Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions. • Hacker News Board

Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#181

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 9:15 AM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #176

rimantas wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downmoded you. Mainly because I see no freedom in Stallman's vision and phrases like "shiny toys" and "lock yourself" rub me the wrong way. I want my freedom to use whatever I choose: open source, proprietary, free, paid, whatever, without some RMS telling me what to do. And I see more freedom in MIT/BSD than in GPL.

The only freedom you give up by using the GPL is the freedom to take away the freedoms of your downstream users. Once GPL'ed, any derivative must also preserve the freedoms of its users. This doesn't happen with MIT/BSD and that's one of the reasons there is a vibrant ecosystem around the Linux kernel and the GNU userland and nothing comparable around *BSDs.

[deleted]

Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#182

Post by stoney » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 9:17 AM UTC

tvon wrote: post #54

StavrosK wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs?

Apple is pretty active in OSS for someone you'd call the polar opposite of RMS.

But Open Source!=Free Software, as I'm sure RMS would point out if he was reading this.

Apple do contribute to open source software, but you certainly don't have freedom when using their products, which is what RMS is all about.

Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#183

Post by tome » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 9:43 AM UTC

sandee wrote: post #117

To all those, who find RMS weird and eccentric : PG > Sounds pretty eccentric, doesn't it? It always will when you're trying to solve problems where there are no customs yet to guide you. ... We'll increasingly be defined by what we say no to. http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html RMS was the first to venture into the new world of OpenSource , software freedom .. and so he has all the traits of early explorer.

FWIW, RMS would definitely not say "Open Source", he'd say "Free Software".

Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#184

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 9:45 AM UTC

jonah wrote: post #105

avar wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bill and Melinda Gates have done tremendous good in the world, and anyone who thinks otherwise is either crude or uninformed. Their foundation has done a lot of good, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. Why does it have all that money in the first place? Well, mostly because Microsoft managed to work itself into a monopoly position with dirty tactics, and the proliferation of their own proprietary file formats. This…

The foundation itself isn't completely blameless. They have some of their n billions invested* in the very companies who's environmental and social policies are are causing harm to people they are trying to help with their clinics, etc. *I heard about this several years ago so would be happy to be told they've changed this. Their response was that the fund management and philanthropic arms of the foundation were fire…

[deleted]

Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#185

Post by _politicalist » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 9:48 AM UTC

jonah wrote: post #105

avar wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bill and Melinda Gates have done tremendous good in the world, and anyone who thinks otherwise is either crude or uninformed. Their foundation has done a lot of good, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. Why does it have all that money in the first place? Well, mostly because Microsoft managed to work itself into a monopoly position with dirty tactics, and the proliferation of their own proprietary file formats. This…

The foundation itself isn't completely blameless. They have some of their n billions invested* in the very companies who's environmental and social policies are are causing harm to people they are trying to help with their clinics, etc. *I heard about this several years ago so would be happy to be told they've changed this. Their response was that the fund management and philanthropic arms of the foundation were fire…

It appears that the Gates Foundation works under certain contstraints, dictated of course by the elite family which runs it. For example, they appear to strongly respect intellectual property and corporate profits, as you might expect from a Microsoft founder. (This may take the form of ensuring that companies like Monsanto benefit from aid.)

There was an informed article in The Nation which touched upon the undemocratic vision the Gates Foundation allegedly has; people affected by poverty do struggle to fix their own problems in a self-governing way. Elite benefactors like Gates or Soros may conceivably help to strengthen the systems which make it hard to self-govern, along with whatever benefits they accomplish.

http://www.thenation.com/article/gates-foundation-and-africa...

(Incidentally, I don't see why Gates is considered a particularly predatory businessman. He just happened to be the one who succeeded, as usually happens; and other businesspeople don't like an entity with the resulting market power. He might be a much nicer guy than many of his competitors, for all I know.)

Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#186

Post by mseebach » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 10:04 AM UTC

_pi wrote: post #160

mattmanser wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an extremely naive diatribe. There are few OSS projects that have done anything more than steal ideas from commercial software in terms of innovation. Programming languages are the only place I can think of that OSS is cutting edge. MS pushed the boundaries of software to the extreme. Go look at any of their competitors at the age of their dominance. Man, look at Netscape navigator in its bloated unusable for…

>There are few OSS projects that have done anything more than steal ideas from commercial software in terms of innovation. Programming languages are the only place I can think of that OSS is cutting edge. Surely you're joking? Outlook is a crappy email client. Mutt which is older than I am, handles mail better than Outlook does, I hate using Outlook. It means archiving my mail every month (several accounts over sever…

> Surely you're joking? Outlook is a crappy email client.

