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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

#521
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…

This was literally me as a late teenager. Anyone remember IVAN (Iter Vehemens Ad Necem)? Battle for Wesnoth? (I'm guessing the latter may still be around...)

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

#522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Stallman says "free as in free speech, not free beer", he means freedom to use software in any way you want including changing it. Not zero price.

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…

Game engine is not what is paying the developpers rent, and Stallman has always explained that he didn't believed artforms should be made open source.

It doesn't sound complicated to me to understand that you can sell games whose code is open source but the 3d models, graphics, levels building and artwork aren't. Customer would still retain all free software liberties, be able to port the game to other platforms and the dev studios would still get paid.

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

#523
post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 boar…

Well let's break it down I am the ggp.

I think this is a good conversation personally.

Now, are you unconvinced that the act of cheating itself is a social problem?

I did use course terminology, it could be a moral failing as well. I lump a lot of those under social. And that's to my detriment obviously. But let's sort that out.

And then there's the part I'm convinced that I understand you on, and that is I believe our current state of technology is not a good fit for social problems, and you believe that it is. Or maybe more accurately, the solutions work and you're happy with that I'm concerned about costs and risks associated with said solutions.

I think once we understand one another there let's have a short chat.

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

#524
post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not enough, hence why it was acquired and eventually killed, regardless of how Red-Hat might justify their decision.

Care to explain which was killed? Neither centos nor redhat.

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

#525
post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 boar…

Oh, and while we wait. I thought of a much better way to express this. So I'm going to drop it here, and then wait for your response and then proceed.

One area where technology is not a good idea is civics. Our votes the law things like that. At the present time, humans are best at managing human Affairs. That includes things like cheating crime who will be the leader oh, what's socially acceptable downtown, all that kind of stuff.

With voting in particular, we are in a position of forced trust with technology. It is going to be cheated, exploited, and has multiple times, and we really don't have options. We need people to physically vote and deal with the votes, or we're going to be under the thumb of the people that own the machines. That's pretty clear.

I am open to the idea of cheating not being in that collection of stuff that humans are best at dealing with. I also think we should have more options like we used to, setting up her own servers and what not like what used to be possible. And frankly still is possible. From time to time I like to play a little Q3A, and I just set up a server and run with friends. I don't think that game will ever die for us.

I want a lot of us, myself included, oppose is the very blunt instrument currently being used to manage cheating. It affects us in ways that really hurt the open Libre software causes. We can't know what's running on our machines, we can't run what we want on our machines, and so forth.

I did this on voice fall in the car, so please forgive typos, but perhaps this puts the chat in a better place. We shall see.

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

#526
post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except that Edison didn’t invent the electric light bulb (first invented in 1806).

https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/or-not-thomas-edison-ligh...

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

#527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's using free as in free speech, not free as in free beer.

If you release a game "free" as in "free speech", how is it not "free" as in "free beer" as well? What would prevent people from redistributing it? Nothing.

I guess I don't understand the question. Plenty of open-source projects charge money for a license. And even closed-source / non-free games have pirates. The availability of the soucre code does not determine a business model, the licensing does.

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

#528
post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried getting a command-line program to build and run on an M1 Mac lately? Yeah, it works most of the time. But when it doesn’t, e.g. due to some post-build script that massages the binary after signing it, it brings you a world of pain.

That's not a cryptographic signature. Use codesign -s - path to binary to recompute the checksum.

And to do that, as a package maintainer, you sometimes have to trace upstream’s build system because you need to intercept the file after the build system has patched it, but before they’re actually using it to run the tests. And then you try to inject the codesign command line into the upstream build system, and hope it’s going to work this time.

And often enough, it just doesn’t work at all ([1] ballpark number of issues, [2] one example case where I can confirm that I was affected myself).

Apple’s codesigning is hell.

[1]: https://github.com/search?q=org%3AHomebrew+codesign&type=iss...

[2]: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/7857#issuecomment-71...

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

#529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stallman rightly predicted that corporations want to amass power and control over you, and that counter-culture technologies like the computer and the Internet would slowly revert to mainstream, corporate-friendly and capitalism-friendly ideals as they become wider spread. This is hardly a fringe position. But whereas a lot of others think the problems are structural to how society operates, and that fixing it would…

Do you recommend any other thinkers on these topics?

Don't limit yourself to technology and computers. These systems are political in nature; that is, they concern the basic fabric of how society is structured. One of the biggest tricks any new field has is thinking we're way different, won't repeat the mistakes of others. Both of these make it hard for me to recommend anything good here without getting myself into an internet argument I don't want at this point in time, but at least start reading some history of labor, of capitalism, and of corporations. A People's History of the United States is widely recommended as an intro to these things, and I might as well give it a namedrop here.

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

#530
post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a look around on the GNU site. He's a great, inspiring writer. e.g. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/essays-and-articles.html

Not his philosophy; that is abundantly clear. I too am completely at a loss for what his actual agenda is.

I never know what that means. People seem to only use it about people they don't like. Seems like Russell conjugation - I have a vision, you have plans, they have an agenda.

What's your (actual) agenda?

p.s. Thinking more about it, it doesn't seem a question that ever has an answer. Seems like it means something like "I don't like that person, what they believe, what they say or what they do. They're so different from me I can't believe they're for real. So I'm going to insinuate they're guided by some concealed nefarious scheme. I heard a right-wing person use the phrase and I thought it was a pretty cool and effective debate tactic. Makes me sound like I've easily seen through their amateurish attempt at deception." Please correct me if I'm wrong, and it's actually a genuine question.

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