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Richard Stallman on Data Autonomy [video]

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Re: Richard Stallman on Data Autonomy [video]

#51

Post by belorn »

such_a_casual wrote: post #9
joesmo wrote: post #4

Trust is indeed a huge issue that seems to be misunderstood and misapplied in the software community. Stallman's views on trust may seem radical, but he's pretty much right. Over and over I see the things he warns about come true and I trust companies and other entities less and less. It's kind of disheartening to see the huge potential of cloud infrastructure, amongst other technologies, going to waste.

His views only seem radical because of the way he presents them. Easily his biggest mistake is naming his movement Free Software instead of something like Software Liberties or Software Rights, and then refusing to change the name at any point after the realization of this error. Then he says things like, "They're trying to put a cloud inside your head." Which is just laughable. Most of the time he's speaking very ge…

The argument made against "Software Liberties" is that any word that is similar to liberalism is highly associated with the US two-party political system. RMS has repeatedly suggested that the word "liberty" is superior over "free" in nations outside the US where that association doesn't exist.

Re: Richard Stallman on Data Autonomy [video]

#52

Post by n4r9 »

andygmb wrote: post #46

In the video stallman states that nonfree software is in the control of the developer who owns it, which is true, but isnt a developer of free software equally in control of their software? I dont look into the source of every program on my OS, even though if i was to use 100% free software, I could. This means I am equally depending on the developer of the free software not to be malicious as I am the nonfree softwa…

At least with free software there is the hope that malicious code will get picked up on by someone with an interest in reading the source, who would then make that functionality known to others.

Re: Richard Stallman on Data Autonomy [video]

#53

Post by jordigh »

andygmb wrote: post #46

In the video stallman states that nonfree software is in the control of the developer who owns it, which is true, but isnt a developer of free software equally in control of their software? I dont look into the source of every program on my OS, even though if i was to use 100% free software, I could. This means I am equally depending on the developer of the free software not to be malicious as I am the nonfree softwa…

> This means I am equally depending on the developer of the free software not to be malicious as I am the nonfree software.

You're typically not the only person who is capable of looking at the code. If there are malicious features you can, in principle, go and see what they are and disable them. More likely, you can depend on others to do it, or you can even hire someone to do it for you. These options are not even available with non-free software.

There is a further purely psychological matter. People are more likely to behave nicely if they feel watched. If they are publishing the source code, they are less likely to be malicious, because they know that anyone can, in principle, inspect their malice. This results in fewer malicious features.

In the case of Firefox doing things like Pocket or Hello or whatever, people can and do go ahead and replace Firefox with things like GNU Icecat or Debian Iceweasel that can remove these unwanted features. Or Firefox extension authors can provide extensions to modify almost anything about Firefox, a task which is facilitated by having access to all of Firefox's source code.

Re: Richard Stallman on Data Autonomy [video]

#54

Post by baldfat »

bcrack wrote: post #37
autoreleasepool wrote: post #27

If BTsync ever goes open source or SyncThing ever achieves the quality and functionality of BTSync, then achieving autonomy over our data will be easy. I use BitTorrent Sync with my FreeNas box. It's absolutely amazing. I am able to completely subvert the cloud and have all my data synced across devices. The mobile app is a user-friendly delight. I was able to share 15 GBs of vacation videos with 10 of my non-techie…

In what ways do you find SyncThing lacking when compared to BTSync? I started using it for work (cautiously) a couple of moths ago and have found it to be very similar (with respect to stability and ease of use) with BTSync, if not superior. Note though that I haven't used BTSync since its first days.

1) Punching holes through Firewalls - BTSync has the strong upper hand for that.

2) Much easier share structure. Synchthing still feels very fiddly compared to BTSync

I had a large corporate job that BTSync would do but I dug in my heels and tried out SynchThing and I had to buy licences for BTSync. It is working out very well.

Re: Richard Stallman on Data Autonomy [video]

#55

Post by baldfat »

Anyone find it funny that the video is on a non-Stallman CC-ND License?

> Q6: Can you comment on the Creative Commons licence?

Richard Stallman: The thing is, it's meaningless to talk about Creative Commons licence. The bad thing about Creative Commons is that it has produced a broad series of licences that have nothing in common. In fact, if you look at these licences and determine what is the freedom that is common to all these licences, the answer is: nothing.

