Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Libreboot – Defend Richard Stallman

libreboot.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 253 posts

Re: Libreboot – Defend Richard Stallman

#201

Post by smitty1e »

I'm more interested in the idea of the FSF.

RMS, irrespective of your opinion of the figure, isn't young.

Will Big Tech devour the concept of Free Software and reduce pretty much everyone to mere product?

What good is the source code if the hardware and networks where that source code executes are reducing you do digital serfdom?

Do the Silicon Valley tech godz play the Emmanuel Goldstein card on the rest of the Free Software leadership until we all just shut up and love Big Brother?

Re: Libreboot – Defend Richard Stallman

#202

Post by crispyambulance »

alpaca128 wrote: post #181
crispyambulance wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They plainly state their irrational opinion that the resignation was the result of a smear campaign by anti-open-source entities and even list them. That's just hysterical garbage. RMS did this to himself by being an abrasive asshole and failing to curb his autistic tendencies. As a major thought leader, he ought to know better.

> RMS did this to himself by being an abrasive asshole So what? Steve Jobs was celebrated while he shat on people left and right and even denied his own daughter's claims that he's her father for years. Elon Musk publicly called someone else a pedophile and hired specialists(which turned out to be scammers) to dig up dirt against that person. Linus Torvalds is known for being rather unfriendly to a lot of people, yet…

> ...don't understand the magnitude of the current outrage and don't think it's fully rational.

That's a perfectly reasonable position. However, it also implies that you would not conclude it's a plot against free software like that zany OP article does.

Torvalds never got in trouble for the NVIDIA outrage because that was just rage against a particular corporate entity. No one got hurt or personally offended by that. He DID get in trouble for being awful and abusive to contributors in the linux community-- that WAS personal and he paid a price for it after getting away with it for a long time.

RMS also has a LONG history of being a vile personality and it finally caught up with him. Again, he should have known better. His role was as a spokesperson, get GETS PAID for that as a living. There really is no excuse.

I don't know about Musk or Jobs. They had other roles besides being a spokesperson. Perhaps they got their comeuppance coming eventually (or posthumously).

Re: Libreboot – Defend Richard Stallman

#203

Post by dmos62 »

spamizbad wrote: post #104

Give me a break. Look, if you don't want his personal conduct to factor in, let's look at the percipidous decline in free software (and the rise of copy right BSD/MIT/Apache open source software). Years ago, LLVM was offered to Stallman and the FSF. Due to the idiosyncratic way he chooses to handle his email, he never even got their message. As such: LLVM fell under a BSD-style license. Clang was built on top of it,…

That's interesting info, thanks for recounting that, but this letter is not about Stallman's merits as a manager, but about the arguably baseless public condemnation of his character.

Re: Libreboot – Defend Richard Stallman

#205

Post by kodah »

Nursie wrote: post #182
iocert wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not forced to defend him, in fact Leah calls some of Stallman's statements "idiotic" herself. But she is intellectually mature enough to see that most humans have had 5 stupid views over 30 years, and Stallman was just honest enough to write them down. You don't need to defend the views (some of which have already been retracted), but you have to accept Stallman as flawed human being. Stallman is currently st…

> You don't need to defend the views (some of which have already been retracted), but you have to accept Stallman as flawed human being. This (the holding on to his views of 15 years ago, which he has since come to understand are wrong) is a major issue in the modern world IMHO. That's not to defend Stallman's more recent gaffes, or even those older ones. But it raises a question - we know people can learn, grow and…

> But it raises a question - we know people can learn, grow and change

I think we are starting to learn this. I believe this at my core because I've observed myself and others, but when I feel some type of way it's not always the first idea in my mind.

Re: Libreboot – Defend Richard Stallman

#206

Post by RichardCA »

tomcooks wrote: post #61
rzwitserloot wrote: post #2

From the linked article: > Our opponents wish to destroy Free Software > Our opponent’s true target is not Richard Stallman; their real aim is to destroy the FSF by thoroughly infiltrating it (like they already have with organisations like the OSI and Linux Foundation). These people even started an online petition calling for RMS’s forceful removal and for the entire board of directors at the FSF to resign from their…

If you think Stallman stands for open source you don't understand free software, open source, nor Stallman.

I prefer to think of it as the political style you find in European countries with the parliamentary system. You have to form coalitions. The "pure" FSF position is like an ideological pole that some people are closer to than others. When this system functions properly, there is more room for nuance and shades of grey.

Of course the danger is that we end up like Israel. They keep re-electing the same guy who is incapable of forming anything, but no one knows who the successor would be or even how such a person would operate in the current climate.

Re: Libreboot – Defend Richard Stallman

#207

Post by koonsolo »

nojokes wrote: post #199
Latty wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can absolutely claim he was wrong, we are talking about a case where it was assault. A minor can't consent under the law. Claiming it was consensual is an excuse that the laws specifically says does not hold because it abusers will always say that, and the responsibility is on adults not to have sex with them. It doesn't matter if there was consent given or not, the person committed assault because the society ch…

The world you are looking for is "abuse". Abusers (your wording) abuse, they do not assault (when they do, then they become an assaulter). What Marvin Minsky did in that situation was to abuse this 17 year old girl. What he did was morally (and most likely also legally, I do not know the full details) wrong but as far as we know, he was not violent or forcing. That is the important difference Richard Stallman tried t…

Seems like at this point, both of us are not fit for leadership ;)

Re: Libreboot – Defend Richard Stallman

#208

Post by Y_Y »

mustafa_pasi wrote: post #124
Y_Y wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On pronouns? https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html On society in general? https://stallman.org/articles/necessary-changes.html For anything else, there's a good chance he's written about it on his website.

I have not opened those links so I don't know what RMS is going to say, but what does any of that have to do with free software?

It has everything to do with free software in the sense that it's just application of the principles of the free software movement. rms wants information to be free because of his moral principles, and these same principles also apply to the world outside software. It's a whole thing.

Re: Libreboot – Defend Richard Stallman

#209

Post by akagusu »

prepend wrote: post #38
EdwardDiego wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget Red Hat, a company that makes it living from FOSS, apparently now also hates FOSS...

There’s multiple angles. I think RedHat is more for PR for IBM. I don’t think it’s binary in that RedHat is owned by a company that has other motivations than when RedHat was independent.

IBM bought RedHat to control the second most important piece of software that makes part of major Linux distributions.

Re: Libreboot – Defend Richard Stallman

#210

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

nojokes wrote: post #199
Latty wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can absolutely claim he was wrong, we are talking about a case where it was assault. A minor can't consent under the law. Claiming it was consensual is an excuse that the laws specifically says does not hold because it abusers will always say that, and the responsibility is on adults not to have sex with them. It doesn't matter if there was consent given or not, the person committed assault because the society ch…

The world you are looking for is "abuse". Abusers (your wording) abuse, they do not assault (when they do, then they become an assaulter). What Marvin Minsky did in that situation was to abuse this 17 year old girl. What he did was morally (and most likely also legally, I do not know the full details) wrong but as far as we know, he was not violent or forcing. That is the important difference Richard Stallman tried t…

> What Marvin Minsky did in that situation

* - what he allegedly did in that situation. This claim is disputed and was never proven.

Post reply on HN