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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

#361

Post by AndrewOMartin »

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…

Gamers includes people who play Doom. It's reasonable to think a few of those players will ask "Why does this have from the 90s have such an excellent, creative and enjoyable scene when tons of games since have been forgotten?"

The answer, at least partially, lies in free tools, engines, and community content.

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

#362

Post by deknos »

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…

you laugh until you get old and the games of your youth do not work anymore because of missing libraries on linux, if there was a linux port.

i am missing my unreal tournament days and would even pay money, if one would build an opensource clone where i could load the original maps of Unreal tournament and UT2004 into the game like with Command & Conquer: Red alert.

(UT2004 crashes randomly on linux and it's always a hassle with the 32bit libs)

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

#363

Post by simonh »

AndrewOMartin wrote: post #361
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…

Gamers includes people who play Doom. It's reasonable to think a few of those players will ask "Why does this have from the 90s have such an excellent, creative and enjoyable scene when tons of games since have been forgotten?" The answer, at least partially, lies in free tools, engines, and community content.

The only reason the engine can be free nowadays is that it has near zero commercial value to the IP owners. If the lesson is that for a libre game to survive and prosper at the mass market level being worthless is an important enabling factor, that’s not a great conclusion to come to.

Anyway Doom has this great community around it not just because the tools are free, thought that’s a an important enabling factor, but due to its cultural significance to gamers and games developers.

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

#364

Post by pjmlp »

pmoriarty wrote: post #360
pjmlp wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People actually pay for open source software too. Take a look at Ardour for an example. Red Hat too.

Indeed, however stuff like CentOS prove how people go out of their way to avoid paying, and how they get pissed off when that option goes away.

I should also note that nowadays Red-Hat belongs to IBM, so there are other forms of funding beyond support contracts for Red-Hat enterprise.

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

#365

Post by MaxBarraclough »

crazypython wrote: post #333
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

To add to this: here's a source confirming the FSF are ok with non-Free game assets (and other non-functional data). [0] They single out documentation specifically, saying that documentation should be Free despite that it's non-functional. [1] See also [2].

[0] https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guideli... (under Non-functional Data)

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.en.html

[2] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/essays-and-articles.html#exte...

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

#366

Post by 2b3a51 »

belorn wrote: post #252
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…

Developers naturally has the freedom to choose where and on what they want to focus development time on, through I would not discount 32-bit machines as computers that should by now have died and be discared, especially in the server space which is what RMS is talking about during that 8-9m mark. A old 1U rack server is perfectly fine to operate as a router, a firewall, a logging server, a message bus, secondary back…

OpenBSD...

"Due to the increased usage of OpenBSD/amd64, as well as the age and practicality of most i386 hardware, only easy and critical security fixes are backported to i386. The project has more important things to focus on." [1]

OpenBSD includes their Xorg port in a base install, and you can run a reasonable graphical desktop on a 32bit machine. Firefox is not packaged for i386 I think. I just use Seamonkey when I test the 32 bit image now and again. There may be other package limitations relevant to server only use. Seems a rational approach to me.

[1] https://www.openbsd.org/i386.html

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

#367

Post by kkfx »

There are two important point we can all see: desktop hw is more and more full of crappy firmware, more and more invasive, powerful in capabilities, out of our control etc AND there is a clear trend to converge toward the mobile world with is actually the worst IT world we have ever seen in closeness and surveillance terms. It's clear that in a not so far future having Windows ad EFI fw and a distro as a WSL application could be the sole choice for most.

Similarly the packaging part: actual trend to "sell" containers, pre-build images is a clear trend toward a proprietary world sold as FLOSS just because somewhere there is some code available. Just consider this: we do not need snap, appimages, flatpack, docker images, ... we have cgroups if isolation is needed and we have NixOS/Guix System. Commercial software, OpenSource-enterprise etc need those tools. Try to imaging why observing how real FLOSS development model was there in the recent past, the role of packagers.

