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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

#231

Post by chmod600 »

oceanplexian wrote: post #10
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #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…

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.

At a certain point it's a game appliance (e.g. Nintendo Switch) rather than a computer. Stallman would probably say that's fine.

The problem is mixing purposes to the point where most people don't even have access to a free computing system.

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

#232

Post by thawaya3113 »

enneff wrote: post #170
csdreamer7 wrote: post #155

Around the 8 and 9 min mark RMS talks about old hardware losing software support, like 32 bit systems. I am a kernel developer and the kernel removes code for a lot of older systems all the time (often lesser known 32bit ARM systems). Phoronix reported that 5.18 removed the Andes NDS32 CPU arch code. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux-51... The reason they do this is because a lot of these syst…

Stallman is not a pragmatic guy. He picks all battles related to free software simultaneously.

Which is why he is so needed.

Pragmatism will always gravitate towards the “middle”. But the middle can never be truly found by pragmatism unless it can see either extreme.

Without Stallman, the closed software extreme has a ton of supporters (Microsoft, Apple, etc) but the free software extreme has almost none.

What Stallman does is define the free software extreme which allows the pragmatists to find a much better middle than if he wasn’t pushing that boundary.

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

#233

Post by Gollapalli »

thebigman433 wrote: post #204
Gollapalli wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He built huge amounts of wealth by building rocket ships and electric cars because he's worried about the earth becoming uninhabitable and thinks we need to be an interplanetary civilization. This is a dude who's dedicated his entire life to (in his mind) save all of humanity from certain doom. I think it's a bit disingenuous to say that it's all just exploitation.

Those goals are cool and all, but that doesnt change his poor worker treatment or his massive wealth hoarding, while still trying to change rules so he can have more. Great goals, but in my opinion, a terrible ambassador for tech/engineering, and a completely ingenuine person. I do not believe he is buying Twitter to "restore free speech" at all, and I dont even think that itself is a particularly good goal without h…

>worker mistreatment

I haven’t worked for Musk, but I’ve heard he only hires fanatics who want to save the world. I expect that he expects things different from most employers.

>wealth hoarding

Most of his wealth isn’t in money or stocks, it’s in his companies. The money that is in stocks, well most of that’s in stock for companies that have actual assets and do actual things in the real world.

People always have power motives for doing things. But that doesn’t make them bad people. It makes them people who have objectives that require power, or perhaps power seekers who need to meet objectives (or claim they do). I trust the former far more than the latter.

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

#236

Post by tsuujin »

worik wrote: post #127
seoaeu wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are defined by what they say though. And a quick google search reveals that RMS’s “emacs virgins” comment wasn’t just an out of character remark he made once in passing

Perhaps because I do not use google (are you in a bubble?) I did not have that result searching. Before I commented I tried to find the source, interesting digressions ensued, but nothing that suggests this is typical. Also I mentioned I have been following him for a long time (nearly three decades, golly). I have never heard those sorts of words pass his lips. So I accuse you of telling a lie here. It is not uncommo…

I’m honestly surprised it took as long as it did to see the first Stallman-apologist “you must be living in a bubble” rebuttal.

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

#237

Post by DoingIsLearning »

waplot wrote: post #230

> Now, more free games? It doesn't satisfy an urgent practical need, obviously... But the crucial thing is, free ones might make it easier for some people to say, 'Let's move off this non-free thing, and play a game that is free. So we can have the same pleasure, but without paying freedom as the price.'“ i'm sorry but i just can't read this without laughing. what does stallman think gamers are like? i can only imagi…

Just because it isn't realistic in today's AAA world doesn't mean the man is wrong.

As a matter of principle he is right but for practical reasons increasing harder to apply.

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

#238

Post by ganyu »

_ofdw wrote: post #145
t-3 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free Software will never be palatable to the mainstream, because the mainstream rejects socialist ideas. I think the popularity of Linux has somehow obscured the ideological origins of the movement, which seemed much more overt in the late 90s/early 00's when I first got into it.

>Free Software will never be palatable to the mainstream, because the mainstream rejects socialist ideas. Then don't frame it as a socialist idea. There's absolutely nothing about Free Software that has a hard requirement on socialist ideology. Frame it as pragmatism: Governments/schools/etc should run free software because it's more cost-effective and thus a more fiscally-responsible use of taxpayer monies. Frame it…

Matter of fact: Chinese smartphone users can be sued for hacking their devices. Particularly developers who develop location mocking apps.

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

#239

Post by jcelerier »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #19

Stallman reminds me of a character in a Greek tragedy. He ends up bringing in the very thing he is fighting against. He makes GPL to give users control over programs. Companies end up using GPL software to power server side software which ends up giving users even less control than proprietary on-device software. He makes GCC to break free of vendors dominating compiler development. IBM(through Redhat) ends up being…

On the other hand it's 2022 and my GNU/Linux/KDE system is very close from 100% free software, and allows to do pretty much anything I want - audio and video creation and editing with Kdenlive, LMMS, Ardour, writing and typesetting (I mostly use LaTeX but LibreOffice works well enough to be used in most of the administration of my country - I'm nearly 30 and have had the luck of almost never having been exposed to MS Office either in school or professionaly), making presentations (I use QML but there's LO, Beamer or whatever Markdown or JS presentation framework of the day), browsing the web with firefox, managing and processing RAW pictures with Darktable, and then there are entire toolchains and development tools which are more than competitive with proprietary alternatives... and I forget a ton of things.

I am thankful every day of being able to live in the world where this is possible and having been able to do so from a quite young age - at first because when I was a kid my parents did not have the money to buy any software at all so learning how to use free software & systems has quickly been a necessity, and now because I know that whenever there's a bug somewhere in the stack I have good chances of being able to peek at the exact issue and if not fixing it myself, at least reporting it to the person who most likely wrote the code almost directly .

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

#240

Post by Karrot_Kream »

Gollapalli wrote: post #224
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. I think we should understand the physics of our homes' use of energy. The world is full of complexity and no single person can understand everything. I don't think software is what everyone needs to understand.

Belaboring the point: you should have SOME working understanding of the physics of your homes use of energy. You should be able to fix your home when something’s wrong with it, so long as it’s not something catastrophically wrong that requires professional help (such as the fire brigade). The point: computers are different from everything else. Pre-writing man is a fundamentally different character to literate, histo…

> The qualitative shift of computational man finds that what he has read can be made into action, simply by it having been written, yet this does not hold true for a person who is handed Durants history of the world, or Livy’s history of Rome (before having been taught Latin, even!) and being told, you have knowledge, even though you can’t get through it all.

I think you have much too high a regard for your own interests and craft. I can guarantee you a cabinetmaker, machinist, pilot, doctor, or lawyer can make any and more of the same style of arguments. A little bit of computational knowledge? Yes it's very useful, and that's what low-code tools like Excel/spreadsheets are for. Akin to learning the basics of reading. More than that? No I think you overestimate the usefulness of computing, and most people only have a working knowledge of reading and writing. The world is full of complexity everywhere. Computing isn't the only thing with this force multiplier effect for humanity.

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