Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Richard Stallman's Computer Setup

richard.stallman.usesthis.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 262 posts

Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup

#241

Post by tommorris »

antoncohen wrote: post #220
yummyfajitas wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain how Stallman is a "software dictator", or how his own version of freedom comes at the "expense of their freedom"?

> Could you explain how Stallman is a "software dictator", or how his own version of freedom comes at the "expense of their freedom"? Richard Stallman believes in the freedom of software, not the freedom of individuals. The GPL ensures that software is always free, by restricting what you as an individual can do with it. To him software being free in more important than a persons freedom. The BSD/MIT/ISC licenses giv…

Fascism? For real?

I knew from the fact that the link title contained the word "Stallman" that it'd get Godwinned. Congratulations.

Do you honestly believe that you can separate what you describe as "freedom of software" from "freedom of individuals"? Does DRM or Tivoization serve the freedom of individuals? Does not being able to modify your computer make you more free?

Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup

#242

Post by tommorris »

ceol wrote: post #130
diminish wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

..and let me guess, you don't mind the company doing the proprietary fork, sue/threaten the open source forking guys, use software patents as a weapon/threat against open source developers. and you don't mind getting someone else's work, and giving nothing back. In short your freedom is an egoistic tactic where you take, use and even abuse but dont care. There are people like RMS who think otherwise; they want a worl…

That's quite the extrapolation. When did I ever say I don't mind those things? I mind them very much. I also mind being forced to do something. I can make a proprietary fork and still give back; when are those two things mutually exclusive? In your quest for "freedom", you're endorsing a license that forces people to do something. Isn't that the very antithesis of freedom?

There's no force. Just a requirement that if you do X, you also do Y. You do not have to do X if you would prefer to not have to do Y.

Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup

#243

Post by rat87 »

sek wrote: post #6

Well, 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…

"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."

I'm pretty sure he understands in his rude comments after Job's death he said: “Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died. and "Jobs saw how to make these computers stylish and smooth. That would normally be positive, but not in this case, since it has the paradoxical effect of making their controlling nature seem acceptable."

I think Stallman knows he just don't care much about it for personal use. The FSF does list

    Gnash — the free software Flash player
    Free software replacement for Skype
    Free software video editing software
    Free Google Earth Replacement
    Help GNU/Linux distributions be committed to freedom
as top priorities people should donate time and money too.

The distros and stuff like android is where a lot of ease of use stuff happens and that is why the FSF lists ( Help GNU/Linux distributions be committed to freedom) and a 100% foss android named replicant under the under the reverse engineering priorities list .

Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup

#244

Post by reirob »

lunarscape wrote: post #20
schraeds wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I bet he is still waiting to find a laptop that his free and open to replace is yulong

He won't have to wait long. Yeeloong have a quad-core Loongson-3A 13.3" laptop on the way.

Can you please provide a URL with more information about the quad-core Loongson-3A 13.3" laptop?

Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup

#245

Post by paulhauggis »

antoncohen wrote: post #220
yummyfajitas wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain how Stallman is a "software dictator", or how his own version of freedom comes at the "expense of their freedom"?

> Could you explain how Stallman is a "software dictator", or how his own version of freedom comes at the "expense of their freedom"? Richard Stallman believes in the freedom of software, not the freedom of individuals. The GPL ensures that software is always free, by restricting what you as an individual can do with it. To him software being free in more important than a persons freedom. The BSD/MIT/ISC licenses giv…

wow, I couldn't have said it better myself.

The BSD license is true freedom to me as well. I release all of my own personal libraries and apps using it.

Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup

#246

Post by paulhauggis »

muuh-gnu wrote: post #234
antoncohen wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could you explain how Stallman is a "software dictator", or how his own version of freedom comes at the "expense of their freedom"? Richard Stallman believes in the freedom of software, not the freedom of individuals. The GPL ensures that software is always free, by restricting what you as an individual can do with it. To him software being free in more important than a persons freedom. The BSD/MIT/ISC licenses giv…

> Richard Stallman believes in the freedom of software, not the freedom of individuals. Stallman believes in freedom of indivisuals, _including_ the freedom of individuals down the stream. The BSD increases only your (egoistic) "freedom" to cut off other people from water supply, while decreasing everybody elses freedom to get to the water source, so it maximizes only one single peak of freedom, while everybody else…

"Stallman believes in freedom of indivisuals, _including_ the freedom of individuals down the stream. The BSD increases only your (egoistic) "freedom" to cut off other people from water supply, while decreasing everybody elses freedom to get to the water source"

This isn't true. If I make changes to an app and don't release the changes, the only think you don't get is my changes. The water source is still available for all.

