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

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

#201

Post by bm98 » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 1:00 PM UTC

jscn wrote: post #112

sprout wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comparison of the microwave to the iPhone is just false. The point is that if the software is simple enough that it's pretty obviously bug-free, and you have no reasonable need to tinker with it, there's no reason you should need the source for the microcontroller. If the controller isn't working, the source is probably not going to help you. You just need a new microcontroller. On the flip side, there's no reas…

When I heard RMS speak a few years ago, he made the distinction between devices like microwaves, and general purpose computing devices. The latter you want to be running Free Software. But for the former it's not really an issue. Unfortunately, the line between the two is blurry at best. For example, I'm not sure how well this jives with the case of the printer software which provided the catalyst for RMS starting th…

Very blurry indeed.

See for example, "Predictable Programs in Barcodes":

http://repository.upenn.edu/cis_papers/200/

From the abstract: "...In particular, we consider programs for microwave ovens, which provide a basic open API for controlling cooking times..."

The authors were only able to _simulate_ a microwave oven, presumably because the software on real microwave ovens is closed. A reasonable argument could be made that the proprietary nature of microwave oven software has limited innovation in this market.

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

#202

Post by rbanffy » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 1:00 PM UTC

rimantas wrote: post #199

rbanffy wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I said, the only added freedom you enjoy by having MIT/BSD-ish rather than GPL is the freedom to remove freedoms downstream. And the ones that are not GPL are so precisely because the vendor wants to be able to remove freedoms downstream should the need or opportunity arise. Are you aware of any other freedom I don't know about?

Yes. To allow "downstream" to do whatever they want with a piece of code I gave them being free from my command what to do.

Including denying its users any freedom.

Tell me one freedom that does not involve denying freedoms and I'll give you the point. If, however, the only freedom you want is the one to deny freedoms, then, this argument became circular a couple messages back.

Using the GPL you deny no other freedom to your downstream users that that.

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

#203

Post by jff » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 1:16 PM UTC

winthrowe wrote: post #32

milesf wrote: post #6

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…

As there are starting to be more and more Linux systems that aren't GNU anymore (think of all the Android tablets, to start), I can see the GNU/Linux distinction becoming more important. Because, when you get down to it, I acutally do want a GNU system. I might very well install Debian GNU/kFreeBSD one of these days, but I want the GNU.

I'm exactly the opposite--I'm looking forward to the day when I can run a GNU-free Linux with no stupid compatibility issues. It'll be hard, given how badly 20 years of GNU has broken Linux, but maybe someday it'll happen, and we'll have a decent C compiler and a non-bloated /bin.

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

#204

Post by randallsquared » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 1:18 PM 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.

Freedom and capability are not the same. People have freedoms by default, and they can be taken away, but people lack capability by default, and they must be provided (in the context of software). The GPL preserves capability by removing a bit of freedom, while the BSD license preserves more freedom at the expense of the possibility to remove capability from downstream users.

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

#205

Post by nickthorn » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 1:21 PM UTC

dman wrote: post #116

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…

“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime".

"Light a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a night. But set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."

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

#206

Post by jff » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 1:21 PM UTC

JulianMorrison wrote: post #133

On a modern Linux system, Gnu is the command line userland, one compiler (among many, and not the dominant one for work if you're a Java shop), and Emacs. And that's it. Not X, not really Gnome, not KDE at all, not the polish put on by Ubuntu etc, and not most of the OS underpinnings either nowadays (dbus, hal, udev, upstart, dpkg, network-manager...). Tell me again, why he should get the Gnu/... in front of the kern…

Thank you! I think many of the more recent Linux users will spend the entire day without once using a GNU tool, except indirectly. And, of course, you could say the kernel and most of the tools were compiled with GCC, but that's not something to be proud of--that just means Linux is full of GCC-idiocy and potentially breaks every time there's a minor upgrade in GCC.

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

#207

Post by alextgordon » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 1:36 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #202

rimantas wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. To allow "downstream" to do whatever they want with a piece of code I gave them being free from my command what to do.

Including denying its users any freedom. Tell me one freedom that does not involve denying freedoms and I'll give you the point. If, however, the only freedom you want is the one to deny freedoms, then, this argument became circular a couple messages back. Using the GPL you deny no other freedom to your downstream users that that.

Yes. Including denying its users any freedom.

"Freedom" is not black and white. Sometimes you need to deny users one freedom in order to give them another. For example, Spotify is a non-free application and it has DRM and lock-in and nasty things like that (no doubt required by the music industry). However, it's completely changed the way I listen to music and given me freedom to listen to more music than I could have done before. I have essentially traded the freedom to tinker for the freedom to listen to music.

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

#208

Post by coliveira » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 1:51 PM UTC

ynniv wrote: post #86

Aaronontheweb wrote: post #60

"I faced the same question at the beginning of the GNU Project. I decided that I would rather do something good with no monetary reward than profit by mistreating people." Thank God Stallman helped all of those sick kids with Malaria in Africa with by giving them GIMP and GCC. Way better than the billions of dollars and thousands of vaccinations Bill and Melinda Gates gave to them. In all seriousness, if we're going…

it's obvious to me that capitalism is utlimately more moral and does more good. That is a heavy statement, and highly contextual. I expect it to be popular in this forum where people view technology as a way to make life better, but keep in mind that strong control over technology can do amazing evil more easily than it can meager good. Gates' philanthropy may appeal to you, but only because as individuals we cannot…

Most of the new technology has been run on Linux because Linux is an operating system for programmers. Windows is an operating system for consumers. These are different concepts, that explain why programmers love Linux so much, and why normal people hate it and use Windows/MacOS instead.

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

#209

Post by Yoshino » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 1:52 PM 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…

> Not to mention compiz/beryl had desktop effects before any other operating system.

You’re joking, right? Mac OS X has always had some sort of desktop effects. Hardware accelerated Quartz Extreme was part of 10.2 in 2002. And Exposé was introduced in 2003… All before Compiz/beryl.

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

#210

Post by Retric » Fri, Jul 30, 2010, 1:53 PM UTC

Aaronontheweb wrote: post #60

"I faced the same question at the beginning of the GNU Project. I decided that I would rather do something good with no monetary reward than profit by mistreating people." Thank God Stallman helped all of those sick kids with Malaria in Africa with by giving them GIMP and GCC. Way better than the billions of dollars and thousands of vaccinations Bill and Melinda Gates gave to them. In all seriousness, if we're going…

Bill G cost the world far far more than he donated. Lost productivity in the first world = less money = less giving. But, 30 billion in chump change is a lot easier to locate than 100's of billions in economic harm.

PS: Consider how much time/money was wasted because IE tried to avoid standards compliance. IMO, the world would have been far better off if MS had spent an extra billion making better software and Bill never donated a single cent.