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

My Talk at Microsoft

stallman.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 248 posts

Re: My Talk at Microsoft

#211

Post by tzs »

Iv wrote: post #21

> Implement an anonymous internet sales platform that doesn't require Javascript, using GNU Taler (taler.net). That seems like a potentially super important project yet it does not have a wikipedia page. That's abnormal! It was even discussed here in 2017! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15274110

Anonymous for and to whom?

Suppose I sell a digital good to a customer in the EU and use Taler to handle this. I need to know which country's VAT to collect, and I need to justify my choice to the tax authorities of any EU country that asks.

That seems to rule out using a platform that makes my customer anonymous to me.

Re: My Talk at Microsoft

#212

Post by EpicEng »

dhruvmittal wrote: post #19
Zhyl wrote: post #5

>Publicly take back Microsoft's attacks on copyleft made in the 2000s. Ballmer called the GPL a "cancer". Allchin called it "un-American". (from the "Suggestions I gave to Microsoft" section) This is something I agree with. I don't think that Microsoft are likely to apologise for EEE [1] as that is likely just considered 'business' and part of the zeitgeist; neither do I think that Microsoft necessarily needs to endo…

> They should, however, be a bit more repentant about starting a McCarthy-esque red scare against all things open source. Especially since we're still suffering from it. There are enough project & program managers who see the words "open source" on an engineering document & send us back to build or buy some alternative.

Replace "open source" with "GPL" and I think you'd be correct.

Re: My Talk at Microsoft

#213

Post by EpicEng »

zeveb wrote: post #168
mikepurvis wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any MacOS user who has to put up with having bash-from-2006 as the default shell has been affected by GPL2 vs GPL3.

Correction: any MacOS user is affected by Apple's decision not to update bash.

...due to changes in v3 which Apple sees as incompatible with their business model. That is an effect of v3. By your logic v3 never affects anyone because there's always a human decision behind whether or not to adopt it or to integrate software which does.

Re: My Talk at Microsoft

#215

Post by EpicEng »

simion314 wrote: post #44
5trokerac3 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a perfect example of how Stallman ultimately is an authoritarian. He wants all the freedom to do what he wants, but has no problem with his "free software" vision limiting the rights of others. As someone else pointed out, "what about proprietary HTML and CSS?" Stallman has no ability to recognize the need for others to protect their own work, he only wants his free access to the fruits of others' labor. Don'…

He is not forcing his views on you, don't like him don't read what he writes. If you want to have a discussion about freedom then let's do it in a rigorous way, go read the GNU page, read about the 4 freedoms then get back and explain your point more clearly. His point is that proprietary software is bad and you should now write it and not use it, I agree with him and I still run some proprietary blobs, I do not feel…

>He is not forcing his views on you, don't like him don't read what he writes.

His job is (was) convincing others that he is right. He's trying to influence people's thoughts and actions. I think a critique of how he goes about that is warranted. Of course we can look the other way, but obviously that doesn't work to the benefit of his goals.

Re: My Talk at Microsoft

#216

Post by TeMPOraL »

5trokerac3 wrote: post #207
TeMPOraL wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what upsets me the most? That you're still not reading. > RMS is the first person I wouldn't expect to understand any of the unspoken obviousnesses of the situation, such as being able to deduce, in the moment, why a child prostitute would be presenting herself as willing RMS did precisely that - showed the understanding by assuming the child was coerced. You seem to be actually arguing here that she was wil…

> That you're still not reading. Projection. Read that paragraph you quoted, specifically the words "in the moment". Nobody is arguing that Stallman didn't deduce she might have been coerced. His whole excuse is that Minsky wouldn't have been able to tell that in the moment , even though he was on f'ing sex trafficking island . That a 17 year old offering to sleep with a 74 year old man on a billionaire's sex island…

> His whole excuse is that Minsky wouldn't have been able to tell that in the moment, even though he was on f'ing sex trafficking island.

Did he know, in that moment, he was on a sex trafficking island?

> That a 17 year old offering to sleep with a 74 year old man on a billionaire's sex island was a victim of trafficking is not something that takes any bit of thoughtful reflection to figure out!

Well, apparently Minsky may have figured that out, given that the witness testimony is that he turned the offer down.

