Trump Signs Executive Order Making Open-Source Code Illegal
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.
Fuck guys you got me. I read half that before I saw it was the onion.
These are turning into jump scares.
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.
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...
why is this believable. literally had to check the community.
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
Yeah this might be the first time I ate the onion.
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.
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!”
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!?!
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.
Shut up. Dont give him ideas.
Holy shit I didn't see the onion logo for a sec, don't DO that to me lmao
Please do NOT give that (insert very bad word) any ideas!! I almost had a heart attack from this!
I think I stopped breathing for a some serious seconds.
Cunt. I filled it in for you.
Bellend? Wanker? Cockwaffle? Comment OP gave us a blank space with a lot of possible words.
Fucking retarded asshole?
.world users dont say slurs challenge
Oh. Gosh darn! He's a bad bad bad guy.
Don't be a sarcastic git. There were plenty of other words you could've used that didn't compare intellectually-challenged people with fascist dictators. It makes them look bad by association.
I'm sorry I insulted the intellectually challenged community. But how do you call the stuff that really smells in a sewer? Can that be the descriptive word to use?
It still makes "shit" look bad by comparison, but feces isn't sentient. So good ahead, I guess?
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.
Ok, I bit this onion. 10/10
The tell on this joke (aside from it being the onion community) was trump actually knowing or caring about open source.
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.
Damn, got me.
It would be funnier if it wasn't written this way.
I laughed out loud
What do you mean by that?
This isn't satire, it's just make believe that confuses a number of things. It's just not funny written this way.
What makes it not satire? Can you think of any current events to which this holds up a mirror? Some of the jokes don't fully land and there are a few low-brow or layman's errors, but everything makes sense from the most basic tech users to the most tech-savvy.
You could, and many do, argue that Disaster Movie is not funny, but claiming it's not a spoof would be wholly incorrect. I'm mostly confused that you're saying this isn't satire and then saying that it checks the boxes for satire. Satire/spoofs don't have to be funny.
Either way, when y'all are saying that this isn't funny written this way, I'd really like you to elaborate. ¿ʎɐʍ sᴉɥʇ uǝʇʇᴉɹʍ ʎuunɟ ʇᴉ sI
What's making it unfunny or how could you rewrite parts to make it funny? I appreciate the fact that y'all are willing to provide honest input, but using constructive criticism would be even more appreciated and help make this community better for everyone, including yourselves.
Real: Trump Fires Nuclear Weapons Workers
Real: Trump un-fires Nuclear Safety Workers
Parody: Trump Fires Nuclear Weapons Workers, and Re-Hires McRib Sandwich
Satire: Trump Fires White House Secretary of GrubHub
By contrast, this post's writing just takes a premise and mashes then up with things that are based in fact - executive orders, open-source software - then tries to shoehorn a joke into how they could possibly be funny IF true. It's like trying a sketch that doesn't work because there is no take on a take, just randomly thought up things that sound like they would be stupid if they happened. It's trying to be a parody without a basis in fact, or at a stretch satire with all the facts wrong. It's just not really funny and comes off as trying too hard to make a joke.
I can get behind this criticism and admit that I felt mostly the same. I figured that either OP didn't flesh out their narrative and just kept proposing more headlines and bylines. Or, they used an LLM.
I'd like to hope that this OP put OC in the UI, you see? Either way, the thing I most appreciate about this post is that they tried. I like the idea of people sharing their harvest from their own onion trees, it makes for a nice little onion amuse-bouche.
The fact that they began with closing open-source as the premise, and Trump's penchant for making up words and definitions that prove he doesn't know anything, I was hoping that somewhere in there would have been a quote like:
Side note: the crazy juxtaposition of your headlines made your spoof and satire examples that much more funny. "Re-Hires McRib Sandwich" made me cackle.
Hey, I'm just proud we have Onion-flavoured Lemmy OC!
Oh my god, SOMEONE post this to /c/Linux and watch the chaos!
You joke but a Republican governor attempted to make viewing the source code of websites illegal
Would immediately cause a penguin insurgency against Trump lol
I didn't realize what comment you were replying to, so I didn't realize you were replying to a linux comment. I thought "penguin insurgancy" was some political term I'd never heard of before. But I didn't know what it meant. So I just envisioned elon musk rising out of the sewer, and biting trumps nose off.
Brooo, i cant even share this with my friends; its too believable
I like this trend of homegrown satire on this community.
Some things are too sacred to joke about.
Man Onion is way to believable these days..
Edit: this text is hilarious great job OP.
Bit this onion hard let me tell you
Its a sad day for the open-source free app Truth Social
Now they are just trying to predict the future
I could post this on Nextdoor.com and none of my neighbors would blink. In fact, loads of them would step up to say how great this plan is. I am sorely tempted.
(Brilliant OP! But throw us some paragraph breaks.)
Y'all breathing a sigh of relief, but it's too early.
All it would take is for someone to mention this to him, and it got people flustered.
Either Altman or Musk are going to mention it because of Deepseek R1 fucking them over...
He would put the code genius that left the doge Page's DB unlocked in charge of enforcement.
Totally not believable since President Musk's companies often depend on it so he would never allow his Vice President to sign such an executive order.
Since it is clearly Musks code, why should everybody else be allowed to use it.
Nobody would maintain it for him for free if was illegal.
Migrant workers in the camps
I wouldn't be surprised at all if an executive order comes along that allows "Federal Contractors" such as em's companies to have exclusive right to things forbidden to the open market.
The onion needs to be take serious these days :-) But he would shoot himself in the foot. His 1984 version of "truth" social is based on mastodon. Wonder how much his platform contributing back in code to mastodon? To be clear that is a rhetoric question...
Honestly, if any Truth code were pushed into Mastodon, I’d probably stop using it
They'd have to shut down Truth Social, if they did that.
Bold of you to presume that they would think of that before doing so!
Remember.....we're all female now. Every last one of us. Regardless of what you feel. That's what the bill says.
Their stupidity helps me sleep at night.
Brilliant
Are we sure that this is satire? Have you guys heard of deepseek and how it's somehow bad that China has the ability to hallucinate as well as American proprietary companies do but for only a fraction of the cost?