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We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

linuxjournal.com

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Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#141

Post by bsder »

mikenew wrote: post #23
jonawesomegreen wrote: post #4

> We collaborate inside proprietary environments, such as Slack and Google Hangouts. Most of the chat and messaging systems in use today are also proprietary and closed. So are most video-conferencing systems and the codecs they use. This one in particular worries me. Having access mailing list conversations and IRC logs provides such a rich history of open source development. I worry about every open source project…

Use Matrix. It's been a slow and bumpy few years, but it's there now. Idealism aside I genuinely prefer it to other messaging services. You don't need to host your own server or anything special (unless you want to). You can just sign up here: https://riot.im/app/

Another website with ferociously irritating password restrictions... sigh.

Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#142

Post by spicytunacone »

icebraining wrote: post #134
eclipseo76 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to them, because they have special needs regarding moderation, because "muh harassment".

Source?

«While we still use it heavily, IRC is an ongoing source of abuse and harassment for many of our colleagues and getting connected to this now-obscure forum is an unnecessary technical barrier for anyone finding their way to Mozilla via the web. Available interfaces really haven’t kept up with modern expectations, spambots and harassment are endemic to the platform, and in light of that it’s no coincidence that people trying to get in touch with us from inside schools, colleges or corporate networks are finding that often as not IRC traffic isn’t allowed past institutional firewalls at all.»

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763276

http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2019/04/26/synchronous-text/

Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#143

Post by swagasaurus-rex »

theamk wrote: post #113
jondubois wrote: post #38

I still cannot believe that we live in a world were: - A website with a silly name like 'Facebook' is worth half a trillion dollars and is extremely profitable. - A website with a silly name like 'Twitter' which only lets you post 140 characters at a time is worth 30 billion dollars. - An app with a silly name like 'Snapchat' which loses billions of dollars per year is worth almost $15 billion. - An international tax…

Re Lambda, I think the closest analogy is renting unfurnished office. When our company moved into next office, it had bare walls with old ugly wallpaper. We paid for the new wallpaper, carpet, interior walls, wiring, etc... And we also kept paying the rent to the building owner, and were at their mercy when they eventually decided to stop renting out that space. Even then, this made perfect sense for business. All-ne…

Running your own servers doesn't require you to bid for sparse plots of land, like constructing your own office space does.

Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#144

Post by romwell »

kazinator wrote: post #61
Drdrdrq wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Why have users chosen those environments? > Because they don't give a rat's ass about the freedom aspect of free software. If software A requires four clicks to do something, but B has a way to do it in 3, they are on B without a second thought. Convenience always wins. Always. Users do care about free (as in beer) and they care if the product or service will disappear without warning (hello Google!). But the defi…

Traditional free software developers do not use the most convenient program without caring about freedom. Otherwise, for instance, nobody would be debugging with gdb, rather than Visual Studio or what have you.Nobody would be LaTeXing instead of using MS Word or Adobe Illustrator. GIMP isn't as good as Photoshop (if I believe what people say), yet people still use it. (I've only ever used GIMP since 1996; I have no i…

>Nobody would be LaTeXing instead of using MS Word or Adobe Illustrator.

Hahaha. Have you tried to write a piece of mathematics in MS Word? I did. It's a torture I wouldn't wish on anyone I know.

Mathematicians are all about convenience; so much so that proprietary LaTeX Editors were quite popular before FOSS caught up (remember WinEdt?).

But LaTeX itself - it's the most convenient tool to write and share mathematics that's ever been made. It's unsurpassed. It's required if you want to publish, because all the journals use LaTeX, and most math books are made with LaTeX.

It's so good that people will literally think you are an idiot if you are not using it[1] and won't believe your results.

And ArXiV, have you heard of ArXiV? No LaTeX, no ArXiV.

And trust me, most mathematicians don't care much about FOSS. But they care about not spending too much effort on making their results presentable and shareable. LaTeX -> PDF is the path of least resistance.

[1]https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304

Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#145

Post by skyfaller »

Jorge1o1 wrote: post #28

There's a great deal of irony in a publication promoting FOSS, but their own website is closed source.

Is Linux Journal's website closed source? Looks like it's running Drupal to me, a quick scan of the HTML reveals https://www.drupal.org)" />. Drupal is GPLv2+, seems fine.

Would be nice if they replaced Disqus with e.g. https://commento.io/ though.

Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#146

Post by sovande »

Sure, we need naive wish lists, but for open source to be more than a curios historical blip and not fall into a Venezuelan disaster, the least we can demand of FSF and OSI is to give us a proper open source license so those who want to _do_ open source work can also succeed commercially. They need to understand and address problems faced by MongoDB, Redis, Elastic et. al. and support their needs with a new license (something better than AGPL). Not flat out dismiss the problems and swipe it under the rug.

Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#147

Post by CJefferson »

shmerl wrote: post #18

Yeah, I'm often puzzled by some FOSS developers not using open communication tools and not running Linux on their actual day to day work computers.

That's partly because Linux is so hard to run. I bought an xps 13 because it is supposed to have official Ubuntu support and I still get weird errors on start-up, and crashes sometimes when I plug 2 external monitors in.

Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#148

Post by smnrchrds »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #86
pixelbath wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Mozilla seems to be a large open source/web advocate, I always have a hard time with the fact that, as an organization, most of their revenue comes directly from Google buying the top spot in default search engines.

And yet, they have one of the few FOSS products that can compete with any of its rivals on quality alone (the only one I can think of actually).

Don't forget about VLC.

Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#149

Post by malvosenior »

kazinator wrote: post #132
malvosenior wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of those look as good as Slack imho. Regardless, there's a bunch of stuff you can do with Slack that you can't with IRC. Emoji reactions, voice/video/screenshare, easily post files and images... Plus there's a unified experience for all users that's not client dependent, no burdensome technical or protocol jargon, no federated servers (or servers to think about at all)... I've used IRC quite a bit but Slack i…

"federated servers" is the only way to maintain a form of freedom while (out of necessity) operating software as a service. If you think that you can't do free software development without relying on all the capabilities of Slack, then the honest thing to do is to quit and spend the rest of your days just working on proprietary stuff. You obviously prefer the solution which has features over any other concern, so why…

Yeah, I don't think so. I work on other OSS and happily use Slack because it's fun and easy (I used to use IRC). I'm not conflicted at all because I appreciate a good UX. I think it would be totally awesome if more open source developers realized that people will use whatever is better for them which often doesn't mean prioritizing openness over usability or features.

I totally get the value of a non-corporate, non-centralized solution. It just needs to have at least as good of a UX for me to switch back to using it.

Re: We Need to Save What Made Linux and FOSS Possible

#150

Post by eeZah7Ux »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #37
kazinator wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why have users chosen those environments? Because they don't give a rat's ass about the freedom aspect of free software. If software A requires four clicks to do something, but B has a way to do it in 3, they are on B without a second thought. But in this case, those users are not just any old end users; the are actually supposed to be FOSS developers, so there is a heavy irony there. I think what is doing on is th…

>> Why have users chosen those environments? > Because they don't give a rat's ass about the freedom aspect of free software. If software A requires four clicks to do something, but B has a way to do it in 3, they are on B without a second thought. Convenience always wins. Always. Users do care about free (as in beer) and they care if the product or service will disappear without warning (hello Google!). But the defi…

> Convenience always wins. Always.

Not at all. There are million examples of human society choosing long term and social benefits over short term and personal rewards.

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