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Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

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Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#101

Post by maurice2k »

dale_glass wrote: post #52
H8crilA wrote: post #33

What's cool about RMS is that he perfectly foresaw many decades ago the world that we live in today: your car or smart fridge refusing actions because its software says so. And you cannot change the bloody software! I cringe every time I see encrypted firmware running in trusted execution environment, DRM, DLCs for fucking physical products, websites or apps that scam you into signing up or giving up some other freed…

The pity is that while he was remarkably prescient, he seems to have stopped adapting decades ago. GNU seems to have little interest in keeping up with modern developments, and seems to be content with maintaining the old command line tools for the most part. Meanwhile, they're becoming a smaller and smaller proportion of an useful software stack, and people are rewriting them in more modern fashions, eg, Rust. Prett…

That's exactly what I think about RMS, FSF and GNU.

I'm mostly working with younger people (like 20-30 years old) and well, they don't really know what GNU or the FSF is.

As a Linux user I'm using GNU software all day but for most people it's just "linux command line tools". It's fine and if they do the job, well done! But this doesn't help the FSF or the GNU project.

A lot of these tools have pretty good documentation but when you visit one of the GNU websites you feel like it's 1995 again. It's more like man pages in HTML. Actually same for Apache Software Foundation.

And this is not getting better...

A start would be a modern representation of the tools and the ideas behind free software, maybe with a bit less philosophy. GNU needs to get a bit "cooler".

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#104

Post by noirscape »

NhanH wrote: post #37
eurleif wrote: post #13

Asking out of curiosity, not to be cruel: I wonder if he's willing to use medical equipment that uses non-Free software? To my knowledge, his stated position against using non-Free software is pretty much absolute; but given that medical equipment's software is almost universally non-Free, taking that stance here would seriously endanger his ability to receive necessary medical care.

I will answer this assuming good faith, but this line of reasoning is very irritating since the answer (to me) is obvious. If RMS made a choice to use proprietary software, with the only alternative being his dead, there is absolutely no moral conflict, or even anything against his principle. The only issue could only ever arises if he claimed "Free Software is more important than human lives", which I am pretty sure…

It's not a bad question to ask; the FSF has proven in the past to be rather uninterested and unhelpful in helping developers of medical software get their stuff licensed in a way that's either compliant or as close to as[0] being compliant as possible[1]. Instead they opted to chide those wanting help for not being true believers of the cause and told them they'll never compromise. Basically the usual "FSF is only ever willing to do FOSS in it's own Ivory Tower even though its mission is to spread it beyond an Ivory Tower."

That said - RMS has iirc said in the past that for medical emergencies he's willing to make a personal exception on this stance.

[0]: Medical devices can't be GPL compliant due to the anti-Tivo clause combined with regulations of the FDA that demand that a medical device will always behave the exact same way in the exact same situation. This is also extended to the software, meaning that not being allowed to reflash the software if you're not the manufacturer is a requirement.

[1]: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/gplv3-fda

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#105

Post by omgmajk »

kaba0 wrote: post #61
minebreaker wrote: post #24

He is the one who we need now , in the era of saas/cloud run by big tech. So sad.

I do hope he gets better, but no, not at all do we “need” him. His accomplishments are way overblown and due to his shitty personality he probably alienated more contributors than whatever actual positives he has ever made.

> His accomplishments are way overblown

Say what you will about his personality, you don't have to like him but saying that his accomplishments are way overblown is a terrible take. His work flows through every part of the GNU land and it's used by almost every tech person on the planet to some extent.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#106

Post by chpatrick »

H8crilA wrote: post #33

What's cool about RMS is that he perfectly foresaw many decades ago the world that we live in today: your car or smart fridge refusing actions because its software says so. And you cannot change the bloody software! I cringe every time I see encrypted firmware running in trusted execution environment, DRM, DLCs for fucking physical products, websites or apps that scam you into signing up or giving up some other freed…

Another way to look at it is Tesla sells an over the air discount in exchange for a slower car.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#107

Post by nrr »

blueflow wrote: post #77
dale_glass wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pity is that while he was remarkably prescient, he seems to have stopped adapting decades ago. GNU seems to have little interest in keeping up with modern developments, and seems to be content with maintaining the old command line tools for the most part. Meanwhile, they're becoming a smaller and smaller proportion of an useful software stack, and people are rewriting them in more modern fashions, eg, Rust. Prett…

And gcc and grub and potentially some other 10 libraries that everybody is still using! > Where's their Youtube channel, or their Twitter? You are seriously asking why the Free Software Foundation isn't using a propietary social platform?

Is it really that unreasonable a question to ask?

The purity inherent in insisting on using only free software is laudable, but evangelizing is only effective when there's reach. (It's also much more compelling when it demonstrably makes folks' lives materially better, but reasonable people will disagree on the particulars there.)

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#108

Post by max_ »

This is so unfortunate. Cancer used to be something I would just hear other people getting until my Dad got it. The I understood that it was very real and that I can also be a victim.

Do you guys know of any ways to reduce your risks of getting cancer? I know not smoking tobacco works.

What foods, bad habits should one avoid. What other habits can reduce cancer risks?

Are there any prophylactic techniques?

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#109

Post by miramba »

benterix wrote: post #70
walteweiss wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This very morning, my wife performed reset of cache/cookies from our family’s perfectly fine iPad 3 (yeah, the one from 2012, 11 years old). The iPad is our kitchen TV, it shows either some content from VLC (works perfectly fine, kudos to the devs) or some YouTube from Safari (the AppStore’s app support is long gone, web app still works quite well, even considering it was updated recently). Today I spent my morning t…

> For me that’s a great example. I personally know many old (even obsolete iPads) lying here and there collecting dust, as their software (and hardware) vendor decided they are all in for nature and ecology (sarcasm), so let millions of perfectly capable devices would be thrown away as a trash. This really infuriates me because we (iOS developers) were all forced to see how it was happening. If you want to stay in th…

> If you want to stay in the game, you have to develop for the newest devices

Even if you don't care, you have to upgrade to the latest Xcode to build against the latest iOS version with the cascade of consequences you described so well.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#110

Post by l33t7332273 »

globular-toast wrote: post #44
eurleif wrote: post #13

Asking out of curiosity, not to be cruel: I wonder if he's willing to use medical equipment that uses non-Free software? To my knowledge, his stated position against using non-Free software is pretty much absolute; but given that medical equipment's software is almost universally non-Free, taking that stance here would seriously endanger his ability to receive necessary medical care.

Do people really think RMS is like a Jehovah's Witness or something? The man is about practically bringing the change he wants to see. He started his own damn Unix clone that we still rely on to this day and you liken him to religious nutters?

I think TempleOS shows that designing an operating system does not mean you can’t be a religious nutter.
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