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Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

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Re: Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

#111

Post by pjmlp »

mhd wrote: post #22
mynegation wrote: post #8

This is the right thing to do and I hope it is not too little too late. Free/libre OSS won the battle for the server, lost the battle for the desktop, but desktop is not (that) relevant anymore. FLOSS phone ecosystem will be hard to next to impossible, in my opinion, but worth going into. Self-hosted server side software has a very good chance of succeeding. For a long time I essentially wanted something like Synolog…

Given the popularity of SaaS and Electron apps, I think everyone lost the battle for the desktop.

The interesting part of it is that those applications are mostly written by GNU/Linux developers, thus decreasing the likelihood of GNU/Linux ever becoming a relevant desktop in world wide market share.

Re: Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

#112

Post by pjmlp »

int_19h wrote: post #91
mikekchar wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting point of view, but I'm not sure I agree with the underlying argument. Specifically, I have not seen the free software environment stagnating at all. If anything I have seen it accelerating fairly consistently since I first became aware of it in 1985. There was a time when I was forbidden from using free software in my day job. Now I am encouraged to use it. How far we have come. This point of idea…

By and large, the industry is embracing open source (BSD, MIT, Apache licenses), but not FSF-style free software (GPL).

Because it allows them to outsource development, cutting costs in software licenses, without contributing anything back to those communities.

I am yet to work with any employer, besides the time spent at CERN, that bothered to contribute anything back to the community.

Many times the idea of even suggesting it was frowned upon.

Re: Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

#113

Post by pjmlp »

mikekchar wrote: post #97
no_wizard wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if my point came across well, so I will try and re-iterate what I mean here in some more detail. To be perfectly clear: I share your motivations, and I cede that the FSF is a lobbying organization for promoting libre software. I want to note that I'm not specifically taking target at FSF here just generally the OSS/FOSS community in aggregate as I have interacted with them. Now, to the argument! :) My ba…

Thanks for clarifying. It definitely makes more sense to me than what I understood from the previous message. Personally, I think there is room for a variety of approaches. It's one of the reasons I'm happy that the OSI is around to champion open source methodologies as distinct from software freedom. Likely, as you say, there would be some benefit from people concentrating on building user-focussed end-to-end experi…

Your story with Corel is my experience with the majority of companies I worked for, very few if any, did care for FOSS for anything else then cutting down costs without giving anything back.

This is why licenses like MIT are so loved by such companies, now with SaaS and Web UIs it is even better for them.

Re: Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

#114

Post by belorn »

Nomentatus wrote: post #96
icebraining wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FSF is a political organization; saying it has too much politics behind it is an oxymoron. And choosing to go after users over licenses is also a political decision. Besides, we already have Open Source as a movement that makes the pragmatic argument for free software, there's no need to water down the FSF.

Then let's rephrase to meet that cavil - there's far too much irrelevant, futile and stupendously wasteful politics, then. The (yes, political) goal of free software is wonderful. Copyleft is a great invention. But the continued insistence on grabbing patents or even obviating patent law in its entire from within a software license - and also the mission to prevent tivoization (which I might want to protect my OS fro…

Clearly you share the goal but not the politics in how to reach it. That happens in practically every political movement. Let imagine a similar comment for ecopolitics:

"The goal of ecopolitics is wonderful. Green energy is a great invention. But the continued insistence on reduced emissions or even a stop to burning fossil fuels in its entire - and also the mission to prevent non-ecological farming (which make food I might want to eat, thank you) - has wasted billions of dollars and fragmented the movement. To conclude, all discussions about climate change should stop and the movement should simply focus on building electric cars and wind farms."

Re: Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

#115

Post by no_wizard »

mikekchar wrote: post #97
no_wizard wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if my point came across well, so I will try and re-iterate what I mean here in some more detail. To be perfectly clear: I share your motivations, and I cede that the FSF is a lobbying organization for promoting libre software. I want to note that I'm not specifically taking target at FSF here just generally the OSS/FOSS community in aggregate as I have interacted with them. Now, to the argument! :) My ba…

Thanks for clarifying. It definitely makes more sense to me than what I understood from the previous message. Personally, I think there is room for a variety of approaches. It's one of the reasons I'm happy that the OSI is around to champion open source methodologies as distinct from software freedom. Likely, as you say, there would be some benefit from people concentrating on building user-focussed end-to-end experi…

I agree they did misunderstand OSS/FOSS badly. The last thing a company like Corel needed (or needs) to do, and I know this i very opinionated; is to make their own Linux distro. This is kind of my entire point. A platform as such that is coherent and well evangelized (I know i keep coming back to this, but I was around for the 'we're going out of business in 90 days' Apple years. It took a huge level of evangelism to keep that ship moving) perhaps would have encouraged Corel to just make their software for Linux, which to me is the win. Yes, its a proprietary Word processor or Image manipulation tool, but the OS would still be free/libre, and Corel, at the time I'm assuming this happened, could have been a win with the platform.

