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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

#51

Post by Beltalowda »

jrm4 wrote: post #36

I really think far too many people are missing why Stallman and the FSF are so valuable. It's not that everyone should behave exactly like them; it's that they provide a useful extreme endpoint such that there can exist a reasonable "Overton Window" of Free/Open Source/ Whatever Software. I 100% support what they do and preach knowing FULL well I will likely never 100% do as they recommend. That's not actually a big…

I don't really see how this is valuable, and I see a lot of ways in which this is harmful to the cause. It's not explaining the message very well, it's actively turning people off, and it's preventing some free software from being as useful as it could be.

You can keep long-term goals in mind while also working towards smaller short-term goals. Almost every political party and lobby organisation in the world is doing exactly that.

Here Stallman again rails against Ubuntu. Okay, maybe Ubuntu isn't perfect, but s/Microsoft windows/Ubuntu/ would be quite an improvement, and especially since the 100% free/libre stuff he recommends are caveated to hell it's the only pragmatic/realistic option there is right now – not necessarily Ubuntu itself, but some distro which includes the same firmware, nVidia drivers, and such. And if a lot of people are actually running Ubuntu/Linux you end up having a lot more leverage.

By focusing only on the endpoint you're actually doing more short-term thinking rather than playing the long game.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#53

Post by FpUser »

jrm4 wrote: post #36

I really think far too many people are missing why Stallman and the FSF are so valuable. It's not that everyone should behave exactly like them; it's that they provide a useful extreme endpoint such that there can exist a reasonable "Overton Window" of Free/Open Source/ Whatever Software. I 100% support what they do and preach knowing FULL well I will likely never 100% do as they recommend. That's not actually a big…

I do not always like FSF and Stallman and their policies. Still I am in complete agreement that they do provide enormous value to the software world in and to the betterment of our lives in general.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#54

Post by makeitdouble »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #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…

> Richard Stallman is one of the most influential and respected members of the movement

If you really think so, I’d argue that his hardline position is then justified.

To me Stallman doesn’t have any specific unfair advantage over anyone who would get on their soapboax and preach for a different approach. You or me could make blogposts and go talk to conferences, and rally people around a different approach. If we were to gain traction, there is no hidden lever for Stallman to pull that throws us in dark cave and nobody hears from us ever.

What gives Stallman his influence is that pragmatic approaches have at most kept the status quo, at worse allowed way more encroachment on our software and devices ownership. Even if we don’t reach the 100% free ideal, setting the goal at “a bit freer than now” won’t help in my opinion.

More and more the “realistic” approach feels close to accepting cops have some amount of violent abuse, because non abusing cops make 90% of the workforce and we better be in friendly terms with them to make things progress, right ?

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#55

Post by rnd0 »

charcircuit wrote: post #43
jrm4 wrote: post #36

I really think far too many people are missing why Stallman and the FSF are so valuable. It's not that everyone should behave exactly like them; it's that they provide a useful extreme endpoint such that there can exist a reasonable "Overton Window" of Free/Open Source/ Whatever Software. I 100% support what they do and preach knowing FULL well I will likely never 100% do as they recommend. That's not actually a big…

Open source would still exist without Stallman and the FSF. There is a practical benefit to open source software and calling people / companies evil / unethical for not open sourcing everything is not as helpful as the FSF may think.

Open Source in the OSI sense of the term was created as a reaction to the Free Software movement so I'm guessing probably not.

It's more likely that we'd have the situation we had with UNIX; incompatible forks tied to incrutable hardware drivers that no one can fix with a zillion different combinations so that when you sat down at a terminal you had no idea what to do -thanks to people being able to take the BSD/MIT software and create their own contrarian forks.

GNU wasn't innovative because it was free, or even because it's source was free. It was innovative because it forced people to play nice.

The UNIX Wars demonstrated how well people play with others when left to their own desires (not at all).

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#56

Post by ivan_gammel »

It won’t be major exaggeration to say that FSF and Stallman are irrelevant in 2022 and not much different from any other radical left group, struggling even to make sense for majority of people. The idea of completely free software where user could control the source code is an obsolete ideal. Not because it’s unviable economically, but because the size and complexity of modern software is far beyond the ability of individual users to reason about it based just on the source code and without any augmentation. Software is no longer result of work of a small village of intelligent individuals, it’s a product of a large and diverse society and other norms and customs should support our freedoms. Free software as an idea did exist only to check the corporations and the governments and to ensure they do not violate other rights. In our society an ordinary person does not do that themselves, this task is usually delegated to various institutions. In information society we need to establish such institutions for the software products and services and not limit it to the code only. FSF got the problem statement right, but their solution was naïve and is now de facto not working.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#57

Post by causality0 »

dangom wrote: post #12
cmeacham98 wrote: post #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…

Stallman has a vision that you and I should be typing our comments and playing our games from machines that are under our control, i.e., whereby we can inspect and modify all of the code that is running on them. That is not the case, and all Stallman is saying, is that this is bad for us. The Free Software Foundation was founded in 1985. From there since Free Software has only lost ground. I don't think Stallman woul…

all Stallman is saying, is that this is bad for us.

That is just plain not true. If it were, that would be fantastic. Unfortunately that's only part of Stallman's message, and a good portion of the rest of it is either simply unworkable or batshit insane.

To quote David Schlesinger after RMS got up on stage and talked about how "women who have not been introduced to emacs are emacs virgins and 'relieving them of their virginity is a sacred duty of all members of the church of emacs'", Stallman continues to embarrass us all

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#58

Post by colordrops »

Beltalowda wrote: post #51
jrm4 wrote: post #36

I really think far too many people are missing why Stallman and the FSF are so valuable. It's not that everyone should behave exactly like them; it's that they provide a useful extreme endpoint such that there can exist a reasonable "Overton Window" of Free/Open Source/ Whatever Software. I 100% support what they do and preach knowing FULL well I will likely never 100% do as they recommend. That's not actually a big…

I don't really see how this is valuable, and I see a lot of ways in which this is harmful to the cause. It's not explaining the message very well, it's actively turning people off, and it's preventing some free software from being as useful as it could be. You can keep long-term goals in mind while also working towards smaller short-term goals. Almost every political party and lobby organisation in the world is doing…

The cause would likely not exist or at least be much weaker if not for Stallman and the FSF and GNU. Ubuntu isn't going to stop what they are doing because of Stallman's ideas.

Love your username btw.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#59

Post by xiphias2 »

,, Macintoshes are moving towards being jails, like the iMonsters. It's getting harder for users to install even their own programs to run them.''

I feel this all the time, especially on my iPad Pro: I'm buying much more idevices than before, because I don't like the direction Windows has taken, and Apple gets always the newest TSMC slots (I buy the newest products from TSMC, they just happen to be made together with Apple).

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#60

Post by colordrops »

alanbernstein wrote: post #44
jrm4 wrote: post #36

I really think far too many people are missing why Stallman and the FSF are so valuable. It's not that everyone should behave exactly like them; it's that they provide a useful extreme endpoint such that there can exist a reasonable "Overton Window" of Free/Open Source/ Whatever Software. I 100% support what they do and preach knowing FULL well I will likely never 100% do as they recommend. That's not actually a big…

I like to think that a goal does not necessarily need to be achievable in order to be valuable.

It's actually important to have difficult or impossible goals. They are guidelines or north stars used for navigation. It helps make short term decisions that trend in the right long term direction.
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