"so it maximizes only one single peak of freedom, while everybody else loses. The GPL levels the access, it maximizes the total amount of freedom available in the ecosystem."

If the GNU were truly free you wouldn't see so many GNU violators being taken to court. The GNU is about as free a s copyright. If you consider that freedom, then yes, it's free.

I would say just don't use GNU software if you don't believe in the licensing, but it's not that easy. The GNU is like a bomb about to explode. As a business owner, if one of your employees uses any GNU software in a commercial app and you have any sort of success, it could be the end of your business if you are forced to release the source. Why? Because someone can and will compile and release it for free, circumventing all of your commercial licensing.

Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup

#247

Post by rbanffy »

lmkg wrote: post #216
DanBlake wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My understanding of his position is that he does not consider firmware to be independent software. The arguments by which he came to be in favor of free software do not apply to firmware. The reason that he promotes free software is because software is capable of being free, that is, it is logistically realistic that people freely copy, modify, and distribute it. From this, he extrapolates that there is a right to co…

> Because it is so tied to the underlying hardware

Firmware has changed over the years, as have the devices we embed it into. Thee devices are much more complex and capable, sometimes, smarter than the computers they connect to. I have worked with devices that ran MS-DOS-like OSs and applications on 386-class processors with built-in printers running a real-time Unix-like OS on a 32-bit RISC processor.

Also, many different devices share common hardware and designs. Hundreds of routers and other various networking devices currently run OpenWRT firmware instead of their original software. Those little boxes are smarter than the first Unix machines I used and at least an order of magnitude smarter than the Burroughs B-500 mainframe that ran land taxes for a whole city on my first internship. All it lacks is a line printer and tape drives.

Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup

#248

Post by burgerbrain »

hollerith wrote: post #231
burgerbrain wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of doubt it. I was using my 233MHz PII up until about 3 years ago to buy things off Amazon regularly. It's amazing what you can do with some swap and a little patience. ;)

Running Windows? I was using a 633MHz PIII until about 3 y ago, then using it again recently when my main computer died, and its gotten a lot harder (on Linux) over those 3 y.

No, ubuntu specifically on that machine. The only tricky part as I can see it should be the webbrowser. You'd either have to use an old one, or a featureless one.

Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup

#249

Post by lunarscape »

reirob wrote: post #244
lunarscape wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He won't have to wait long. Yeeloong have a quad-core Loongson-3A 13.3" laptop on the way.

Can you please provide a URL with more information about the quad-core Loongson-3A 13.3" laptop?

Chinese: http://www.lemote.com/products/computer/yilong/312.html

Translated: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh-CN&tl=en&#38...

Re: Richard Stallman's Computer Setup

#250

Post by lukeschlather »

potatolicious wrote: post #144
nknight wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't (technically) use GPL'd code inside your iOS application. Web startups don't generally build iOS apps, they build web apps. > GPL is not the greatest license, that's why they created LGPL (to remove some of its stupid restrictions) and even that wasn't enough... Enough for whom? Microsoft? I know it's hard to believe, but some people do not have "allow companies to benefit from my work without giving back…

> "Web startups don't generally build iOS apps, they build web apps." That's a silly distinction to make - we have been moving towards this for years now, and we're already there - we are in an age where a single web service can have many clients, beyond browsers. I suppose Amazon.com isn't a web company because they have an iOS app. Nor Facebook. Nor Google. Nor AirBnb. Nor...

We have had client apps written in languages with no memory management for decades. The value of the web is that it provides a widely supported API that is fairly "safe" to program in.

And with the exception of AirBnb (which is somewhat out of place in your list for other reasons) none of those web companies wrote an iOS app until they became well-established players. In fact, they're all older than iOS.

Post reply on HN