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Trisquel GNU/Linux

trisquel.info

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Re: Trisquel GNU/Linux

#41

Post by MaxBarraclough »

widespace_ wrote: post #37
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“is a bit too extreme” Understatement of the year. You are a dev who wants to make some money on the side and keeps her software proprietary because monetizing open-source is a rare exception than the rule? F!@# her and her lack of ethics! And don’t touch her software, or her, with a 10 foot pole, let alone pay for it! Oh, there’s a proprietary firmware blob that this device requires, but it runs off onboard flash so…

>Understatement of the year. You are a dev who wants to make some money on the side and keeps her software proprietary because monetizing open-source is a rare exception than the rule? F!@# her and her lack of ethics! And don’t touch her software, or her, with a 10 foot pole, let alone pay for it! Are you asking for the free software foundation to support proprietary software?

I think that's just the point here: yes, strictly speaking they are, but practically speaking the alternative is to put the user's cybersecurity at risk.

If you ask just about any user, they will say they prioritise their cybersecurity over the purity of their Free Software stack. The FSF seemingly disagree. That disagreement is an important one.

Re: Trisquel GNU/Linux

#42

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

Barrin92 wrote: post #33
quadrangle wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a reactive, defensive attitude. Just try applying everything you wrote to the topic of being vegetarian. Vegetarians are indeed arguing against meat-eating, and you could talk about how you are just some pig farmer selling meat on the side, and the vegetarians are saying "F You!" And then there's the practical problems with whether animal products are identified in various food products… And people get super def…

the same thing applies to vegetarians. Smart and effective vegetarians who want to promote vegetarianism don't fill a balloon with red paint and throw it at someone while screaming 'meat is murder!', they convince people to cut down their consumption, promote alternatives that ordinary people can deal with, and as a result get 50% of what they want to a hundred times as many people, which is more than 100% of nothing…

> Smart and effective vegetarians who want to promote vegetarianism don't fill a balloon with red paint and throw it at someone while screaming 'meat is murder!'

Are the GNU/FSF folks doing that? The most I'm aware of is strongly-worded blog posts, which is rather short of physical ... outbursts.

Re: Trisquel GNU/Linux

#43

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

srvmshr wrote: post #10
_jal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it as a reference implementation that, in a perfect world, hardware vendors would proudly target.

Hardware manufacturers can ideologically target the libre flavor, but in practice it is next to impossible to deliver. Drivers are built to address specific hardware features. As features grow, so do system complexities and software calls. Every OEM addresses a feature in a specific problem-solving paradigm. Trying to unify most hardware under a standard set of function & procedure calls cannot be fathomed. A real wo…

I don't follow; linux-libre still has drivers; nobody's saying you can't write per-device drivers, just that the whole of the code to run it should be FOSS.

Re: Trisquel GNU/Linux

#44

Post by ploxiln »

elagost wrote: post #32

Trisquel is based on Ubuntu like other operating systems (Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, Zorin OS, etc.) but they do something unique - they rebuild the Ubuntu packages from source, instead of just including the Ubuntu repos in their software sources. Trisquel is quite a usable distro for laptops that are 3-4 years old if you have an appropriate wireless card - Atheros 9xxx series cards tend to work well as the ath9k driver is…

> Debian tends to be more up to date than Trisquel since it's usually based on the previous Ubuntu LTS.

Agreed with most of what you wrote, except this last bit ... it's a funny way to put it :)

Ubuntu is based on Debian, it "forks" from Debian "unstable" aka "sid" every 6 months (with a fair amount of additions and modifications). Debian stable is released roughly every 18 to 22 months, so it has similar age, on average, of Ubuntu LTS (uniformly every 24 months). But sometimes it's a year newer, sometimes a year older, etc.

Re: Trisquel GNU/Linux

#45

Post by Ygg2 »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #41
widespace_ wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Understatement of the year. You are a dev who wants to make some money on the side and keeps her software proprietary because monetizing open-source is a rare exception than the rule? F!@# her and her lack of ethics! And don’t touch her software, or her, with a 10 foot pole, let alone pay for it! Are you asking for the free software foundation to support proprietary software?

I think that's just the point here: yes, strictly speaking they are, but practically speaking the alternative is to put the user's cybersecurity at risk. If you ask just about any user, they will say they prioritise their cybersecurity over the purity of their Free Software stack. The FSF seemingly disagree. That disagreement is an important one.

I don't know. You can spin a lot of stuff as cyber security.

Hosting all stuff in cloud does prevent getting locked by some ransom ware.

Plus security isn't an absolute. A determined enough actor could always hack you.

Re: Trisquel GNU/Linux

#46

Post by kube-system »

bogwog wrote: post #38
mustache_kimono wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shouldn't be downvoted. It's an opinion that is unpopular here, but which needs to be stated occasionally. The FSF is extreme, and, right now, not 10-20 years ago, but right now, the FSF and Stallman are negative assets for FOSS.

How is it “extreme”? The point of the FSF is to foster and support free software. Supporting non-free software is literally the opposite of their mission. The guy you replied to is being childish and exaggerating. The FSF isn’t some extremist organization out to destroy people who dare to write or use closed source software. Do they refuse to include proprietary software in their distributions/projects? Obviously. Ar…

> The FSF and Stallman are the only assets for FOSS.

