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Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

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Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#241

Post by rakoo »

0xDEF wrote: post #144
rakoo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FSF has created the AGPL 16 years ago ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Affero_General_Public_Lice... ), so it's not like they didn't see the turn that software was going into. But it was already a losing battle, because every developer wants to think they might become millionaire and won't use it. Whether the software runs on my computer or not, if I am the user, I must be in control. Whether the meal is prepa…

AGPL is also the license you should use if you don't want big corporations to use your software. Big Tech even avoids GPL-3 and stick to GPL-2 from what I have noticed.

I'm fine with big corporations use my software: the deal is that whatever they do with it, they must give it back to the users with the same license. Make it live beyond the company's existence and control. It's still better than my software being non-copyleft and being used by a company.

I wish they would give back all the profit as well but that's another topic and the AGPL doesn't touch that.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#242

Post by tgma »

nvy wrote: post #138
rakoo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The FSF is clearly not reaching the people it needs to reach. The FSF has been talking to users and to devs for decades, but unfortunately devs went from being users that had no problem sharing their progress to business people who thought that restricting access for personal, individual gain at the expense of the entire society of today and tomorrow is somehow "better", "more free", because who knows, maybe I'll b…

Perhaps if the FSF had actual professionals running communications, people who persuade other people for a living, the FSF's message would actually get through to people.

I don't think PR is the real issue. IMHO, the fundamental principle behind FSF philosophy is the license is primarily written to secure the long-term interest of the _user_, not the community of the authors. The reason authors were okay with that in the first place is, early on in computing, users and authors largely overlapped, if not exactly the same. Over time, the authors and users diverged widely, thus their interests diverged. FSF philosophy has failed to appeal to the authors of the software because it is economically a bad deal for them. Users who do not pay are by-and-large leeches. Also, some of the freedoms are not considered as valuable by the users as they are for fellow authors, perhaps sensibly so because they are never going to utilize such freedoms.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#243

Post by _cenw »

missingET wrote: post #66
_cenw wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought the advocacy was fundamentally correct, but way too distanced from achievable and realistic compromises within a system that wants profit over everything. The only real path would've been through legislation, and now we're back to setting your expectations to realistic.

Although I never find myself agreeing fully with them, ideological absolutists who refuse compromise are actually useful as some kind of anchors to the Overton window. They are not the ones ending up negotiating the actual realistic solutions but their activism helps shifting the equilibrium. If your side of the argument is all compromise-makers trying to meet people halfway you often end up giving up more than you’r…

This is usually known as a radical flank, particularly useful in discussions about climate activism these days.

The FSF/GNU seems a bit too fringe and not too great at explaining the problem to everyday people instead just offering entirely uncompromising solutions that don't work for most people. More isolationist than activist. What would the less radical organization benefiting from the existence of FSF/GNU even be? The EFF?

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#244

Post by mbakke »

onethought wrote: post #213
loup-vaillant wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first principle, is when I have a thing (computer, car, toaster), I have the thing. It’s mine. I control it, I can have it repaired wherever, I can resell it, and if I have the skill, maybe even tweak it. But most importantly the thing serves me , not the corporation that sold it to me. If the thing is a general purpose computer that can run arbitrary software (and I’d be tempted to include anything that can be r…

That is why I made the point about the metal in a Tesla. It’s hardware, it’s yours, you have no reasonable capability to modify it, yet that is uncontroversial. So why is the software?

A metal bar will always be a metal bar.

Software is malleable, and Tesla (or hackers) can change it under your feet. You should be able to inspect it and have a say in what it does or whether to accept the next update.

See the recent Philips Hue debacle for an example of when software that's been running well for years suddenly turns on the user.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#245

Post by jraph »

drt5b7j wrote: post #240
jraph wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the person with the t-shirt is both sympathetic to communism or the Che, and RMS, I can see how it can not be a provocation. RMS was probably right not to sign it though. I also believe producing a t-shirt with RMS depicted as the Che is not quite right.

Of course the person with T-shirt is sympathetic to communism and RMS, but their sympathy to RMS is very superficial. Otherwise they would know that RMS wouldn't approve. So it's option 2 I guess.

Intent matters. It's only a provocation if it's meant to be a provocation.

Otherwise it's mere faux-pas, at worst.

What's more, you don't necessarily know everything about a person. I would not know anything about RMS's political opinions if I had not read his website a bit, I would only know him for his stance on free software.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#246

Post by morita2342 »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #5
freeqaz wrote: post #4

Some type of Lymphoma that is being managed, he said in the video. Does anybody have any other info about this?

The audio is really terrible, but he says that the cancer is being managed and that he will be around for many more years. I am glad to hear that. Before that, he talks about covid and long covid. But I couldn't tell if he says that he has long covid now. I know that he was being pretty careful to avoid covid, to the extent that's possible while travelling on planes as much as he does. I had some discussions with him…

On the topic of (long) covid, luckily he apparently is fully vaccinated (judging from the many times he wrote about the vaccine and mandates in his blog), so he likely won’t catch the new strands in the process of recovery or be in any danger of long covid.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#248

Post by boffinAudio »

Biganon wrote: post #238
drt5b7j wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) A picture of che Guevara is always an association with communism B) RMS is very well known as someone who is, amongst other things, not a communist. Frankly I fail to see how this could be taken as anything other than a provocation. Why would you have a picture of RMS as Che and then ask him to sign it? The only other explanation I can think of is you're too stupid to not see A or B.

Well first of all I was 15 or 16 at the time, so I guess I didn't give it as much though as you currently do, and besides, Che Guevara is (to me at least) not a symbol of communism first and foremost, but a symbol of a man fighting for his ideas (not saying that's my opinion of him especially nowadays, I'm talking about the symbolic power, especially of the famous photograph we all know). So... no. Besides, it was in…

Che Guevara was responsible for the murder of an awful lot of innocent human beings. That fact is lost on the edge lords who want to worship him as a saviour of mankind. He was far, far from that.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#249

Post by rakoo »

nvy wrote: post #138
rakoo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The FSF is clearly not reaching the people it needs to reach. The FSF has been talking to users and to devs for decades, but unfortunately devs went from being users that had no problem sharing their progress to business people who thought that restricting access for personal, individual gain at the expense of the entire society of today and tomorrow is somehow "better", "more free", because who knows, maybe I'll b…

Perhaps if the FSF had actual professionals running communications, people who persuade other people for a living, the FSF's message would actually get through to people.

The FSF has had actual professionals running communications.

I don't think the issue is in the form but in the content: developers don't want to hear they are favoring greedy private interests (sometimes including themselves, sometimes at their expense) instead of the common goods, because the freedom to restrict a good from everyone for personal profit is more important than the freedom to access said good and build upon it.

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