Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#121

Post by roenxi » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 5:12 AM UTC

4bpp wrote: post #49

Frondo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complaints about stallman aren't a matter of thoughtcrime, they're a matter of entirely inappropriate behavior, not just once but repeatedly, over the course of decades. This was the one that disturbed me the most: "Going to an RMS talk in the early 90s and meeting with him in person was among the worst of my experienced - I was fifteen, still obviously underage, and skipping gym class to hear him speak at a prof…

It's notable that all of these anecdotes are from back in the '90s and before; since I assume Stallman's accusers dug around very hard for material and this is the best they could find, it stands to reason that he probably has long since improved in that regard. Moreover, the same cluster of people among others has seriously been arguing ( https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix... ) that a mattr…

I don't think it is even worth focusing in on specific issues; throwing mud at Stallman's character is post-hoc rationalisation for a situation created by thoughtcrime.

Even if the mud sticks, the major problem is that Stallman was forced to resign after what appears to be (from public info) a moral panic. People acting on moral panics is really bad; good process is slow process.

There are real complaints about Stallman. There have been since the 90s. If it looked like he was resigning because of those then that would be a totally different kettle of fish.

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#122

Post by tzs » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 5:18 AM UTC

tjpnz wrote: post #116

sn41 wrote: post #7

In the years to come, I believe free software will be recognised as one of the paradigmatic changes in how science itself is done. Now chemists and biologists have started talking about making data openly available and so forth. It's a shame that RMS has to spout forth on every issue, and in the current climate of outrage, science may have lost an important transformational voice. I think as a society, we need to cal…

>It's a shame that RMS has to spout forth on every issue, and in the current climate of outrage, science may have lost an important transformational voice. The four freedoms are truly revolutionary and have grown on me over the years. If he had been a bit more focussed and perhaps even a little pragmatic it wouldn't be hard to view him as a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates like figure. At the very least we would be having co…

> The four freedoms are truly revolutionary and have grown on me over the years. If he had been a bit more focussed and perhaps even a little pragmatic it wouldn't be hard to view him as a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates like figure.

If he had been a lot more pragmatic, he probably could have put the whole free software thing on hold for 20 years, and been one of the early microcomputer billionaires either alongside Jobs and Gates, or even instead of one (or both!) of them.

Then go back to free software--except now it would be backed by the several tens of billions of dollars of the Stallman Foundation, which would generate enough annual investment income forever to easily afford to award tens of thousands of $100k grants for free software development each year.

A decade of that, and there would be GPL replacements for pretty much everything.

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#123

Post by redis_mlc » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 5:20 AM UTC

eesmith wrote: post #97

inimino wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Free software isn't about making data openly available. You must be allowed to redistribute the software, and you must be allowed to get, modify, and redistribute the code. Binaries and code are data. Maybe what you mean is that the biologists' and x-ray crystallographers' journals developed their push for data access independently of the free software movement, but it's a stretch to say that access to the data tha…

"Allowed to" is not the same as "required to." Open science people generally want people who publish papers to be required to publish the data. This might be in a public repository, or with the journal, and if there is a fee, that fee should effectively only cover cost. Stallman's conception of free software says that you should be able to charge as much as you want. Hence, these are different concepts. What I mean i…

> Stallman's conception of free software says that you should be able to charge as much as you want.

Yes, he was referring to the service of duplicating and mailing tapes pre-Internet. You seem to have mistaken that for a key philosophical issue of some kind, when it's secondary.

> reacting to the hyperbole

I worked for national labs back in the day. Every dept. wrote their own terminal applications, plotting programs, etc. which consumed serious grant budgets. Free and open source software has been a huge boon to science. The most important? GCC and family. Second is probably Linux, which is GPL. See a pattern yet?

It really sounds like you need a history lesson on the FSF, because you're way off base.

