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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

#531

Post by ddingus »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #351
the_af wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Do they care?" I guarantee you that they will. They might not think so now, but when in a couple or so of decades they suddenly remember a cherished videogame from their youth (maybe associated with the joy of discovering videogames, maybe with a memory of a friend who's passed away, maybe just because of doing videogame archaeology) and they cannot play it at all because of DRM or unsupported hardware (and the im…

Gamer nostalgia is a niche within a niche. The modern hardcore gamer market has tens of millions of customers - maybe hundreds if you include trivial but addictive phone games. The nostalgists who want to get Jetpack Willy running again so they can relive a misspent youth number tens of thousands at most. And in fact there are few/no DRM issues for these vintage games and emulations, because they're distributed as bi…

I really question the size of the niche. We've got Recreations of all the classic machines going on right now, people buying arcade cabinets, and even casual gamers into Retro. Their organizations now into digital archaeology going back through trying to tell the stories communicate the impact on culture and a lot of other things.

A lot of people thought gaming is shallow, but it's really not. It has packed a major league punch on culture, tech itself given its age.

My take is we're going to have the early Roots stories oh, because things are open enough and simple enough but we can get them, and we're going to get them wall a lot of the people are still alive. But after that it's going to be a mess.

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

#532

Post by giraffe_lady »

synergy20 wrote: post #414
jasoneckert wrote: post #384

From reading the other comments here, I understand that it's easy to pick something RMS said and say "Yeah, right..." But you have to keep in mind that RMS advocates the free software philosophy - the complete left end of the software spectrum - the white angel on your shoulder (not the red devil on the other). And while I find some of his points too radical to implement practically in my own situation, I believe it'…

You're so correct, can't agree more. Nobody is perfect, focus on one's strength serves everyone better.

It's just... curious that you rarely see this kind of grace extended to other sorts of radicals and subversives. Not that it doesn't happen ever, but there seem to be certain subjects where we appreciate this role and others where we don't.

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

#533

Post by jokoon »

waplot wrote: 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…

Shouldn't it be possible to sell a game while making it open source at the same time?

I mean that's a bit what quake 3 did, the content kept its copyright.

I honestly don't think it's posing a threat to the company who makes the game, because there won't really be anybody forking the game and making it better than the original creator, in a short period of time, while also selling it. It will only bring bad publicity.

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

#534

Post by prmoustache »

Merad wrote: post #181
lovich wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stallman seems like the kinda of guy who would tell you that you need to starve in the streets as long as you fit his version of ethics. All while he lives comfortably off the income of his own celebrity.

He has told people almost that exact thing. I recall an interview from about a decade ago where some asked RMS a question similar to the one the GP mentions, but their phrasing was more like, "I need to make money from software to feed my family." RMS' answer was that the interviewer's ability to feed their family was less important than free software. RMS' heart is mostly in the right place, but he's a fanatic who i…

He just reply according to where the cursor is placed regarding ethics.

The same way anyone who think selling metamphetamines to vulnerable people and kids is unethical and wrong, then you should not do it and find another income to feed your family.

Nobody is put a gun to the temple and forced to write proprietary software to make a living. There are myriads of other jobs.

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

#535

Post by dang »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #21
MilnerRoute wrote: post #2

It looks like Lunduke just cut-and-pasted all the quotes that Slashdot published (presumably their transcription from the FSF's audio file) on Saturday. https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/04/16/238221/richard-stal... https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/04/16/238221/richard-stal...

Thanks for posting those but for the first of your two links, I think you meant: https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/04/16/2154203/richard-sta... That is, are two different slashdot posts about the different aspects of the talk, and the above link is to the earlier of the posts.

Ok, we've changed the URL above to that link from https://lunduke.substack.com/p/richard-stallman-the-state-of.... Thanks to both of you!

We want original sources here. From the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html):

"Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."

(For the purposes of that guideline, copying and pasting someone else's work counts as 'reporting on'.)

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

#536

Post by cxr »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #281
tannhaeuser wrote: post #268

Missing a reflection about how abundance of F/OSS has pushed us towards SaaS as one of the few places left to make a living from pure software dev, and the oligopolies arising out of it. What about Linux (Android) being used as the prime spyware vector, and Linux being used for cloud lock-in (k8s et al)? Also missing a discussion about the role of open standards as opposed to open implementations, such as POSIX/LSB,…

> Missing a reflection about how abundance of F/OSS has pushed us towards SaaS as one of the few places left to make a living from pure software dev, and the oligopolies arising out of it. The fundamental reason is the shift towards the web as a platform, not the abundance of Free Software. As for the oligopolies you mention, the process is as democratic as possible with extremely low barrier to entry: many of the cu…

Indeed, the mentioned complaints about Android are not in any sense the result of an overadherence to Stallmanist thinking (rather, the opposite...)

