Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement
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Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement
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Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement
#2It looks like Lunduke just cut-and-pasted all the quotes that Slashdot published (presumably their transcription from the FSF's audio file) on Saturday.
https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/04/16/238221/richard-stal...
https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/04/16/238221/richard-stal...
Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement
#3> Instead of telling you what the program means, it tells you what the program is permitted to mean.
Hmm that's insightful.
Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement
#4Sounds like Stallman's standard stump speech to me?
Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement
#5His new book seems interesting.
Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement
#6Important bit of state from the Show-Don't-Tell Department:
> “Due to unforeseen technical difficulties, RMS gave his talk over audio only.”
Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement
#7> But typically these games are not solitaire; you're playing with other people. And using a non-free program together with other people? That's particularly bad. Because it means that those people are pressuring each other to keep running that non-free program.
I wonder what Stallman would say about anticheat software. Even people who don't care in the slightest about free software think anticheat is detestable.
But without it, there's a client-side arms race against the server code which is a different kind of metagame than most players would want.
Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement
#8> “Well, first of all, I don't think there's anything bad about playing a game. Unless the game is non-free — then it's bad for you, if you play it.
I get that Stallman's shtick is being as hardline as possible about free software, but it really feels like sometimes this hurts the free software movement.
Imagine trying to bring in a normal, non-technical person who plays video games as one of their hobbies (describes a lot of my friends at least), and they see this quote. Immediately, it feels bullshit and dumb to them - non-free games (which make up 99.999% of the market) are "harmful for them"? It's hard enough for me (a trusted friend) to explain the free software movement to them after seeing stuff like this, imagine a random person just stumbling upon it.
And yes, every community has their super-idealistic members that make extreme hyperbolic statements, but the problem is that Richard Stallman is one of the most influential and respected members of the movement (and the founder of it!). Sometimes I feel like we could get a lot more done for free software with a tiny bit of pragmatism - for example, in the video game space, pushing for Valve to open source the Steam client, which feels like the most likely high-impact goal to push for rather than the lost battle of trying to change the entire industry at once.
Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement
#9> But typically these games are not solitaire; you're playing with other people. And using a non-free program together with other people? That's particularly bad. Because it means that those people are pressuring each other to keep running that non-free program. I wonder what Stallman would say about anticheat software. Even people who don't care in the slightest about free software think anticheat is detestable. But…
>Even people who don't care in the slightest about free software think anticheat is detestable.
[[Citation Needed]]. Trying to play a multiplayer game that doesn't implement effective anticheat is miserable. The arms race is unfortunate but 100% understandable, and I wouldn't play any game that doesn't implement some form of it.
Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement
#10> But typically these games are not solitaire; you're playing with other people. And using a non-free program together with other people? That's particularly bad. Because it means that those people are pressuring each other to keep running that non-free program. I wonder what Stallman would say about anticheat software. Even people who don't care in the slightest about free software think anticheat is detestable. But…
I think he would just say “I told you so”. To play a game I need to be running non-free hardware, to run a non-free OS (Windows 11) to run closed source software, that connects to a non-free server, that spies on me in proprietary ways to prevent cheating.