The FSF doesn't even support the use of the term "FOSS".

They support the idea of libre software. The broader "open source" community is much larger than the FSF or RMS.

The GPL is the third most popular FOSS license.

Re: Trisquel GNU/Linux

#47

Post by SahAssar »

srvmshr wrote: post #10
_jal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it as a reference implementation that, in a perfect world, hardware vendors would proudly target.

Hardware manufacturers can ideologically target the libre flavor, but in practice it is next to impossible to deliver. Drivers are built to address specific hardware features. As features grow, so do system complexities and software calls. Every OEM addresses a feature in a specific problem-solving paradigm. Trying to unify most hardware under a standard set of function & procedure calls cannot be fathomed. A real wo…

This distro still has drivers, it just requires those to be libre too. Every linux driver written (and also firmware/microcode) could be included, but that would require those to also be licensed as libre. It does not have any more technical restrictions, only legal and licensing ones.

Re: Trisquel GNU/Linux

#48

Post by tomcooks »

mustache_kimono wrote: post #30
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“is a bit too extreme” Understatement of the year. You are a dev who wants to make some money on the side and keeps her software proprietary because monetizing open-source is a rare exception than the rule? F!@# her and her lack of ethics! And don’t touch her software, or her, with a 10 foot pole, let alone pay for it! Oh, there’s a proprietary firmware blob that this device requires, but it runs off onboard flash so…

This shouldn't be downvoted. It's an opinion that is unpopular here, but which needs to be stated occasionally. The FSF is extreme, and, right now, not 10-20 years ago, but right now, the FSF and Stallman are negative assets for FOSS.

How else other than by being radical do you expect not to lose ground?

Re: Trisquel GNU/Linux

#49

Post by quadrangle »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #25
quadrangle wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a reactive, defensive attitude. Just try applying everything you wrote to the topic of being vegetarian. Vegetarians are indeed arguing against meat-eating, and you could talk about how you are just some pig farmer selling meat on the side, and the vegetarians are saying "F You!" And then there's the practical problems with whether animal products are identified in various food products… And people get super def…

Nothing I said was not true. The FSF encourages all members to shun proprietary software of any kind - which is why we have Linux-Libre and Trisquel. Even though, to put it simply, monetizing open source is very rare and the FSF looks down on people (including solo programmers) with the gall to keep their software proprietary. The FSF is also a complete hypocrite when it comes to firmware. Proprietary firmware which…

There are vegans who encourage shunning animal products. And yes, there are critiques of people with the "gall" to eat meat. Those facts don't mean they are wrong. That's a matter of engaging with the actual arguments.

To say the RYF certifcation is hypocritical is a misunderstanding. They drew a line for certification that isn't 100% puritanical. They aren't absolutely impractical. They don't say that your points about firmware don't matter, they just wanted a line that could be practical for the certification.

I recognize your point, but your language and judgments are out of line. The FSF argues that embedded blobs that are completely unchangeable by anyone are similar to hardware. Now, I happen to agree with you that the lack of freedom is still a problem. But the distinction they make isn't totally illogical.

Vegan movements can be extreme too, and you can criticize them. But the level of animosity and defensiveness people get into shows that people are really sensitive about these things. It's as though they recognize that there might really be some fundamental issues with proprietary software or with meat, and the existence of the anti-proprietary or anti-meat views cuts people to the core. I mean, it's one thing to simply disagree, but it says a lot more when people are SO emotional about it.

Re: Trisquel GNU/Linux

#50

Post by quadrangle »

Barrin92 wrote: post #33
quadrangle wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a reactive, defensive attitude. Just try applying everything you wrote to the topic of being vegetarian. Vegetarians are indeed arguing against meat-eating, and you could talk about how you are just some pig farmer selling meat on the side, and the vegetarians are saying "F You!" And then there's the practical problems with whether animal products are identified in various food products… And people get super def…

the same thing applies to vegetarians. Smart and effective vegetarians who want to promote vegetarianism don't fill a balloon with red paint and throw it at someone while screaming 'meat is murder!', they convince people to cut down their consumption, promote alternatives that ordinary people can deal with, and as a result get 50% of what they want to a hundred times as many people, which is more than 100% of nothing…

The analogy works because 99.9% of vegetarians don't even use words to directly tell others that they are unethical, they just assert their OWN vegetarianism as an ethical decision, and others go bonkers as though this is the most grotesque personal attack. This all happens without any red-paint-balloons or other extremist stuff.

In other words, when someone comes along and says what amounts to "for ethical reasons, I behave differently than you", people interpret it (understandably but unreasonably) as saying "you are an unethical person" (whereas the responsible reaction is, "hmm, maybe there's an ethical issue here that I should consider that I haven't yet"). Then, people focus all their attention on rationalizations to reject the other person, such as calling them "ideologues".

The Trisquel website doesn't say, "if you use or make proprietary software, you are evil". People react to the subtle implications as if that's what it said though. Maybe that's because people don't want to admit that they actually do act in ways that are ethical compromises?

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