261–270 of 293 posts
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No, it would not... Give me a break. I pray that Poe's Law is in out in full force here.
We're probably not picturing the same thing here. How about a nuclear reactor? A 100kw transmitter? Does that help? Want me to draw it? Nice way to stray from the argument while being an ass. We're not even discussing anything related to free software anymore.
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We're probably not picturing the same thing here. How about a nuclear reactor? A 100kw transmitter? Does that help? Want me to draw it? Nice way to stray from the argument while being an ass. We're not even discussing anything related to free software anymore.
Exactly how much power to you think a tesla coil uses...? O.o Also, the primary reasons you cannot run (most kinds) of nuclear reactors in your garage have nothing to do with your power company (this said, if you do want to run your own powerplant and sell power back to the grid, you are more than free to do so... If you don't care about plugging yourself into the grid then you are even more free to do so). Similarly…
That's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I don't think this attitude is healthy around here - I'm not a native english speaker, and I know shit about electronics - the argument was completely ignored while I was hung out to dry because of a bad analogy.
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It's actually really interesting he feels the need to point that out. Possibly because the /g/ and /prog/ boards have such a fascination with him (perhaps deservedly). Stallman has famously called /g/ full of "inane comments" [1] - and I remember someone venturing far enough outside of /prog/ to mail another idol, Gerald Sussman, who said that such fandoms were "unscientific and ultimately destructive", which was ver…
Thanks for those wonderful screenies. I just intended to request further infos on the Stallman/4chan "relationship" but your posting cleared some things up. 4chan is still after all these years one of the most fascinating places around.
(http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/8326/screenshotmh3.png)
(http://dis.4chan.org/read/prog/1202783375)
(http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/1861/screenshotlm2.png)
etc etc.
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>If RMS saw me, he'd probably shoot me on the spot You must be thinking of ESR: http://www.catb.org/~esr/guns/
That is very distasteful. Just because someone is advocating firearms rights doesn't mean he will shoot you if you don't share his opinions.
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That is very distasteful. Just because someone is advocating firearms rights doesn't mean he will shoot you if you don't share his opinions.
Am I missing something? I don't even know who the guy is, and I was joking in my comment above. I am a gun nut myself, member of IPSC...
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> a lot of open source isn't Free in RMS's terms, but he does promote the whole open source movement as a whole You are wrong. "I do not advocate open source [...]" - Richard Stallman See: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/09/15/rms_why_open_source_...
sorry, reading what I wrote I can see I didn't phrase my pedantic point correctly - I included it for just such a comment as yours! What I meant to say is that he doesn't endorse non-Free OSS. But he does end up "promoting" it however (not purposefully), DESPITE being stricter/more to the left than it. I guess rather than promote I should have said help or aid. If he didn't do what he did the open source movement wou…
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"... He sounds like a religious fundamentalist, or an 'Amish farmer'..." I quite like the Amish Farmer [0] analogy to technology. Select the good bits of technology, ignore the ones that are "better left alone" . [0] Jamie Sharp, "The Amish: Technology Practice and Technological Change" ~ http://www.shawcreekgeneralstore.com/amish_article1.htm
"Lessons of Amish Hackers" a chapter in What Technology Wants by David Kelly.
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No, I get the free == freedom part. And it is still nonsensical at many levels. I developed hardware for many years. A lot of this hardware was based on FPGAs. FPGAs, while hardware, are made into a functional solution through code. You write your hardware description in Verilog of VHDL and you get a working product in return. Some of this code took years to develop, evolve and optimize. It was very, very costly. And…
Sorry, but I don't think you get it. To use your car analogy. The analogy would be correct if the only way to legally service your car would be to use the dealership's mechanic. Any attempt by you to rebuild your engine or use after-market parts would be illegal. Forget about improving your car in any way. That's illegal too. No new car stereo for you unless you upgrade to a whole new car. Most people are fine with t…
What you want, really, might be akin to the car company releasing the full design files of the car to you when you buy the car. What's the difference between source code for software and source code (the design) for making a car or a refrigerator these days. I fire-up Solidworks and can design a car. I fire-up various compilers and write the embedded code that runs the engine control systems, etc.
To create Linux, PHP or any piece of software you have teams of programmers in front of computers typing away. The case is the same for designing a car or a microwave oven.
Are you suggesting that Samsung should grant you the ability to download all the design files for that $69 microwave you bought at Walmart? Probably not. Why not? It's the same thing. I have spent years designing products that combine hardware and software. I've done it all in front of a computer. Exactly as I do when I code a website or an iPhone app. No difference. So, then, why treat them any different? Why aren't the proponents of free/freedom also not buying cars or supporting microwave oven makers than don't release their design files.
Ridiculous you say? So be it. It may very well be that it is not I who isn't getting it. My world is complete and equitable because I understand, like, support and promote that BOTH points of view are part of a symbiotic relationship. You cannot have free/freedom without paid/closed. Period.
I noticed that you neglected to mention my observations about you bringing up that MS was the largest contributor to the Linux kernel last year. You, with that, made my point with absolute precision: The largest contributor to Linux last year could afford to do so because they earn a revenue stream from another paid activity. And, in this case, it happens to be paid/closed software.
Again, I propose that the extremist view that ALL software ought to be free or free+freedom is simply not realistic and actually counterproductive.
What do you think would happen if someone like RMS came out and said something like: "I've decided to start supporting MS products because they enable MS to make significant and valuable contributions to the FOSS software community"
I'd bet you a good cup of coffee that you'd see a huge boost in the amount of FOSS work coming out of MS and others.
If you look at what RMS represents you can't help but cringe. He's actually proud of working with a piece of crap computer that is probably a decade behind the times. In his world the millions of people that have gained and continue to enjoy employment due to the evolution and improvements of paid/closed platforms and software would not have jobs. It's a joke.
I come from the vantage point of having designed and built my own computers down to the chip level. Having literally wire-wrapped my own boards. Designed my own disk controller cards and written my own OS and applications. So, I'll say that I have some skin in the game. And, yes, I know that a 1GHz machine with very lean software can do quite a bit. I was running AutoCAD on a CP/M system with 64K of RAM and a two-card math co-processor and RAM disk with 640K of memory. And I did a lot of good work with that. But, you know, today, I gladly pay thousands of dollars a year for licenses to programs such as SolidWorks and Altium Designer to get my work done. They are amazing and do a great job. They represent a tremendous amount of R&D and expertise in the field. And, no, I don't care to have the source code and don't really give a shit if they don't want to release it. It's their product and they should be entitled to do with it as they please. My annual license fees get me continued and consistent improvement and support.
We might want to agree to disagree at this point.
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Sorry, but I don't think you get it. To use your car analogy. The analogy would be correct if the only way to legally service your car would be to use the dealership's mechanic. Any attempt by you to rebuild your engine or use after-market parts would be illegal. Forget about improving your car in any way. That's illegal too. No new car stereo for you unless you upgrade to a whole new car. Most people are fine with t…
The analogy was not intended to be strict. That is impossible. What you want, really, might be akin to the car company releasing the full design files of the car to you when you buy the car. What's the difference between source code for software and source code (the design) for making a car or a refrigerator these days. I fire-up Solidworks and can design a car. I fire-up various compilers and write the embedded code…
To get you to think more carefully, as a computer engineer can you tell me the difference between a computer and a microwave oven or a car as finite state machines? Which regular languages does a computer accept that a car does not?
Also, can you tell me the the difference between software and the licensing of the software?
I think getting clear on those two questions will go along way towards clearing up your confusion.
You might also think about how RedHat recently made a billion dollars.
