41–50 of 263 posts
"I value freedom more than technical progress."
"We need to make it so hard to move production from one country to another that each company will be stuck in one country, so that country will be able to regulate it.
"iGroan"? "iBad"?
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Stallman is like a goalpost. He's as far over to one side as you can be. We need people like him since we all tend to measure our views and beliefs in reference to others. I just wouldn't want to hang out with the guy. I say "Linux" and buy proprietary software. I'm sure he wouldn't want to hang with me either, but I do respect him.
Who is the other goalpost? Are they equally necessary?
I lost patience with RMS years ago. The problem with Free Software is a marketing problem. If you have to keep explaining things over and over again, saying "Free as in Freedom", or trying to get GNU/Linux to take hold instead of just Linux, you're doing it wrong. Richard is a tremendous hacker, but he's a lousy salesman. I'm not a big fan of salespeople in general, but guys like DHH have proved that it's not enough…
I've taken on occasion to calling it LNU, not GNU. The L is for "Linux kernel", to give proper credit to the Linux kernel for turning GNU from just a set of third party tools you installed on your proprietary Unix system into a complete system.
If I want to be formal, I call it LNU/Linux.
In response to software which requires a lot of development time to create, specifically tax software or games, RMS says: > The reason I don't use nonfree software is that it would take away my freedom. I don't want to let that happen. So I don't consider installing nonfree program, even as an possible option. I treat them as poison. I hope that you will too. This man lives in an imaginary world where no one has to m…
I think it is actually the opposite of that. > You have a choice between deserving a reward and not getting a material reward, and getting one but not deserving it. I think that RMS sees our current society as intrinsically flawed with regard to how it is that we reward people for their good and hard work (and the behavior patterns associated with that work). It is not that he lives in a world where no one has to mak…
Almost every freedom you enjoy came as an economic incentive first.
This is also an oversimplification, but implementing shit without understanding the impact on society historically has led to disaster.
Saying that it would be better if the world did X or Y is very shortsighted without having stats to back your claims ... especially without first demonstrating a sustainable economic model that can survive X or Y (like selling shit and receiving money for it).
More likely would be that software development would be a true commodity OR software would evolve to make Free Software irrelevant.
And it is already happening.
Every interesting application that happened in the last 5 to 10 years is a web application. Web applications are services, not products ... with web apps, people aren't having access to the binary of that application and it doesn't even run on their machines anymore (with the possible exception of distributed systems, like Bittorrent ... but you can see how well Chandler worked out and compare it with the Google Apps).
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The fact of the matter though is that it is not financially viable in any way (or ever will be) for all software to be "free" in the sense of RMS "free". How could a company like Google, built fundamentally on trade secrets, ever be developed. No one would invest the kind of money that was required to build Google into what it is today if Microsoft could go to Github and download "google-search". It is pie in the sky…
Wait a second. Why do you think the world is better, having Google, than it would be if "google-search" was on Github and hosted by a bunch of people? That sounds worse to me. I assume you think that the existence of Google has led to other good things, but I don't see any reason to believe that the people at Google are doing better or more valuable work there than they would be if Google didn't exist.
I expect most responses here will be pretty negative, and I honestly can't defend his position because our politics differ so greatly (and his stance spins directly out of those philosophical roots). Nor can I forgive his personal attitude and general arrogance over the years, although it has softened significantly of late. But I'll give the man a grudging amount of respect: he hasn't budged one inch on his position…
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Source code is not equivalent to a schematic. Source code is equivalent to schematics, raw materials, free labor and the key to a factory. All you need to do is run it through a compiler and you've got an operational program.
Indeed, there aren't any manufacturing costs. So under a free software model you'd have to make money by continuing to make improved versions under contract, or offering support, hosting or other things like that. A lot of people are doing this sort of thing already, so you can make a living off it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ
No wonder computer people have a brutal rep for social interaction. WTF.
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Who is the other goalpost? Are they equally necessary?
Organisations like the Business Software Alliance ( http://www.bsa.org/ ) are the closest I can think of to a pro-proprietary advocacy group.