Richard Stallman Explains [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#151

Post by loup-vaillant » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 11:27 AM UTC

teekert wrote: post #144

craigsmansion wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Surely GIMP could copy those tools, as well as any missing functionality?

Couldn't the funding that currently goes to Adobe be devoted to further the development of GIMP instead?

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#152

Post by teekert » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 11:28 AM UTC

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #150

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…

He can't but nothing stops him from developing methods with which he can edit his DNA and subsequently applying those methods. So the DNA analogy is not valid, he is the owner of his DNA.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#153

Post by teekert » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 11:30 AM UTC

teekert wrote: post #144

craigsmansion wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Not sure why I can't reply to you loup-vaillant but here it is:

Do you mean the "funding" (more like "income") that Adobe generates by selling their software instead of giving the source code away?

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#154

Post by cyphar » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 11:32 AM UTC

syshum wrote: post #147

cyphar wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Which is what my first link was to. ;)

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#155

Post by csydas » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 11:32 AM UTC

teekert wrote: post #143

loup-vaillant wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Well, to a degree Freedoms compete. As the old adage often misattributed adage goes, "Your right to swing your arms ends where my nose begins." Sometimes our freedoms encroach on other people's own freedoms; despite the notion of an unalienable right, such freedoms are only available via force of some means; monetary compensation, organized violence (state or otherwise), and so on. As rights need some external force to validate, to me it seems reasonable and sensible that you're going to have both competing freedoms as the enforcers will hold different freedoms in higher/lower regard than others.

I understand that such a position basically strips away all human dignity and reduces everything to a "might is right" argument, but is that not very much true in many ways? We agree on the freedoms we want to have protected and are more lax about those less important.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#156

Post by SeanMacConMara » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 11:34 AM UTC

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 I see no evil whatsoever in someone making a software tool and selling only the binaries to someone who is happy to use said binaries under the terms the seller and buyer agree upon. That to me is freedom, nobody is forced in that scenario."

to hopefully explain more clearly...

RS's FOSS agenda is promoting some very very specific legal freedoms for all the people in a state. Not "freedom" in general. Not just for software developers or any other niche group. Those freedoms are specific to software as he believes that it's impact on societies, especially democracies is fundamental now and in the future.

If one were to think FOSS is just "open source" or a "nice thing for developers" one would have entirely missed the point. FOSS _is_ a "nice thing for developers" but that is just a side effect. FOSS is a hard-line political tool to very strongly promote specific kinds of legal rights/freedoms. RS drew a line in the sand and never crosses it. Thats why the GPL is so strict. It's the whole point of it.

His use of the word "evil" can be non-obvious. He sees users of software who have had their legal rights restricted via proprietary licensing as having been harmed (possibly in a very small way, possibly in a very serious way) by that situation, even if they entered into it willingly (with or without knowledge of FOSS's philosophy). Even if the proprietary vendor didn't mindfully intend harm, harm can still be done.

RS is not primarily concerned so much about the tiny individual incidents but the "network-effect" they have on society as whole when multiplied by billions. RS refers to that overall effect on democracy as "evil".

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#157

Post by sokoloff » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 11:34 AM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #149

sokoloff wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 corp…

Capitalism doesn't require proprietary software, but it enables it.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#158

Post by teekert » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 11:34 AM UTC

syshum wrote: post #147

cyphar wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Oh, that is a must watch for me, thanx. I remember Lunduke being vigilant because he was trying to sell his software on Linux without the risk of it immediately going into a repo for free (if I remember correctly). And why shouldn't he? I still think Linux would benefit from a strong offering of closed source software, as Lunduke did back in the day as well.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#159

Post by teekert » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 11:37 AM UTC

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…

If the vendor is a user or at least, a person. Making one more important than the other creates a paradox, doesn't it?

It's not important who benefits, it's import that one should have the right to offer ones own creation under their own terms.

Re: Richard Stallman Explains [video]

#160

Post by teekert » Thu, Aug 10, 2017, 11:40 AM UTC

cbenz wrote: post #62

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…

Freedom of users is more important than freedom of vendor. That's because users are the society, the citizens, everyone in fact. So defending the freedom of the creator to sharing software under her own terms is way less important than defending the freedom of users.

If you think your rights should make it possible for you to do with my creation as you please, then I shall never do business with you. Hell I don't even want to create anything in or for a world that thinks they have anything to say about my creations. I shall share my creations with you as a I damn well please and if you don't want to stick to the conditions that I set for sharing something with you, I shall simply never share anything with you.

Note that I may choose the GPL for my creation and you may share said creation in that case. But only because I choose the GPL as the conditions that applies to my creation.

In fact, I love the GPL, it makes the world a better place but a creator is the only one that can apply it to his creation, not you nor society at large, not in the name of common good or anything else. The creator only, you shall not force a creator lest he will stop creating and you will be worse off because of it.