Surely you're joking. First, Outlook isn't for anyone who'd be comfortable operating mutt. Period. Second, sure, Outlook has stupid design-decisions. But nobody claimed that Outlook is perfect, it was argued that Outlook was better than Lotus Notes which is was competing against when it was launched. And it was (and is), leaps and bounds. Third, Outlook isn't just a mail client, it's an integrated communications suite. It has taken OSS years and years to catch up with this. You may not agree that it's a critical feature, but for millions of business users, it's a deal-breaker.

There's good innovation in the kernel-space, too, but user-facing apps are playing catch-up.

Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#187

Post by loup-vaillant » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 10:05 AM UTC

rimantas wrote: post #94

rbanffy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Casual users. There are lots of market forces pulling towards proprietary. Most people don't care about software freedom - they want shiny toys right now. Jobs, Gates, Ballmer and Ellison cater to them. They build and sell tools to help you lock yourself to their software. And they even use free software for that. edit: dear downmodder: try harder. I am sure you can articulate a useful argument instead of just downvo…

I downmoded you. Mainly because I see no freedom in Stallman's vision and phrases like "shiny toys" and "lock yourself" rub me the wrong way. I want my freedom to use whatever I choose: open source, proprietary, free, paid, whatever, without some RMS telling me what to do. And I see more freedom in MIT/BSD than in GPL.

> I want my freedom to use whatever I choose: […] proprietary, […] whatever, […]

So you want the freedom to lose your freedom, for a short term benefit. Make no mistake: you are not as free to stop using that proprietary software as you might think. Most proprietary software strongly encourage you to stick with them, and make switching difficult. The best examples I have in mind are operating systems and office suites.

The same could be said about slavery: you give up all your freedoms for the ultimate short term benefit: staying alive. Fortunately, we try to eliminate this horrible choice, by abolishing slavery.

Likewise, abolishing proprietary software might be a good idea. Until then boycott is all we have.

Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#188

Post by bandushrew » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 10:12 AM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #91

wtallis wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the one who downvoted you, but I do think that casual users aren't quite the opposing goal post to RMS. They are greedy, but more than that, they are short-term thinkers. They can't (even collectively) cause quite as much harm as the guys like Jobs, Gates, Ballmer, and Ellison can when they manipulate the market. Big corporations led by big egos have the power to kill products and permanently remove innovatio…

Indeed. I have no doubt people like Jobs, Gates, Ballmer and Ellison (among many others) oppose the freedom ideals Stallman stands for. Still, I think they rely (willingly or not) on the casual user and its disregard/unawareness of the freedoms they thrown away to reach their goals. Without uninformed users, they are harmless. Tools will be developed and willing users will free themselves from their power.

I dont know whether they 'oppose' the software ideals that stallman stands for or not.

I agree very strongly with Stallman and the points he regularly makes regarding the dangerous of proprietary software, and I am very grateful for the things he has done to push his ideals and to increase awareness of the issues and dangers surrounding copyright abuse and the freedom of software users.

I also create and sell proprietary software, and I disagree with him that it is immoral to do so.

No need to oppose him, I can simply disagree with his conclusions while agreeing with a very large number of the points that he makes.

Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#189

Post by mseebach » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 10:22 AM UTC

His answer regarding games show the bounds of his philosophy.

I don't know whether our community will make a "high end video game" which is free software, but I am sure that if you try, you can stretch your taste for games so that you will enjoy the free games that we have developed.

The asker wants a high end video game, and is prepared to pay for it and accept non-freedom. RMSs position is basically "you're wrong for wanting that which doesn't fit into my dogmatic world view".

I mean, his Hollywood-answer is coherent (don't give money to Hollywood, they spend that money to actively destroy your freedom), but this is declaring bankruptcy on his philosophy. His "iGroan/iBad" and "Billionaire Polluters" puns doesn't make him sound less like a 12-year old. Does he also spell Microsoft with a $?

Re: Richard Stallman answers Reddit's top 25 questions.

#190

Post by petsos » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 10:24 AM UTC

sambe wrote: post #179

smallblacksun wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who gets to decide if there is "no reasonable need"? Apple clearly believes (just like the microwave manufacturer) that there is "no reasonable need" to extend the iphones software.

The iPhone is pretty much marketed and sold as a multi-purpose computing device. There is a huge market for installing software on it, there is a development environment etc. People know this when they buy it. It is very obviously a computer-phone. When you buy a microwave, you are buying it to heat food. You are not expecting to be able to browse the web on it or play games. If you are, then you need your head exami…

So, iPod classic is OK but iPod touch is not? What about a TV? A TV that can play youtube viedos? A car? The kindle? The drobo? Are they all multi-purpose computing devices? The distinction is actually not as very very clear as you think.