Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

gnu.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 101 posts

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#21

Post by Svip »

danso wrote: post #10

> There are organizations that proclaim support for free software or the GNU Project, and teach classes in use of nonfree software. It's possible that they do some other things that really support free software, but those classes certainly don't. On the contrary, they work directly against the free software movement by promoting the use of the nonfree software. That increases the magnitude of the practical problem it…

Maybe he means the JavaScript code executed on Airbnb's website is not licenced under a free licence and thus nonfree?

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#22

Post by [deleted] »

dcgudeman wrote: post #9

I really appreciate what RMS has done as far as start a movement that I think has contributed greatly to the human existence but when he says things like "The basic point of the free software movement is that nonfree software is unjust and should not exist." I can't but seriously question his judgment. It's one thing to personally want to use free software, it's another to claim that nonfree software "should not exis…

[deleted]

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#23

Post by Sylos »

Rexxar wrote: post #16

In the RMS world you are not good if you support some free software. You have to support them exclusively From the link: The basic point of the free software movement is that nonfree software is unjust and should not exist. Personally, I completely disagree with this.

That's not true. He for example thinks it's a good thing that Steam is available on Linux, as it makes it viable for people to come into the Linux world and from there, they usually end up using more free software. Of course, he doesn't like Steam either, and would like to get rid of it eventually, but it's the lesser of two evils for the time being.

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#24

Post by danso »

Svip wrote: post #21
danso wrote: post #10

> There are organizations that proclaim support for free software or the GNU Project, and teach classes in use of nonfree software. It's possible that they do some other things that really support free software, but those classes certainly don't. On the contrary, they work directly against the free software movement by promoting the use of the nonfree software. That increases the magnitude of the practical problem it…

Maybe he means the JavaScript code executed on Airbnb's website is not licenced under a free licence and thus nonfree?

Yeah that's probably right: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.en.html

Ignore my tangent.

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#25

Post by cpkpad »

rmc wrote: post #18
dcgudeman wrote: post #9

I really appreciate what RMS has done as far as start a movement that I think has contributed greatly to the human existence but when he says things like "The basic point of the free software movement is that nonfree software is unjust and should not exist." I can't but seriously question his judgment. It's one thing to personally want to use free software, it's another to claim that nonfree software "should not exis…

That's been RMS & FSF's position for decades. They view it as wrong that you have software which you do not have the four freedom for. Many legal and ethnical systems have limitations on what you can consent to. You're not allowed to consent to work for less than the minimum wage, for example

This is a little bit different. The only reason proprietary software exists is the copyright clause in the Constitution, which grants the government a right to issue limited-time monopolies to creators of original works.

Revoking a government-granted monopoly is very libertarian. Revoking mutual consent is the opposite.

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#26

Post by hobos_delight »

danso wrote: post #10

> There are organizations that proclaim support for free software or the GNU Project, and teach classes in use of nonfree software. It's possible that they do some other things that really support free software, but those classes certainly don't. On the contrary, they work directly against the free software movement by promoting the use of the nonfree software. That increases the magnitude of the practical problem it…

> JavaScript is many things, but nonfree isn't one of them.

I believe he is referring to the license to use/modify the JS being delivered by Airbnb specifically in this case, not the language itself.

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#27

Post by yuhong »

dcgudeman wrote: post #9

I really appreciate what RMS has done as far as start a movement that I think has contributed greatly to the human existence but when he says things like "The basic point of the free software movement is that nonfree software is unjust and should not exist." I can't but seriously question his judgment. It's one thing to personally want to use free software, it's another to claim that nonfree software "should not exis…

I wonder what will likely happen when RMS dies.

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#28

Post by cpkpad »

legulere wrote: post #12

Or to paraphrase it: All other goals have to bow before the goal of everything being free software as defined by Richard Stallman. I also think that open source is nice, but by far it's not the most important thing there is to software.

Or to paraphrase you: "I don't know how to read. Ouch. Big words hurt my brain. I know! It's too complex for me, so I'll mock it."

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#29

Post by MichaelBurge »

danso wrote: post #10

> There are organizations that proclaim support for free software or the GNU Project, and teach classes in use of nonfree software. It's possible that they do some other things that really support free software, but those classes certainly don't. On the contrary, they work directly against the free software movement by promoting the use of the nonfree software. That increases the magnitude of the practical problem it…

> JavaScript is many things, but nonfree isn't one of them.

Javascript is often minified, and it's generally important to the Free Software movement that you get the original source. Otherwise, a company could comply with an open source license by providing you with a compiled binary, which does have all the functionality the source code describes.

The other issue might be that you get to view the Javascript source, but might not be able to redistribute it or modify it.

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#30

Post by yuhong »

cpkpad wrote: post #25
rmc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's been RMS & FSF's position for decades. They view it as wrong that you have software which you do not have the four freedom for. Many legal and ethnical systems have limitations on what you can consent to. You're not allowed to consent to work for less than the minimum wage, for example

This is a little bit different. The only reason proprietary software exists is the copyright clause in the Constitution, which grants the government a right to issue limited-time monopolies to creators of original works. Revoking a government-granted monopoly is very libertarian. Revoking mutual consent is the opposite.

Of course, this deals only with the freedom to copy/distribute, which is IMO the most interesting one anyway.

For example, from https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.sys.mac.announce/... :

"allowing system software to be distributed free of charge via these organizations has limited our ability to convince Apple resellers to distribute and promote Apple system software products to their customers."

Post reply on HN