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A short critique of Stallmanism

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Re: A short critique of Stallmanism

#181

Post by jcora »

quitspamming wrote: post #77

I'm surprised the HN crowd isn't calling this out for what it is, anti capitalist BS. I've seen people talk about tactics, DRM, ethics, but the author's point was Stallman is right expect for one thing: profit. Stallman tries to explain over and over again how free software can be profitable, and the author of this post's whole point is, "nah, it can't be. Want free software? You need socialism." Stupid article pushi…

Yes I am a socialist and as such I employ materialistic and systemic analysis. Just calling it "anti capitalist BS" is a pretty shitty attempt at critique.

> but the author's point was Stallman is right expect for one thing: profit.

Did you even read the article?

Re: A short critique of Stallmanism

#182

Post by throwaway729 »

closeparen wrote: post #62
throwaway729 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, thanks for making me think more about this. I still don't think GMail could've come into existence without the carrot of user data. Maybe now that it does exist Google has a vested interest in keeping people inside its platform, which would mean my statement is incorrect. Maybe I'll just weaken my statement to this: I think a GMail replacement would be far easier to achieve than a strong legal framework protectin…

GMail is GMail because of spam filtering and search. There can be no such thing as GMail that respects your privacy, because without the spam filtering and search efficacy that come from huge training datasets, you have just another Squirrelmail/Roundcube/Zimbra installation.

I guess that depends on what you mean by privacy.

I tend to define privacy in terms of an intersection of users' expectations and preferences -- data should be used how users expect it to be used, and those expectations should match their preferences.

For example, a particularly voyeuristic user might truly prefer -- independent of any transactional considerations -- for marketers to know a bunch of intimate information about them. In that admittedly entirely fictional case, the modern web isn't a privacy violation.

My point is that it's possible to use data for a particular purpose without violating users' privacy expectations and preferences. There are both legal and technical mechanisms that enable these sort of use cases.

I think it's fair to say that most people expect and are perfectly OK with google using their email to filter spam and improve search. Therefore, I don't consider those use cases to be privacy violations.

Also, although search and filtering are two huge features GMail, even a GMail without those features would be quite superior to Squirrelmail/Roundcube/Yahoo! accounts with tiny data limits (which really were the alternatives when GMail launched).

Re: A short critique of Stallmanism

#183

Post by vurpo »

jcora wrote: post #136
labster wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, I get it, they're both socialists and all. But Bernie is the opposite of what OP describes. Stallman is a purist, Sanders is a realist. Stallman fights to keep "GNU/" attached to "Linux", while Sanders talks about the fake news coming to people on Facebook's closed platform.

The sentiment of this comment is correct. Free software should be an integrated part of a wider movement for emancipation, and only harms itself by being so pedantic and hermetic. However, I don't really have a problem with insisting on the name GNU/Linux, and that's why I didn't even mention it in particular: I believe it's simply a matter of being fair and technically precise.

In my opinion the problem with "GNU/Linux" is that there really is no such operating system at all. Debian contains a lot of GNU software, as well as the Linux kernel, but also contains a whole lot of Debian-specific software (most notably dpkg and apt), as well as other software (for example, X.org). If we compare, Fedora contains a lot of the same software as Debian, but also a whole lot of Red Hat-developed Red Hat-specific software (again, it's RPM, dnf, but also things like flatpak which is not specific to any one operating system).

Why do people insist on saying that all of this is one single "operating system" called "GNU/Linux" and that there are different "distros" called Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, Arch, etc., instead of just calling it all a bunch of operating systems? Because these different "distros" are not compatible with each other. They can mostly run each other's binaries, and some configuration knowledge works across them, but other than that they are mostly incompatible. And they are all based on Linux, GNU, and a bunch of non-GNU software.

So if we say that "This is an operating system called Fedora, which is based on Linux and GNU and a bunch of other stuff", instead of "This is a distribution of the operating system GNU/Linux called Fedora" then we would just be better off overall. There is no more reason to fight over the name "GNU/Linux" versus "Linux" since both are pretty inaccurate anyway. There would be no more user confusion about what Linux is, as there seems to be today (e.g. people blame Linux for userland problems, or people expect program X to be packaged and get support for operating system Y because it says "Linux" on the webpage). And things like BSD would seem less foreign if people knew that it's really another operating system instead of being seen as just some weird non-Linux thing.

And if the GNU people ever get around to actually finish their operating system, then they could just call it "GNU" without causing even more confusion

Re: A short critique of Stallmanism

#184

Post by vurpo »

gkya wrote: post #119
labster wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, I get it, they're both socialists and all. But Bernie is the opposite of what OP describes. Stallman is a purist, Sanders is a realist. Stallman fights to keep "GNU/" attached to "Linux", while Sanders talks about the fake news coming to people on Facebook's closed platform.

Well, want it or not GNU/ is a big part of Linux distros, at least until a distro with an alternative userland and c library makes it to the top. And even then most of open source has some GNU somewhere in the foundation.

