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GNU LibreJS

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Re: GNU LibreJS

#151

Post by icebraining »

mankash666 wrote: post #97
kristopolous wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you shouldn't use terms like "Nazism" so loosely. It makes it lose its denotative and connotative value. If you do, then what words will you have at your disposal if the real thing comes around? Unless RMS is leveraging nationalism through racist policies and wants a strong police state or thinks mercantilism should replace capitalism, it's really not a very good label - save that for the real thing.

Certainly a hyperbole to use the said term. Nonetheless, from RMS' recent commentaries, it does seem like for software, he wants to replace capitalism with socialism. Like cited in the Slashdot link in my previous comment, he's gone so far as to demonize free software that isn't GPL.

Nonetheless, from RMS' recent commentaries, it does seem like for software, he wants to replace capitalism with socialism.

Nonsense. There's nothing "socialist" about Free Software. Plenty of capitalistic companies make their money by using and writing FOSS.

Like cited in the Slashdot link in my previous comment, he's gone so far as to demonize free software that isn't GPL.

All he's doing is asking people to refrain from accepting a patch before he can talk to someone about it. What demonization?

Re: GNU LibreJS

#152

Post by icebraining »

krapp wrote: post #74
j_koreth wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does stallman say he wants other people to do the same as him. He merely listed just how he browsers rahpther than how I ther people should browse

Would it not be safe to assume that, if RMS is living according to his principles, his lifestyle reflects what he believes to be a reasonable expression of those principles? Why would he refuse to use a web browser, if it were possible for him to do so within his moral framework?

Why would he refuse to use a web browser, if it were possible for him to do so within his moral framework?

If you had actually read the page, you'd see that he actually does use a web browser occasionally.

Re: GNU LibreJS

#153

Post by Karunamon »

cyphar wrote: post #141
Karunamon wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the taking advantage of that's evil, not the political status of the code.

The actual issue is that proprietary software puts you in a position where you can be taken advantage of. Free software puts you in a position where that can't happen. Sure, you can have proprietary software that doesn't spy on you. But much of it does, and even though it doesn't spy on you today it could spy on you tomorrow. So, if you consider "putting people in a situation where they have no control over their liv…

Free software puts you in a position where that can't happen.

Heartbleed disagrees. Less likely? Arguable. "Can't happen"? Unequivocally false.

And besides such security benefits are gained by having the source visible, not necessarily "free".

Re: GNU LibreJS

#154

Post by stephenr »

icebraining wrote: post #149
stephenr wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd bet >70% of people here work with a complete or almost-completely free software stack. 70% seems quite high if you mean "free" as rms does.

What are you thinking of? MIT/BSD/Apache/etc are all considered Free by rms and the FSF (even if they prefer copyleft licenses).

iOS, OS X, a heap of Sun/Oracle stuff, most Microsoft stuff.

I didn't say floss isn't prolific, I just think it's unlikely 70% of people here depend on it (almost) entirely

Re: GNU LibreJS

#155

Post by cyphar »

Karunamon wrote: post #153
cyphar wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual issue is that proprietary software puts you in a position where you can be taken advantage of. Free software puts you in a position where that can't happen. Sure, you can have proprietary software that doesn't spy on you. But much of it does, and even though it doesn't spy on you today it could spy on you tomorrow. So, if you consider "putting people in a situation where they have no control over their liv…

Free software puts you in a position where that can't happen. Heartbleed disagrees. Less likely? Arguable. "Can't happen"? Unequivocally false. And besides such security benefits are gained by having the source visible, not necessarily "free".

Did you read what I said? I never mentioned security. More secure software is not the goal of free software. The goal is for users to have freedom when using their computers. And it is a simple fact that proprietary software puts you in a position where you can be taken advantage of by the software developer and free software doesn't (you can always pay a developer to fix the code without needing to ask the original developer -- this is unique to the free software world).

So, please stop putting words in my mouth. I never mentioned security, I'm talking about freedom.

Re: GNU LibreJS

#156

Post by rekado »

Zikes wrote: post #18
throwanem wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes I think RMS would be happier if the web had just stopped development after the release of the Mosaic browser. Or before. He doesn't really [1] browse the web: > I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with. I usually fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program (see git://git.gnu.org/womb/hacks.git) that fetches…

Email makes a network request, just like AJAX, which makes it "non-trivial" by his definition.

