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Stallman’s Law

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Re: Stallman’s Law

#91

Post by hvidgaard »

omphalos wrote: post #57
roflchoppa wrote: post #6

Interesting that the more "advance" technology gets, the lower our reasonable expectation of privacy becomes. I want to know when the average person gets on a computer, and surfs around, what data do they expect is kept for just themselves vs shared with the service.

I think it's because of the common assumption that the system that controls your data must also house the application that interacts with this data. When decentralized applications finally arrive (the inklings are already here) users won't be forced into this false choice. In that sense, companies like Google and Facebook are behind the curve, and don't really represent technological "advancement", but rather a socia…

You just touched upon one of my idealistic geek wet dreams: Truly decentralized applications. Let's use ondemand music streaming as an example. I dream of a network where I pay whatever vendor I want, to deliver streams of music. I also pay whatever vendor I want to save my data (think playlists and play data). And I pay whatever vendor I want (could be free software as well) to play those streams. Each component does one thing, and the communication between is documented and open sourced. If I decide to switch player, that is fine, perhaps I use a different player on my phone and on my rpi terminal. If decide to switch stream provider my data is not locked with the previous vendor.

Re: Stallman’s Law

#92

Post by hvidgaard »

oelmekki wrote: post #42
marcus_holmes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a few drivers for big corps getting involved in open source: 1. Getting intelligent people to work on projects for free. This is actually rarer than it sounds. But it does happen. 2. Protecting dependencies. Once a large company depends on a piece of technology, it has a vested interest in the future of that piece of technology. For proprietary code bases, this might mean buying the supplier. For open…

> RMS' view often seems to come from a place where all commercial organisations are inherently evil and out to do their users harm. Yes, this was the thinking in early 2000', and indeed this was a proper reaction to the windows context back then. But I don't think that's what rms is fighting for anymore, I would state it more like : "if I bought it, then I own it", like when you buy a house, you can do any change in…

> like when you buy a house, you can do any change in it you want

Except when you can't. HOA rules, or municipal regulations can prevent you. Other rules and regulations applies as well.

Re: Stallman’s Law

#93

Post by TeMPOraL »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #39

I have no idea when this "law" was written or said, but I think this type of thinking--in 2016--is exactly the cause of what it's prophesizing. Instead of thinking from "corporations vs. us", a better approach would be to think of humanity as a single entity. I do understand that all this "open software" movement could have an impact because it was very polarizing and moved a lot of people. But in a world where open…

> Only when you look deeper into the corporation's motivations you'll be able to figure out a way to defeat this. Otherwise it just reads like a rant.

It's actually pretty simple - money, power. Corporations are amoral machines; if there's something that brings profits and they can get away with legally, some corp will eventually do it (same seems to apply to small companies).

> Instead of thinking from "corporations vs. us", a better approach would be to think of humanity as a single entity.

Thinking like this was always the hallmark of my life. But the more I interact with actual people, and not just high-school friends but random people; CEOs and coworkers and shopowners and cleners - the more I realize there is a split there. Some of us think of humanity as a single entity worth caring about. Others don't give a fuck. They think of "me, family and friends vs. the rest of the world". Which makes it easy to justify fucking "the rest of the world" for profit. I don't really know how humanity is to reconcile those two worldviews.

Re: Stallman’s Law

#94

Post by misrepresent »

misrepresent wrote: post #89
comex wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no idea who first put the words "open source" together, and neither do you. I think it's much more likely someone grabbed the term and added their own agenda to it after it was already popular. Perhaps you should read the site in question rather than guessing. https://opensource.org/history > The “open source” label was created at a strategy session held on February 3rd, 1998 in Palo Alto, California, shortl…

And yet, if I look at: https://archive.org/stream/CathedralAndTheBazaar/cathedral-bazaar_djvu.txt I see that Eric Raymond used the term on November 18th 1997. Wanna place a bet that I can't find an earlier use than that? Perhaps you shouldn't trust everything you read as definitive...

