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Richard Stallman Explains [video]

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Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#141

Post by teekert »

icebraining wrote: post #68
teekert wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

""We" should not allow that"... Yeah that sounds like freedom to me. You are free to deal with these companies or not. Whether you agree with these companies and their ways is irrelevant. This is same as not agreeing with another persons' religion, you are free do choose a way to lead your life, don't try to force your way upon others. Others happily share their data with Google and reap the benefits of a very helpfu…

Worrying about free software advocates using the law against others is hilarious. It's like worrying about Walmart cashiers demanding to make more money than software developers.

It's not and I am glad it isn't. The GPL is sometimes enforced and rightly so, code authors choose this license and donated their time and skill under this condition (the GPL) of their choosing. Re-licensing it or ignoring the licenses is a crime, you lied that you would uphold the license when you started using the software.

Don't get me wrong, I love the GPL, I love free software! Choosing a license though, GPL or proprietary, is entirely up to the author of a piece of code though. Forcing open licenses upon authors is detrimental to freedom in general.

Worrying or not worrying about it has nothing to do with the ethics of breaking the GPL (or any license).

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#143

Post by teekert »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #66
teekert wrote: post #54

Ever since I listened to this episode of the Linux Action Show [0] I can't take RMS serious anymore. He bases everything he believes on one assumption he doesn't dare to argue himself: "Proprietary software is evil." That is it. When you attack his values and stances, he falls back to that sentence. When you argue: But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his ow…

> But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his own terms? GPL vs BSD all over again. Freedoms conflict. The one "freedom" RMS would restrict is the freedom to restrict the freedom of others (one's users). One has to chose at some point. Since there are more users than creators, the freedom of many users is more important than the freedom of one creator. (Assumin…

BTW, ask yourself, if Freedom conflicts, are you really using the correct definition of Freedom? I strongly believe the definition of Freedom should be applicable to all human without creating any paradoxes. Check all your premises, carefully.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#144

Post by teekert »

craigsmansion wrote: post #131
teekert wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This discussion is one level higher, it is about the freedom of the creator to choose a license for his software. GPL is not better than BSD or the other way around, it is about the freedom to choose a license. The freedom to say to a buyer: "Ok, we have a deal under these conditions." The buyer has the freedom to reject the deal. This is the scenario with the most freedom imho. I'm afraid, but correct me if I'm wron…

> Photoshop frees a lot of people from the inability to express themselves in the exact way they want. It's not quite as binary. Creative urges and most other human endeavours do not exist in a vacuum. If you are at a friend's house--say a fellow artist, and he shows you how to effortlessly create new art with Photoshop. You might be impressed and enthused and say: "This is great! I want to be part of this," but your…

I agree! And I use Gimp for that very reason!

However, my Photoshop inclined friends would experience the absence of the liquify and Refine Edge tool as an inhibition of their desire to reach their goal (the image they have in mind). In that sense, Photoshop is an enabler for their wishes, Photoshop gives them the freedom to make what they want.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#145

Post by mikojan »

cyphar wrote: post #109
nannal wrote: post #88

Kind of funny you're all in here posting youtube links, I didn't know they were GNU friendly and I can only imagine how RMS feels given his zealotry.

You can use youtube-dl[1] to download videos from YouTube (and transcode them to free formats) without runnning their proprietary JavaScript. There's even a free software Android project[2] that lets you stream videos without running their proprietary JavaScript -- and in my opinion it's much better than the proprietary YouTube app. RMS's concern with YouTube is that they use proprietary JavaScript and they use paten…

You can also just pass the url as an argument to mplayer or one of it's derivatives (all of which use youtube-dl under the hood, I believe). Not even concerned with freedom here. It's just a better user experience when the video is longer, IMO.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#146

Post by teekert »

reacweb wrote: post #83
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When you argue: But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his own terms?" I hope you're aware that this is the oldest argument in the book. It literally goes back to Plato and arguments about how you can be free if you're not free to make other people slaves.

The best metaphor I have ever seen to understand why proprietary software is evil.

The freedom to make other people slaves creates a paradox because such freedom can not be applied to all humans at the same time. We can not logically be each others slaves, now can we? I find this metaphor (or thought experiment... is this actually a metaphor?) to be very poor personally.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#147

Post by syshum »

cyphar wrote: post #72
teekert wrote: post #54

Ever since I listened to this episode of the Linux Action Show [0] I can't take RMS serious anymore. He bases everything he believes on one assumption he doesn't dare to argue himself: "Proprietary software is evil." That is it. When you attack his values and stances, he falls back to that sentence. When you argue: But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his ow…

You should note that Bryan Lunduke has changed his opinion significantly since that podcast, and he has become a very vocal activist for free software[1]. He's also stopped developing proprietary software, and is actually a board member of the openSUSE project now. A lot of things change after 5 years. Oh, and they did an episode immediately after that show where they decided to talk about RMS's arguments "behind his…

Lunduke has also done another interview with Stallman recently as well on his own channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0y0oXU8YNk

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#148

Post by syshum »

teekert wrote: post #54

Ever since I listened to this episode of the Linux Action Show [0] I can't take RMS serious anymore. He bases everything he believes on one assumption he doesn't dare to argue himself: "Proprietary software is evil." That is it. When you attack his values and stances, he falls back to that sentence. When you argue: But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his ow…

>But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his own terms?

That is the Open Source vs Free Software debate in alot of ways

Stallman and the Free Software movement is about the USERS freedom, ensuring that the END USER of software retains the rights to modify, use, and examine the software they use

Where Open Source is mainly focused on the DEVELOPER of the software, most Open Source advocates are developers that want to have their libraries, dev tools, frameworks, languages, compilers, etc all open so they can create closed software for end users, and use code interoperably between projects with out having to worry about Licensing, this is why Open Source favors MIT, BSD, and other non-copy left licenses, where Free Software is GPL

Also you might want to watch the newer interview between Byran Lunduke and Richard Stallman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0y0oXU8YNk

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#149

Post by loup-vaillant »

sokoloff wrote: post #130
loup-vaillant wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a capitalistic society where proprietary software were forbidden, we may not have Photoshop. To me, that indicates a problem with capitalism itself.

In a capitalist world where food could not be sold or traded for consideration, I believe we would obviously not have restaurants/supermarkets and it seems very likely either more people would need to be farmers and/or more people would starve. Is that also a problem with capitalism, or a problem with "not capitalism"?

I was just saying that if capitalism requires proprietary software, then capitalism has a problem. The unstated (yet obvious) assumption was that proprietary software is evil.

I'm not sure food trade is evil. Forbidding it doesn't make much sense to me. Regulating it however makes a whole lot of sense. But we already do.

Isn't the cold war finished by now? Surely there could be viable alternatives to the current corporate capitalism veering cyberpunk?

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#150

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

teekert wrote: post #54

Ever since I listened to this episode of the Linux Action Show [0] I can't take RMS serious anymore. He bases everything he believes on one assumption he doesn't dare to argue himself: "Proprietary software is evil." That is it. When you attack his values and stances, he falls back to that sentence. When you argue: But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his ow…

RMS bangs on about freedom being the ability to have collective / individual control over software by being in possession of, and compiling the, source code.

How does he reconcile this with, say, being in possession of his own DNA, but not knowing how to compile from source.

Is RMS really free if he can't inspect, modify, and tinker with, his own software and hardware.

In the RMS World there would be no life allowed unless all life came with GPL'ed Abiogenesis.

Because non-free abiogenesis is unethical.

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