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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

#321

Post by largely_sitting »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #268

Missing a reflection about how abundance of F/OSS has pushed us towards SaaS as one of the few places left to make a living from pure software dev, and the oligopolies arising out of it. What about Linux (Android) being used as the prime spyware vector, and Linux being used for cloud lock-in (k8s et al)? Also missing a discussion about the role of open standards as opposed to open implementations, such as POSIX/LSB,…

I would be fine with far less features for a platform that was simpler and standardized. Users seem to be gravitating toward the same, with short form video and a search bar being their main anchors. A reflection on complexity versus free would be nice to see. The more complex a system is, the less free it becomes by virtue of implementation time.

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

#322

Post by robjan »

jrockway wrote: post #314
tannhaeuser wrote: post #268

Missing a reflection about how abundance of F/OSS has pushed us towards SaaS as one of the few places left to make a living from pure software dev, and the oligopolies arising out of it. What about Linux (Android) being used as the prime spyware vector, and Linux being used for cloud lock-in (k8s et al)? Also missing a discussion about the role of open standards as opposed to open implementations, such as POSIX/LSB,…

How does k8s lock you in to the cloud? The idea is that it's a replacement for things like Cloud Formation that really did lock you into AWS.

Isn't Cloud Formation more like Terraform? k8s pretty much abstracts the whole cloud platform and makes it deployable anywhere (theoretically). Although practically there's usually lock-in to some managed services.

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

#323

Post by npteljes »

jhbadger wrote: post #258
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…

There are some really addictive games that are open source though. And some of them are quite rightly famous. For example, Nethack. I've played Nethack for countless hours over the course of decades. It's definitely given me more entertainment than 99% of all commercial games that I've bought, and I have it installed on all my computers (and there are even phone versions). https://www.thegreatestgameyouwilleverplay.c…

The most fun I had, with people who give 0 thoughts about free software, were Teeworlds, Hedgewars, Xonotic, OpenTTD and OpenRCT and OpenRA, and Apple Flinger. These were genuinely fun, with relatively straightforward onboarding, and we sunk a good number of hours into them. This is not to say that they're better or worse than closed-source games, just my recommendation of what games proved to be actually fun under real life circumstances.

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

#324

Post by einpoklum »

csdreamer7 wrote: post #155

Around the 8 and 9 min mark RMS talks about old hardware losing software support, like 32 bit systems. I am a kernel developer and the kernel removes code for a lot of older systems all the time (often lesser known 32bit ARM systems). Phoronix reported that 5.18 removed the Andes NDS32 CPU arch code. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux-51... The reason they do this is because a lot of these syst…

So, two of the people closest to you use 32-bit machines today. Explain to me again why 32-bit support is not a major issue then? :-(

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

#325

Post by [deleted] »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #165

> Well, first of all, I don't think there's anything bad about playing a game. Unless the game is non-free — then it's bad for you, if you play it. I prefer the freedom to decide what’s good for me, and at least thus far have a better track record identifying what would benefit me than RMS has. I don’t even care about video games, my go to is still winmine.exe but who is anyone to tell me I shouldn’t enjoy that?

[deleted]

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

#326

Post by danjac »

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…

Stallman probably thinks the state of the art is "GNU-Penguin-On-A-Sled".

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

#327

Post by lovich »

belorn wrote: post #299
lovich wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would classify being able to live at his office without being tossed out into the streets, and being given a home after that got to be too much for the school, as living off his celebrity. The "technically" in "technically homeless" is a major difference between what Stallman has to deal with vs what non famous computer scientists/software engineers have to deal with.

I understand he's forgone the amount of wealth he could have accumulated by just working in the software industry in the name of his cause, and that is laudable. However he thinks everyone should do this despite the greater burden they'd have to shoulder. All the people he tells shouldn't be making non free software so they can support themselves and their families are not going to be given free lodging by MIT.

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

#328

Post by ddingus »

tjpnz wrote: post #301
jhbadger wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some really addictive games that are open source though. And some of them are quite rightly famous. For example, Nethack. I've played Nethack for countless hours over the course of decades. It's definitely given me more entertainment than 99% of all commercial games that I've bought, and I have it installed on all my computers (and there are even phone versions). https://www.thegreatestgameyouwilleverplay.c…

Doom 3 might technically qualify, the source code was released under the GPL years back. The caveat was that you needed the creative assets to play it (although I'm pretty sure it would happily run with custom maps). I especially like this model. You get the source but the people who worked on the game still get paid.

I do too.

Romero spoke about this a while back. Several members of the team at ID, Romero included, got started on the Apple ][ computers. Those machines were completely open, software driven everything! I keep one as a reminder of my own roots, and the machine is still fun! (Romero keeps his too, as do many from that time period, but I digress...)

The author behind Beagle Brothers software and educational materials was a huge impact on many of us, and ID. They released their code so that others may create and so that their games live on for the people who enjoy playing them. Open matters, and that's why one can play doom on almost everything these days, as one example.

It's a great model.

What I've enjoyed is seeing the ID team watch what others do, and share in all the fun from a secure position having been well paid, no worries beyond that.

And frankly, they can STILL sell those creative assets. People would still buy them.

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

#329

Post by npteljes »

alkonaut wrote: post #296
atoav wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We shouldn't expect one person to solve these issues though, I think. In my opinion it's perfectly valid from him to just point out the problem, or give a recap of the state of things and point out trends. It's up to everyone else to make of it what they will. I personally tested many of the foss games myself, and then pitched the ones to my group when we wanted to play games. Due to me trying them first and work out some kinks beforehand, onboarding was easy and we ended up having a good amount of fun.

I also like your train of thought however. Which is why I'm happy to support Steam in their effort with Proton. They surely can't make everyone release a Linux version, so what if Wine could run all of the games instead? I like this idea in general and it also enabled me to not reboot into Windows to play some of my favorites.

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

#330

Post by zichy »

tjader wrote: post #90
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 and the FSF see closed source software as unethical. Imagine if someone asked you for help and said "I don't see how to free my slaves while making a living, paying my rent, paying for my children's education". Would you tell them "You shouldn't have slaves, it's unethical" or would you try to help them find a way to run their business with fewer slaves, but still some?

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