to tie a reputable open source project to an unrelated harassment and stalking website.

  • I saw the description and thought "Wow! That works just like the DDOS retarding" of KiwiFlare. I didn't know it was a proper fork of it.