Earlier quoted context omitted.
Practically? No. From the ultra-geek perspective? Yes.
The real geeks I know what to get work done, not send email all day.
How do their achievements stack up against RMS?
Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
91–100 of 262 posts
Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
#92The saddest part of all this is that kids will read it and think "this is what 'sticking to my principles' is going to get me, so fuck it." RMS used up his "I was there when" cred a long time ago. He's now the demented grandparent no one has the heart to tell to STFU when he yells at the TV. And yet simultaneously, one of the greats.
Show some respect son. Seriously.
I did. Seriously.
Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
What sort of ultra-geek uses that sort of setup? The current generation of that notebook has a processor that runs at less than 1GHz! The only reason he gets away with it is that he mostly does mail on emacs from console. It's too minimalist for any present day software development work
I know a reasonable number of present-day developers who use a setup not much more complex than that: emacs or vim in a console. Not very practical for webdev, but you can do scientific-computing or embedded dev that way. For scientific computing you'd probably want a beefier CPU to run tests, but those are often run remotely on a computing cluster anyway.
> Not very practical for webdev
On the contrary! I spend most of my working day using vim in a terminal (with tmux) to do web development. It's just text generation, after all.
I'd go so far as to say that if you're doing test-driven web development, it should be possible to build a system entirely within a terminal, and that's what I aspire to. It's only the front-end styling (CSS etc.) that actually needs anything more than a terminal.
And yes, I find this efficient: far more efficient than hacking and pressing F5. I think there are other benefits to this way of working: it tends to make progressive enhancement and accessibility the path of least resistance.
Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Richard Stallman is to software what Jean-Paul Sartres was to philosophy during his time and still now. JPS like RMS was living through his convictions and ideas to the point of refusing the Nobel prize because it would have tinted his motivations. RMS would do the same without any questions. Don't get them wrong: these people are not fanatic, they are just living and breathing a cause they started for a good reason.…
Don't get them wrong: these people are not fanatic, they are just living and breathing a cause they started for a good reason. AKA Fanaticism. He's become an inflexible, computerized hermit. His dogmatic adherence to a demonstrably untenable principal of "freedom" has relegated him a permanent state of pre-1995 digital stasis. He's not principled, he's dogmatic. At best, he's a cautionary tale demonstrating the state…
> demonstrably untenable
Please, demonstrate away.
Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
#95You have to give the guy some credit; Stallman believes in the free software movement, fights for it, and refuses to compromise his rights or values.
Don't take this the wrong way but I personally feel that the GPL is not a free software license, I feel it's a community software license. BSD is a free software license, BSD code is truly yours, you want to create a proprietary fork you can do it, you want to create a GPLed fork you can do it, you want to expand the BSD code base you can do it. One thing I really love about BSD licensed code is that I feel like I ow…
It comes down to how to define "freedom" for free software. RMS's is a very pragmatic (and in my opinion counterintuitive) definition: it just means that no one can conceal the source code. It's counterintuitive to me, because I would consider the maximum freedom being akin to public domain software: anyone would be able to do literally whatever they want with the software, including redistributing it without distributing the source code.
Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
#96You have to give the guy some credit; Stallman believes in the free software movement, fights for it, and refuses to compromise his rights or values.
Does he have the same moral reservations for other devices in his life?
ie; what car does he use and own? All (modern) cars accept software updates which is his definition of a computer. Most modern televisions, dvd players, routers and even some microwaves/refrigerators can take firmware updates also.
Genuinely curious about the above - Not being a troll, just wondering how far the man really takes his beliefs. Does he stop at the most publicly noticeable devices ( laptop/cellphone ) or does he go all the way.
Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
#97You have to give the guy some credit; Stallman believes in the free software movement, fights for it, and refuses to compromise his rights or values.
He has to compromise at some point. He can refuse to stick non-free software on his computer, but he can't refuse to benefit from the use of non-free software in the computers of the cars and planes that he uses for travel, and he can't refuse the non-free software that was used in the manufacture of many of the products he uses every day.
So, what's your point? That he shouldn't fight for free software because it's difficult? Imagine the world in the 80's, when there wasn't a free as in freedom OS; rms knows about compromise when there are no alternatives, he just doesn't want a non-free OS in a non-free computer when there are free alternatives. We usually call it coherence.
Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
#98Well, not the best way to expand your horizon. When he would use things like the iPad from time to time, he would understand that convenience is the biggest threat to open source. Nobody cares how free Stallman's device really is. When he would speak for better open source devices, he would actually make progress. Right now is Shuttleworth advancing the free software movement to be accessible for everyone. Reminds me…
> Linus Torvalds is the man who made everything possible.
Not to detract from the men, but he used the GNU C Compiler to compile its kernel, as well as the GNU bash shell, the GNU linker and so on...
Since its inception, the free software movement created a network of hackers and GPL programs that was well established by the time Torvalds started its kernel. Without that network, Linux and many other "groundwork" programs would not even been possible in the first place.
Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
#99Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup
#100You have to give the guy some credit; Stallman believes in the free software movement, fights for it, and refuses to compromise his rights or values.
Don't take this the wrong way but I personally feel that the GPL is not a free software license, I feel it's a community software license. BSD is a free software license, BSD code is truly yours, you want to create a proprietary fork you can do it, you want to create a GPLed fork you can do it, you want to expand the BSD code base you can do it. One thing I really love about BSD licensed code is that I feel like I ow…
They're both free, just with different goals. The GPL gives freedom to the user of the software, the BSD license gives freedom to the developer of the software.