Unfortunately most devs are born trained to proprietary development model sold as the best and sole paradigm, they can't even imaging something different than copy-cutting GAFAM models.

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

#368

Post by rndgermandude »

Kinrany wrote: post #307
User23 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make a lot of money writing free software at whatever FAANG is called now. I mean sure the source is never distributed because the binaries aren’t either, but it does meet the definition.

When Stallman says "free as in free speech, not free beer", he means freedom to use software in any way you want including changing it. Not zero price.

Except this model is practically "zero price". Yes, you can sell GPL software, but on the customer side, buying such software cannot be justified economically, if all you got to do is to find somebody/some place that will provide this software to you free of charge and legally so. The only customers that would pay are ones that do it for moral purposes, at which point your business selling GPL software isn't a business anymore, but something that receives charitable donations.

All of the open source companies/people that come to mind are not selling libre software, they are all selling some kind of service - support contracts, managed hosting, etc - or they embraced some kind of freemium/"open core" model (so they are really selling non-free software), or they are funded by charitable donations and sometimes public grants, often by having some large non-free companies being sponsors (Linus Torvalds is paid this way for example, through sponsorship money from the who-is-who of the non-free corporate world distributed through the Linux Foundation).

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

#369

Post by simonh »

car_analogy wrote: post #354
Jarwain wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 col…

> It's not freedom in general that's useless, but specifically freedom when that software relies on an upstream service to do things. Until that service (such as a bank) decides that your rooted, user-controlled phone is no good, and forces you to use one controlled by the manufacturer, if you want access to your bank account.

If you want access from an app on your phone yes, not just to have access.

The fact is it’s not just us that are stakeholders in the devices we carry. Our mobile network provider is a stakeholder, the manufacturer is a stakeholder, our bank is a stakeholder. This is why e.g. we don’t have unlimited rights over the bank cards or those access code generator devices some banks used to issue.

If you want to use your phone for some of the functions of a bank card, then some of your banks interests in the functioning and management of that card roll over into your phone. If you want to play a social online game on your device, then now the games company and the wider community of gamers playing that game with you has an interest in the management of your device. If you don't like that, that's fine you should be able to have as much control over your device as you want ideally, but you wont be playing those games or using those services.

Cory Doctorow is one of the few people in the techie public space that seems to have a really good grip on these issues and some practical ideas on how to solve these problems, through chains of trust based on users owning the keys to the chain of trust on their devices. It’s a really hard complex problem though.

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

#370

Post by peoplefromibiza »

maratc wrote: post #350
ddingus wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do tons of useful stuff on my computers running software locally on those computers. You are right about network services working hard to own more and more of the interactions and make it increasingly difficult to manage one's relationships and interactions without those services. Frankly, I've responded by making damn sure I have interactions with the people I care about that are not owned by these services. Shoul…

> That's a social problem being attacked with technology Any problem in the last couple of centuries is being attacked with technology. That's what the industrial revolution is about. Steam engine? That's a transportation problem being attacked with technology. Covid vaccines? That's a healthcare problem being attacked with technology. Anti-missile missiles? That's an international relations problem being attacked wi…

> Steam engine? That's a transportation problem being attacked with technology

steam engine has been adapted to transportation, after transportation was invented, they haven't solved any social problem.

there wasn't a transportation problem, there was a problem applying the technology to transportation, for lack of better alternatives.

steam engine in cars were banned until 1920s, so cars used electric engines.

it worked (kinda) on trains

main application of steam engine still remains steam turbines for power (electricity) generation, which is a modern technological challenge by itself.

> Covid vaccines? That's a healthcare problem being attacked with technology

COVID vaccines helped an economic problem, people would have survived by avoiding contacts

they have been in fact deployed firstly and foremost in developed (AKA rich) countries (2.8 billion people around the world are still waiting to get their first shot).

modern drug manufacturing is not about society anymore and hasn't been for at least a century now.

> Anti-missile missiles? That's an international relations problem being attacked with technology.

That's a warfare problem that has always been about technology, since forever.

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