EDIT: Reference https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/transcripts/rms-fs-2006-03-09....

Re: Richard Stallman on Data Autonomy [video]

#56

Post by such_a_casual »

belorn wrote: post #51
such_a_casual wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His views only seem radical because of the way he presents them. Easily his biggest mistake is naming his movement Free Software instead of something like Software Liberties or Software Rights, and then refusing to change the name at any point after the realization of this error. Then he says things like, "They're trying to put a cloud inside your head." Which is just laughable. Most of the time he's speaking very ge…

The argument made against "Software Liberties" is that any word that is similar to liberalism is highly associated with the US two-party political system. RMS has repeatedly suggested that the word "liberty" is superior over "free" in nations outside the US where that association doesn't exist.

I'm pretty sure the word "liberties" is used more by the tea party and other right wing movements than by the left. Who is making this argument? Do they have any data to back that up?

Re: Richard Stallman on Data Autonomy [video]

#57

Post by nextos »

zanny wrote: post #48
nextos wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope Stallman focusses on mobile now. Desktop, laptop & server are pretty satisfying free software platforms. But mobile is incredibly dissatisfying, and it's quickly getting a decent share of users. Incidentally, FSF is running a vision survey to establish strategic goals: https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/create?gid=403&reset=1

The battle for desktops and laptops is still not even close to won. Proprietary microcode in everything is on the rise, motherboard firmware is less open every generation of x86 hardware, and now we are seeing SSD microcontrollers be exploited and be otherwise untrustable. Gains have been made, in that GPUs are much more open now than they were 10 years ago from AMD and Intel, and AMD has done a good job supporting t…

I know. I'm not saying we should ignore desktops. But things are on the right path there, I think. I can order a brand new (and inexpensive) Rockchip Chromebook tomorrow and get it going on a fully open stack. Not even CPU microcodes, although I don't know about its SSD microcontroller. I think this is remarkable.

Now, if we talk about mobile, there are only a few niche projects like Neo900 which might release extremely expensive, outdated and half free hardware. On the software side of things, Mer is pretty much dead, and Replicant offers very limited functionality only on cherrypicked old hardware.

Re: Richard Stallman on Data Autonomy [video]

#58

Post by RansomTime »

baldfat wrote: post #55

Anyone find it funny that the video is on a non-Stallman CC-ND License? > Q6: Can you comment on the Creative Commons licence? Richard Stallman: The thing is, it's meaningless to talk about Creative Commons licence. The bad thing about Creative Commons is that it has produced a broad series of licences that have nothing in common. In fact, if you look at these licences and determine what is the freedom that is common…

There was a link on the FSF's site about using ND for opinion: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-and-globalization.ht...

Re: Richard Stallman on Data Autonomy [video]

#59

Post by nabla9 »

CaptSpify wrote: post #43
joesmo wrote: post #4

Trust is indeed a huge issue that seems to be misunderstood and misapplied in the software community. Stallman's views on trust may seem radical, but he's pretty much right. Over and over I see the things he warns about come true and I trust companies and other entities less and less. It's kind of disheartening to see the huge potential of cloud infrastructure, amongst other technologies, going to waste.

I used to roll my eyes at him. I thought he was just a nut. Turns out, he was right, and I was wrong. I hate the fact that he's right, because the warnings he made seemed so obviously stupid to implement. Yet here we are. I now respect him immensely

Stallman stubborn and incredibly unreasonable. There are many things I disagree with him, but when he is right he is right. I'm very grateful that he exists. RMS reminds me of this GBS quote:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” ― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

Re: Richard Stallman on Data Autonomy [video]

#60

Post by krapp »

n4r9 wrote: post #52
andygmb wrote: post #46

In the video stallman states that nonfree software is in the control of the developer who owns it, which is true, but isnt a developer of free software equally in control of their software? I dont look into the source of every program on my OS, even though if i was to use 100% free software, I could. This means I am equally depending on the developer of the free software not to be malicious as I am the nonfree softwa…

At least with free software there is the hope that malicious code will get picked up on by someone with an interest in reading the source, who would then make that functionality known to others.

To be fair, that hope exists with proprietary software as well, it's just that the end user is excluded from the set of eyes watching the code.
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