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Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

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Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#391

Post by hkt »

hutzlibu wrote: post #328
hkt wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are phases in which change happens: Stallman's preaching to people who can actually make free software (eg, people you might find on HN) has accomplished a huge amount of capacity building. He's tremendously good at encouraging it, and always has been. That provides the raw material for people who are perhaps a little more adoption focused (and apt) which is work that can't happen if there's no capacity.

Well, I am also good at making software, share the goal of a world where everyone fully controls their devices - yet I am appalled by many things around him. Mostly the "superior" ethical stance. You do things this (my) way, then it is ethical and you love freedom or you are not ethical and don't want freedom. Sorry, but I just have some different opinions about some things, but I rather feel not like working togethe…

Yet there are enormous amounts of cooperation within free software. There are the various organisations like the GNOME foundation, the Free Software Foundation, Debian, and many more beside. Thousands of volunteers keep these things going to produce well integrated, usable software.

Not to mention the common principles in most free software around interoperability and loose coupling. Apple and Microsoft (and the rest) have less to do on this, because they don't have to make their software nearly as generic. Microsoft famously fixed something in SimCity at the OS level. Google and Facebook don't have to worry about interoperability, which undoubtedly removes a lot of complexity for them. In some ways, free software has a greater burden to carry.

The problem with usability in free software is not one of culture or cooperation, it is one of capital. The fact is, Apple and Microsoft have at this point invested hundreds of billions in finding the best engineers and designers around the world and paying them to focus on polishing their operating system. By comparison, Debian's (very impressive) 3500 or so developers, maintainers, and contributors, are almost exclusively volunteers and working at most part time on their chosen packages.

If you want to see better free software, what I'd suggest to you and everyone else is this:

Next time you want to buy a phone, pick something cheaper, and donate the difference to a developer of free software. If you're an iPhone user and you switch to a Fairphone 5, say, you can throw £600 at someone like Joey Hess, or just pick an organisation that makes good stuff and give it to them if you don't want to find a specific author. Let's remind ourselves that if 1000 people did this, it'd be £600k of funding to improve free software.

Personally, I'd recommend a donation to the NLNet foundation: https://nlnet.nl/

(plug for nlnet, they're currently taking proposals and will fund successful ones: https://nlnet.nl/news/2023/20230801-call.html )

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#392

Post by oblio »

jeltz wrote: post #342
pawelmurias wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux desktop is more viable than ever. Other then in most stuff migrating to the browser how so? Browser + terminal has been a good combo for a long time, the desktop enviornment only have suffered enshittification due to a push to touch screen oriented UI conventions.

PipeWire made sound finally work flawlessly for me on Linux, Proton made it possible to play a ton of games, graphics drivers being stable, especially for Vulcan and Firefox enabling hardware acceleration. Some things are worse as you note, but there have been som important improvements.

Is there a mainstream laptop on which Linux runs as well as Windows? I'd really want one that doesn't cost 3k+.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#393

Post by spiritplumber »

PostOnce wrote: post #322

Stallman's character is one of the reasons I have repeatedly considered establishing some kind of "Church of Computing", i.e. an organized "religion" solely to secure religious protections and rights as they apply to the modern world. For example, the right not to have to use some random company's app to interact with a government agency or a public school (and agree to said company's EULA, etc). It only takes a few…

You have visited the EFF's headquarters, yes?

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#394

Post by oblio »

onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #192
tibbydudeza wrote: post #114

A divisive character and not the easiest to deal with and rather cranky and very set in his ways (his web browsing via an email - eish) but without his early efforts there would have not been the FSF and GNU and later Linux. Right person at the right time - live long and prosper RMS.

Once you start reading some more accurate history of famous people in the past you will find out that pretty much everybody did things that today would get you canceled. Nobody is perfect. World is moved forward by imperfect people that are able to do something productive for the society.

> today would get you canceled

I hate that word. It's not being "cancelled". It's being called out for being a jerk, and it's past overdue we did that.

For the Stallman case the impact of "cancellation" was probably 0, anyway.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#395

Post by blueflow »

throwaway5Am1k wrote: post #382
Pannoniae wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Linux desktop is better than ever (in fact, I am switching to it the first time in a few days! I just need to setup some things first) Sadly, the enshittification has also taken over parts of the Linux desktop as well though. For example, the mobile-first, flat-everything user-hostile design. (like gnome) Dark themes were not common while skeuomorphism was mainstream, they are only in demand right now because vie…

>enshittification This is the 2nd time this word has been used to describe the Linux desktop in this thread, and it's disingenuous. FOSS doesn't do any of the things described with enshitification article: it doesn't sit between buyers and sellers and screw each of them in turn. That's not what's been happening. Maybe the software goes shit, but it is not "enshitification". At every turn there's been alternatives (GN…

I disagree, use the word more to complain about GNOME and what they did to their UI. Even my 512GHz Windows XP Laptop runs more smoothly, and that without SSD.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#397

Post by badpun »

calderknight wrote: post #264
robertlagrant wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. People fleeing Communism are the last people you want to listen to regarding Communism. Dismiss them as rabid and move on.

I presume you're being ironic. One should listen to them. One should also be aware of the massive selection bias in views you're going to hear.

Show me the countries (ok, even one country) in the world where people are happy that they are/were under communism. In other words, it's not selection bias when everybody holds more or less the same opinion.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#398

Post by AndyPa32 »

jraph wrote: post #355
borbulon wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having cancer myself, I can tell you that there are a lot of misconceptions about what life “under chemo” is like. I’m in a clinical trial for pills now, but when I was doing infusions, the worst of them had me out of commission for about 4 days - chemo day (which was about schedule, not side effects), then days 4, 5, and sometimes 6 after chemo day. The rest were completely manageable, in fact I looked forward to wo…

> the worst of them had me out of commission for about 4 days - chemo day (which was about schedule, not side effects), then days 4, 5, and sometimes 6 after chemo day Isn't chemo tolerated differently in different patients? It's still anecdotes, but I've heard many stories of people, some usually very dynamic, being strongly weakened by it. To the point some even decide it's not worth it and stop the treatment altog…

Yes, it's different for different patients.

It's also true that chemo treatment has gotten better over the years. Chemo 20 years ago was much harsher and it's not the same anymore. Advancements in pharmacology.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#399

Post by hkt »

luma wrote: post #357
PostOnce wrote: post #322

Stallman's character is one of the reasons I have repeatedly considered establishing some kind of "Church of Computing", i.e. an organized "religion" solely to secure religious protections and rights as they apply to the modern world. For example, the right not to have to use some random company's app to interact with a government agency or a public school (and agree to said company's EULA, etc). It only takes a few…

You refuse to learn something because you are afraid that that thing might change and require you to learn new things? Maybe this isn’t the best industry for you.

He's very much not saying this, he's saying he doesn't want a small number of very large companies to be in control of whether or not his skills are valuable at market. This could broadly be construed as an argument against the entire cloud/SaaS/PaaS/IaaS market, but it is still a very valid criticism. Most IT people are in some way subordinated by massive companies, and free/open source software is an escape hatch on that, because there's not a relationship of exploitation or control between users and community projects.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#400

Post by jonahbenton »

oblio wrote: post #387
op00to wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Knew him a long time ago. It's a very different thing not understanding what other people are, compared to bearing them ill will. Definitely interactively incompetent, but doesn't carry ill will.
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