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#124

Post by 4bpp » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 5:23 AM UTC

jonathankoren wrote: post #93

4bpp wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's notable that all of these anecdotes are from back in the '90s and before; since I assume Stallman's accusers dug around very hard for material and this is the best they could find, it stands to reason that he probably has long since improved in that regard. Moreover, the same cluster of people among others has seriously been arguing ( https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-appendix... ) that a mattr…

The contemporary misinterpretation of the mattress aside, RMS already had already earned his reputation in the 90s, as had at least one other OSS luminary of the time. Case in point: RMS's incredibly uncomfortable St iGNUcius routine was already legendary.[0] Does he intend for it to be awkward at best, and offensive at worst? I doubt it. Has people told him that it is not received as he intends? Definitely. Does he…

I do not think that a tacky joke about "emacs virgins" as part of a comedy routine parodying real religious movements past and present deserves being treated as a punishable offense at all. Not only do I think that this should not be objectionable and those who try to make it out to be are contributing to our society being a worse place than it has to be, calls for punishment on the basis of it also strike me as plainly hypocritical in an age where beloved and respected media and tech figures can use the sexual history of members of their political outgroup as an insult ("incel", "cuck") and are applauded for it.

Long before the current iteration of our dominant ideology, people talked about the slut-versus-stud distinction[1] as one of the ways in which sexism manifests itself in our society. It seems to me that both the circumstance that we would find Stallman joking about female sexual inexperience intrinsically scandalous, and the circumstance that we find $twitterpersonality taking actual malicious shots at male sexual inexperience okay, would serve to reinforce this double standard, not combat it. Consider the possibility that at the very least, the people who are now actually interpreting Stallman's remark as offensive may at least not have been considered good feminists back in 2009, when mjg59's post and my citation were written. Should we fault Stallman for acting ineptly but ultimately in line with what was probably the "best" advice at the time?

[1] https://www.gender-focus.com/2009/11/22/slut-vs-stud/

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#125

Post by pzone » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 5:29 AM UTC

knolax wrote: post #65

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #3

That's what makes me so furious at the morons who deplatformed RMS over some silly devil's advocate defense of Minsky on an internal mailing list. The guy has an important idea that he put most of his life into developing. In the process, he made programming much more inclusive than anyone could dream about in the days of proprietary operating system with compilers that sold for thousands of dollars. So even if havin…

I saw a tweet on Mastodon that claimed Git was a "major barrier for people of color" or some other nonsense. Meritocracy is dying here.

That kind of talk always seems downright racist to me.

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#126

Post by madacoo » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 5:46 AM UTC

4bpp wrote: post #107

madacoo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this might be perfectly rational behaviour for people who care about some side of the cause I dispute this is rational. Creating echo chambers polarises and intensifies opposing viewpoints. The rational thing to do would be to engage in polite and meaningful discussion with people with whom you disagree. This would diffuse extreme opinions and allow people time to consider whether or not their position is justified…

Can you elaborate on why you dispute it is rational? I'm working with a definition of "rational" that is more or less "the optimal way to attain your goals", and assuming that the goals of Stallman's detractors imply that everyone agrees that Stallman/people like him should be cancelled. My argument, then, is that (1) upvote/downvote patterns on a forum like HN are a useful tools to reduce the frequency of the case a…

Let's start by assuming that a rational agent might choose as a goal the complete cessation of a particular belief. In that case I'd argue that downvoting patterns, as previously described, are not rational because, rather than having the intended consequence of reducing the likelihood of the expression of that belief, they would in fact simply cause that belief to strengthen and then be expressed elsewhere in alternative echo chambers. In order to establish which of our claims is correct we'd need to empirically observe the propagation of beliefs as a result of downvoting patterns. That would not be an easy thing to do.

However, I would also argue that choosing a goal like 'bring about the complete cessation of a particular belief' would be irrational. Although I accept that once I make that claim the conversation is directed towards very shaky territory. The question of how to choose rational goals is probably impossible to answer definitively.

But I will say that when I claimed that the rational thing to do would be to engage with a disliked belief in a meaningful and polite manner, my assumption was that a rational agent would choose to behave in a way that facilitates growth for both the agent and those with which they engage. Of course, once again, this choice of goal is by no means self-evidently rational.

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#127

Post by kyancey » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 5:51 AM UTC

Every time I read stuff like this, I think it's the free software people who miss the point of open source.

