551–560 of 623 posts
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I kind of do this. I avoid using currency and have no credit cards but once in a blue moon need to buy something from online.
How do you function without currency? That is wild.
If you want details, there are some in my comment history.
Half an hour through the ~90min presentation, I was wondering about speech-to-text solutions out there to really skim through it. For anyone else who would similarly like to be able to skim through a transcription: https://pastebin.com/Fgrh68WY Ran it through the Goog's speech to text. It's a quick paste of the raw pass, with no clean-up, although I added a couple of timestamps. Some irony in the choice of transcript…
I was the main author on the manual you linked to. In 2012, Stallman contacted me about his new book, and with that forthcoming, I thought it made no sense for me to spend much more time on mine. So I never got quite finished it, and did only a few minor bug fix releases since then. I did not know it was going to be ten years until his came out! In any case, I did help him a bit on the new one, but not very recently.…
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> just those where the people involved have opposing goals. This describes every competition ever; person A wants the winner to be A, but person B wants the winner to be B. Should we stop doing doping tests at Olympic games, as it's an application of (non-free) technology to a social problem?
Medical tests are only part of the solution there. They would be worthless without the more important component: a trusted third-party tester. As we've seen with DMCA takedowns on YouTube, an automatic third-party arbiter ends up favoring one side. Usually the one who learns to game it.
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“Murder” is a curious choice of analogy, too. Seems to me this thread is very firmly subject to Godwin’s Law. > When have you ever seen Stallman be pragmatic instead of idealist Pragmatism vs idealism isn’t the point. My question was why would you expect someone you haven’t met to be an asshole, if you didn’t already think they were an asshole?
I don't know what to say. Someone went to a person who is well known to have the position that nonfree software is unethical and to be an idealist to ask how to make nonfree software and somehow is surprised that the answer is that they shouldn't make nonfree software. I would expect the same if I asked any particularly idealistic vegan how to eat meat with less impact. The idealistic vegan will just tell me to not e…
I’ve been to events supporting a cause. They are full of people who, in support of their passionate convictions, try to help and persuade people to join them without reducing personal dilemmas to simplistic answers.
It makes me wonder: if strong convictions don’t cause or correlate to how you treat people, is there another explanation for why it’s so easy to find such anecdotes?
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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 o…
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>>> And while I find some of his points too radical to implement practically in my own situation, I believe it's very important that we have someone like him in the tech world. As a result, whenever there is a RMS talk, I listen to it. And each time I gain new and valuable perspectives about free software that help guide future decisions. Most people would probably find his views and recommendations as too extreme to…
> I never pay for anything on the Web, because I cannot pay anonymously. Wow. My first thought upon reading that is that seems quite extreme. Having said that, it just shows you how normalized it's become to track all transactions.
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"Free" here does not mean "free of charge", it means "libre" (guarantees the four essential freedoms [1]). The common quip is "free as in freedom, not as in free beer". [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms
"The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others" How is that not always going to end up being "free of charge"? Someone is always going to end up redistributing it without charge.
> > How is that not always going to end up being "free of charge"? Someone is always going to end up redistributing it without charge.
If you redistribute it. Doesn't mean you cannot sell your own software and allow the user to have the source code. The GPL allows the end-user to redistribute it, for free if they want, but it's essentially a non-supported, always behind version.
If the end-user adds some nice functionality to the software AND they then redistribute it, then they are forced to provide the source for the changes they made, which allows you, as the vendor, to incorporate those changes into your product. The idea is that, for any piece of software, the entire community of users will have the ability to modify that software.
After multiple iterations, even companies will get in on the act because they save money by contributing to, and using, the commons.
The point of the free software movement is not to prevent companies from making money writing software (that's a side-effect, sure), it's to ensure that the end-users' freedom to change the software is guaranteed.
Now you may argue that such a position, taken to its logical conclusion, will result in software developers never getting paid again. You may even be right. However that is not relevant to the movement's goals. Their goal is having a particular right for the end-user. Their goals does not include the well-being of the software developer.
It is pointless to argue that the movement, if successful, will result in software development being a non-paid activity, because not only is that not a goal for the movement, it's not even a concern for them. Hence, the argument is irrelevant.
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I've been waiting for my Librem 5 (that I paid for) for four years...
Same here. However they do have a good reason for that now: https://forums.puri.sm/t/i-mx-8m-quad-availability-and-price... .
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> The point is not to compare proprietary software to slavery. You did exactly that. > The point is that Stallman does not find proprietary software bad for the user, he finds it morally wrong. I truly hope that you are wrong and Stallman does not believe proprietary software to be an evil on par with slavery.
> You did exactly that. You may want to reread my original post carefully. > I truly hope that you are wrong and Stallman does not believe proprietary software to be an evil on par with slavery. I can't claim to know the internal ranking of evil things in Stallman's mind, but nonfree software is very clearly beyond the line of unjustifiable evil for him. "While we can distinguish various nonfree distribution schemes…
> Stallman: "we consider them all equally unethical."
This is my whole point in a nutshell; unethical and evil are NOT synonymous words and you keep treating them that way. Wage theft is unethical and should be criminal. Slavery is evil.
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> "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…
And then I try one and wonder this looks really ugly. This mechanic is rather annoying, yeah maybe it isn't worth the nostalgia. Thankfully, I am PC gamer so most things work, outside certain set of DRM...