We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom • Hacker News Board

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#21

Post by bluejekyll » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 3:24 PM UTC

I wish he would have gone more into the design of the kernel and significant changes that are going to be needed to take advantage of the NVRAM based systems that are coming very soon. The I/O design needs to be completely overhauled.

It's probably going to be a great time to rewrite and resign portions of Linux, but I honestly don't think the community will be capable of doing a major architectural change. Kernel modules have been a great step towards modular design, and this needs to be pushed everywhere so that more changes can be isolated in the development process.

I've been a huge Linux (and GNU, most of what this article is about really is GNU, not Linux) user since being introduced to it in 1996, but as much as I love it, I do wonder if there are new options that will reveal themselves in the next few years that will better answer some of the modern hardware advancements. Linux is a beast of a system now, with a lot of technical debt and a hard to penetrate C code base, I hope it can evolve where it needs to, but I think it will require huge commitments from the community.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#22

Post by dTal » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 3:24 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #4

zanny wrote: post #2

Meanwhile, Windows is still pretty much the only desktop OS for 99% of people, Nvidia has stolen large-scale compute with a holistically proprietary CUDA, and Google has hijacked the ecosystem and culture with Android and ChromeOS (the former by having vendors use the incredibly destructive model of forking the kernel and stuffing it with binary blobs rendering it stuck to that version on whatever device you have, an…

I can appreciate why you are expressing the negativity you are... but that's not going to help us either. So many years ago, nobody expected anything to take the place of AOL. Of Yahoo. Of MySpace. Those giants have fallen because someone decided to do something. So, instead of deciding to do nothing but accept this as inevitable... do something. Contribute to Diaspora. Convince your friends and family to use email i…

I didn't see it as negative, or as acceptance of the inevitable. I read "all it takes is a concerted effort and focus and within several hardware generations we can reverse this dire course" and "The day Linux GPL enforcement is a thing is one step closer to curtailing the power abuses by many of these large enterprises over their users because that is actually a straightforward way to do it.". These are good, concrete suggestions and it is extremely unfair to characterise them as "preaching to an echo chamber instead of actually doing something".

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#23

Post by stormbrew » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 3:27 PM UTC

deng wrote: post #7

gaius wrote: post #6

Apple's OS X, which wouldn't be what it is if Linux hadn't already been the leading nix OS.* Well that isn't true. NeXTStep was built on the 68k from 4.3BSD which originated on the VAX. It has no lineage in common with Linux, and in fact pre-dates it. And OSX now is by far the most popular workstation Unix. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unix_history-simple.svg

> It has no lineage in common with Linux. That's not what he wrote. In its initial release, OS X did depend heavily on free software (Samba, Apache, GNU, etc.), which again thrived because of Linux.

Also most of the early adopters of osx that I knew at the time were actively seeking out a unixy desktop because they worked on software eventually destined for Linux servers and didn't like the available desktop options for Linux.

Not to say that was the entire market, but it was a good chunk of it.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#24

Post by deng » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 3:29 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #19

deng wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has no lineage in common with Linux. That's not what he wrote. In its initial release, OS X did depend heavily on free software (Samba, Apache, GNU, etc.), which again thrived because of Linux.

Solaris was a much bigger deal than Linux well into the OSX era. In fact if Linux had never happened Solaris would probably still be around and we'd be arguing about how much OS X owes to Solaris and whether it matters that SunOS predated NEXT but Solaris didn't.

> In fact if Linux had never happened Solaris would probably still be around and we'd be arguing about how much OS X owes to Solaris

Hardly. How would have Apple developed a full userland and development toolchain with the resources it had at that time? That's exactly the point of the article: OS X wouldn't be where it is without Linux (read: GNU/Linux), not because it was technically the best Unix (it wasn't), but because it was free software.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#25

Post by officialchicken » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 3:29 PM UTC

Like everyone, I want more freedom, not less: the battle should begin with a sane GPL version 4. See the MIT, BSD and LGPL licenses which provide more freedom over GPL3.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#26

Post by simonh » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 3:31 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #17

legulere wrote: post #12

I think the problem is that the FSF's definition of freedom still stems from a time where everybody being a programmer was seen as a realistic and achievable goal. The actual situation is that we have two groups that care about different things: Users and developers. Users' biggest concern is that the software helps them achieve what they want to do. They care about restrictions like DRM if it hinders them in doing w…

> Users' biggest concern is that the software helps them achieve what they want to do. There are two problems with this assertion: (1) users often don't know what they want to do or what they'll want to do in the future and (2) users don't have the education to understand the freedoms provided by open source / free software or lack thereof. The situation is similar with automobiles. Until now at least people had the…

>An open-source software on the other hand might not be maintained in 10 years from now, but people (like a government agency) can always fund further development, if they really, really need it alive. Open source never dies.