> a distro with an alternative userland and c library makes it to the top

Android shot past all the others to become the most popular operating system in the world, in case you didn't notice.

Re: A short critique of Stallmanism

#185

Post by closeparen »

throwaway729 wrote: post #182
closeparen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GMail is GMail because of spam filtering and search. There can be no such thing as GMail that respects your privacy, because without the spam filtering and search efficacy that come from huge training datasets, you have just another Squirrelmail/Roundcube/Zimbra installation.

I guess that depends on what you mean by privacy. I tend to define privacy in terms of an intersection of users' expectations and preferences -- data should be used how users expect it to be used, and those expectations should match their preferences. For example, a particularly voyeuristic user might truly prefer -- independent of any transactional considerations -- for marketers to know a bunch of intimate informat…

The problem is, under the current legal framework, if Google has access to the data for any reason then so does the government.

The only way to protect your users from the government is to not possess (or be able to make sense of) their data at all.

Re: A short critique of Stallmanism

#186

Post by pmoriarty »

petertodd wrote: post #93
schoen wrote: post #55

(Here I'm focusing on part 2 and the conclusion of the article, not part 1.) This article suggests that RMS ought to make his own leftist beliefs an explicit part of the free software movement. As the author is aware, RMS has generally tried not to do this, recognizing that free software advocates can have a wide range of beliefs about other issues, even if a plurality of people in the movement are hold leftist views…

Indeed, as an independent consultant I'm far more inclined to use LGPL/AGPL/GPL licences for work that I think I could sell commercially precisely because I see those licenses and private property/capitalism as very compatible. Quite simply, I'm happy if you either pay me money or code for the right to use my code; the users who contribute neither are more often than not still benefiting me via a wider userbase - aka…

"the users who contribute neither are more often than not still benefiting me via a wider userbase - aka advertising to the minority who will give something back."

A lot of users also provide free support, bug reports, and beta testing.

Re: A short critique of Stallmanism

#187

Post by BuuQu9hu »

ommunist wrote: post #85
BuuQu9hu wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GPL and copyleft are not magic pixie dust. Just as proprietary software is pirated very frequently, so too do companies and individuals ignore copyleft licenses. Like the BSA spends money to enforce proprietary licenses, so to do the FSF, SFC, gplviolations.org and others have to spend money to enforce copyleft. There are also lots of violations of permissive licenses, but generally the authors of permissively li…

Yes, this is because OSS authors do not have union, which could have lawyers, which could do the job.

The SFC functions sort of like a union, but they don't have very much funding though:

https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/

Re: A short critique of Stallmanism

#188

Post by [deleted] »

vacri wrote: post #118
afsina wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually IMO majority of hacker news commenters are left leaning, and I try avoiding political news here because their rethoric is tiring (to me).

I think it's quite the opposite. There's a lot of people living in the high-paid tech bubble here. Actual lefties seem thin on the ground, and less numerous than libertarians. If HN is seen as left-leaning, then the political diversity spectrum in the US is in truly dire shape.

[deleted]

Re: A short critique of Stallmanism

#189

Post by Mouq »

Grue3 wrote: post #163
Mouq wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't really see why it needs to be called out as such. It's pretty explicitly radical leftist. Is Hacker News exclusively capitalist now? TBF I tend to avoid this site, so maybe it is. If you think materialist analysis isn't useful, well, maybe it's not useful to you . But geez, the author didn't even get into, e.g., Marxist analysis or anything so controversial :P

Far left is just as dangerous as far right, and needs to be called out. Ideologies that resulted in deaths of millions shouldn't be socially acceptable.

Alright bro. Have you considered the millions of deaths caused by American conservativism/liberalism?

Re: A short critique of Stallmanism

#190

Post by webmaven »

smsm42 wrote: post #94
petertodd wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, as an independent consultant I'm far more inclined to use LGPL/AGPL/GPL licences for work that I think I could sell commercially precisely because I see those licenses and private property/capitalism as very compatible. Quite simply, I'm happy if you either pay me money or code for the right to use my code; the users who contribute neither are more often than not still benefiting me via a wider userbase - aka…

I've seen a lot of companies using GPL/AGPL for exactly the same purpose - to prevent other commercial companies from reusing their code. It is especially common in areas where added-value customizations are valuable - i.e., if you have GPL (or, usually, dual-licensed commercial/GPL) core for, say, document handling system, you can market it as open-source, take contributions, and build add-on business on it, but if…

> if you have GPL (or, usually, dual-licensed commercial/GPL) core for, say, document handling system, you can market it as open-source, take contributions, and build add-on business on it, but if a competitor comes out and wants to use your core, they now have to publish source for all their add-ons, so you can have them for free.

This is a bit tricky to pull off unless you get a copyright assignment or a license permitting relicensing from all contributors, or your GPL licensed core has a large exception carved out of it (say, for proprietary plugins).

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