Sorry if my replies are annoying, I merely find this subject interesting. Feel free to ignore this.

It is not obvious to me why a being couldn’t have an “understanding” without a “thought”. I do not believe it’s possible to verify if a creature has a subjective experience but an “understanding” of the environment could be attributed to how a being performs in an environment (a crow gets foods that was just out of reach inside a tube of water by adding rocks to raise the water level). I have some experience on game-dev programming and limited understanding on consciousness as a personal interest, if that’s helpful.

Try to read this next part without understanding it. If you know English you will find it impossible to NOT find meaning in these letters displayed in a row. That’s more like a subconscious processing. If you’re learning to read English then there’s likely an active “thought” appearing in your experience. See a difference?

If I hacked a server to get content then I would be circumventing payment at it shouldn’t be up to me how it responds to requests, I don’t own it. Google trying to enforce playing adverts via software running on my property is an unjust overreach. The user choosing what displays on their own monitor is not “circumvention”, it’s claiming ownership over your computing. Google could choose to verify on their servers if I’ve paid (in normal currency) but instead their servers act like adverts are an optional donation.

I trust Linus is being sincere when he says “it’s not a judgement” but blocking ads is being compared to a criminal doing copyright infringement (illegal). The word used is one originally meaning for a person murdering others on boats (immoral), and it’s used because it’s pejorative. It’s unavoidably judgemental.

They are similar only if you presume there is an agreement of content in exchange for revenue from adverts. If you view the internet as a place for open collaboration, or oppose (internet) advertisement, then you wouldn’t presume that agreement and it looks very different.

Sometimes people exaggerate and if you point out what they said is inaccurate then they get mad you’re not addressing their main point.

Two

are better than one

No worries. Think I’ll call myself an author as the source code is a text that can amount to a copyrighted work.

Hopefully this will not conflict with another field and and we can put this issue to rest.

Sad, but also funny to see someone revoke an MIT license. Presumably they think that is retroactive as why do it otherwise. Instead of preventing use they just un-invite themselves from any group that wishes to continue it’s open source development.