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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

#281

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

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,…

> 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.

The fundamental reason is the shift towards the web as a platform, not the abundance of Free Software. As for the oligopolies you mention, the process is as democratic as possible with extremely low barrier to entry: many of the current big players weren't millionaires who had to invest piles of money into factories and wait for decades for their dreams to materialize.

> What about Linux (Android) being used as the prime spyware vector, and Linux being used for cloud lock-in (k8s et al)?

I don't believe RMS would object to that, he is not a Linux fanboy and concentrates on Free Software instead.

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

#282

Post by ivan_gammel »

csdreamer7 wrote: post #175
ivan_gammel wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question: what is the share of software products released and used under GPL? What good do they do exactly to non-technical users, compared e.g. to Apache license or commercial no-cost licenses? There are obviously some successes, but in general GPL license is not popular - overwhelming majority of the software is not released under GPL and sometimes never released to the public.

> Question: what is the share of software products released and used under GPL? What good do they do exactly to non-technical users, compared e.g. to Apache license or commercial no-cost licenses? Apache and commercial no-cost is not the same. If the vendor decides to cut support for a piece of software and introduce something new, bloated and costs more. I have the choice to hire a programmer to maintain the current…

> Apache and commercial no-cost is not the same.

They are the same in the sense that they are both not GPL. They just illustrate the spectrum of licenses that are not ideologically aligned with FSF, but may still do the job.

> As for the software products: they are still very common.

I will just repeat myself: there are some successes, but this is not the majority of the software. It’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s enormous pile of proprietary software, that is absolutely not free or open source. Think of Google, Facebook or Salesforce codebase. Think of all the banking or military software. Even some Linux distro can be dwarfed by those applications.

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

#283

Post by viktorcode »

stakkur wrote: post #196
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…

The problem is in the question: the game dev wants to know how to reconcile ethics and his desire to make money from making games. Stallman is saying “it’s not my job to help solve your dilemma.” And he’s right. If I ask a doctor ‘how can I eat french fries and still lose weight”, the doctor will say “you can’t, and I can’t help you resolve your dilemma. What you’re doing is unhealthy”.

Only he's wrong. He's supposed to be the top expert behind Free Software movement, nobody else can answer that real-life question better than RMS.

An idea that's inapplicable to reality even in principle is worthless.

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

#284

Post by pmoriarty »

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,…

"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)?"

It's not like closed-source software would have prevented any of this.

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

#285

Post by zufallsheld »

vhgyu75e6u wrote: post #277
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.

RMS does not mean free as in free bear but as in Libre.

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

#286

Post by macns »

jhbadger wrote: post #258
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…

There are some really addictive games that are open source though. And some of them are quite rightly famous. For example, Nethack. I've played Nethack for countless hours over the course of decades. It's definitely given me more entertainment than 99% of all commercial games that I've bought, and I have it installed on all my computers (and there are even phone versions). https://www.thegreatestgameyouwilleverplay.c…

got a 404 error for the linux link: http://nethack.org/v360/ports/download-linux.html

  sudo apt install nethack

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

#287

Post by bni »

xiphias2 wrote: post #59

,, 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…

This is quite wrong and uniformed.

I build and run from source, both my own and from others all the time on my Mac.

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

#288

Post by ivan_gammel »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #109
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…

I don't think you understand. Most people consciously using free software do not read the source code, or modify it. The value of libre software is no less to them - it only takes one canary or developer to alert the community of issues in the source code, so making an argument based on the fact that most people don't read source code or even can is bunk - that's always been true and the community has reaped the bene…

> Most people consciously using free software do not read the source code, or modify it. The value of libre software is no less to them - it only takes one canary or developer to alert the community of issues in the source code, so making an argument based on the fact that most people don't read source code or even can is bunk - that's always been true and the community has reaped the benefits of libre software anyways.

I understand this too well. You say: “one canary developer”. If our software was built in hope that someone will bring the canary to ensure quality, we would have terrible software. It is surely nice to have this opportunity, but you don’t have to release your software under GPL for that. Hiring QA or white hat team could work even better. I’m not saying that open source software does not work: there are of course some successful projects. It is just minority of the entire codebase, and not all open source software is released under licenses endorsed by FSF. If we care about our rights, we should think what could be the appropriate way to build trust in the software made by Google, Okta or Salesforce, because open source battle is lost there.

> Now if you want to talk about real bloat, like JavaScript libraries…

No, I do not want to talk about that mess. That particular example won’t prove anything. Sorry. :)

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

#289

Post by Kinrany »

duxup wrote: post #20
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…

> Even people who don't care in the slightest about free software think anticheat is detestable. I don’t want to play a game with a bunch of cheaters, and I don’t want to have to filter down to “friends I know won’t cheat “ to play a game with others.

You could play with friends of friends of friends. We can make software for making these checks automatically and transitively, and automatically distribute responsibility when someone is found cheating.

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

#290

Post by belorn »

Beltalowda wrote: post #24
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…

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…

It is a bit like a rancher asking the founder of the vegan movement how to raising livestock while making a living, pay his rent, pay for his children's education, etc. The conversation can very easily become non-constructive, even when the more optimal answer could be focused on improving things, like using a more humane method of killing and better treatment when the livestock is alive.

I would have just answered that the best way to develop free software games is to not be forced to rely on copyright in order to get paid. Get paid to work on it, rather than get paid after work has already been done. If one has to rely on copyright to get paid, a CC BY-NC license might be the best choice, as then the author still have exclusivity to put the game on stores. An other choice is a contractual trigger where once the author is not interested in exclusivity they they will release the code.

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