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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

#481

Post by Arainach »

vjk800 wrote: post #227
Arainach wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even people who don't care in the slightest about free software think anticheat is detestable. [[Citation Needed]]. Trying to play a multiplayer game that doesn't implement effective anticheat is miserable. The arms race is unfortunate but 100% understandable, and I wouldn't play any game that doesn't implement some form of it.

This is due to how multiplayer in modern games is orchestrated. In the old days, you would play multiplayer with your friends and their friends on a private server or some kind of community server where cheaters could quickly be recognized and banned by the admins. Now this communal way of playing online games is largely gone and replaced by match making which makes multiplayer basically the same as playing against c…

I lived through those days, and you're looking back with rose colored glasses. Most servers didn't have an admin online most of the time, so hacking was still a major annoyance if you didn't have something like VAC.

I do miss the quirky nature of private servers, custom maps and game mods, and all of that, but cheating was a big problem back then too.

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

#482

Post by ddingus »

maratc wrote: post #406
jdbernard wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because using technology to solve social problems leads to restraining people's personal freedom, choices, and expression in a much more direct manner than other domains of problem solving. Furthermore, this restraint tends to impact people unevenly. As ineffective as the government may or may not be, at least the goal is for all people to be considered equal in the eyes of the law. With technology the power lives wi…

The inequality issue exists as well with Covid vaccines and with weapons — other applications of technology, so societal problems are not standing alone there. The unequal access to nuclear weapons is... a good thing I guess? What still needs to be explained is why throwing technology at power generation problems, economic problems, healthcare problems, or warfare problems is seemingly ok regardless of inequality, bu…

It is about technology alignment, and the nature of people.

Right now, our tech is not capable of understanding meaning a mere child does easily. This makes it very poorly aligned with the problem domain in that applying it will create at least as many and probably more problems than it will solve.

Other problem domains have seen better tech alignment and have also seen greater success, though one could argue we also poorly understand the new problems created in some cases. (Global warming makes burning fuels a much worse deal than initially believed)

The side effects inherent with such blunt instruments as appear to be required to apply tech to social, human problems warrant consideration well beyond, "just because we can."

In the future, when our tech is much better, perhaps it can address human, social problems with far fewer costs to those subjected to the solutions.

Just how much control over your life and expression do you feel is necessary?

Right now it is well beyond anything I feel good about and it has just gotten started!

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

#483

Post by shagie »

comex wrote: post #254
vjk800 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is due to how multiplayer in modern games is orchestrated. In the old days, you would play multiplayer with your friends and their friends on a private server or some kind of community server where cheaters could quickly be recognized and banned by the admins. Now this communal way of playing online games is largely gone and replaced by match making which makes multiplayer basically the same as playing against c…

Anticheat was still a thing in the old days, even when it was something the admins had to manually install (PunkBuster for some games, I think?) or at least not opt out of (VAC). So, at least at the time, many admins saw it as desirable despite their own existence.

I recall the signed netrek builds back when I was playing that. Sure, you could read the source - but only signed builds could run on certain servers.

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

#484

Post by badsectoracula »

Ekaros wrote: post #381
badsectoracula wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

UT2004 has native Linux version. I would expect that to still work well. The Windows version does, so there should be no need for Wine at all.

I wouldn't because the Linux UT2004 binary is very old and aside from glibc, X11 and perhaps a couple of other libraries, the Linux userland doesn't really have much of a culture for ABI stability preservation.

There are certainly ways to run Linux UT2004 binary in modern Linux but it'd be way more effort than running the Windows binary under Wine.

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

#485

Post by auggierose »

chrisseaton wrote: post #3

> Instead of telling you what the program means, it tells you what the program is permitted to mean. Hmm that's insightful.

I am looking forward to that book, but I don't expect too much from it. After all, he basically says, I don't like abstraction. Let's see if the result is worth specialising his book to GCC.

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

#486

Post by lovich »

belorn wrote: post #413
lovich wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would classify being able to live at his office without being tossed out into the streets, and being given a home after that got to be too much for the school, as living off his celebrity. The "technically" in "technically homeless" is a major difference between what Stallman has to deal with vs what non famous computer scientists/software engineers have to deal with. I understand he's forgone the amount of wealth…

Being a celebrity does provide much more benefits than a person actually being homeless. However your comment above said he lived comfortably off the income of his own celebrity. We would have to twist the word income here for a bit to cover this kind of situation. The comfortably part is also a bit questionable, but I guess living at the office can be comfortable to some people. The description just didn't fit the s…

Alright, if you want to be that pedantic then find+replace “income” with benefits. The point still stands. He has the basics of his life taken care of and tells others they should go without in the name of his ethics system

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

#487

Post by zach_garwood »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #142
starwind wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you just compare Stallman and the FSF to the Abolitionist movement, and paid software to slavery?

Why is it that people on the modern internet seem unable to grasp the concept of an analogy? Two things don't have to be exactly as bad as each other to be analogous circumstances. You are supposed to apply to same chain of logical reasoning to the two situations. Just expressing faux outrage with a "How dare you compare these two things" isn't actually defeating the argument in any way.

Oh no, we all get what analogies are. This is just a shitty one.

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

#488

Post by BashiBazouk »

teddyh wrote: post #421
BashiBazouk wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was checking in every once in a while when it was live once the video crapped out. I popped in and he was trashing Zoom, which I found a tad ironic...

I can, even without having heard it, assure you that he wasn’t disparaging the technology of Zoom.

Not anymore than any other technology he disparages: it's proprietary and steals your information, which is all likely true. But if he is using open source free software as a replacement, shouldn't he have tested and fixed said software? Isn't that his entire shtick? High minded ideals are great and all but at the end of the day the software needs to work and on that day it did not...

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

#489

Post by maratc »

ddingus wrote: post #482
maratc wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inequality issue exists as well with Covid vaccines and with weapons — other applications of technology, so societal problems are not standing alone there. The unequal access to nuclear weapons is... a good thing I guess? What still needs to be explained is why throwing technology at power generation problems, economic problems, healthcare problems, or warfare problems is seemingly ok regardless of inequality, bu…

It is about technology alignment, and the nature of people. Right now, our tech is not capable of understanding meaning a mere child does easily. This makes it very poorly aligned with the problem domain in that applying it will create at least as many and probably more problems than it will solve. Other problem domains have seen better tech alignment and have also seen greater success, though one could argue we also…

This thread has started with a problem of cheating in online games (like head-aiming bots in first-person shooters) and (non-free) anti-cheating software as a solution to that (not ideal, but closing that gap somewhat). GGP pointed out it's "a social problem" and suggested we shouldn't attack it with technology (anti-cheating software). I still stand unconvinced with regards to that.

Otherwise, I had been denied boarding in the Covid era because the software had had a bug, so I tend to generally agree with your sentiment that the technology has too much control over my life already.

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

#490

Post by lovich »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #440
rndgermandude wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 busine…

Ardour has 10's of thousands of users, many of which get the software from their Linux distributions. Nevertheless, more than 6000 of these individuals choose to help fund the project to the tune of between $150k and $210k a year. So yes, although your observations are not wrong, they do not apply universally.

> 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.

> Nevertheless, more than 6000 of these individuals choose to help fund the project to the tune of between $150k and $210k a year.

How is this not covered by the posters comment about it not being a business but a charity if you rely on people paying more than they need to?

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