Regardless, this is off topic anyway. What's on topic is that RMS did not excuse the accusations of sex, only the accusations of violence which the original accusations (to his impression) risked turning into.

> Now you're making excuses for the excuser.

No, I'm only repeatedly restating what RMS said in different forms in a vain hope that one of these restatements "clicks" with you.

> You have proven no lies in my bulleted list.

I believe I did prove one (note that I didn't accuse you of making it, just repeating it).

You know, this thread and the whole RMS story does make me worried about future of humanity. Great many people in the industry have revealed themselves to have no ability to read with comprehension, or parse clear English sentences. Now I see why people can't even agree about most basic facts in scientific issues like global warming - they read one thing, but in their minds, they read a different thing.

I have nothing more to add on this topic.

Re: My Talk at Microsoft

#217

Post by tutfbhuf »

jacquesm wrote: post #94
richard_todd wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earlier he had said that we shouldn’t keep old grudges, so I was surprised he then turned around and asked for them to renounce statements from 20+ years ago, made by people that aren’t even there anymore. In my mind, .net core and vs code and countless smaller projects are a complete renunciation of their previous public statements. Maybe Stallman can’t see that because they MIT license those things, but why ask for…

Ballmer is an opportunist, pure and simple. When it suited him Linux was a cancer, and when it no longer suited him he 'loved Linux'. If the wind should ever change Linux will for sure be a cancer again.

Ballmer says Linux instead of GNU/Linux. That's just another mistake.

Re: My Talk at Microsoft

#218

Post by tutfbhuf »

decoyworker wrote: post #70
Gaelan wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’d have to drop the windows store, no?

This is a hypothetical. I realize the improbability.

If you could run a completely free (libre) windows, including all pre-installed software, subsystems ... everything, well then hypothetical yes.

Re: My Talk at Microsoft

#219

Post by 5trokerac3 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #216
5trokerac3 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That you're still not reading. Projection. Read that paragraph you quoted, specifically the words "in the moment". Nobody is arguing that Stallman didn't deduce she might have been coerced. His whole excuse is that Minsky wouldn't have been able to tell that in the moment , even though he was on f'ing sex trafficking island . That a 17 year old offering to sleep with a 74 year old man on a billionaire's sex island…

> His whole excuse is that Minsky wouldn't have been able to tell that in the moment, even though he was on f'ing sex trafficking island. Did he know, in that moment, he was on a sex trafficking island? > That a 17 year old offering to sleep with a 74 year old man on a billionaire's sex island was a victim of trafficking is not something that takes any bit of thoughtful reflection to figure out! Well, apparently Mins…

You still keep going to this "witness" testimony as if it's a kill all. It isn't. Where Minsky was and with whom has far more weight than what someone said who - for the umpteenth time - WAS ALSO ON JEFFREY EPSTEIN'S ISLAND.

This "witness" also has zero bearing on anything Stallman wrote, as he was writing under the assumption that the accusation is true. Your continued use of it in defending Stallman denotes bad faith.

> ...RMS did not excuse the accusations of sex...

No, he only wrote a blog post saying that diddling kids should be legal. I can infer from that his thoughts on the Minsky situation.

> No, I'm only repeatedly restating what RMS said in different forms in a vain hope that one of these restatements "clicks" with you.

You're reiterating your interpretation as if it's valid. It is not, for all the aforementioned reasons.

Re: My Talk at Microsoft

#220

Post by rhinoceraptor »

NotATroll wrote: post #199
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Javascript in the browser is practically compiled binary software at this point. You can't realistically inspect or edit 99% of what you're running since it's fully minified and obfuscated. And that's even more the case with WASM.

Yeah, but what on earth is the alternative? Mobile gui's without javascript would be horrendous. On top of that, that's the platform you're minifying for . I don't minify javascript to hide what's running, I minify it because a 3KB file is a lot less to download than a 12KB file. So what? You design an entirely new language that: A) Can't be minified (How?) B) Has to be open source C) Can't be obfuscated (virtually i…

I don't think that there is anything necessarily wrong with it. I was just pushing back on the idea that just because Javascript is distributed in source form, that it isn't effectively the same thing as a compiled binary to the end user.
Post reply on HN