Which is why we he uses free software for email.

Re: GNU LibreJS

#157

Post by rekado »

sdegutis wrote: post #22

It's really interesting to see GNU writing their own version of everything so that it adheres to its own principles. It reminds me of China. Both reinvent things based on questionable motivations, both seem to really not "get" every-day people (e.g. understand their needs and wants), and both end up with products that just feel lower-quality and half-put-together than the products they're cloning on principle.

I can only shake my head at your cardboard cutout of "China" and your take on GNU.

I'm working on GNU because I share its vision of providing more computing freedom to people, blurring the lines between admins and users as is the case with Emacs (self-documenting, trivially extensible and modifiable), Guix (trivial inspection and modification of all packages on a system, a large step towards freedom from system administrators, independent software profiles giving each user what they want), and the Hurd (even more freedom from sys admins).

I'm not even talking about the many compilers in GCC, which make it feasible to build a completely free system (such as GuixSD).

You seem to misunderstand the GNU project, and I find it unpalatable to reduce what you call "China" to a cardboard cutout for the sake of a flawed analogy.

Re: GNU LibreJS

#158

Post by thesz »

Karunamon wrote: post #92
oneweekwonder wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RMS takes the polar opposite position to proprietary software. Is his viewpoint always practical; maybe, maybe not. But by creating such polar opposite he gives space for a lot more "lessor" free, more practical solutions and options. So he plays a very important guardian kind of role; which a lot of people will chalk up to paranoia.

It's still paranoia at the end of the day. Consistent paranoia, thoughtful paranoia, but still, ultimately, paranoia. I think what bothers people about Stallman (or at least, what bothers me about him, and extrapolating) is that he takes a moralistic approach. Non free software isn't a non optimal thing to be fixed for well-thought-out reasons X, Y, and Z, it is an Evil , and you are Wrong for perpetuating it.

Paranoia is a medical condition.

I think it means not what you think it means.

Re: GNU LibreJS

#159

Post by rekado »

ymse wrote: post #76
sdegutis wrote: post #22

It's really interesting to see GNU writing their own version of everything so that it adheres to its own principles. It reminds me of China. Both reinvent things based on questionable motivations, both seem to really not "get" every-day people (e.g. understand their needs and wants), and both end up with products that just feel lower-quality and half-put-together than the products they're cloning on principle.

I'm curious, which products are you referring to? In most cases the GNU version predates the alternative by a large margin. E.g. screen vs tmux, squid vs varnish, wget vs curl, net-tools vs iproute2 etc. Of more recent software "clones", there is guix vs nix, mcron vs vixie-cron, shepherd vs systemd, gnutls vs openssl, all high-quality implementations of good ideas. Sure, lsh has a way to go before it's a viable alte…

> Of more recent software "clones", there is guix vs nix, mcron vs vixie-cron, shepherd vs systemd, gnutls vs openssl, all high-quality implementations of good ideas.

Shepherd is hardly a clone of systemd. It's older and has much fewer features. They are both init systems.

The relationship of Guix and Nix is also not that of rivalry. Guix uses the Nix daemon and subscribes to the idea of functional package management, but everything else is quite different.

(I realise you put "clone" in quotes and wrote "all high-quality implementations of good ideas", but I thought I should clarify anyway.)

Re: GNU LibreJS

#160

Post by Karunamon »

cyphar wrote: post #155
Karunamon wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free software puts you in a position where that can't happen. Heartbleed disagrees. Less likely? Arguable. "Can't happen"? Unequivocally false. And besides such security benefits are gained by having the source visible, not necessarily "free".

Did you read what I said? I never mentioned security. More secure software is not the goal of free software. The goal is for users to have freedom when using their computers. And it is a simple fact that proprietary software puts you in a position where you can be taken advantage of by the software developer and free software doesn't (you can always pay a developer to fix the code without needing to ask the original…

>And it is a simple fact that proprietary software puts you in a position where you can be taken advantage of by the software developer and free software doesn't

Two (non security, as you mentioned, even though it's brought up continually by apologists) examples off the top of my head:

* FileZilla, a GPLed FTP client, had malware added to its installer by Sourceforge at the request of its developers.

* Ubuntu, an operating system composed entirely of free software, started sending search data in its UI to third parties without prior notice.

If you think it's impossible for the developer to take advantage of you because their software is "free", you simply aren't being imaginative enough.

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