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Happy birthday to GNU: celebrating 34 years of the free software movement

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Re: Happy birthday to GNU: celebrating 34 years of the free software movement

#21

Post by carussell »

jimmies wrote: post #6
0xFFC wrote: post #2

Hats off to RMS. Whom I love and respect deeply. Thank you for all have you done for free software. P.S. I am from small third world country. Right now I am applying and starting PhD in one of universities in USA and my field is basically OS and File systems. I have said this, to mention one thing created the interest in me to study and persue CS when I was teenager. And it was GNU. I remember first days when I insta…

Same here. I am forever indebted to RMS and his crazy vision. May he be with the world for a long time. It has played a big role in turning my life around from a college drop-out to almost getting my PhD in the USA now. If I had just stuck with proprietary software, I don't think I would know what I know today. It is that the idea that you actually could touch and understand the world, given enough time and dedicatio…

Please look into effective altruism. Relevant discussion is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13678952

Re: Happy birthday to GNU: celebrating 34 years of the free software movement

#22

Post by peatmoss »

overcast wrote: post #14

What I always found bizarre about Stallman is the lengths he goes to make himself anonymous(no online purchases, fetching websites remotely and then emailing output). Yet at the same time, he's so prolific publicly in everything he preaches about. https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

> prolific publicly in everything he preaches about.

I think that's the key point: he's private where he's given no consent (i.e. being tracked on the web), and is public where he has chosen to... preach.

Re: Happy birthday to GNU: celebrating 34 years of the free software movement

#23

Post by vfclists »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #20
vfclists wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why people pretend not to understand Stallman's view point. If you buy a physical device which isn't controlled by some software black box, you can fix or improve it so long as you have the materials, skills and tools to do so, or you can afford for others to do that for you. Libre software operates on the same principle. If you have the skills to understand the code, you can extend it or fix it. What is…

Any licensee who adheres to the terms and conditions is given permission to modify the work, as well as to copy _and redistribute_ the work or any derivative version That redistribute there is what undermines any business model that depends on selling licenses for GPL software. If you sell your 100-line code for $1bn, there is huge incentive for the customer to sell it themselves at a lower cost, undercutting you.

The purpose of the license is to enable the end user to fix the software if it is broken and extend it if they want to. It is to remove restrictions on the use of the software, not the sale of the software.

If avoids the current situation in which equipment manufacturers deliberately insert software into equipment roles which have historically worked fine without software to prevent the users and third-party repairers from repairing them, and criminalizing attempts to fix problems via DRM regulations.

Making software fixable by end users doesn't involve any major losses as most people, even advanced computer programmers don't have the knowledge or domain expertise to fix or extend software themselves. It only means they have the option of locating and hiring other experts to fix themselves if they need to, as goes for a lot of the sophisticated hardware and software devices out there.

Re: Happy birthday to GNU: celebrating 34 years of the free software movement

#24

Post by nerdponx »

rekado wrote: post #11
nerdponx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. GNU is way more than Linux. GNU Parallel, the ubiquitous GNU Make (did you know ":=" is a GMU extension?), GNU versions of Grep and Sed that have some really nice quality of life options, and the GPL which for better or worse has "infected" a lot of really important software. That said, it's a shame that GNOME, Gtk, and Glibc are evidently not the best (I use none of them but I have read many complaints). Lot…

What's not to like about the GNU C library? It's used on the vast majority of GNU+Linux distributions. > Lots of other old, weird, and/or semi-abandoned projects too like Taler, ... GNU Taler is none of these things. > And where does this "everything but the kitchen sink" mentality come from with respect to options and configuration in GNU programs? Did you know that GNU Emacs had an overflowing kitchen sink as its l…

GNU Taler

Always happy to stand corrected on these kinds of things. When it was posted here recently I got the impression that nobody was using it for much of anything, nor would they. Then again I should know better than to put too much stock in comments here. It's full of people like me repeating things they don't understand...

Re: Happy birthday to GNU: celebrating 34 years of the free software movement

#25

Post by overcast »

peatmoss wrote: post #22
overcast wrote: post #14

What I always found bizarre about Stallman is the lengths he goes to make himself anonymous(no online purchases, fetching websites remotely and then emailing output). Yet at the same time, he's so prolific publicly in everything he preaches about. https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

> prolific publicly in everything he preaches about. I think that's the key point: he's private where he's given no consent (i.e. being tracked on the web), and is public where he has chosen to... preach.