At the government department or big organization level, they can fund or perform any proprietary development they need themselves as well. FOSS just isn't necessary at that level of resources. For ordinary users FOSS provides essentially zero comparative benefits over proprietary. If code doesn't have the features they need, goes unsupported or has bugs, they're in the same boat regardless. People choose to pay for software for valid reasons.

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#27

Post by dTal » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 3:33 PM UTC

This is a great article, if a little slapdash on the details. I don't agree with the notion that we're "losing"; the reason is neatly exemplified by the HN front page:

  3. FreeBSD 10.3 officially supported on Microsoft Azure (microsoft.com)
  138 points by tachion 6 hours ago | flag | 77 comments  

  10. Microsoft Edge WebGL engine open-sourced (github.com)
  308 points by aroman 13 hours ago | flag | 80 comments

  24. How the Windows Subsystem for Linux Redirects Syscalls (microsoft.com)
  330 points by jackhammons 20 hours ago | flag | 243 comments

Microsoft. Open-sourced. Time travel from even 5 years ago and that HN front page would blow your mind. Industry-wide, it's more and more common now for "free" to be the default. Heck, complain about Android all you like, but for all that, the OS itself is miles more free than Windows. We actually owe this dire forking situation to the freedom Android affords - imagine if every fly-by-night laptop manufacturer felt comfortable rolling their own custom branded Windows with proprietary interface components.

I don't argue for complacency. We need to up our game with things like GPL compliance and reclaim the concept of a "distro", but on phones this time. But taking the long view, we're definitely "winning".

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#28

Post by AdmiralAsshat » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 3:34 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #27

This is a great article, if a little slapdash on the details. I don't agree with the notion that we're "losing"; the reason is neatly exemplified by the HN front page: 3. FreeBSD 10.3 officially supported on Microsoft Azure (microsoft.com) 138 points by tachion 6 hours ago | flag | 77 comments 10. Microsoft Edge WebGL engine open-sourced (github.com) 308 points by aroman 13 hours ago | flag | 80 comments 24. How the…

FWIW, this is not the article's actual title. The actual title is "What's Our Next Fight?"

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#29

Post by chillingeffect » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 3:37 PM UTC

nxzero wrote: post #18

As someone that deeply cares about tech & freedom, truly feel most techies fail to see that that majority of the world does not see freedom as a priority. While I do not know the answer, I do believe it's possible to find one. Focus on building relationships first, then tech.

It goes all the way back to lifestyle.

For most people, freedom means something like, "My partner and I will work our whole entire lives doing things we don't really like, possibly be out of debt by retirement, at which point our kids will be in debt. Then we can travel the world and spend the rest on our healthcare." The fact that they can do that seems good enough for them. They always think if they work a little harder they will get ahead.

For others, freedom means something like, "I will further the betterment of humanity. I will work until my house is paid off and then expand and enjoy the gift of existence."

For the elite, the perspective is, "I've got a six-sigma edge. It enables me to put a in few months of light, clever work a year and not have to kowtow to anybody, all while living in devastating luxury. It requires leveraging all available resources, such as plundering the environment, the Constitution, the well-being of others, but it keeps me on top."

The elites are the ones convincing all the mainstreamers to forward their potential to their own causes. "Spend all your time on facebook. Consume. Compete. Upgrade. Fear." Linux people are caught in the middle, because they tried to make tools to help the mainstreamers, but didn't quite get there yet and the elites got a hold on it.

I believe the real answer is waking people up to the reality of how their desires are being manipulated to trap themselves in debt and desire. Basically, the message of Adbusters. Stop feeding Hollywood. Stop eating out all the time. Slow food. Do things IRL. Eat together. Fix old cars instead of constantly tweaking designs. Stop responding to dopamine rushes.

I went out to lunch with an admin at my company the other day. Her family doesn't have laundry machines in their home, but they're going to Las Vegas for a vacation. Why give away all that time and money to others?

Re: We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom

#30

Post by bryanlarsen » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 3:38 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #26

bad_user wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Users' biggest concern is that the software helps them achieve what they want to do. There are two problems with this assertion: (1) users often don't know what they want to do or what they'll want to do in the future and (2) users don't have the education to understand the freedoms provided by open source / free software or lack thereof. The situation is similar with automobiles. Until now at least people had the…

>An open-source software on the other hand might not be maintained in 10 years from now, but people (like a government agency) can always fund further development, if they really, really need it alive. Open source never dies. At the government department or big organization level, they can fund or perform any proprietary development they need themselves as well. FOSS just isn't necessary at that level of resources. F…

"they can fund or perform any proprietary development they need themselves as well"

Try phoning up Microsoft and asking them how much it would cost to add a feature for an old piece of DOS software that they haven't touched in the last 20 years. I suspect the answer would be at least 8 figures, if not 9.