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Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

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Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#291

Post by doikor »

klabb3 wrote: post #131
TulliusCicero wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even people who don't care in the slightest about free software think anticheat is detestable. Generally the people who are actually into multiplayer games accept anticheat software as a necessary evil. Yes, they're not exactly enthused about what amounts to game-supporting spyware, but playing a game that's rife with hackers is a miserable experience.

Grifters, trolls, asshats always find their way into communities that are centrally moderated. That includes most online games and social media today. This problem isn't solved with anti cheat and government ID checks. In fact this problem was solved years ago, simply by letting each community create their own spaces with their own rules. This means some spaces are private. Others may be semi-open. And some will be f…

Private walled gardens would pretty much kill the competitive scene of most games.

I used to play competitive dota (the original wc3 map) back in the day and the inhouse leagues were a massive pain in the ass. Same with all the various leagues for counter strike (1.6 at the time). UX was terrible, the moderation sucked and you still had to have anti-cheat as people would cheat even in private spaces. Usually the easiest way to get up the ladder was do something dubious and be good friends with the mods so they would rule in your favor.

People use cheats even at LAN events too. So yeah for competitive multiplayer anti-cheat is pretty much required.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#292

Post by chha »

pygy_ wrote: post #221
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of "I, robot": to provide public safety, just throw everyone in jail.

They're soft... Had they been looking into definitively getting rid of un happiness, they would have killed everyone ASAP.

Already been done:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smile_(Doctor_Who)

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#293

Post by moth-fuzz »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #19

Stallman reminds me of a character in a Greek tragedy. He ends up bringing in the very thing he is fighting against. He makes GPL to give users control over programs. Companies end up using GPL software to power server side software which ends up giving users even less control than proprietary on-device software. He makes GCC to break free of vendors dominating compiler development. IBM(through Redhat) ends up being…

I think this is what a lot of people mean when they say that FOSS (and Open Source in general) 'lost' in the grand scheme of things. Sure, FOSS is running the entire show from sites to servers to databases to build systems to programming languages, but, whether or not you can actually see the code seems to hold little sway when the war is really over personal data and privacy. Who cares if I can see the tensorflow source code when the real danger is in the models these companies are building, which themselves are aggregated of petabytes of 'anonymous' user data. You'd have to open-source the data, too, to see how these businesses are truly run.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#294

Post by atoav »

waplot wrote: post #230

> Now, more free games? It doesn't satisfy an urgent practical need, obviously... But the crucial thing is, free ones might make it easier for some people to say, 'Let's move off this non-free thing, and play a game that is free. So we can have the same pleasure, but without paying freedom as the price.'“ i'm sorry but i just can't read this without laughing. what does stallman think gamers are like? i can only imagi…

I mean many games do have a privacy problem and I can't imagine it will just go on like this.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#295

Post by Jarwain »

feanaro wrote: post #280
mixologic wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like free software, and RMS's biggest blind spot is the network, between people, and between computers. Everything is framed and discussed in this old timey way of using computers, where you had a general purpose machine that was personal that you programmed to do things you needed, or installed software on, to also do something valueable. Now it seems like the vast majority of the needs and requirements to ru…

> The 'freedom' to inspect the code that runs on your computer is useless without both the freedom to see what happens upstream, and also some level of trust or confidence that the service you're using really isnt doing something nefarious. How is such freedom useless? I keep hearing this argument, yet I still run a significant portion of software locally and have no plans of replacing that with services, given they…

It's not freedom in general that's useless, but specifically freedom when that software relies on an upstream service to do things.

Your argument sounds like it is against the use of software that requires such an upstream service in the first place, which is a fair stance to take. The Problem is when that upstream service is Necessary for whatever you are trying to do. Like in circumstances where interaction and collaboration with other users is the goal.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#296

Post by alkonaut »

atoav wrote: post #294
waplot wrote: post #230

> Now, more free games? It doesn't satisfy an urgent practical need, obviously... But the crucial thing is, free ones might make it easier for some people to say, 'Let's move off this non-free thing, and play a game that is free. So we can have the same pleasure, but without paying freedom as the price.'“ i'm sorry but i just can't read this without laughing. what does stallman think gamers are like? i can only imagi…

I mean many games do have a privacy problem and I can't imagine it will just go on like this.

Sure. But let’s postulate that people would rather be monitored 24/7 than play the AAA game from even a a few years ago, and in order to stop playing AAA games and start playing free software, what is the realistic path there? Giving a yearly speech?

Being dogmatic doesn’t help here I think. Start from the fact (people must play billion dollar budget games) and work backwards. How can privacy be improved, etc.

