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

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

#101

Post by rpdillon »

kuba_ wrote: post #63
tacos wrote: post #3

We're also a lot older now and many realize the "us versus them" thing wasn't helpful. Shame the article opens with such a flattering retelling of a wonky strategy. It was always the data, not the code. Try and find an open dataset for any interesting machine learning problem and you'll realize that while "freedom" was busy doing things like setting back the use of precompiled headers in GCC a decade and making it vi…

I agree. Google open some of your data. This empire defense bullshit game doesn't belong in the 21st century. ...and hey you Snowden's inside Google leak that 128k model already.

Hrm. Looks like a neural net wrote this comment.

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

#102

Post by ultramancool »

massysett wrote: post #78

"So what's our next fight?" I don't have a next fight. If I'm going to fight for something, it's going to be something a whole lot more important than computer software. Free software is here to stay. Success has occurred. I'm not going to grope around for another fight. Instead I'm going to harness my software freedoms to write software that does what I need it to do.

Intel SGX.

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

#103

Post by sosuke »

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…

What an excellent snapshot. I could absolutely see those headlines as being April Fool's day jokes just a few years ago.

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

#104

Post by palunon »

iheartmemcache wrote: post #37
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…

** > 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. RE: 1 - Yes they do. Look at your little sister/brother/niece/nephew aged 13-18. They want to gossip and flirt on Instagram and take selfies as a way to promot…

>That car analogy breaks down due to the fact that you're driving a relatively obscure car manufacturer/make/model

Not sure of where the GP lives, but PSA (Peugeot) is the second car manufacturer in Europe (after Volkswagen) in terms of markets share, and the first in France...

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

#105

Post by kazinator »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #97

I'm pretty disappointed. If anything Silicon Valley really screwed up by achieving the exact OPPOSITE of what the FOSS movement was striving for. The commercialization of software has resulted in these walled gardens of proprietary software, closed data, closed formats, etc. It's a sad day, for example, when a large percentage of the population actually believes that Facebook is the Internet.

Give those people some credit! They happen to be also well aware that the Web is the Internet, and that Wi-Fi is also the Internet.

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

#106

Post by vidoc »

MrTonyD wrote: post #82
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

Well, since I worked on the team moving NeXTstep to the i386 family at NeXT, I can say with certainty that Linux played no role at all. We had copies of ATT UNIX and BSD UNIX which had portions already running on Intel (so we didn't have to completely reinvent the wheel.) There was some discussion about which UNIX we should be using on Intel in order to move it all to Mach - but the easy path was to build on some ear…

> I wrote the original white paper for Larry analyzing the state of the Linux kernel.

Would you mind sharing a link by any chance?

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

#107

Post by cwyers »

davexunit wrote: post #44
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…

>FSF's definition of freedom still stems from a time where everybody being a programmer was seen as a realistic and achievable goal. The FSF does not believe that everyone should be a programmer. Much like freedom of the press matters for those that aren't journalists, freedom of the software matters for those that aren't programmers. I care about the right to repair even though I'm not a car mechanic. >The actual si…

Sure, it's a spectrum. But it's a very lopsided one -- there's a huge mass of people over at the "100% user" side of the spectrum, and a long, thin tail out towards developer.

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

#108

Post by kazinator »

bo1024 wrote: post #99
massysett wrote: post #78

"So what's our next fight?" I don't have a next fight. If I'm going to fight for something, it's going to be something a whole lot more important than computer software. Free software is here to stay. Success has occurred. I'm not going to grope around for another fight. Instead I'm going to harness my software freedoms to write software that does what I need it to do.

One point I took away from the article was to look around and think more deeply about what issues today are just important as freedom in computing was during the ascension of Linux. To me, a big one is ownership: who really owns/controls the things we purchase? As for free software, consider that desktop computers are rapidly becoming less and less relevant to consumers at large, on average, yet they are also becomin…

Desktop computers are extremely relevant to people who do anything more than passively consume entertainment and participate on social networks. Mobile touch screen devices are next to useless for creating content.

Also, speaking of desktops, don't forget laptops.

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

#109

Post by simonh »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #66
simonh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, an organization at that scale can solve problems at that level because they have the resources to fund development of an alternative that e.g. doesn't rely on DOS. Individual users don't have the funds to do that, or the skills to develop new features themselves, so once it's no longer supported they're equally screwed whether the software they rely on is FOSS or proprietary.

If the software is open source, you can relatively easily find somebody to do it for you for $100/hour or so. That's within the scope of many individuals. $100 000 000 is outside of the scope of pretty much everybody.

Relatively easily. Really. Your solution is for ordinary non technical people to become development managers and hire someone they don't know to do something they don't understand at their own financial risk.

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

#110

Post by kazinator »

ktRolster wrote: post #89
MrTonyD wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, since I worked on the team moving NeXTstep to the i386 family at NeXT, I can say with certainty that Linux played no role at all. We had copies of ATT UNIX and BSD UNIX which had portions already running on Intel (so we didn't have to completely reinvent the wheel.) There was some discussion about which UNIX we should be using on Intel in order to move it all to Mach - but the easy path was to build on some ear…

Ironically, I was later involved with the team at Oracle that converted Linux from a toy into a functioning kernel. Seriously?

In 1994 I did contract work for a serious businesses that ran commercial pay-for-click information website that ran fabulously on Linux, 1.2.x kernels.

Since I first started using Linux in 1993 (0.99 patch level 12), it has always been a functioning kernel.

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