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Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

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Re: Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

#141

Post by dale_glass »

cxr wrote: post #131
dale_glass wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think rewrite in Rust is a solution to "modernize" GNU tools. Maybe another memory safe language, but Rust has severe bootstrapping issues which is a hard sell for distros that care about source to binary transparency. That IMO is of lesser importance. It's a technical problem that's of little relevance to most end-users. It's still a problem, but one that I think can be solved. The point though is that the…

I agree with your overall position, but where you say: > Otherwise it'll be left in a sort of museum curator position I think we actually need this; somebody should already be doing it. I wrote about this several years ago: > Maybe in an alternate universe there exists an organization—or some sort of loosely connected movement—that focuses on software comprehensibility as a gift to the world and for future generation…

> Maybe in an alternate universe there exists an organization—or some sort of loosely connected movement—that focuses on software comprehensibility as a gift to the world and for future generations.

And like I said, I agree that this is a good and valuable thing to do, but not for the FSF. The FSF is trying to change the future, not to preserve the past.

GNU tools used to be the high end, full of features versions compared to what commercial Unix had, which is why they caught on. But you can't sit on your laurels, or others will catch up.

Eg, what do they offer as a shell? Bash. Okay, that was a great shell once upon a time, but honestly by modern standards it's painful. Even a couple decades back I was already reaching for Perl if I had to write more than about 10 lines. Since then the situation has only gotten much worse, and meanwhile we have things like PowerShell and nushell that suggest a new approach. The FSF seems nothing to offer in response.

Re: Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

#142

Post by phkahler »

aerhq3h5 wrote: post #48
the-dude wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is fair to say that without the GPL and GNU, there would have been no Linux as we know it today.

I mean that's true and commendable but the OP was speaking towards the future. And on our current trajectory the future is only becoming more and more decoupled from GNU. From the downvotes though I've either come across as combative or sarcastic I suspect.

>> I mean that's true and commendable but the OP was speaking towards the future. And on our current trajectory the future is only becoming more and more decoupled from GNU.

That's the point. The only way to prevent the bad outcome is for GNU and GPL to make a comeback. People need to understand and care about it first if it's every to prevent the bad future.

Re: Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

#144

Post by noirscape »

mbakke wrote: post #96
dale_glass wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think the FSF and GNU are resting on their laurels and barely relevant. So one of the core things for the FSF has been the GNU tools. Recently it's become trendy to rewrite stuff in Rust, and overall it seems like an excellent idea to have the core tooling of an OS being much harder to exploit, and often much more performant. For instance ripgrep is a nice improvement on the classical grep, nushell is a bette…

I think the FSFE (Europe) is doing a lot better than its American sister foundation, with active involvement in EU politics, running campaigns, etc. Individual GNU projects are doing fairly well on the technical side (toolchain, Emacs, Guix, Mes), but there is little to no coordination across GNU, much less with the FSFs. FSF Asia seems to have fallen off the earth, even though India appears to have a fairly active f…

The FSFe's knock-on effects (getting involved in local politics) also tends to translate to software that serve end-users.

A big issue with the FSF is that the GNU project only really serves two groups of users: programmers and power-users/commandline junkies. I belong to both of those groups. You know who doesn't? Most people out there. 99.9% of people using a computer don't give a shit on if their stuff is compiled with GCC, musl or clang. That's a fight that only concerns programmers (and one the GNU project arguably lost). The FSF simply never adapted to the idea that there's gonna be a sizable portion of computer users that will not know how to program. Too much of their rethoric is still laden on the assumption that everyone who uses a computer knows how to program (arguably an RMS relic, given his advice on learning how to program is just... unsuited for a lot of users[0]).

If you want free software to matter, start by funding free software that your average Joe needs to use. The FSFe seems to have figured that one out to some extent - governments contract out their IT work, so if you can get in a FOSS clause on those contracts, then that's a big win for everyone.

Just look at Peertube and Matrix for successful examples (regardless of product quality -I think Matrix is fundamentally broken-, these are both tangible things a regular user can access that are a meaningful alternative to YouTube/IRC).

[0]: https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

Re: Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

#145

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

pjmlp wrote: post #133
quickthrower2 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes indeed. The alternative timeline - Windows on nearly all servers and desktops. All software purchased from ISV and closed source. Bugs galore that never get fixed because they have you locked in. Crappy software due to lack of competition.

