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The Free Software Foundation is dying

drewdevault.com

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Re: The Free Software Foundation is dying

#191

Post by chuddington »

nicpottier wrote: post #137
shortrounddev wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing an organization is obligated to do is: 1. Treat all candidates equally, regardless of race, sex, etc. 2. Hire the most qualified candidate for the job, regardless of race, sex, etc. 3. Not engage in conscious or unconscious selection bias when looking for new applicants. I consider it to be a valid hiring practice to make sure you show up to career fairs at HBCUs or women's universities Doing anything…

> Doing anything beyond that is not only a bad solution, it is immoral to press your hand down on the weight of one candidate over another based on his or her identity categories. It is as wrong to prefer a white candidate as it is to prefer a black candidate. This is a very convenient position to take for white men in power. Now we insist it must be a perfectly level playing field, never mind the centuries of racism…

Yes, we do insist that. If you have a problem with wanting a level playing field, too bad.

Re: The Free Software Foundation is dying

#194

Post by rcoveson »

IndigoIncognito wrote: post #193

Why is everyone hating on Stallman, what did he do? Surely you can't eject someone for being a straight white male?

I'm somebody who usually finds himself defending Stallman, so please let me gently nudge you to read at least the trivially discoverable criticism of him before making the assumption you're making.

Re: The Free Software Foundation is dying

#195

Post by yarg »

kmeisthax wrote: post #136
yarg wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the issues are completely orthogonal to the effective operation of an open source software foundation. If you want to have a talk about the also completely unrelated issue of facial recognition, we can do that too.

The facial recognition software issue is not orthogonal: the biggest problem with it is that it's proprietary software being used to do law enforcement. We don't know how Clearview's software works and it is already generating false arrests and convictions. If this is an orthogonal issue, than software freedom is just a petty tech squabble between programmers with no bearing on the average user, and nobody should car…

The biggest problem is not that it's proprietary software - the biggest problem is that the software does not work as intended.

There are multiple factors that lead to the software not working - and none of them stem from the fact that it's proprietary.

(The Stallman notion that anything other than copyleft needs to be erased is fucking ridiculous - and I really don't think that you'll find traction with it on a site where almost everyone uses the profits from software to feed themselves and their families.)

There is a related notion that would have granted you some traction - that tax payer funded software should be open source.

This nicely parallels the issue of public access to publicly funded scientific research - which has gotten a lot of traction here, over time.

As far as rising authoritarianism is concerned, you've chosen a weird hill to die on.

The court is packed, and the already broken two party system is being gerrymandered into oblivion.

You're focusing on the tools being used without regard for the intention and the users.

Anyway, you didn't even get to the fun part of the conversation - that facial recognition struggles with black people and women.

Which is a fun little conversation that people like to politicise and blame on the people who wrote the code.

Re: The Free Software Foundation is dying

#197

Post by yarg »

t-3 wrote: post #163
kmeisthax wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The facial recognition software issue is not orthogonal: the biggest problem with it is that it's proprietary software being used to do law enforcement. We don't know how Clearview's software works and it is already generating false arrests and convictions. If this is an orthogonal issue, than software freedom is just a petty tech squabble between programmers with no bearing on the average user, and nobody should car…

If the facial recognition software was open source, it would still be used to facially recognize people. There's no guarantee the algorithms would be better, but even if they were , that wouldn't stop them from being applied in a biased fashion. There are no technical solutions to human governance and society, we need human solutions for those.

The algorithms are in trouble.

Black people have darker faces with generally softer features, women paint themselves with makeup and frequently leave the house looking less like themselves than other people.

The sorts of solutions that a prescribed - more diversity - do nothing to fix those issues.

Multi-perspective and multi-frame processing can be used to reconstruct 3D models of a well-lit individual, which has the potential to get around makeup induced false contouring.

Solving the issues of clowns and women - but how do you deal people who are genetically predisposed to being poorly lit?

Infrared's probably your best option, and it's already common place in security.

Re: The Free Software Foundation is dying

#198

Post by subsistence234 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #175
amno wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What significant, tangible accomplishments does Stallmann have in the past 15 years? You believe you will never grow old? Do you wish your family and friends to turn back on you because you are old and don't have the same energy as you had when you were 20? The question is how the landscape would look like today and if there even would be "open source" in the broader sense as we see it today, with permissive licens…

> You believe you will never grow old? Part of growing old is handing things over to other people to carry on. > Do you wish your family and friends to turn back on you because you are old and don’t have the same energy as you had when you were 20? I don’t think the FSF is intended to be Stallman’s personal support network first and foremost, and I particularly don’t think that is the premise it has used in raising f…

> handing things over to other people to carry on.

"other people" means: corporate stooges

______

not the first time in history that voices appear to demand that a leader of some project, someone with a proven track record of principles over status/power/wealth, be replaced. typically what they're really asking for is a leader that's easier to pressure, more amenable to their interests. this is even more the case if they're demanding that the replacement be selected on the basis of immutable characteristics unrelated to the project.

Re: The Free Software Foundation is dying

#199

Post by subsistence234 »

zulban wrote: post #32
jmclnx wrote: post #4

>It’s time for Richard Stallman to go I was expecting to see this, there is nothing more corporations would like more then to see him gone. Then they can take full control of the FSF, already they have their hands in it. So far many of his predictions have come true and there are a few more that seems to be on their way to happening. What FSF should do is work stop the move to secure boot. Already there are Intel Lap…

Maybe you'd appreciate my perspective on why they need to let Stallman go: https://blog.stuartspence.ca/oh-stallman.html From first hand experience, I believe he is clearly a net negative.

most criticism I've read seems to boil down to: he's not a macchiavellian eel.

Re: The Free Software Foundation is dying

#200

Post by subsistence234 »

jsnell wrote: post #93
jmclnx wrote: post #4

>It’s time for Richard Stallman to go I was expecting to see this, there is nothing more corporations would like more then to see him gone. Then they can take full control of the FSF, already they have their hands in it. So far many of his predictions have come true and there are a few more that seems to be on their way to happening. What FSF should do is work stop the move to secure boot. Already there are Intel Lap…

> What FSF should do is work stop the move to secure boot. How would they do that? They have no influence, and if anything have worked for decades to alienate any potential allies. Nor do they have any leverage via the software or licenses the control. The only GPL software that's best of breed is Linux, which FSF has no say on. No critical software uses the latest versions of GPL.

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