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Time to fork the FSF

larrythefreesoftwareguy.wordpress.com

251–260 of 340 posts

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#251
post #13

At the risk of getting repetitive: I think rms was speaking strictly from a utilitarian perspective-- that is, Jobs' absence is overall a good thing for the FOSS movement (even though that might not actually be true, unless Cook is more committed to FOSS than Jobs). I can see how some find his statement tactless, but I'm not offended by it because Jobs was not an important person in my life. That doesn't mean that hi…

+1 (I especially agree with last part where you question forking FSF)

I am really proud of this downvotes I got for supporting free software :)

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#252
post #40

RMS has the FSF and Defective By Design sites as soapboxes if he wished to gain more attention from Jobs's death. This was a post on his political notes page. He did nothing to publicize it. He didn't post to aggregators or tweet to ask for upvotes (technically it was posted on his Identi.ca account which is linked to his political notes feed, but it got no special treatment). If some major sites hadn't picked up on…

While he might not have asked for the publicity, it would be very easy for Stallman to issue a public apology.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe RMS sees a subtle distinction between death and gone-ness in his head. But I promise you that people in grief see absolutely no distinction between the death and the loss of the person they mourn. It is not legitimate for the mass of HN to be "in grief" because of Steve Jobs's death. You may be sad, but certainly no grieving period should be necessary for strangers. Stallman was not overtly disrespectful imo,…

>It is not legitimate for the mass of HN to be "in grief" because of Steve Jobs's death. You may be sad, but certainly no grieving period should be necessary for strangers. When was this decided? And by who? Did I miss a memo? I've never owned an Apple product in my life, but the computers I have used, the smartphone I own, the tablet I will eventually get, the world I will live in 20 years from now, probably would n…

> It is not legitimate for the mass of HN to be "in grief" because of Steve Jobs's death. You may be sad, but certainly no grieving period should be necessary for strangers. > When was this decided? And by who? Did I miss a memo?

You need a memo to tell you others don't have to feel the same way you do?

> So who's deciding how we are to legitimately feel about that?

You, but keep it to yourself or risk other people sharing their feelings with you.

I too see Jobs like Bill Gates. He went out of his way to sue competitors out of business and hated the idea of anyone's success he couldn't charge rent for. The world is a far poorer place because of would-be monopolists like him.

As for the future he'd have created, it's on schedule. He's a product manager, not a materials scientist, graphics artist, programmer, etc. The same quality of work is being done by the same workers today as is was last week.

As the leader of an consumer protection organization, seeing how Jobs sought to ultimately undermine personal control of a user's computer through DRM and lawsuits, Stallman's response seems quite reasonable.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#254
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mike Daisey in the NY Times was far, far more eloquent and actually in some ways, even more bitingly critical of Jobs than Stallman: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/opinion/jobs-looked-to-the... But he was also basically respectful.

EDIT: Already it's own post now: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3084961 Wow! Easily the best Steve Jobs article I've read this week! For me, this paragraph captures it all: I spoke with a man whose right hand was permanently curled into a claw from being smashed in a metal press at Foxconn, where he worked assembling Apple laptops and iPads. I showed him my iPad, and he gasped because he’d never seen one turned…

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Re: Time to fork the FSF

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 (I especially agree with last part where you question forking FSF)

I am really proud of this downvotes I got for supporting free software :)

"+1 agree" without adding new ideas is very poorly received on HN, no matter what the topic, because we can't afford to have everyone doing that. Just upvote.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the Apple way. Gave me lots of extra time to pursue other interests. Remember, you rely on a lot of people who aren't good at computers but have other skills.

>Gave me lots of extra time to pursue other interests. Honestly, I don't get this argument. I set a Linux installation up once, configure it how I like it, which takes a day or two in total, then I'm set for a few years. The administration on my system consists of running "pacman -Syu" every month or so then rebooting the system. So that's what, ~40 hours (high estimate at 1 hour per update to account for Murphy's La…

You raise a good point about other subjects. I think it is more about on going costs. Not initial costs. I don't think there is any platform that isn't a pain to setup. Mac OS is probably worse for setup since there is no apt-get and doesn't ship with as complete a set of standard software.

Eg. Ubuntu 10.10 to 11.04 required me to answer questions about some config files that I know nothing about. So you have to baby sit the installation. Leopard to Lion, click OK, go do something else come back to a Lion login prompt.

Mac OSX has Time Machine and APIs for in built autosave and versioning. It's not perfect but any sort of backup is good, as is making sure you do not lose your work. And the ability to restore accounts from Time Machine is pretty nice. Linux has ???

Mac OSX has Spotlight. I can type in something like "Canon" and get all the pictures I took on my Canon cameras. Linux has ???

That why I stuck with Macs. They are not perfect. But they really do try to make those little things work. My first Mac was the last generation iBook. I was completely amazed that it could go into and out of sleep mode correctly all the time. Saved me hours and hours of rebooting right there.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#257
post #184
post #40

RMS has the FSF and Defective By Design sites as soapboxes if he wished to gain more attention from Jobs's death. This was a post on his political notes page. He did nothing to publicize it. He didn't post to aggregators or tweet to ask for upvotes (technically it was posted on his Identi.ca account which is linked to his political notes feed, but it got no special treatment). If some major sites hadn't picked up on…

Hey, you seem to be as clueless about communication as he is.

What I find more interesting: are you as good at hacking as rms? Or is being better at communication the only thing you can take pride in? I suspect that might be behind all the ranting.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#258
post #184
post #40

RMS has the FSF and Defective By Design sites as soapboxes if he wished to gain more attention from Jobs's death. This was a post on his political notes page. He did nothing to publicize it. He didn't post to aggregators or tweet to ask for upvotes (technically it was posted on his Identi.ca account which is linked to his political notes feed, but it got no special treatment). If some major sites hadn't picked up on…

Hey, you seem to be as clueless about communication as he is.

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Re: Time to fork the FSF

#259
post #257
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, you seem to be as clueless about communication as he is.

What I find more interesting: are you as good at hacking as rms? Or is being better at communication the only thing you can take pride in? I suspect that might be behind all the ranting.

I have nothing whatsoever on rms’ hacking.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#260
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is not legitimate for the mass of HN to be "in grief" because of Steve Jobs's death. You may be sad, but certainly no grieving period should be necessary for strangers. When was this decided? And by who? Did I miss a memo? I've never owned an Apple product in my life, but the computers I have used, the smartphone I own, the tablet I will eventually get, the world I will live in 20 years from now, probably would n…

> It is not legitimate for the mass of HN to be "in grief" because of Steve Jobs's death. You may be sad, but certainly no grieving period should be necessary for strangers. > When was this decided? And by who? Did I miss a memo? You need a memo to tell you others don't have to feel the same way you do? > So who's deciding how we are to legitimately feel about that? You, but keep it to yourself or risk other people s…

> You need a memo to tell you others don't have to feel the same way you do?

Wow. What utter, irredeemable hypocrisy. "It's not legitimate for HN to grieve" is met by indignation at being told how we should feel, and then you have the unmitigated gall to declare in opposition that others don't have to feel the same way we do?! That was the point!

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