Didn't this fork happen quite some time ago?
http://www.opensource.org/
And for pretty much the exact same reasons being given now?
Although some of the people behind that are almost as embarrassing to be associated with as RMS.
Time to fork the FSF
301–310 of 340 posts
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
Strictly from an utilitarian perspective RMS should keep his big fat mouth shut when someone -especially somebody as popular as Jobs - dies.
I don't really think popularity is a reason to suppress rms' constitutional rights (he is a US citizen as far as I know), no matter how crazy or alienating his opinions are.
Come on, no one is saying he shouldn't have the right to express his opinion, just that he could have worded them in a way that didn't make people cringe.
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue is not at all with his opinion. It is that he expressed it in a horrendously, gratuitously crass and offensive way. Here is a transliteration into humane language of what he said: "My heart goes out to Steve Jobs' family in their time of grief. And my heart also goes to the millions of people who looked up to him as an icon and inspiration. But we need to not get so carried away honoring the dead that we fo…
>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,…
Steve Jobs made an impact on me through his words, his actions, and even his products. While I was a complete stranger to him, he was not a stranger to me. I grieved.
Keep in mind that grieving is not a binary thing. The grief one feels at the loss of one's children is different than losing one's parents, or a close friend, or a neighbor, or a coworker, or someone in the community, or someone you've never heard of living halfway around the world. Or a visionary business leader.
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that every good movement needs its loons. This is probably true but when they become an embarrassment and a liability it's better to distance yourself from them as much as possible. His latest comments are particularly insensitive but it goes a lot deeper than that. Most of the stuff he writes leaves me with a more negative view of free software. He basically wants people to reject most modern software/techno…
> He basically wants people to reject most modern software/technology/services No. If he wants anything from the average person, instead of for them, it's that they pay attention to the value of their freedom (to keep using your software when the key server goes offline, for instance) now instead of later when it's too late. > Most of the stuff he writes leaves me with a more negative view of free software. Of course…
> Of course. You resent what you see as his spiritual purity in rejecting Trojan horse DRMed products that lock you in because you know you aren't capable of going without something you want now for greater gain in the future.
> You realize that going with the locked-down answer is as smart as selling your house for the short-term gain, but unlike Stallman, are unable to control your urges. Thus you hate him, and those who can.
I am reminded of this quote:
"Each one of us, in his timidity, has a limit beyond which he is outraged. It is inevitable that he who by concentrated application has extended this limit for himself, should arouse the resentment of those who have accepted conventions which, since accepted by all, require no initiative of application." - Man Ray
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but it doesn't make me want to spend an entire Saturday trying to get Linux to recognize my sound card. Stuff like that is FUD though, linux sound support is pretty good these days and the amount and variety of devices supported dwarfs the best the commercial world has to offer. In general, Linux support of legacy devices is amazing. Newly minted hardware without a factory supported driver is a different kettle of…
When a user installs Linux and can't get her brand new graphics card to work, she doesn't care whose fault that is. When the brightness adjustment keys don't work, all I think is "crap, my computer does not work". The vast majority of people are like that; my use of the first person singular was not an accident, I count myself among them. It's not a matter of assigning blame, it's a matter of recognizing reality. For…
When a user installs Linux...
Someone who installs an OS has immediately gone beyond mere "user". A fairer comparison must include pre-installed machines.
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but it doesn't make me want to spend an entire Saturday trying to get Linux to recognize my sound card. Stuff like that is FUD though, linux sound support is pretty good these days and the amount and variety of devices supported dwarfs the best the commercial world has to offer. In general, Linux support of legacy devices is amazing. Newly minted hardware without a factory supported driver is a different kettle of…
Newly minted hardware without a factory supported driver is a different kettle of fish but you can't really blame the Linux driver writers for that, they need information to work with and if manufacturers are not going to supply that info it needs to be painstakingly recovered, which is not always possible and almost always incomplete to some extent. Who cares? It doesn't work. When I buy an Apple laptop I know all t…
I've encountered several printers and scanners that did not work on OSX but did have working Linux drivers. I've used graphic tablets, external sound cards, printers and scanners that just worked as I plugged them in under Ubuntu. Not so in Mac.
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#307Earlier 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…
"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 not exist if it wasn't for Steve Jobs." Steve Jobs has said many times that if he and Apple had not done the things they did, some other person or company -- within a short time period, would have done them.* If you respect wha…
"Steve Jobs has said many times that if he and Apple had not done the things they did, some other person or company -- within a short time period, would have done them."
Yes, someone probably would "do them". Probably not as well. Probably without the attention to detail. Had the Lisa and Macintosh come out, Microsoft or someone else probably would have still shipped a really crappy GUI. Maybe we'd still be using Windows 1.0.
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's pretty telling that tablet computers have existed for ... what, 15 years? And that tablet computing didn't take off with consumers until iPad. I think that's a fine example of how Steve influenced a change in the world. The Average Person has no concept of How Things Could Be Better. They just take what's available, get the job done, take their paycheck and live their lives. iPad seems to be the first ti…
>I think it's pretty telling that tablet computers have existed for ... what, 15 years? And that tablet computing didn't take off with consumers until iPad. I think that's a fine example of how Steve influenced a change in the world. Consider that for most of these 15 years, the hardware wasn't good enough for mass appeal. The combination of a CPU powerful enough to render video and to support custom apps written in…
Could not agree more.
But this Jobs fanboying surely indicates that world is not yet educated enough.
Even hacker's new crowd belives in Jobs magic and reality distortion.
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#309I don't get it, personally. Yes, Stallman's a loon - although as an aside I think that every good movement needs its loons. Who's going to say "you know what? I believe in Free Software so much that I will use nothing else, and publicly and harshly declare that anyone doing otherwise is a moron and a traitor to the future of humanity"? Anyone who is willing to sacrifice the usefulness of the last 30 years of propriet…
The issue is not at all with his opinion. It is that he expressed it in a horrendously, gratuitously crass and offensive way. Here is a transliteration into humane language of what he said: "My heart goes out to Steve Jobs' family in their time of grief. And my heart also goes to the millions of people who looked up to him as an icon and inspiration. But we need to not get so carried away honoring the dead that we fo…
I think better still would be to say nothing.
By completely failing to acknowledge what Jobs did that was positive (even within his own value system) Stallman shows just how clueless he is. To put it another way, Stallman is fine with people being imprisoned in the walled garden of a computer priesthood, so long as the software they don't know how to use is "free".
Re: Time to fork the FSF
#310Crass and insensitive but in line with everything I've ever heard him profess to believe. He's never strayed from his goal in making great software available to millions of people around the world, and he's never given a shit why it shouldn't or couldn't be done his way...damn, that sounds familiar.
It's my understanding that Jobs would turn on a dime and adopt your way of doing something in place of his, IF you could make a compelling enough case for it.