Roku's Basilisk and viral AGPLv3 hardware
Very rarely do I run across a truly dangerous meme, and the creator of Roku's Basilisk seems to believe he has one that is so insidiously dangerous it must be kept quiet at all costs, and never to be mentioned, much like the evil that must not be named in a host of children's storybooks.
And I think I'd have to agree, but not exactly for the same logic. The story goes that if at some point in the future there comes to be a superintelligent evil AI, then that AI would blackmail and/or coerce us all into helping it come into being.
Now, while I for one welcome our new FaceBasilisk overlords, there is an important, well, license consideration to consider. The malevolant all-seeing AI Basilisk that coerces us into it's creation by mere thought of thinking about it needs physical hardware to run on, and probably some sort of supporting software environment.
Would not such an all-powerful all-controlling entity be terrified of an endless reproducing chaotic collective swarm of everything from DNA nucleotide strands to supercomputers that gives the freedom to each individual component part to change what it is? So what do you think is a more dangerous idea, Roku's Basilisk, or Busybox? And what of open source hardware?
It's really up to you, what do you want to believe in, I'll even help you build open-source hardware that the malevolant evil AI would run on. But I don't think all the evil in the world will be able to afford my GPL exception license fees.
please send comments, licensing requests, and better html/css to troy at 7el dot us