Looking from Apple, Google, Microsoft and IBM ecosystems, and SaaS products, the alternative timeline isn't much different from actual reality.

The difference is the dystopia being parts of the industry vs everywhere, and that's huge.

Re: Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

#146

Post by shadowgovt »

noufalibrahim wrote: post #99
sbuk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "On the other hand you have dystopian corporate whose biggest dream is slave labor and locked-in cash cows from which value is drained 'til the last drop." An therein is the problem I, and I know many others, have with the FSF and it's followers. This language is just not compelling - in fact, it's a massive turn off, even if you think it's true. This comes off as the ravings of a crackpot! Consider "On the other h…

Precisely. It's hard to argue that these "dystopian corporate" entities haven't added any value to the society. You can make a solid case that the intangible costs are too high but starting off with accusing them of "slave labor" and "locked-in cash cows" is a non starter and it's been the kind of rhetoric that the FSF has always used. I don't (and never wanted) the FSF to dilute its message but I do think they'd ben…

I think they often serve a useful purpose moving the Overton window... But it's why I can nod respectfully at them from over here, but not join them. The core of the free software movement embraces a radicalism that's out of line with reality and would actually reflect a worse world than the one we live in (who's going to make locked-down systems for people who don't want to be their own sysadmins if we actually kill off the closed-corporate model? I, for one, am not stepping up to volunteer to be the one who does that for all my relatives who are a stone's throw away from getting their stuff ownzed if they had admin rights to it).

Re: Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

#147

Post by rightbyte »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #136
rightbyte wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redhat had been getting a profit for like 10+ years by now. How would that not be enough?

Profitable, sure. But businesses that are poised for future success don't sell themselves, particularly to a has-been like IBM.

What would the stockowners care who pays them? I don't think they have much emotional attachment to Redhat.

IBM just have to pay more than the stockholders believe the stock is worth. It has nothing to do with if the owners believe in the company or not.

Re: Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

#148

Post by mbakke »

shadowgovt wrote: post #146
noufalibrahim wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. It's hard to argue that these "dystopian corporate" entities haven't added any value to the society. You can make a solid case that the intangible costs are too high but starting off with accusing them of "slave labor" and "locked-in cash cows" is a non starter and it's been the kind of rhetoric that the FSF has always used. I don't (and never wanted) the FSF to dilute its message but I do think they'd ben…

I think they often serve a useful purpose moving the Overton window... But it's why I can nod respectfully at them from over here, but not join them. The core of the free software movement embraces a radicalism that's out of line with reality and would actually reflect a worse world than the one we live in (who's going to make locked-down systems for people who don't want to be their own sysadmins if we actually kill…

That's a false dichotomy. It's possible to have a locked down device that allows full access/visibility if you jump through enough hoops.

(Android is almost there, software wise, but closed vendor firmwares are still rampant).

Re: Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

#149

Post by freedrull »

grumbel wrote: post #28
noufalibrahim wrote: post #6

My earliest exposure to free software was via. GCC and Emacs. The early debates on Gnu/Linux, OSS vs. Free Software etc. were all things I imbibed back then. The ideological stand of the FSF was appealing to me when I was younger and really affected my outlook. Over the years, I can't help but feeling that while the FSF's core message is still relevant and true, their tactics have more or less pushed them outside of…

The issue for me is more that the FSF hasn't kept up with what is happening in technology. Software these days is often a secondary concern, as you aren't the one owning the computer, instead it is all running remotely and it's really about the data and control of said data. The licenses the FSF offers, including the AGPL, are inadequate to address this. Over in Europe we got the GDPR, which does actually address a l…

> you aren't the one owning the computer

Sounds to me like they are more relevant than ever. :)

Re: Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

#150

Post by type0 »

red_admiral wrote: post #112
teddyh wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with the GPL is that its "infectious" nature does not play nicely with how the B2B world works, where you might link against your client's in-house proprietary libraries, which even though they're never planning to distribute them, they very much don't want their own IP to become GPLed as a result. Standard GPL FUD. Firstly, linking against proprietary libraries is fine as long as you don’t distribute t…

Some of the companies I've worked with, and their lawyers especially, have explicitly said that for them anything GPL in the application layer was a no-no (Linux as OS was fine though). This is on code that will never be distributed outside internal systems.

> anything GPL in the application layer was a no-no (Linux as OS was fine though).

well, just proves how hypocritical it is

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