I really miss BYTE magazine.
BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
31–40 of 41 posts
Re: BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
#32I sometimes feel like the world is moving away from the FSF principals more then it is moving towards it. Nobody seems to be in control of their own devices, software and data anymore. Data is stored in the cloud, applications are remotely removed from you're IPhone, you have to log in to play offline games, phones send all sorts off personal data to third parties. This is all happening in a time where free software…
What is even sadder is that most of the systems that are taking away from the users the control of their data and applications have been built (at least in part) thanks to free software.
AGPL is fighting that war.
Re: BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reason for not being optimistic is that lots of people are touting UEFI locked bootloaders as a step in the right direction (under the excuse of security) while most of the rest will look at those crippled subsidized Win8 ARM tablets and say "look! shiny!". Sadly, "Idiocracy" is a prophetic movie...
I see idiocracy only in failure to understand, that "common people" have different priorities form you, nerds. And for them security is priority. "UEFI locked bootloaders" for them is just meaningless phrase and they couldn't care less about that. How stupid is to think, that if you are computer nerd the whole world should be to? Have you seen doctors moaning about world becoming idiocracy just because not everyone k…
I see idiocracy only in failure to understand, that "common people" have different priorities form you, nerds. And for them security is priority.
When your argument rests on the premise that "common people care more about security than nerds", maybe you should reconsider it.
Re: BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
#34BYTE: What are you going to do when you are done with the GNU system? Stallman: I'm not sure. Sometimes I think that what I'll go on to do is the same thing in other areas of software. He's 60 this year. He was crying on a staircase this year in Spain. Someone stole his laptop.
I don't think it's fair to treat him this way. Except for the kernel, pretty much everything I use is GNU or was inspired by GNU. From the coreutils to the window environment, passing through the compiler, most linux systems are half GNU. Besides, we need activists like Stallman in the same way we need activists like Peta or activists like Greenpeace. They might be too radical and close-minded, but they always have a…
Stallman is league different from those, he contributes both valuable product and coherent legal analysis. His only harm comes in a occasional bitter verbal lash at his opponents, and how his moral superiority makes compromisers feel uncomfortable.
Re: BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
#35BYTE: What are you going to do when you are done with the GNU system? Stallman: I'm not sure. Sometimes I think that what I'll go on to do is the same thing in other areas of software. He's 60 this year. He was crying on a staircase this year in Spain. Someone stole his laptop.
whoa. I wasn't, uhm, jeez. Why do you assume I was trying to insult him.
Then what were you trying to do?
Re: BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
#36I love where he says the kernel is about a year away from being finished. :)
The interviewer mentioned public domain a couple of times, but Stallman explained how he used copyright+licenses to ensure improvements were passed on as free software. This is pre-GPL, so it's historically interesting to see the transition from public domain to GPL free software.
Re: BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
#37I love where he says the kernel is about a year away from being finished. :) The interviewer mentioned public domain a couple of times, but Stallman explained how he used copyright+licenses to ensure improvements were passed on as free software. This is pre-GPL, so it's historically interesting to see the transition from public domain to GPL free software.
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Re: BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
#38There were all kinds of interesting articles in BYTE. I remember finding a whole box of them when I was still in grade school - tossed out by the public library - and I spent the summer reading and memorizing them. Somehow I missed this interview until now. Cheers, Stallman!
I've probably failed a couple tests in engineering school (took fluid mechanics 3 times) because of the time I spent reading the library's almost complete collection. BYTE was a magazine for another time, when new didn't mean "the latest, incrementally faster, x86 architecture capable of running Windows". Wow... I'm really gloomy today.
I hope this cheered you up. :-)
Re: BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
#39There were all kinds of interesting articles in BYTE. I remember finding a whole box of them when I was still in grade school - tossed out by the public library - and I spent the summer reading and memorizing them. Somehow I missed this interview until now. Cheers, Stallman!
I spent summers with my dad who was an instructor at a large techincal college. The hot Texas afternoons were spent reading Byte and designing computers looked very much like Steve Ciarcia's.
I particularly liked the Circuit Cellar where he had to break into his own house because he left the stove on. By the time he could disarm the system, the stove would start smoking which would auto-dial the city fire department.
First he invades the yard with its dog-deterrents, then slips into the house bypassing the window sensors, skips over the pressure-sensitive carpets, dodges a bunch of other things, and finally makes it to the basement where the alarm box is. He needs light so he opens the fridge - alas, that sets of the alarm but the alarm doesn't successfully dial. :-)
I googled but couldn't find it online. Good times. :-)
Re: BYTE Interview With Richard Stallman (1986)
#40Wow. I was one year old when this was published. Stallman's combination of sort-of-maddeningly-precise nerdspeak and revolutionary zeal has always made me cock my head and listen--if not to every word, then at least to some of his more apt analogies: "I think it is important to say that information is different from material objects like cars and loaves of bread because people can copy it and share it on their own an…
The reason copyright exists is because the person who created X (a book, a play, etc) wanted to be paid. The US Constitution describes the reason for copyright as "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." The question then is, if you allow people to copy "information", then do you reduce progress, because people don't get paid for their work? The answer to that may be 'no', but it isn't as simple as comparing information to bread.
You might be interested to know of Thomas Jefferson's writings on the topic (to have "Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature and their own inventions in the arts for a term not exceeding ___ years but for no longer term and no other purpose." in the Bill of Rights) and Benjamin Franklin's on patents ("that as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously"). TJ was initially opposed to monopolies of any sort, but that changed over time.
I point this out to suggest that these utopian ideas you see have echos even back into the centuries.