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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

#331

Post by ddingus »

smackeyacky wrote: post #269
xiphias2 wrote: post #59

,, Macintoshes are moving towards being jails, like the iMonsters. It's getting harder for users to install even their own programs to run them.'' I feel this all the time, especially on my iPad Pro: I'm buying much more idevices than before, because I don't like the direction Windows has taken, and Apple gets always the newest TSMC slots (I buy the newest products from TSMC, they just happen to be made together with…

It amazes me that the very first personal computer I had was effectively useless without being able to write your own software. It wasn"t an Apple ][ but they encouraged software development, it was a huge part of 8 bit culture. 40 years later, trying to get something running on a modern Mac is painful, and they gatekeep it with Xcode and a variety of user hostile features. They have become what they despised in that…

The machines were often sold with your ability to create software with ease being a feature / benefit selling point.

The Apple ][ is the iconic machine, as was the BBC Micro (which has a kick ass BASIC / in-line assembly environment in ROM many Apple ][ users would envy), and heck my machine came with schematics!!

The modern Mac is a bit painful. Agreed.

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

#332

Post by mpol »

pjmlp wrote: post #311
pmoriarty wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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)?" It's not like closed-source software would have prevented any of this.

People actually pay for closed source software, even if piracy might happen. SaaS is the only way left to force most people to actually pay for the FOSS stuff they leach.

I don't think "force" is the right word here. More that it's an offer companies can make and customers can choose. Free software and free data are not always a concern of users, lock-in might not be the best choice long-term, but they are not being forced in any way afaik. (edit: initially I mean, after the lock-in there is force of course.)

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

#333

Post by crazypython »

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…

under the free software philosophy (free SOFTWARE), art assets are allowed to be non-free, but stallman believes the game code itself should be free. considering games rely heavily on art, this model still lets you sell games.

Stallman isn't a free culture person

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

#334

Post by lovich »

ddingus wrote: post #317
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…

At a minimum, those gamers need to look at the past, and their own future. See, when hardware was more open, I was able to preserve and continue to play the games I enjoy. In fact, I can disassemble them, learn from them, make my own. The gamers of today won't be playing the games of their formative years on their terms, if they are playing them at all. This is just one of the many things Stallman is right about. Lau…

>won't be playing the games of their formative years on their terms

Do they care? Lots of these games are like fashion, where the core gameplay loop is pretty similar to exactly the same as previous games, just with a different art direction on top. The fact that its popular is what makes it popular until its not.

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

#335

Post by robonerd »

pxeger1 wrote: post #251
zzo38computer wrote: post #247

> Ubuntu of course is a non-free distro, and I wouldn't recommend that anyone use it. I use Ubuntu because it came with the computer, although it is a old version, and I have removed many of the included packages. (If I was setting it up myself, then I might prefer one without systemd (and without Wayland, if possible); I would also need it to be based on free software, although I do not require that the package mana…

> without Wayland, if possible What's wrong with Wayland?

Speaking for myself and my computer: 15-25% performance loss in games (OpenMW and Minecraft specifically) with no apparent upside. I use X11 kwin with compositing on a laptop with Intel graphics, I don't get any screen tearing with this configuration, so what's the point of Wayland?

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

#336

Post by numpad0 »

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 think he just reinvented F2P. Or looking at something similar to its spirit.

Many modern competition games like VALORANT or PUBG are free-beer with paid food, built on free-beer semi open engines like UE4, and are also streamed free-beer on Twitch or YouTube.

And kids are moving towards F2P from paid games such as Battlefield or Call of Duty franchise, because the former category is free(-beer). The former is also startin in to surpass the latter in quality.

It’s “just” a matter of turning free-beer into free speech, and I think it could well happen as an inevitability, just not in a quarter or two.

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

#337

Post by lovich »

worik wrote: post #127
seoaeu wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are defined by what they say though. And a quick google search reveals that RMS’s “emacs virgins” comment wasn’t just an out of character remark he made once in passing

Perhaps because I do not use google (are you in a bubble?) I did not have that result searching. Before I commented I tried to find the source, interesting digressions ensued, but nothing that suggests this is typical. Also I mentioned I have been following him for a long time (nearly three decades, golly). I have never heard those sorts of words pass his lips. So I accuse you of telling a lie here. It is not uncommo…

First hit for me searching `emacs virgin stallman` on duckduckgo and bing separately. That's three major search engines. (Are you in a bubble?)

>I have never heard those sorts of words pass his lips. >So I accuse you of telling a lie here. It is not uncommon to make up stories and exaggerate faults of those you politically oppose. Still lies

You must not be listening very hard. Making comments like these is even part of his wikipedia page as he had to set down from the FSF and MIT for a while for similar comments

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

#339

Post by ddingus »

lovich wrote: post #334
ddingus wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a minimum, those gamers need to look at the past, and their own future. See, when hardware was more open, I was able to preserve and continue to play the games I enjoy. In fact, I can disassemble them, learn from them, make my own. The gamers of today won't be playing the games of their formative years on their terms, if they are playing them at all. This is just one of the many things Stallman is right about. Lau…

>won't be playing the games of their formative years on their terms Do they care? Lots of these games are like fashion, where the core gameplay loop is pretty similar to exactly the same as previous games, just with a different art direction on top. The fact that its popular is what makes it popular until its not.

They will. They will want to share their roots, tell their stories, etc...

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

#340

Post by kiwicopple »

tluyben2 wrote: post #297
zufallsheld wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 qua…

supabase ceo here

> pattern emerge that are not Libre to pay back

I do not see this to be a pattern we will follow. We have a hosted offering which we earn revenue from.

The self-hosted offering always being free. All software is MIT, Apache2, or PostgreSQL licensed and we plan to keep it that way. We have the beneficial characteristic that we are a suite of tools, which limits the threat of competition from a cloud provider like AWS taking the software and offering it themselves. What would the offer from Supabase? Our Realtime server? PostgREST? The Dashboard? PostgreSQL? They already do. Our Postgres extensions? Hopefully they do, it will make it easier to run Supabase with RDS.

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