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Reasons not to use Facebook

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Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#371

Post by kragen »

maxerickson wrote: post #369
kragen wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, Keith Bostic has gone on record saying that the reason he started trying to strip out the AT&T bits from the BSD kernel was because he was inspired by GNU, and wanted to see if the BSD kernel could work as a kernel for GNU. Maybe in Open Sources , I don't remember.

I wrote the comment thinking that the BSD releases in the early 1980s had been released under the 'BSD License', I even did some amount of checking (I can't remember what evidence in particular made me decide to post). I see from looking more carefully this time around that the ~1980 license from Berkeley was not the same thing as the later one.

Well, it's also true that the liberalization of the later versions of the BSD license (removing the advertising clause) was at least in part a result of FSF pressure. But that wasn’t what I meant. I had thought that the early BSD releases were under the four-clause BSD license — but you needed the AT&T Unix source code to compile them.

However, this turns out not to be the whole story at all. I tried rooting around in http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4BSD without any success at finding a 4BSD license. http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/kirkmck.htm... has Kirk McKusick’s recollection of the history of the licensing; up to at least 4.3BSD-Tahoe in 1988 it’s talking about “site licenses” rather than free-software licenses, and all the recipients needed AT&T licenses as well. It wasn't until the NET-1 release ("the networking tape") in 1989 that what we know as the BSD license existed, and it wasn’t until the NET-2 tapes in 1991 — largely impelled by Bostic — that there was anything like a complete free BSD OS.

http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch09.html talks about how Bostic credits Stallman with inspiring him to care about software freedom.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#372

Post by jcrawfordor »

cheatsheet wrote: post #263
jcrawfordor wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who interacted closely with RMS for several days recently, I think I should set the record straight on one important fact. RMS absolutely uses cellphones. He just doesn't own one himself. Instead, he borrows the phones of the people around him, and his assistant collects those people's phone numbers in order to call him. What this says about his philosophy probably depends significantly on how irritating y…

As a person who is only one person, society only changes when one person can reveal or demonstrate to others the concepts that form the ground of the argument. Otherwise it's just crap stuffed up in your own head. For him, it is more irritating to live in a world that thinks it is okay to regularly violate people through crossing boundaries of what they consider personal information. For you, it is more irritating to…

I don't really see where you're getting your opinion on me here.

The thing I found irritating was RMS constantly borrowing my phone (and having to help him use it each time...). He can have whatever opinions he wants.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#373

Post by maxerickson »

kragen wrote: post #371
maxerickson wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote the comment thinking that the BSD releases in the early 1980s had been released under the 'BSD License', I even did some amount of checking (I can't remember what evidence in particular made me decide to post). I see from looking more carefully this time around that the ~1980 license from Berkeley was not the same thing as the later one.

Well, it's also true that the liberalization of the later versions of the BSD license (removing the advertising clause) was at least in part a result of FSF pressure. But that wasn’t what I meant. I had thought that the early BSD releases were under the four-clause BSD license — but you needed the AT&T Unix source code to compile them. However, this turns out not to be the whole story at all. I tried rooting around i…

I opened the .tap here in a text editor yesterday, it mentions executing a license and returning it to Berkeley:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bsd42/files/Install%20tapes/...

(I wasn't super careful to determine that the language there applied to the whole distribution, but it seems fairly likely)

The argument I was trying to make would have survived a 4 clause BSD license in 1980; I wasn't saying that BSD and derivatives as they exist owe nothing to GNU, I (thought I) was pointing out that people were sharing a sophisticated base system under a liberal license prior to GNU. Starting from there and proceeding without GNU it's of course hard to say where things would have ended up, would they have further liberalized the license, would they have filled in the rest of the system, who knows? They certainly might have.

I do think there are economic forces that encourage some sort of open model for software that is necessary and reasonable well understood/explored, but it's hard to examine a notion like that without a history machine.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#374

Post by kragen »

maxerickson wrote: post #373
kragen wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's also true that the liberalization of the later versions of the BSD license (removing the advertising clause) was at least in part a result of FSF pressure. But that wasn’t what I meant. I had thought that the early BSD releases were under the four-clause BSD license — but you needed the AT&T Unix source code to compile them. However, this turns out not to be the whole story at all. I tried rooting around i…

I opened the .tap here in a text editor yesterday, it mentions executing a license and returning it to Berkeley: http://sourceforge.net/projects/bsd42/files/Install%20tapes/... (I wasn't super careful to determine that the language there applied to the whole distribution, but it seems fairly likely) The argument I was trying to make would have survived a 4 clause BSD license in 1980; I wasn't saying that BSD and deri…

Right, and it turns out that they were sharing a sophisticated base system; it was just that the licensing, once people started applying copyright to software at all, didn't protect the users very well.

And, yes, clearly information sharing is very good for software — as I pointed out elsewhere in this thread, that’s what SHARE was founded for in 1955 — but it’s also good for chemistry, and yet it took many centuries before we got Priestley and the Invisible College instead of alchemists writing notes in code so their apprentices couldn’t steal them.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#375

Post by pckspcks »

misiti3780 wrote: post #318
pckspcks wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way to not use Facebook. Let me repeat that: THERE IS NO WAY TO NOT USE FACEBOOK. Everyone's photos: Mine, yours, Stallmans, get posted to Facebook, annotated with our names (which is increasingly becoming easy enough to do with ML -- the human component will increasingly decline). If at least one of your friends uses Facebook, Facebook has profile information on you. Stallman doesn't have a Facebook acco…

what are you talking about? - i have a lot of friends and do not use facebook - i have an account but dont really log in - a lot of my friends dont use it. the less you use facebook, the more you realize how useless it really is - you want to keep in touch with people, use email - it has worked for a long time, and will continue to work for a long time. photos - use google photos or dropbox messages - who care about…

> what are you talking about?

Read about 3 more lines of the post, and you'll see.

Your reading comprehension skills are lower than my toddler's. Fortunately, you're in good company, from the number of similar posts.

Re: Reasons not to use Facebook

#376

Post by misiti3780 »

pckspcks wrote: post #375
misiti3780 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what are you talking about? - i have a lot of friends and do not use facebook - i have an account but dont really log in - a lot of my friends dont use it. the less you use facebook, the more you realize how useless it really is - you want to keep in touch with people, use email - it has worked for a long time, and will continue to work for a long time. photos - use google photos or dropbox messages - who care about…

> what are you talking about? Read about 3 more lines of the post, and you'll see. Your reading comprehension skills are lower than my toddler's. Fortunately, you're in good company, from the number of similar posts.

thank you!
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