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Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
401–410 of 841 posts
Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
#402I wish RMS all the best for his health, a long and happy life. I also know that if he reads this, it will be from an Emacs mail client on his dusty ThinkPad in text mode (no X11 or Wayland) by sending a URL to a service he wrote that will email him the Web page back - a clean process without any using any tainted proprietary software. He only ever exchanged one sentence with me when we had dinner together with other…
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He's eccentric, and most people would say that his social skills are subpar. But if you spend more than a few minutes reading his emails or watching him talk you'll realize that he is most definitely /not/ an asshole.
Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's possible a lot of people would like to leave but can't. Also, some people would like to return, missing the cultural aspects of the country they left behind or their families, but can't because they're unable to sustain themselves there, they need to continue helping their families economically and depend on the higher wages of where they're residing, or they're afraid because it's dangerous.
Any number of things may be true. But one cannot sensibly infer those things from this sample of people that is very far from being a random sample, but is actually a heavily selected sample. If you're really interested in the state of things "back home", don't seek out a group of people who are very likely to be slanted toward having a particular view (whether that view be positive or negative), and when they expres…
I'll grant you that it's not a random sample and that there will be some skewness in opinions. But ignoring the wider context of the journey that these people must have made, and considering the nature of totalitarian governments, it seems to me that you're taking an obtuse position.
Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
#404Earlier 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 am not misusing the word. I don't know what their incentives are, but they are just progressively making things worse and more locked down in the name of "progress".
Bland, corporate, utterly inoffensive and lifeless "design"? Check. Trying to remove theming from users? Check. etc....
The only reason why they haven't succeeded like other OSes is because it's FOSS. But they really want to take away the user's choice, shift the Overton window, and pretend like things were always bad.
Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
NLNet is awesome ! :)
Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
#406I hope he’s able to manage it well (since the prognosis is good) and is around for a lot longer. We need absolutists like him who go to extremes and are known widely. For a few moments, leave aside his personality and what people have said about his behavior or hygiene. If he hadn’t been there, our world would’ve been a lot different and a lot poorer. A visionary is what he was and is. While the Free part of FOSS is…
Does he have a reputation for poor hygiene?
more like people like to exaggerate anecdotes for karma points
Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
#407̛If you check the surroundings, you will see the mess we are in. Virtually (?) there are 0 options for a viable IoT platform, mobile/desktop OS that doesn't annoy us. It could be privacy, locking, you name it, ... Only recently, I happen to realise, we could have listened to this man little more. Too late then, we are sold already. Recover well Mr Stallman! I wish you the best!
Well Linux is usable as a desktop operating system. For IoT there are multiple open source project, Home Assistant, ESP Home, just to name a few. The real problem are mobile operating system. Android phones are nowadays even more and more locked down, and using ROMs without Google Services is nearly impossible.
> The real problem are mobile operating system.
I think it's deeper than that; I think the problem is mobile devices. The OS has to somehow paper-over the fact that there's no mouse, and that everything has to be done with finger-stabs on a 3"x5" screen. That doesn't work with the traditional desktop widgets, so a variety of OS-level widgets and Javascripty plugins is layered on top. But (a) they're not consistent with one-another, and (b) they're not consistent with the desktop metaphor (which isn't going to go away).
Basically, I don't think a phone is suitable for user-input of any complexity. It's a device for selecting content that you then consume passively. It can't be used as a replacement for a desktop. "Mobile first" sounds all very well, but nearly all mobile-first projects have the desktop portion permanently stubbed.
Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
Linux desktop is more viable than ever. Zigbee/Matter/... are widely adopted open standards without vendor lock in. Things like Home Assistant are getting serious attention and funding. Could be much worse.
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…
I find the criticism of GNOME a bit weird - personally, I love its user interface because it virtually isn't there. It gets out of the way and when I do see it, it feels clean and well organised. I'm old enough to remember the windows-esque start menu type setups (which I know many DEs still use) and am a bit of a convert to the convergence mindset of GNOME.
To be honest, the only thing that bothers me about Linux desktop environments is that there isn't a simple way of getting a 4G dongle and using my laptop as a phone (calls, SMS, etc).
Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the person with the t-shirt is both sympathetic to communism or the Che, and RMS, I can see how it can not be a provocation. RMS was probably right not to sign it though. I also believe producing a t-shirt with RMS depicted as the Che is not quite right.
There is some soft irony that the t-shirt depicting Stallman supporting "revolution" is made in China and coming from Aliexpress. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005081587056.html
Wow, to add insult to injury, that t-shirt calls RMS an "OS Liberator" as in "Open Source Liberator", not "FS Liberator" as "Free Software Liberator". That would really piss RMS off: he HATES it when you refer to Free Software as Open Source!
On the other (left) hand, I'd definitely buy an ironic t-shirt of ESR as Che labeled "Free Software Liberator" and ask ESR to sign it, just to piss him off and provoke him to threaten to shoot me, like he did to Bruce Perens.
The irony of Eric S Raymond threatening someone else for behaving "like that kind of disruptive asshole in public" is rich -- very rich.
ESR's Death Threat Email to Bruce Perens:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/1999/04/msg00623.html
Bruce Perens Dead:
https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/10
Terrorismistic:
Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
#410I hope he’s able to manage it well (since the prognosis is good) and is around for a lot longer. We need absolutists like him who go to extremes and are known widely. For a few moments, leave aside his personality and what people have said about his behavior or hygiene. If he hadn’t been there, our world would’ve been a lot different and a lot poorer. A visionary is what he was and is. While the Free part of FOSS is…
That was a beautiful comment, but I want to make an important point: > While the Free part of FOSS is being substituted by “(just) open source” and “source available” The OSD is very much compatible with the FSFs list of freedoms. “Source available” is a new name for “shared source” and is fake open source proprietary trash.
You're right. I guess one difference would be the part where the free software tell us "why".
But in practical terms, it is too complicated (ethics!), so all is down to copyleft or not, which I believe is what the parent comment was referring to.
Perhaps that's what we should be using: copyleft vs open source, instead of free software vs open source.