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Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman [pdf]

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Re: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman [pdf]

#71

Post by DonHopkins »

kashyapc wrote: post #40
jimmies wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone knows Stallman is very hard to work with. But not everyone knows he is also one of the nicest, most honest, down-to-earth people ever. He actually spent time to read and answer every single email I sent to him despite me being a little no one. I know he couldn't possibly have hired a person who pretends to be him -- he corrected the lingo of the sender. Ah, such a Stallman thing :). I don't have much to say…

Very much agree with the point about how accessible (especially via email) RMS is. A month ago I too have exchanged some email with him about license clarification of some slides he's worked on in the past. He responded within a day with precise details. (From my exchange I was again reminded of his funny auto-responder email.) And not to mention how unfailingly honest he is, which is impossible to miss when you read…

    [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
    [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
    [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Re: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman [pdf]

#72

Post by kgwxd »

wiz21c wrote: post #46

Stallman has been my man for more than twenty years (the first time I heard him). I still 100% agree with his core values. But a while ago, he explained that mobile phones were closed/proprietary/spying and, in the very same talk, explained that if he had to give a call, then he'd use someone else's phone. That sounded wrong to me. I told it to him but the answer was not clear... So to me, he's mostly perfect, but th…

He talked about the cell phone thing in some video I saw and that answer bugged me a bit too. At first it seems like that line of reasoning could be used to justify using all proprietary things. But I think that cell phones are proprietary spying tools is one issue, a reason not to register one in your name due to maintaining anonymity, as well as a reason not to do personal computing on, because who knows what the hell it's doing in the interest of the proprietor. On the other hand, making a few phone calls through someone else's phone is basically the same level of risk as using a pay phone. So both points are about cell phones but one is about cell phone as a computer/gps and the other is about the cell phone as a phone. If he had said he'd use someone else's phone to check his email, I'd be worried about his line of reasoning :)

Re: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman [pdf]

#74

Post by jimmies »

jancsika wrote: post #68
jimmies wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone knows Stallman is very hard to work with. But not everyone knows he is also one of the nicest, most honest, down-to-earth people ever. He actually spent time to read and answer every single email I sent to him despite me being a little no one. I know he couldn't possibly have hired a person who pretends to be him -- he corrected the lingo of the sender. Ah, such a Stallman thing :). I don't have much to say…

> But Stallman wanted to call desktop distros GNU/Linux. If a parasite with the intent to undermine free software had burrowed into Stallman's brain, something like this naming debacle is what it would use. Reasonable people like you and me find it makes sense on Stallman's part. He did the work. He should get credit in the naming. Calling his work by the name of Linux isn't technically fair. Stallman has every right…

>Reasonable people who aren't like you...

I don't care about other people's distros, I didn't rename them. I didn't ask them to rename. I told you in the comment above it was my distro. I have all rights to name it whatever way I want, and the way I see fit is respecting his wish.

Re: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman [pdf]

#75

Post by bb88 »

flowless wrote: post #48
bb88 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it really does. It will get better with KiCad 5.0 though which should be released soon.

Care to explain what's new in 5.0 regarding library management? I'm considering rolling out a standalone library (package) management for Kicad re-using infrastructure from Haskell (stripped down Hackage + Stackage servers). This way there would be a versioned repository people could upload their libraries to and from your own project you can depend on these libraries. Stackage would then create a snapshots of these…

The big changes are the foot prints are being downloaded instead of using the github plugin.

http://blog.oshpark.com/2018/02/10/whats-coming-in-kicad-ver...

I think there's maybe two things added to kicad that could be very awesome.

1. For SMD components, take a part, put it on a flatbed scanner and scan the footprint directly and allow you to edit widths before using it. Then I could just order the parts and use them in my designs without having to spend a lot of time constructing the footprints.

Heck even just an overlay of the image onto the grid would be fine.

2. Something like what you're doing, except as a full blown SaaS solution that does pins, symbols, footprints, and 3d models on demand.

Re: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman [pdf]

#76

Post by kod »

jimmies wrote: post #33
jrauser wrote: post #26

Wow, the close of Lessig's introduction is powerful. We have indeed not earned that freedom yet. > I don’t know Stallman well. I know him well enough to know he is a hard man to like. He is driven, often impatient. His anger can flare at friend as easily as foe. > He is uncompromising and persistent; patient in both. Yet when our world finally comes to understand the power and danger of code — when it finally sees th…

Everyone knows Stallman is very hard to work with. But not everyone knows he is also one of the nicest, most honest, down-to-earth people ever. He actually spent time to read and answer every single email I sent to him despite me being a little no one. I know he couldn't possibly have hired a person who pretends to be him -- he corrected the lingo of the sender. Ah, such a Stallman thing :). I don't have much to say…

I'm not sure you would describe him as "nicest" if you had talked to him in person.

I think being nice requires you to be able to acknowledge other people's viewpoints, even if you don't agree with them. Stallman comes across as fundamentally incapable of that.

