Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Time to fork the FSF

larrythefreesoftwareguy.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 340 posts

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#41

Post by saurik »

leot wrote: post #17
BigCanOfTuna wrote: post #12

Crass and insensitive but in line with everything I've ever heard him profess to believe. He's never strayed from his goal in making great software available to millions of people around the world, and he's never given a shit why it shouldn't or couldn't be done his way...damn, that sounds familiar.

Yes, but RMS is simply wrong, here. Jobs has put great software into more hands than RMS ever did. Jobs might well have (indirectly) had an even more positive influence on FOSS by spreading BSD. (I'm not saying that there isn't a ton of FOSS out there in lots of hands -- but RMS isn't responsible for its being there in the same way Jobs is responsible. Jobs is responsible for the iPhone. RMS isn't responsible for And…

(BSD != "Free" => Mac OS X != "Open". Jobs "spreading BSD" is therefore irrelevant, and probably explains the downvotes you are receiving, if you or anyone else are at all curious.)

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#42

Post by cookiecaper »

leot wrote: post #17
BigCanOfTuna wrote: post #12

Crass and insensitive but in line with everything I've ever heard him profess to believe. He's never strayed from his goal in making great software available to millions of people around the world, and he's never given a shit why it shouldn't or couldn't be done his way...damn, that sounds familiar.

Yes, but RMS is simply wrong, here. Jobs has put great software into more hands than RMS ever did. Jobs might well have (indirectly) had an even more positive influence on FOSS by spreading BSD. (I'm not saying that there isn't a ton of FOSS out there in lots of hands -- but RMS isn't responsible for its being there in the same way Jobs is responsible. Jobs is responsible for the iPhone. RMS isn't responsible for And…

RMS makes no comment about "great software" in the post. He says that Jobs "made computers as a jail 'cool'" (paraphrase), and I think to a great extent that's true -- Apple has always been the most aggressively locked-down computer maker. Although OS X uses several open-source internals and although Apple even maintains some of these (including very important ones, like CUPS and X), they are still in some ways the most "locked down" computer (and consumer electronic) maker out there.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#43

Post by cookiecaper »

kristopolous wrote: post #25
learc83 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't always agree with RMS, I think he truly believes everything he says. I don't think the same of Fred Phelps. I long ago reached the conclusion that he tries to say the most inflammatory thing possible wether he really believes it or not. I have no idea why, but I believe he has some other agenda than just the condemnation of homosexuality. I've even almost seriously entertained the idea that he is a clos…

Some think he's just a novel con-artist: 1. http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/gro... 2. http://kanewj.com/wbc/ Looks like it equates to fairly decent take-home pay given that he probably works far less than the 2080 full time hours a year for it. And remember, it's a church, so it's all tax free.

I would say that a very significant contingent of Protestant church men are in it for the money. We shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that they're all sincere -- cons often come with a generous helping of scriptural glaze.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#45

Post by cookiecaper »

gfodor wrote: post #27

All you really need to do is consider what Steve Jobs would have said about RMS if he were still here when RMS is no longer. At worst, he'd say nothing, at best, he'd say something that would have touched you and made you think deeply about what the two men had in common despite their deep differences.

I upvoted this, but meant to downvote it.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#46

Post by yew »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #36
learc83 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most zealots have a strong conviction, and will do whatever is necessary to further their cause. Sometimes what they deem necessary is shocking to the rest of us. However, Phelps "ministry" seems to exist, simply to shock. He's like the one dimensional villain who is evil for the sake of being evil. Since his public persona seems like a fictional character, I assume he is one.

>He's like the one dimensional villain who is evil for the sake of being evil. That's how I see the Pope or your typical small town preacher, yet I believe their sincerity. I'm not sure why you get to sit there and decide who is sincere and insincere without any proof. They are Christians, they follow scripture, they have opinions and audience. They're not con men, they are simply misguided and in IMHO evil because i…

Given the degree to which Phelps has in fact monetized his craziness, I'm personally inclined to believe that it's at least partly an act. His whole family regularly engages in activities that are specifically calculated to make people angry enough to do something, and then they sue everyone they can get their hands on for as much money as possible.

I don't think he's an atheist, though. I know plenty of Christians who are almost as crazy and definitely not acting. I think he's just a fundamentalist who's smart enough to take advantage of adding a little on the top; a sort of larger-than-life "media personality."

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#47

Post by MBlume »

learc83 wrote: post #34
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naww, he's just a zealot. The history of religion is the history of zealotry, as well as oppression and violence. Funny how you think he must be an atheist, when he fits the religious zealot profile to a 't.' Phelps fits the character of so many religious leaders who have millions of followers and millions of dollars. Phelps' big issue is that he's poor at monetizing his crazy, unlike other successful bigots like Fal…

Most zealots have a strong conviction, and will do whatever is necessary to further their cause. Sometimes what they deem necessary is shocking to the rest of us. However, Phelps "ministry" seems to exist, simply to shock. He's like the one dimensional villain who is evil for the sake of being evil. Since his public persona seems like a fictional character, I assume he is one.

If you're right, it's a pretty deep con he's playing:

www.atheistnexus.org/page/nate-phelps-2009-aa-speech

trigger warning/tl;dr: Phelps family is every bit as horrifically abusive as you'd imagine.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#48

Post by microarchitect »

learc83 wrote: post #34
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naww, he's just a zealot. The history of religion is the history of zealotry, as well as oppression and violence. Funny how you think he must be an atheist, when he fits the religious zealot profile to a 't.' Phelps fits the character of so many religious leaders who have millions of followers and millions of dollars. Phelps' big issue is that he's poor at monetizing his crazy, unlike other successful bigots like Fal…

Most zealots have a strong conviction, and will do whatever is necessary to further their cause. Sometimes what they deem necessary is shocking to the rest of us. However, Phelps "ministry" seems to exist, simply to shock. He's like the one dimensional villain who is evil for the sake of being evil. Since his public persona seems like a fictional character, I assume he is one.

Some corollary of Poe's law applies here. If some religious guy seems too batshit insane to be true, he's just as likely to be real as he is to be batshit insane.

Re: Time to fork the FSF

#49

Post by genieyclo »

josephg wrote: post #6

I'm aware of Stallman's advocacy on free software issues, but (completely honest question), what else does the Free Software Foundation do ? Software is at a point where its basically impossible to make anything useful without opensource software. Proprietary code is a minority in my stack both as a developer and as a user. Proprietary software is often good before opensource software is good, but consistently openso…

rtm would never run HN on Linux :-)

If they haven't upgraded, FreeBSD 7.1 (not sure on the particulars of RELEASE version).

news.arc does not need Apache or NGiNX, but I'm not sure whether HN uses varnish cache.

Post reply on HN