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Richard Stallman Was Right All Along

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Re: Richard Stallman Was Right All Along

#161

Post by Stormbringer »

lukifer wrote: post #148
Stormbringer wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I'm no RMS fanboy by a long stretch of the imagination. What you're saying is that they should throw their arms up in the air and say "welp, that's how the real world works in reality, so might as well give up and accept it". But I think you're being unfair. The normal open advocates don't fear and demonize closed source. They may secretly pity it, they may secretly hate it, I don't know. The RMS vision o…

I am, admittedly, attacking a straw man, though in the case of RMS and a few others, it's not far off from reality. > In one sandpit, everyone shares their toys. In the other sandpit... who cares what they do? That's the attitude I mean. The fact is, a lot of people care: engineers, customers, and investors are making really interesting things happen in that sandpit. For FOSS advocates to avoid the development happen…

I think that RMS is quite happy to cut all ties with the closed source world in order to build a brave new one that is an idealised programmers paradise. I look at the GPL and it seems to me the clear intent there is to have this separation, this "software apartheid" if you will.

You and I on the other hand, might look at it and say "okay, but how do these brave new programmers eat? Who pays their rent?" Back in the day, RMS used to just do some hand waving and point out that if (sorry: "once") the economic benefits of open source are realised that companies will do this because they realise it is in their best interests.

I'd be delighted to be wrong, but it seems that only a tiny minority of Open Source developers are actually hired by enlightened companies to work on their Open Source projects full time. Google being an obvious big contributor in that regard. But here's the thing with RMS, he is such an extremist that even Google's contribution isn't enough. He doesn't want a measly couple of buillion dollars worth of commitment, he wants it all, the heart mind body and soul must be dedicated to the cause or you are unworthy.

The sandbox metaphor breaks down when we look at one of the things that RMS objects to about Google, that they use Open Source, and they provide 'free(ish)' software services in return, but because those web/software services sit behind the "big-iron" curtain Google are never obligated to release their changes and improvements. Hence the GPL becomes ineffective in that scenario.

The problem of course is the risk of ghetto-isation of the open source developers. You and I might be reluctant to leap in boots and all because of petty economic concerns and so keep at least one foot in the closed source world. This lets us see lots of exciting things happening there. But don't forget that there is lots of stuff happening in the open source world. Closed source may look more exciting now, but RMS is taking the long position that in the end his legions of trusty hackers working together will create something much better than the corporations all doing their own small secret things.

And something genuinely spectacular happened last year. Last year was (finally) the long predicted, long awaited year of Linux hitting the mainstream. Except of course it wasn't Linux on the desktop, but Linux on mobile (Android).

Unfortunately, as open as it might be, it seems to me that Android is deeply flawed as far as alignment with the GNU philosophy of openness, what with the carriers doing all kinds of horrible things (some behind the scenes, some brazenly out in public). I hear stories of Microsoft making more money off Android than the do off Windows mobile (or whatever it is called this week), simply by threatening legal action, and patents of dubious parentage. Not to mention some of the openness being more open than others (e.g. Google releasing the code to some partners but not others, and not the public)

Re: Richard Stallman Was Right All Along

#162

Post by [deleted] »

jaekwon wrote: post #159
pg wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give me some examples of specific predictions he made that you feel are most prescient?

From the "Right to Read" 1997-02... "Dan had learned that each book had a copyright monitor that reported when and where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing." -> Streaming content, DMCA tech "It was also possible to bypass the copyright monitors by installing a modified system kernel." -> Jailbreaking "But not only were they illegal, like debuggers—you could not install one if you had one, without knowing…

[deleted]

Re: Richard Stallman Was Right All Along

#163

Post by [deleted] »

jasonlotito wrote: post #107
hammerdr wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to understand that the system isn't that simple. Bills do not exist in a vacuum. You cannot view these things as independent and completely unrelated to everything else going around it. Yes, the President could veto the bill but then the next few months becomes about him veto-ing a military appropriations bill. He would then need to explain to the American public why the freedoms it eroded were unacceptable…

> You have to understand that the system isn't that simple. No, see, you are the one failing to understand. We understand what you are saying. We still disagree with it. At some point, someone has to stand up and say "No, this is wrong." Someone has to call out Congress and the President for using the military's pay check to erode our rights. The President could have done this. He didn't. He elected to accept the mea…

[deleted]

Re: Richard Stallman Was Right All Along

#164

Post by jaekwon »

adrianbye wrote: post #89
spodek wrote: post #53

"I, too, disregarded Stallman as way too extreme... Only a short while ago I would've declared this as pure paranoia - but with all that's been going on recently, it's no longer paranoia." I considered him extreme until I thought more about it, then came to agree with him on most major points... ... that was in 1993. Glad to see others here.

same for me, except around 2003. RMS is a difficult guy but he tends to be right.

Consider me in, since 2012-01-02.

Re: Richard Stallman Was Right All Along

#165

Post by stfp »

jonhendry wrote: post #149
super_mario wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously expecting Stallman or any one person to "fight" the government and prevent it from passing some draconian law. You seem to thoroughly misunderstand how a modern democracy operates. It's up to the people to prevent a government like that by not electing politicians that have draconian views on the subject. And the only way people can ever do that is if they are aware of all the issues. And Richard is…

Compare the FSF to the EFF.

They do different things? That are both needed and important?