I reject, as someone else mentioned, as an aside, that macOS is just free software with a non-free GUI on top. That is missing the boat completely.

Re: Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

#116

Post by chimprich »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #36
cperciva wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are herd animals. They tend to look at what other people like them are doing, and do likewise. It's unfortunate that people look at trivia like gender and ethnicity in such circumstances; but it's a fact of human behaviour. If potential contributors look at a project and don't see anyone who "looks like them", they're unlikely to contribute; so projects which want to maximize contributions are well advised to…

I view this issue differently, and I would love your opinion on my view. First on sex/gender: I feel that hormonal differences create psychological differences in the norms between genders. This is why men are generally more aggressive and violent(see higher incarceration rates) and women are more nurturing. These differences lead to people in general choosing careers that reflect their psychology, and forced diversi…

> First on sex/gender: I feel that hormonal differences create psychological differences in the norms between genders. This is why men are generally more aggressive and violent(see higher incarceration rates) and women are more nurturing.

There's strong evidence that genetic differences account for some behavioural differences between men and women. The ones you suggest do make it clear why you'd expect a skewed distribution of genders in fields such as the army or midwifery. It's much less clear that genetic differences should lead to such an underrepresentation of women in tech fields; in this case I suspect that culture and social inertia are a large part of the explanation.

Re: Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

#117

Post by Arizhel »

cperciva wrote: post #30
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am afraid I don't see how lack of minority representation is a factor in open source software. How does one's race or gender affect whether or not they submit code? edit: Again, if you are downvoting me, please explain so I can understand. I'm not arguing for the sake of argument.

Humans are herd animals. They tend to look at what other people like them are doing, and do likewise. It's unfortunate that people look at trivia like gender and ethnicity in such circumstances; but it's a fact of human behaviour. If potential contributors look at a project and don't see anyone who "looks like them", they're unlikely to contribute; so projects which want to maximize contributions are well advised to…

I have one big objection to this idea about potential contributors not seeing people who "look like them":

We're talking about open-source/Free software here, not working in a corporation. Volunteer FOSS work is all done remotely. If you asked me what the contributors to, say, The GIMP looked like, what sex they were, and what their ethnicities were, I could not tell you other than to merely make a wild guess. I suppose I could go look up their names and then make very good guesses based on those, but that's a lot of work; it's not like the contributor list pops up every time you start the application. FOSS volunteers frequently never see each other in person, and simply send in code contributions. They're not interviewed in-person, and they don't have to show up in-person to an office full of other people. If anything, it should be the most egalitarian form of work worldwide!

For most users, FOSS software is made by people who are utterly nameless and faceless. So I really don't see why this should be a factor to potential contributors. It should be the one place where they can feel safest about not being singled out and treated unfairly for their sex/age/ethnicity/other factor. There's not even a requirement that they use their real name! No one's stopping them from making a new email address at fake.name@gmail.com and contributing with that if they're really paranoid about being treated unfairly.

Re: Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

#119

Post by orblivion »

moxious wrote: post #62
orblivion wrote: post #38

While doing all of this catch-up is important, I think it would help FOSS politically (as it were) if there were something new and exemplary to come out. Signal is a good example (once they fix the Google thing, and BTW someone finally took up Moxie on the offer and there's a PR in progress). Maybe Sandstorm too (Plug and play web apps that are secure? That's kind of novel and useful if you think about it. And IMO th…

FOSS often plays catch-up, because true innovation is really hard and takes a lot of time and resources. It's frequently too much to ask of an all-volunteer workforce. It's not that they can't do it (ultimately the people writing FOSS are the same people as those writing apps for companies) it's just that there isn't the same set of motives in place. This is why in earlier days, GNOME's goal was to catch up to Window…

It's an economic uphill battle to be sure. I hope people keep brainstorming alternative business models.

Re: Free Software Foundation Priority Projects

#120

Post by flukus »

icebraining wrote: post #81
carussell wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An AI-driven assistant doesn't have to necessarily run on someone else's servers and be under their control to be useful. In fact, if I teach my assistant patterns like how when I say "David" I mean David O, then I don't see a) why this type of learning can't be fully localized, or b) how phoning home with this kind of data is going to be of any particular use to anybody else, anyway. To put it another way, what's wr…

I'm not involved in AI projects, but my understanding is that current state-of-the-art work, including in digital assistance components like speech recognition, the approach involves gathering large amounts of data and throwing it into deep learning algorithms. This is why Google had free services like Voice, which served as sources for their modelling data.

IMO this is a bunch of BS by companies that want to control and centralize computing.

Years ago we had products like Dragon naturally speaking that could do full voice dictation reasonably accurately. They had limited digital assistants too (which is a subset of full dictation, much less valid inputs), though not much more limited than today. These ran on Pentium 1's.

The downside to this was the training time, but in practice I found this to be a strength. It was trained to my voice, not whatever generic profile Google stocks me into. I got better results nearly two decades ago (got a Dragon demo in a carnival bag) than I get with Google voice today.

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