31–40 of 61 posts
Related question: wouldn't FOSS ruin competitive online play, by making it impossible for game companies to prevent cheating?
"My guess is that the direct good effect will be bigger than the direct harm." Did rms just admit that proprietary software can theoretically have benefits? What's this world coming to lol
That surprised me as well, I'm sure I've heard him say before that nonfree software is 100% unethical even on a free platform. Perhaps he realises that having steam + valve games would be a huge net win for desktop linux use. Even if you had mainly nonfree software , in theory desktop linux would still be quite a free system in the sense that there would be a level playing field amongst software devs.
Note he actually says "Nonfree games (like other nonfree programs) are unethical". That one believes an act is unethical is different from believing it will have a net negative effect vs not performing the act, and there's often a lot of nuance to be had when something is ethically questionable.
Consider the periodically-raised question of taking control of a botnet in order to shut it down. Opinions on this range from "totally ethical" to "totally unethical", even as much of the "totally unethical" crowd would probably admit that shutting down the botnet is a net good vs not doing so.
Sometimes, "X is unethical" doesn't mean "no good will come of X", it means "we need a third option". RMS believes non-free software is unethical, almost surely believes the existence of software in general is a net good, and that Free Software is the "third option".
"My guess is that the direct good effect will be bigger than the direct harm." Did rms just admit that proprietary software can theoretically have benefits? What's this world coming to lol
Programmers have to eat, and free software needs a supporting paradigm to be sustainable. With Firefox it's the search engine, with Apache it's support, only smaller projects can be made from pure passion. Any large company porting software to a platform will be good, as more people (and thus support) will come to Linux. >Nonfree games (like other nonfree programs) are unethical because they deny freedom to their use…
As more of our world is software and we rely on it to do things like store our personal information and trust it to respect our privacy etc, how is the availability and ability to understand and inspect that software not a potentially very ethical issue?
"My guess is that the direct good effect will be bigger than the direct harm." Did rms just admit that proprietary software can theoretically have benefits? What's this world coming to lol
Programmers have to eat, and free software needs a supporting paradigm to be sustainable. With Firefox it's the search engine, with Apache it's support, only smaller projects can be made from pure passion. Any large company porting software to a platform will be good, as more people (and thus support) will come to Linux. >Nonfree games (like other nonfree programs) are unethical because they deny freedom to their use…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That surprised me as well, I'm sure I've heard him say before that nonfree software is 100% unethical even on a free platform. Perhaps he realises that having steam + valve games would be a huge net win for desktop linux use. Even if you had mainly nonfree software , in theory desktop linux would still be quite a free system in the sense that there would be a level playing field amongst software devs.
Even the most zealous are rarely devoid of all nuance. Note he actually says "Nonfree games (like other nonfree programs) are unethical". That one believes an act is unethical is different from believing it will have a net negative effect vs not performing the act, and there's often a lot of nuance to be had when something is ethically questionable. Consider the periodically-raised question of taking control of a bot…
I'm sure I've heard Stallman say in the past that software cannot possibly be in any way good unless it is free.
Why would I care? I understand the point of freedom for some software: say if tomorrow the whole nginx team decides to retire and I nginx is a critical part of my business, I have the option of taking over the maintenance. But games are not like that. Games are entertainment and presumably a short-lived one. I play, I get bored, I move on. The games are also a product of diverse teams: it's not just programmers, but…
Games I think are a very different case to almost any other software and should be treated as such, of course that does not necessarily mean that they do not contain malicious features.
"My guess is that the direct good effect will be bigger than the direct harm." Did rms just admit that proprietary software can theoretically have benefits? What's this world coming to lol
RMS is pretty reasonable! He gets a bad rap, I think. It's like people watch his every move like, "Oh man, what's that craaaazzyyy old man going to do next?" Of course, he's actually right 4 times out of 5. I thought the point he made in this article was a balanced one.
Why would I care? I understand the point of freedom for some software: say if tomorrow the whole nginx team decides to retire and I nginx is a critical part of my business, I have the option of taking over the maintenance. But games are not like that. Games are entertainment and presumably a short-lived one. I play, I get bored, I move on. The games are also a product of diverse teams: it's not just programmers, but…
We create copyright laws because we want value what is made possible by it.
Games are entertainment.
Games are culture.
I want Hemingway's texts to be available to blind people, to to work on todays e-readers, and not be lost forever because they can't be updated to current technology.
There are specific exemptions in US copyright law to allow brail versions and copyright holders can't stop them being made available.
I want all copyright software source to be registered with the Library of Congress, because I value software.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
RMS is pretty reasonable! He gets a bad rap, I think. It's like people watch his every move like, "Oh man, what's that craaaazzyyy old man going to do next?" Of course, he's actually right 4 times out of 5. I thought the point he made in this article was a balanced one.
I agree that he was pretty reasonable in the case of this article, but he is a bit crazy by most people's standards. A friend of mine has worked for the FSF and told me that Stallman won't even use the World Wide Web! Anything he needs looked up he has coworkers do for him because they're foolish enough to trust that nonfree web sites aren't malicious.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/134979
As far as the internet, though, as I told a friend long ago - Richard Stallman doesn't need the internet. The internet needs Richard Stallman.
"My guess is that the direct good effect will be bigger than the direct harm." Did rms just admit that proprietary software can theoretically have benefits? What's this world coming to lol
Programmers have to eat, and free software needs a supporting paradigm to be sustainable. With Firefox it's the search engine, with Apache it's support, only smaller projects can be made from pure passion. Any large company porting software to a platform will be good, as more people (and thus support) will come to Linux. >Nonfree games (like other nonfree programs) are unethical because they deny freedom to their use…
The free or nonfreeness of a particular piece of software is as much of a moral question as the color of sand on a beach.