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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

#271

Post by viktorcode »

tjader wrote: post #90
Beltalowda wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago I saw an indie game developer recount his experience with Stallman[1]; he doesn't see how he can release his games as Free Software while making a living, pay his rent, pay for his children's education, etc. So he asked Stallman what to do about that. Stallman's reply? "You should not be making those games, it is unethical." To say that is non-constructive would be an understatement; it's just shuttin…

Stallman and the FSF see closed source software as unethical. Imagine if someone asked you for help and said "I don't see how to free my slaves while making a living, paying my rent, paying for my children's education". Would you tell them "You shouldn't have slaves, it's unethical" or would you try to help them find a way to run their business with fewer slaves, but still some?

You are comparing slavery to writing proprietary code. It takes a cult-like devotion to perform that mental leap. Maybe it's obvious in your mind, but good luck spreading this word to wider world.

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

#272

Post by zeruch »

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…

"what does stallman think gamers are like?"

He doesn't care, and likely has never given a single iota of thought to it, as he assumes what is best is to think like him.

And dear RMS acolytes who will almost certainly bristle at this statement; I spent enough time around him and his satellites in the 90s/oughts, to feel quite comfortable saying this. He has near zero interest (and I would argue the capacity) to try to understand what drives other people, just the self-righteous purity of his own views.

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

#273

Post by ivan_gammel »

datadata wrote: post #107
ivan_gammel wrote: post #56

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 i…

Do you think that the growing size and complexity of software might be part of the strategy of those profiting from the suppression of free software, rather than a necessity for increased software quality?

Linux kernel today is more complicated than 25 years ago. Is it conspiracy or necessity?

In a modern product engineering process we in fact fight the increasing complexity by selecting for the implementation only features that have the biggest business impact. That code is created because someone is going to use it to address some user need, not to confuse a potential reader. Nobody thinks at the moment of the roadmap planning about harming free software, this idea is just absurd.

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

#274

Post by fsflover »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #268

Missing a reflection about how abundance of F/OSS has pushed us towards SaaS as one of the few places left to make a living from pure software dev, and the oligopolies arising out of it. What about Linux (Android) being used as the prime spyware vector, and Linux being used for cloud lock-in (k8s et al)? Also missing a discussion about the role of open standards as opposed to open implementations, such as POSIX/LSB,…

> What about Linux (Android) being used as the prime spyware vector

To deal with that, consider using GNU/Linux phone Librem 5 recommended by the FSF: https://www.fsf.org/givingguide.

> and Linux being used for cloud lock-in

What do you want to discuss here? There is always a possibility to use tools for the evil. Non-free software is used for that, too (much more).

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

#275

Post by nmz »

orbital-decay wrote: post #256
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…

Laughing at RMS had proven shortsighted in the past, and I don't think anything changed, it's still unwise. It's not just about free software either (that's a higher-level target), it's also about the hardware and freedom of running your software on your machine, and owning your computer in general. For example, anticheats in multiplayer games is the major driving factor behind locking PCs down with DRM and chains of…

Not really shortsighted, when it comes to games, it was laughable then and its laughable now.

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

#276

Post by makeitdouble »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #93
makeitdouble wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 we…

As others have pointed out, the Right to Repair movement has achieved far more practical progress than Stallman has. Stallman can't/won't even defend the GPL in court; others have had to organize outside the FSF to do so because the FSF is only interested in stroking its beards.

Right to Repair and the other foundations fighting to defend GPL don't seem to be in conflict with Stallman's position, nor what the FSF does, so your point would be that the FSF is not as efficient as you want it to be ?

In my opinion, if Stallman is an hermit that only serves as an anchoring for other people to move toward the right direction, I'd argue it's plenty enough.

Now I don't know much about the FSF finances and what we should really be expecting from it.

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

#277

Post by vhgyu75e6u »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #165

> 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 prefer the freedom to decide what’s good for me, and at least thus far have a better track record identifying what would benefit me than RMS has. I don’t even care about video games, my go to is still winmine.exe but who is anyone to tell me I shouldn’t enjoy that?

He seems so out of touch with reality, advocating for everything being free open source, specially games would have stopped many of the now cultural references that exists. Making games is hard, making good games is harder and needs a team both motivated and financially compensated.

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

#278

Post by fsflover »

tambourine_man wrote: post #69

> Due to unforeseen technical difficulties, RMS gave his talk over audio only I’m all for free software but that’s hilarious and symptomatic.

AFAIK it was the problem with his Internet speed, not with software. He had the video stream in the beginning, but it was lagging.

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

#279

Post by charcircuit »

belorn wrote: post #270
charcircuit wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some cheats like wallhacks, trigger bot, fake lag, backtrack, etc that aren't really possible to catch with just server side checks.

I am not sure what you mean there. Wallhacks is the ability to see through walls. The server could simply not give out the information about what behind a wall and the wallhack exploit would stop working. It would also very likely introduce pop-in and latency issue as soon the client peeks behind the wall and now need updated information from the server. Fake lag is in a similar situation. The server could simply hol…

>It would also very likely introduce pop-in and latency issue as soon the client peeks behind the wall and now need updated information from the server.

Which is why games that do that will still send you data about player who you are almost able to see. This will be their exact position and look direction along with what they are holding. Even limited wallhacks can give a competitive advantage.

I think you misunderstand fake lag. With fake lag you get fake packet loss / latency which causes your character to stutter making it harder to aim at you. The server isn't getting a regular stream of updates of your position.

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

#280

Post by feanaro »

mixologic wrote: post #260
orbital-decay wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laughing at RMS had proven shortsighted in the past, and I don't think anything changed, it's still unwise. It's not just about free software either (that's a higher-level target), it's also about the hardware and freedom of running your software on your machine, and owning your computer in general. For example, anticheats in multiplayer games is the major driving factor behind locking PCs down with DRM and chains of…

I feel like free software, and RMS's biggest blind spot is the network, between people, and between computers. Everything is framed and discussed in this old timey way of using computers, where you had a general purpose machine that was personal that you programmed to do things you needed, or installed software on, to also do something valueable. Now it seems like the vast majority of the needs and requirements to ru…

> The 'freedom' to inspect the code that runs on your computer is useless without both the freedom to see what happens upstream, and also some level of trust or confidence that the service you're using really isnt doing something nefarious.

How is such freedom useless? I keep hearing this argument, yet I still run a significant portion of software locally and have no plans of replacing that with services, given they are a far worse option, precisely due to the loss of freedom and autonomy for not much additional gain.

Sure, if you accept that all your software are belong to them, then clearly the freedom to run libre stuff is useless, tautologically. But maybe you shouldn't be ready to give away that freedom just yet?

That you cannot be sure what someone else is running "over there", on a machine you don't control, is a fact of nature. Trading away your freedom for a foolish attempt to control that is misguided and shortsighted.

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