Saying “solitaire has fewer privacy issues than this AAA game” is like saying “walking is better than driving”. That doesn’t improve cars.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#297

Post by tluyben2 »

zufallsheld wrote: post #285
vhgyu75e6u wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He seems so out of touch with reality, advocating for everything being free open source, specially games would have stopped many of the now cultural references that exists. Making games is hard, making good games is harder and needs a team both motivated and financially compensated.

RMS does not mean free as in free bear but as in Libre.

He sure does but that still would form many issues with compensation as we have seen, many times, with open source companies. Everyone shouts red hat or something but that’s one exception; most other people who make Libre software, die of hunger under a bridge, or, more likely, have a day time job and simply will drop the Libre project when things get too busy. This is why companies now go from Libre to something quasi Libre to try to make money. There are some Libre (supabase for instance) projects now getting fairly large amounts of VC cash to get going, but once they have to ‘stand on their own legs’ usually pattern emerge that are not Libre to pay back (provide ROI to) the investors and then some.

I wish we would find a way to properly do this; I would insist on creating only Libre software, but for now, it is fairly random if it will make money while closed (saas) software is much more straight forward as in; if I have clients, I make money. With Libre software that I ask money for, I might have 100k stars and a lovely following while making no money at all.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#298

Post by ivan_gammel »

Gollapalli wrote: post #257
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The qualitative shift of computational man finds that what he has read can be made into action, simply by it having been written, yet this does not hold true for a person who is handed Durants history of the world, or Livy’s history of Rome (before having been taught Latin, even!) and being told, you have knowledge, even though you can’t get through it all. I think you have much too high a regard for your own inter…

Perhaps. But I still think that computation is fundamentally different from everything that’s come before. I’m allowed to be idealistic about some things. Aren’t we all?

It is surely different in the sense that it has the complexity of higher order. Every software in addition to the complexity of the implementation also reflects the complexity of the domain: if one person cannot grasp the full picture of the domain, the same person cannot be expected to understand the software for it. We are beyond the point when for many domains a single human being could understand them in their entirety. 20 years ago I could say I understand and can replicate the technology behind a personal computer from silicon to OS internals to GUI application on a CRT screen (I studied electronics and computer science). Today even a specialist in one of the layers will need a lot of time to understand an unfamiliar product. If we cannot do it, we should focus not on how we can get access to the code but on how we can entrust the audit and repair responsibility to someone else who is a specialist. And that’s a different story.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#299

Post by belorn »

lovich wrote: post #82
Beltalowda wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago I saw an indie game developer recount his experience with Stallman[1]; he doesn't see how he can release his games as Free Software while making a living, pay his rent, pay for his children's education, etc. So he asked Stallman what to do about that. Stallman's reply? "You should not be making those games, it is unethical." To say that is non-constructive would be an understatement; it's just shuttin…

Stallman seems like the kinda of guy who would tell you that you need to starve in the streets as long as you fit his version of ethics. All while he lives comfortably off the income of his own celebrity.

> All while he lives comfortably off the income of his own celebrity.

For most part of his life he was living in his office at the university, technically homeless. After that period he lived in a home designated by MIT, possible because they got tired of the building code violation of having a professor living in his office.

Re: Richard Stallman – The state of the Free Software movement

#300

Post by thinkingemote »

noobermin wrote: post #128

I'll go ahead and shoot. The fact that this topic would be off-topic is just not true as the person speaking is in fact rms. Does this mean he is recuperated now? Everyone was calling him a pedophile and the FSF lost a lot of contacts over him being re-appointed. What does this mean then? Tbh, I was curious what happened since last year and I didn't realize at the time he was somewhat apologetic, and honestly, it is…

Interesting question, and the discussion does still need to be had. Let me try to give some insights:

The FSF today has the highest membership it has ever had. Most new members joined in support of RMS last year in defence of the attacks on his reputation. The Foundation is doing very well now.

One interesting (and little discussed) theory about the attack on RMS that I heard was that it was also an attack on the Free Software and the FSF as a kind of coup and championed by people working from and benefiting from the chip makers, corporations and manufacturers.

Now there's is some evidence for that the majority of attackers were from that group, however I suspect it's more likely a correlation between the new kind of professional cultural standard of Silicon Valley highly paid technologists and their income sources, than any coordinated attack on Free Software in principle.

There was some a relation between the more lax Open Source developers and the anti-RMS stance seen in previous times, but I think, again, it's not some conspiracy to take down Free Software but rather a relationship between the more pragmatic Open Source developers being able to work for the Silicon Valley industry and becoming part of that culture.

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