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

#537

Post by ivan_gammel »

datadata wrote: post #519
ivan_gammel wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot really expect that every user will have sufficient expertise to understand how an operating system works. Today not even technical users can do it without investing considerable effort. Security only explains why _some_ people should be able to understand how software works, and this is a different story. You do not need to make software open source or free for that, there can exist entire spectrum of vari…

You do not need to understand the entire operating system to benefit from open source. Open source can enable an end user to fix or at least report a narrow issue.

>Open source can enable an end user to fix or at least report a narrow issue.

This is a very small subset of end users that can do that and will want to do that. Even software engineers may not dare to touch the code and seek for workarounds or ways to report the bug with less effort instead. The programming language and APIs can be unfamiliar, there can be lack of context etc. The distance between general computer science literacy and ability to read the code of a large product is very big - experts often tend to underestimate it. For the majority of other people value of this possibility is literally zero: they would prefer to have a warranty from vendor. There's very little consolation for them in having weak guarantees from community of volunteers that discovered bugs will be some day fixed.

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

#538

Post by kmeisthax »

josephcsible wrote: post #516
kmeisthax wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having third-party Snap servers is unfortunate, and something we probably should be forking Snap to add support for. Still, calling it "not freedom respecting" seems a little hyperbolic given that the actual part that runs on your computer is very much FOSS. It's not any different from, say, reading a website whose server software is unreleased, but whose client-side JS is all Free Software. As for sideloading...…

> It's not any different from, say, reading a website whose server software is unreleased, but whose client-side JS is all Free Software. I think that an important difference here is that there are FOSS Web servers that are compatible with your browser, but there's no FOSS servers compatible with your Snap client. > Epic Games is still pushing their lawsuit from the perspective of a proprietary software vendor, just…

>Remember the old issue with VLC in the App Store?

The issue with VLC in the App Store was that an older version of the App Store T&Cs had standard EULA language that said you weren't allowed to pirate the apps on the store; which contradicts every version of the GPL ever.

VLC worked around this by relicensing their iOS port to MPLv2, whose copyleft is apparently weak enough that the App Store EULA does not conflict with it. I'm not entirely sure why.

This, however, is a moot point. Apple fixed the problem by letting you just write custom EULA language specific to that app that says the GPL overrules the App Store EULA for that app. This is how iSH legally ships an entire x86 userland full of GPL software on the App Store, for example. Even things like the Installation Instructions requirement (either GPLv2 or v3's) is satisfied by the fact that Apple hands out free development accounts like candy and will likely continue to do so for as long as the App Store exists.

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

#539

Post by stjohnswarts »

sleepymoose wrote: post #474
jasoneckert wrote: post #384

From reading the other comments here, I understand that it's easy to pick something RMS said and say "Yeah, right..." But you have to keep in mind that RMS advocates the free software philosophy - the complete left end of the software spectrum - the white angel on your shoulder (not the red devil on the other). And while I find some of his points too radical to implement practically in my own situation, I believe it'…

As someone who has heard the name but never looked into his message until now, is Stallman always so gung-ho on "All software should be free software"? Specifically, when I hit his comments regarding video games, I was quite shocked. "Unless the game is non-free — then it's bad for you, if you play it.", if that's the case, then is any entertainment that comes at a monetary fee bad? How ahout proprietary software for…

He's a fairly important figure in free software. Probalby more like a godfather than a father I'd say. He lives what he preaches and he means it. I respect that. He sees any software (including firmware and video games) as bad unless you get a copy of the software so that you can modify it. His own license adds more stipulation to that like "if you distribute this software you have to release the code (and copyrights notices) that goes with it or make it available to those distributed to so they can modify it for their own use and this license is sticky". It's a bit more complicated than that but that's the jist. I think people who dismiss him as a nut should revisit how many times they've complained they are stuck with software/hardware that they can't get to work like they want or repair it because the company is defunct or refuses to fix old (non-lucrative) software/firmware.

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

#540

Post by MaxBarraclough »

Jasper_ wrote: post #529
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tim…

I think you've just described all of leftist theory. I was wondering specifically about thinkers on Free and Open Source software taking a broader scope than what we tend to see from the FSF.
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