Well, it looks like I was wrong about the origin of the term. I misread Eric Raymond's changelog, and after a half hour of searching I can't find an earlier use. (I wish there was a usable search for old usenet postings...)

Anything else I said still stands though - including that it's foolish to try and paint everyone with the same brush.

Re: Stallman’s Law

#95

Post by misrepresent »

sedachv wrote: post #90
comex wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no idea who first put the words "open source" together, and neither do you. I think it's much more likely someone grabbed the term and added their own agenda to it after it was already popular. Perhaps you should read the site in question rather than guessing. https://opensource.org/history > The “open source” label was created at a strategy session held on February 3rd, 1998 in Palo Alto, California, shortl…

In reply to user misrepresent, who seems to have signed up to HN just to attack RMS: Wrong. "Revision 1.29 February 9 1998 esr Changed ``free software'' to ``open source''. " http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral...

I haven't attacked anyone, and I haven't even mentioned RMS until now. That's a very weird accusation.

Re: Stallman’s Law

#96

Post by whybroke »

roflchoppa wrote: post #6

Interesting that the more "advance" technology gets, the lower our reasonable expectation of privacy becomes. I want to know when the average person gets on a computer, and surfs around, what data do they expect is kept for just themselves vs shared with the service.

It's really a cultural (judicial?) shift that is immensely reluctant to apply the traditional standards of public interest (of which privacy is a sub set) to new technology.

The continued expansion of IP rights and copyright extension is part of the same shift.

Re: Stallman’s Law

#97

Post by ubernostrum »

catern wrote: post #72
misrepresent wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think one mission statement on one website represents the position for all of us?

Clearly this has now devolved into mere semantics, but... if your position emphasizes user freedom, then your position is the "free software" position, not the "open source" position, just as a matter of the historical definitions of those terms. "Open source" was coined for the explicit purpose of de-emphasizing user freedom (that is, making the idea of FOSS more palatable to companies that were not interested in al…

And yet you're pushing connotations onto it.

"Open source" was meant to be a way to frame the discussion in different terms. Yet by saying that it was "for the explicit purpose of de-emphasizing user freedom" you sneakily imply motives to the people who coined and promoted the term. Once parsed out, rhetorically it's about as sensible as post-9/11 "they hate us for our freedom" discourse in the US.

Re: Stallman’s Law

#98

Post by lisper »

gaius wrote: post #73
cyphar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the basic principles of "open source"? Because as far as I'm aware, they don't include "user freedom". It's all about practical benefits which are not the primary benefits of free software (the primary benefit of free software is freedom).

Well there's free as in speech. And free as in beer. And free as in working for IBM without getting paid.

And free as in allowing Facebook or Google to make money off of you by selling your attention as their product.

Re: Stallman’s Law

#99

Post by erikbye »

hvidgaard wrote: post #92
oelmekki wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> RMS' view often seems to come from a place where all commercial organisations are inherently evil and out to do their users harm. Yes, this was the thinking in early 2000', and indeed this was a proper reaction to the windows context back then. But I don't think that's what rms is fighting for anymore, I would state it more like : "if I bought it, then I own it", like when you buy a house, you can do any change in…

> like when you buy a house, you can do any change in it you want Except when you can't. HOA rules, or municipal regulations can prevent you. Other rules and regulations applies as well.

Exactly, often you are not even allowed to paint your house in a color of your choosing.

Re: Stallman’s Law

#100

Post by DasIch »

makecheck wrote: post #47

Corporations need to be treated as if they could have radically different managers at any moment (because they can). The Best Company Ever of today could be bought by Worst Corporation In Existence tomorrow. It essentially doesn’t matter what a company is currently doing or “promises” to do or not do, if those behaviors are not legally binding. And even then, if you have to read a hundred-page document to figure out…

You're seriously overestimating how powerful managers are and how difficult it is to change the culture of an organization.
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