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The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

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Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#31

Post by konjin »

robotresearcher wrote: post #21
city41 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember in the 90s people all thought Stallman was crazy. And by people I mean developers, Linux users, people on usenet, etc. We all appreciated his contributions but at the end of the day just figured he was wearing a tin foil hat.

By no means all people. He became very well known in the tech community in the 90s because a significant number of people were interested in what he was saying. He won the MacArthur award in 1990.

People don't want to listen to Stallman because he talks about motivations. The number of times I've had people downvote me for pointing out all organizations will act to maximize profit regardless the cost to others is extraordinary.

It doesn't matter if it's google, mozilla, microsoft or the fsf.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#32

Post by Shared404 »

fsflover wrote: post #13

Some companies fight on the side of users in this war. Check out https://puri.sm/products/ for an example (happy user).

Some other interesting companies:

    https://starlabs.systems/
    https://system76.com/
    https://www.pine64.org/
Most of these are probably well known to those who frequent HN, but just in case I'll mention them.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#33

Post by FpUser »

bigbubba wrote: post #12
twentydollars wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate in plain English? Your comment makes no sense to me.

That is plain English. Using a dictionary to help yourself out with the more uncommon words is a better approach than asking people to restrict their vocabulary to suit you.

>"..quickly running into an audit process that can be used to ensure that any virtue can be clean room redesigned by the monolith"

I do not think the part quoted qualifies as plain English

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#34

Post by raphlinus »

twentydollars wrote: post #8
salawat wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. Secure boot is opaque to most. Gigantic monolithic actors in the realm of hardware and software collude to keep the plebiscites from making anything too disruptive without them quickly running into an audit process that can be used to ensure that any virtue can be clean room redesigned by the monolith... Yeah. Seems pretty prescient to me.

Could you elaborate in plain English? Your comment makes no sense to me.

Here's my translation into simpler English, with the caveat that I'm only about 90% sure it captures the original intent:

The article is not biased or out of date at all. Most people can't figure out how to get around "secure boot" technology, which has the effect of locking people out. Big companies, both those that make hardware and software, work together to lock ordinary people out of creating alternatives. If an independent creator were to make something good, the big companies would just make their own version, that would be just as good for most users.

Yeah, this article seems like it accurately predicted the future when it was written.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#35

Post by mullingitover »

city41 wrote: post #14
heavyset_go wrote: post #7

This is something Stallman[1] and others have talked about for a while now, with this article having been published in 2003[2]. [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.en.html [2] https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

I remember in the 90s people all thought Stallman was crazy. And by people I mean developers, Linux users, people on usenet, etc. We all appreciated his contributions but at the end of the day just figured he was wearing a tin foil hat.

To be clear, Richard "I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children" Stallman is totally nuts (although I'll give credit where it's due, he finally walked back his stance on pedophilia).

A stopped clock is still right twice a day.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#37

Post by adamgordonbell »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #4

> But in general, the poorer and younger you are, the more likely you are to be a tenant farmer in some feudal lord's computational lands. An analogy that will probably define the 21st century...

Cory has a great fiction story about this called "Unauthorized Bread" https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#38

Post by Conan_Kudo »

tinco wrote: post #30
city41 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember in the 90s people all thought Stallman was crazy. And by people I mean developers, Linux users, people on usenet, etc. We all appreciated his contributions but at the end of the day just figured he was wearing a tin foil hat.

I was too young in the 90's to know about him, but in the early 00's people definitely didn't think him crazy. Linux was doing well and his contributions to its success were recognised, even if he didn't get as much credit as he wanted (should've got?). I feel it's the past ten years that he's become more notorious for his quirks and his gaffes. For someone who was such a large philosophical influence on our industry…

> Even though we have Linux, I would love to see more dominant GPL projects out there. It is an excellent license when used strategically and I think it's dismissed as too extreme too often.

Unfortunately, the startup/business world has largely taken over most forms of open source development, and they've put a lot of pressure to change the default license for new projects from (A/L)GPL to ASL. That change enables a lot more exploitation of software projects and open source software developers and it's almost embarrassing how often open source projects and commercial open source entities are surprised when it happens.

I wish we could live in a world where the default was to contribute with time and/or money to support each other, but we don't. If we did, I think we wouldn't even need share-alike licenses. But we don't, so we do.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#39

Post by amatecha »

konjin wrote: post #31
robotresearcher wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By no means all people. He became very well known in the tech community in the 90s because a significant number of people were interested in what he was saying. He won the MacArthur award in 1990.

People don't want to listen to Stallman because he talks about motivations. The number of times I've had people downvote me for pointing out all organizations will act to maximize profit regardless the cost to others is extraordinary. It doesn't matter if it's google, mozilla, microsoft or the fsf.

The FSF is a non-profit organization, so that motivation quite literally doesn't apply to them. All other regular corporations, yes. :)

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#40

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

city41 wrote: post #14
heavyset_go wrote: post #7

This is something Stallman[1] and others have talked about for a while now, with this article having been published in 2003[2]. [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.en.html [2] https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

I remember in the 90s people all thought Stallman was crazy. And by people I mean developers, Linux users, people on usenet, etc. We all appreciated his contributions but at the end of the day just figured he was wearing a tin foil hat.

He is crazy. Crazy is a subjective cultural term applied to people who exist on some margin of polite society. Crazy people aren't bad, even if the term is intended to denigrate.

To me, all radical libertarians are crazy. But the fact that he also doesn't have a grasp on what is acceptable social decorum (don't simulate nasal sex at dinner, don't make an apologist argument for pedophilia in public, etc) is probably what makes other people reach for 'crazy'.

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