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#128

Post by tzs » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 5:52 AM UTC

ariabuckles wrote: post #92

4bpp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I expect that the second- and third-degree network effects have. MIT has had a huge influence on open source software. Keeping the number of women who contribute to FOSS lower has a snowball effect of discouraging other women from contributing—there are fewer leaders to look up to, and day-to-day misogyny in FOSS spaces goes unchecked more often. Surely second- and third-degree network effects occur on the enco…

I think the negative effects spread further because they skew the field more. I think women are more likely to avoid FOSS because there are few women, even without knowing who RMS is, than men are likely to go into FOSS because of RMS or someone who was inspired by RMS. That's an assumption on my part, but I think making tech more equitable for all people is a worthy goal in itself, even if that doesn't increase the…

> Minsky should have known. Implying there's any way what he did was okay creates an unwelcoming environment for women, especially young women and girls at MIT

How would Minsky have known? It was 2001 or early 2002, before Epstein's trafficking came to light. From Minsky's point of view, a girl who worked at Epstein's retreat as a masseuse and was above the age of consent [1] offered to have sex with him. (Which, according to Gregory Benford, who was there, Minsky declined).

[1] 16. It wasn't until later that the US Virgin Islands raised it to the current 18.

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#129

Post by waterhouse » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 5:53 AM UTC

4bpp wrote: post #95

michannne wrote: post #38

It seems this thread and others like it has fueled a controversial honeypot, as some users are mass-downvoting comments that are perfectly in line with the content posted, simply because they stand for or against ousting Stallman, and others are doing the opposite -- mass upvoting comments that align with their predisposed view of the situation. I'd like to take sometime however to reiterate that freedom applies to a…

But consider the possibility that this might be perfectly rational behaviour for people who care about some side of the cause (even if it comes at the expense of HN as a forum): the victory condition for any belief is to be so universally accepted that its negation can not be expressed in polite company. If you come into a HN thread believing X and then see that every post stating X got downvoted into oblivion, maybe…

> the victory condition for any belief is to be so universally accepted that its negation can not be expressed in polite company.

Well, to quote our host: No one gets in trouble for saying that 2 + 2 is 5, or that people in Pittsburgh are ten feet tall. Such obviously false statements might be treated as jokes, or at worst as evidence of insanity, but they are not likely to make anyone mad. The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true.

I don't think people talking about Bigfoot are usually subject to ostracization, unless they're really overbearing about it (keep changing the subject back to Bigfoot, start insulting or yelling at those who disagree, etc.). And I think not-Bigfoot is basically in the victory condition. I think the victory condition is "universally accepted" and it doesn't necessarily imply "negation cannot be expressed in polite company".

But you might be right that "its negation can not be expressed in polite company" is one of the steps along the way for some beliefs. I hope that's not true (because it might justify what I consider abhorrent behavior), but it might be.

That said, I recall seeing a study that said that extreme protest tactics were counterproductive in advancing an ideology. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314949726_Extreme_P... is probably the one I'm thinking of. I hope the principle extends, or can be extended, to "nasty behavior to suppress ideological opponents is counterproductive". It seems at least possible. Lots of argumentation consists of saying that one's opponents are nasty, which at least is evidence that many people have the potential to react strongly to (perceived) nasty behavior...

Re: Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software (2007)

#130

Post by prepend » Tue, Sep 24, 2019, 5:56 AM UTC

grawprog wrote: post #19

sn41 wrote: post #7

In the years to come, I believe free software will be recognised as one of the paradigmatic changes in how science itself is done. Now chemists and biologists have started talking about making data openly available and so forth. It's a shame that RMS has to spout forth on every issue, and in the current climate of outrage, science may have lost an important transformational voice. I think as a society, we need to cal…

One of the things that really soured me to working as a biologist was being told the data we collected would not be allowed to be made freely available, as we originally proposed and was accepted in our grant proposal. Instead it would be locked away in a government database, available for a fee despite the data being collected using tax dollars, after we'd been working for over a year and a half on the project and h…

That sounds really frustrating. Fortunately many countries now have open data legislation. For example, in the US, since 2013 by executive order (M-13-13) and this year (Evidencemaking in Policy/Open Data Act), federally funded projects must eventually release their data to the public or include a plan explaining why national security or privacy reasons prevent it. I think it’s getting better.