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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

#371

Post by e3bc54b2 »

watwut wrote: post #347
robocat wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of examples where somebody who has influenced the world was an idealist, out of touch with societal norms. RMS has serious faults, but his virtues have an immense value in my opinion. ‘The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.’.

Tho, those unreasonable men also fairly often cause quite a lot of damage to their own causes and to world in general. Also, I think that looking at history, claim that all progress was due to unreasonable men is false.

> Also, I think that looking at history, claim that all progress was due to unreasonable men is false.

This is because the definition of 'unreasonable' is relative. For Edison, wasting thousands of hours of lightbulb experiment was quite reasonable.

For most people before him, it was squarely in the unreasonable territory, and hence it took Edison for lightbulb to happen.

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

#372

Post by guerrilla »

kergonath wrote: post #348
orbital-decay wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laughing at RMS had proven shortsighted in the past, and I don't think anything changed, it's still unwise. It's not just about free software either (that's a higher-level target), it's also about the hardware and freedom of running your software on your machine, and owning your computer in general. For example, anticheats in multiplayer games is the major driving factor behind locking PCs down with DRM and chains of…

> Laughing at RMS had proven shortsighted in the past, and I don't think anything changed, it's still unwise. I don’t know, I’ve been laughing at him for 20 years and nothing bad ever happened because of that. How is it unwise? > For example, anticheats in multiplayer games is the major driving factor behind locking PCs down with DRM and chains of trust. The driving force was (and still largely is) protecting copyrig…

Just Google "Stallman was right", sounds like you might be in a bit if a bubble.

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

#373

Post by neilalexander »

blueflow wrote: post #357
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…

I have a ton of devices that are 32 bit x86. I'd love if i was able to continue to use them... i can't stand having to throw away all tech every $x years. I only need like, 1 GB of RAM to work productively! I unironically work on machines that i found in the garbage. Remove 32-bit x86 support, and it will pin me down to the few 64-bit machines that i have.

Every line of code has a maintenance overhead and it is quite likely you are in a minority at this point. Eventually, as with all things legacy, the effort outweighs the gain.

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

#374

Post by peoplefromibiza »

kergonath wrote: post #348
orbital-decay wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laughing at RMS had proven shortsighted in the past, and I don't think anything changed, it's still unwise. It's not just about free software either (that's a higher-level target), it's also about the hardware and freedom of running your software on your machine, and owning your computer in general. For example, anticheats in multiplayer games is the major driving factor behind locking PCs down with DRM and chains of…

> Laughing at RMS had proven shortsighted in the past, and I don't think anything changed, it's still unwise. I don’t know, I’ve been laughing at him for 20 years and nothing bad ever happened because of that. How is it unwise? > For example, anticheats in multiplayer games is the major driving factor behind locking PCs down with DRM and chains of trust. The driving force was (and still largely is) protecting copyrig…

> I don’t know, I’ve been laughing at him for 20 years and nothing bad ever happened because of that. How is it unwise?

[anecdotal]

luck has nothing to do with being wise.

anyway, I think unwise in this context means that RMS has been right more times than he's been wrong.

And very few of those laughing at him have ever asked for forgiveness for laughing at him or recognize that we owe to him some of the benefits of living in the modern computer era.

https://banksyexplained.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/LAUGH...

> The average teenage gamer does not care

that's why kids have neck beard parents to care (by law) about their future and safety.

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

#375

Post by Macha »

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.

However, as has been a point of discussion here for the last several years, the SaaS services themselves are often as much "leeches" as the users when it comes to open source.

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

#376

Post by pmoriarty »

pjmlp wrote: post #364
pmoriarty wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

CentOS was popular, but Red Hat still made billions of dollars in revenue.

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

#377

Post by lynguist »

assttoasstmgr wrote: post #210
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…

There were a large number of Intel Atom tablets and laptops manufactured less than a decade ago that were hobbled with I think a 32-bit UEFI which could only boot a 32-bit OS. I own two of these devices myself so they are not uncommon.

The deal with these devices is they have the compute power of a Pentium III from 1999 or a Raspberry Pi 2 from 2015.

It’s enough for an embedded system, but vastly underpowered for desktop computing or web browsing.

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

#378

Post by peoplefromibiza »

watwut wrote: post #347
robocat wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of examples where somebody who has influenced the world was an idealist, out of touch with societal norms. RMS has serious faults, but his virtues have an immense value in my opinion. ‘The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.’.

Tho, those unreasonable men also fairly often cause quite a lot of damage to their own causes and to world in general. Also, I think that looking at history, claim that all progress was due to unreasonable men is false.

> Tho, those unreasonable men also fairly often cause quite a lot of damage to their own causes and to world in general

did they?

I think that in history those that caused quite a lot of damage to the World are those that laughed at unreasonable men, thinking they could not achieve anything substantial.

Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead or wearing toothbrush moustache, is purely coincidental

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

#379

Post by alkonaut »

DocTomoe wrote: post #318
alkonaut wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a game costs hundreds of millions of dollars to create. Just royalties to sports leagues etc can be massive, for a sports game for example. RMS should work backwards from that assumption and explain how to get such games into gamers hands while maintaining freedom. If he can’t then he should probably give up arguing that people should stop playing or switch to something completely different than what they conside…

No. A game does not cost hundreds of millions of dollars to create. Some games choose to burn hundreds of millions of dollars, for very little return. Some of the best games were a lot cheaper to produce. License costs are elective: Noone forces you to plaster Football players names and team logos on your Football game (and some of the best (and creative) Football games choose not to) The main problem is that RMS liv…

> The main problem is that RMS lives in a world in which people care about freedom, when they only care about brand recognition - and that is in fact related to marketing and thus "millions of dollars".

There are other reasons than licensing and marketing that makes games cost hundreds of millions too. People expect games to be on the scale that they are, so the cost of developing these games will be astronomical.

It’s ok to care about freedoms of course but I don’t see how it’s a meaningful to argue that the most popular section of games should simply go extinct rather than work for making those more free or privacy conscious than they are.

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

#380

Post by badsectoracula »

deknos wrote: post #362
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…

FWIW UT2004 works fine under Wine (GOG version) here.
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