To the extent that you need a remote system to retrieve a webpage, and then email it to you so you can read it?! I mean come on here.

Re: Happy birthday to GNU: celebrating 34 years of the free software movement

#26

Post by peatmoss »

overcast wrote: post #25
peatmoss wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> prolific publicly in everything he preaches about. I think that's the key point: he's private where he's given no consent (i.e. being tracked on the web), and is public where he has chosen to... preach.

To the extent that you need a remote system to retrieve a webpage, and then email it to you so you can read it?! I mean come on here.

You can argue that is extreme (it's certainly more extreme than I'm able / willing to do), but your earlier comment was claiming a disconnect between his web browsing habits and the public persona that he maintains. I don't see his cultivated public persona at odds with his private desire to be un-tracked on the web.

Re: Happy birthday to GNU: celebrating 34 years of the free software movement

#27

Post by madmax108 »

Just crossposting from the article, but every year on this day I donate to the FSF. You can as well at: https://my.fsf.org/donate

Remember that almost every tinfoil scenario that RMS has been preaching about has come true in the last dozen or so years, and it is important, now more than ever, to be able to defend the rights and freedoms of computer users.

You can also become an FSF member at: https://my.fsf.org/associate/support_freedom/join_fsf

Re: Happy birthday to GNU: celebrating 34 years of the free software movement

#28

Post by jimmies »

carussell wrote: post #21
jimmies wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I am forever indebted to RMS and his crazy vision. May he be with the world for a long time. It has played a big role in turning my life around from a college drop-out to almost getting my PhD in the USA now. If I had just stuck with proprietary software, I don't think I would know what I know today. It is that the idea that you actually could touch and understand the world, given enough time and dedicatio…

Please look into effective altruism. Relevant discussion is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13678952

Thanks for the directions. I will see how I best engage in the community, to be honest, now I don't feel like super enthusiastic about the industry. So I might just take a break some time and write whatever the hell I want.

Re: Happy birthday to GNU: celebrating 34 years of the free software movement

#29

Post by AceJohnny2 »

vfclists wrote: post #23
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any licensee who adheres to the terms and conditions is given permission to modify the work, as well as to copy _and redistribute_ the work or any derivative version That redistribute there is what undermines any business model that depends on selling licenses for GPL software. If you sell your 100-line code for $1bn, there is huge incentive for the customer to sell it themselves at a lower cost, undercutting you.

The purpose of the license is to enable the end user to fix the software if it is broken and extend it if they want to. It is to remove restrictions on the use of the software, not the sale of the software. If avoids the current situation in which equipment manufacturers deliberately insert software into equipment roles which have historically worked fine without software to prevent the users and third-party repairer…

I think we're talking past each other.

My point is that the GPL undermines software-based business models. This is the foundation upon which GPL fear is built upon.

Your point, if I understood correctly, is that the GPL gives the users freedoms to modify the software. That's all well and good (and that's why I love it), but that's unrelated to the business model. Further, you dismiss the business impact of the GPL redistribution "loophole". I recommend looking at the history of all open-source based companies to understand the real impact of that loophole. For example, VA Linux Systems or any commercial Linux distribution other than RedHat (and there, the impact of CentOS), and there's a reason Ubuntu has struggled with controversial money-making strategies like including ads in desktop searches.

Undermining a business model undermines the livelihood of companies, and thus the salary and livelihood of people working in that company. That is where the fear of the GPL stems from. Understanding that fear is necessary if you hope to address it successfully.

Re: Happy birthday to GNU: celebrating 34 years of the free software movement

#30

Post by thomastjeffery »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #12
jimmies wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An uncompromising absolutist, his views can't survive contact with the real world intact, but they can influence the landscape as he exerts pressure on it. Well, somehow his views survived. GNU happened and is alive today. Billions of people are using it or a variant of it. In fact, GNU/Linux is arguably the most successful OS in the planet. The GNU has projects that power almost every computer and every mobile pho…

> What more you want? Broader adoption of the GPLv3 and AGPLv3, for one thing. Getting Apple to get over their aversion of the GPL, for another. Ever wondered why macOS shipped with antiquated version of Bash, Emacs, Make...?

> Getting Apple to get over their aversion of the GPL

Apple isn't going to join the Free Software Movement. If they do, they will be something entirely different, using the same name.

Apple's business model is based on proprietary software, and limiting users.

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