Re: Richard Stallman Was Right All Along

#166

Post by stfp »

lukifer wrote: post #85
pyrhho wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you recognised this issue so long ago, I'm sure you have some recommendations regarding how we can solve it?

I'll tell one thing which won't solve it: religious zealotry and advocations for everyone in the world to commit to FSF purity. Open software advocates should treat closed and controlled systems in the same fashion that techies implore content creators to treat piracy: an unstoppable force of nature that must be accepted and competed with, rather than feared and demonized. Also underlying both issues: the need for im…

Stallman is a good extreme, in that he creates and lives by an idealized system (call it "pure" if you want), which enables a lot of less ideal, more real-life versions to exist in between his and the "commercial software" world, without any negative side-effect to the world at large.

Re: Richard Stallman Was Right All Along

#167

Post by glimcat »

ars wrote: post #157
glimcat wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because he can close his eyes and wish, I suppose. It's a netbook, there are microcontrollers. The microcontrollers have firmware. Besides which, I somehow doubt that all the relevant microcircuitry is open source.

He's OK with that kind of firmware - as long as the code can not be updated the circuit is considered a black box. He doesn't ask for open source hardware either, so firmware directly tied to hardware is considered hardware.

Seems a wee bit arbitrary. And convenient.

Re: Richard Stallman Was Right All Along

#168

Post by strobgot5 »

muhfuhkuh wrote: post #38
dpkendal wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Nobel Peace Prize winner? The man who promised to close down Guantanamo Bay and has still yet to manage to do so? Whose election campaign promised "Change" yet whose only significant move in that way so far, in office for 3 years, is the repeal of DADT? The man who I (along with so many liberals) want desperately to believe in, but who just makes it too hard for us? Yes, that man.

The guy who also oversaw an economy that returned 401Ks to at least sane levels from -40% in 2007-8; the guy who actually said and then did get bin Laden; the guy who pushed for and signed a law that is as close to healthcare reform as anyone has gotten since Medicare was enacted almost 50 years ago; the guy who pulled us out of Iraq when the Republican candidate in 2008 said we should be there for 100 more years; th…

The candidate supported by progressives — President Obama — himself holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians — Muslim children by the dozens — not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack. He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs. He has institutionalized the power of Presidents — in secret and with no checks — to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of a Congressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.

He has entrenched for a generation the once-reviled, once-radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism powers of indefinite detention, military commissions, and the state secret privilege as a weapon to immunize political leaders from the rule of law. He has shielded Bush era criminals from every last form of accountability. He has vigorously prosecuted the cruel and supremely racist War on Drugs, including those parts he vowed during the campaign to relinquish — a war which devastates minority communities and encages and converts into felons huge numbers of minority youth for no good reason. He has empowered thieving bankers through the Wall Street bailout, Fed secrecy, efforts to shield mortgage defrauders from prosecution, and the appointment of an endless roster of former Goldman, Sachs executives and lobbyists. He’s brought the nation to a full-on Cold War and a covert hot war with Iran, on the brink of far greater hostilities. He has made the U.S. as subservient as ever to the destructive agenda of the right-wing Israeli government. His support for some of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes is as strong as ever.

Most of all, America’s National Security State, its Surveillance State, and its posture of endless war is more robust than ever before. The nation suffers from what National Journal‘s Michael Hirsh just christened “Obama’s Romance with the CIA.” He has created what The Washington Post just dubbed"a vast drone/killing operation,” all behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy and without a shred of oversight. Obama’s steadfast devotion to what Dana Priest and William Arkin called “Top Secret America” has severe domestic repercussions as well, building up vast debt and deficits in the name of militarism that create the pretext for the “austerity” measures which the Washington class (including Obama) is plotting to impose on America’s middle and lower classes.

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/31/progressives_and_the_ron_pau...

Re: Richard Stallman Was Right All Along

#169

Post by brown9-2 »

dpkendal wrote: post #25
paulhauggis wrote: post #12

Take note who signed it.

A Nobel Peace Prize winner? The man who promised to close down Guantanamo Bay and has still yet to manage to do so? Whose election campaign promised "Change" yet whose only significant move in that way so far, in office for 3 years, is the repeal of DADT? The man who I (along with so many liberals) want desperately to believe in, but who just makes it too hard for us? Yes, that man.

People that claim to be disillusioned with Obama don't seem to really grasp that this type of "change" is impossible to manufacture when Congress actively opposes you. The President is just one branch of the federal government; the voters don't elect a dictator for four years.

If you want these type of changes, you need to vote for the people that represent it in each election - presidential, midterms, local elections, all of them. You can't give up on the entire idea because the first guy you get really excited about and who actually wins fails to implement all of it in the first three years.

Re: Richard Stallman Was Right All Along

#170

Post by pg »

jaekwon wrote: post #159
pg wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give me some examples of specific predictions he made that you feel are most prescient?

From the "Right to Read" 1997-02... "Dan had learned that each book had a copyright monitor that reported when and where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing." -> Streaming content, DMCA tech "It was also possible to bypass the copyright monitors by installing a modified system kernel." -> Jailbreaking "But not only were they illegal, like debuggers—you could not install one if you had one, without knowing…

Predicting DRM phoning home in 1997 does not seem startlingly prescient. Nor locked down systems; those already existed.

The only novel idea I see here is the point that copyright, which was originally a restriction on publishers, has now become a restriction on consumers. But that doesn't seem so dystopian. Everyone is a publisher now.

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