Re: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman [pdf]

#78

Post by 794CD01 »

adrianN wrote: post #44
sincerely wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without talking about this specific case (I've never heard of that guy) sexual assault is basically impossible to "prove" without clear video recordings. :/

So guilty until proven innocent?

It's better than "never guilty because proof is impossible".

Re: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman [pdf]

#79

Post by Digital-Citizen »

anjbe wrote: post #25
e19293001 wrote: post #5

One of the things that free software lacks strength is in EDA tools. There were people who created free software for hardware guys but with the lack of fund and volunteers, the development deteriorates. While hardware development is not easy compared to software development, I hope there will be a strong move in EDA tool development. Free software deserves the praise for saving everyone's ass.

The FSF claims to care about EDA, but contributes to the problem by pushing strong copyleft at any cost. Like the time Stallman refused to relicense LibreDWG (GPLv3) so that LibreCAD (GPLv2) could add support for Autodesk DWG files. ( http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/whats-up-with-dwg-a... , http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/libredwg-drama-the-... ) He cares about his copyleft philosophy and GPL dogma…

I'm not convinced that's an example of your point -- "[RMS] cares about his copyleft philosophy and GPL dogma more than the ability of free software to use free software". And some parts of the blog you pointed us to are simply wrong, like saying "[GPLv3] doesn't work for end-user software" is also wrong in that that's not true (there are many GPLv3, GPLv3+ -- GPLv3 or any later version -- and even GPLv2+ programs intended for users to run) and mischaracterizes the underlying issue. The heart of the issue has to do with understanding why GPLv2 licensors won't switch to GPLv3 (which would be fine but risk revisiting this problem again later) or GPLv3+. Furthermore, this is hardly an intractable problem, particularly among copyright holders who want to look out for their users' software freedom.

As http://gplv3.fsf.org/rms-why.html rightly points out, "both GPLv2 and GPLv3 are copyleft licenses: each of them says, “If you include code under this license in a larger program, the larger program must be under this license too.” There is no way to make them compatible.". So LibreCAD could relicense to be either GPLv2+ or GPLv3 which would allow making a program with code from LibreCAD and code from a GPLv3 program. Asking a GPLv3 or GPLv3+ project to relicense under a lower version GPL would be heading in the wrong direction for preserving user's software freedom. Asking the FSF to do a worse job of defending software freedom is a silly thing to ask.

GPLv3 has substantial practical improvements over GPLv2 which all GPL licensors ought to consider. A few examples: nicer termination terms than GPLv2 -- under GPLv2, any infringement causes a infringer to lose their rights under the license unless the copyright holder(s) restore those rights. GPLv3, on the other hand, grants an infringer some time to come into compliance to account for accidental infringement. GPLv3 has anti-TiVOization, anti-DRM, and patent licensing language not explicitly present in GPLv2. GPLv3 has a more modern source distribution requirement than GPLv2 (which was written before Bittorrent). Again, as http://gplv3.fsf.org/rms-why.html rightly points out, "Further advantages of GPLv3 include better internationalization, gentler termination, support for BitTorrent, and compatibility with the Apache license.".

http://gplv3.fsf.org/ has complete details on GPLv3's advantages and http://gplv3.fsf.org/rms-why.html concisely states multiple reasons to switch to GPLv3. There are plenty of good reasons to license under GPLv3 or "GPLv3 or later" to avoid this problem in the future.

Re: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman [pdf]

#80

Post by Digital-Citizen »

wiz21c wrote: post #46

Stallman has been my man for more than twenty years (the first time I heard him). I still 100% agree with his core values. But a while ago, he explained that mobile phones were closed/proprietary/spying and, in the very same talk, explained that if he had to give a call, then he'd use someone else's phone. That sounded wrong to me. I told it to him but the answer was not clear... So to me, he's mostly perfect, but th…

I doubt he explained anything proprietary as being "closed". He spends considerable time correcting people when they summarize his views and use that term because (as he also explains) that's a reference to open source, a group founded over a decade after the free software movement which ostensibly promotes a development methodology purpose-built to remove the ethical underpinning of free software. See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Closed for more on this. In practice, open source philosophy is disposed of in the face of powerful, reliable proprietary software ("How can I get a copy [of that proprietary program]?") and that's why proprietary software businesses like open source and don't care to discuss anything in terms of software freedom. But software freedom is far better for computer users in cases where the two philosophies conflict or diverge. See the section named "Different Values Can Lead to Similar Conclusions…but Not Always" of https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.... for how this plays out in practice.

As to using someone else's tracker (tracking is what those devices do most of the time, so why not acknowledge that's what they chiefly are by calling them by their rightful name?): this is right in line with understanding that software freedom concerns control of one's own computer. Remote services (such as /., Hacker News, Google mail, and more) might run on nonfree software. That's a bad choice for the computer owner (all computer owners deserve software freedom) but it doesn't say much about use of the service because service users don't have a say about someone else's computer. By the same token, those that choose to own and keep trackers on their person have already divulged the location of the tracker (and thus themselves), and that choice was never Stallman's to make. So the choice for Stallman (or someone using someone else's tracker) comes down to making the call or not.

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