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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

#591

Post by WoodenChair »

dang wrote: post #535
throwaway81523 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 some…

I think you got this one wrong.

The original posted URL was: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/richard-stallman-the-state-of...

The grandparent comment says that Lunduke ripped off Slashdot. I don't see that. There is one quote that's the same and several that I see that are different. You claim you changed it to the original source... the original source would be the Libreplanet link here: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/the-state-of-t...

So both Lunduke and Slashdot are posting news about LibrePlanet and it's not clear one ripped off the other, other than having one quote that's the same.

It seems like you went with the above commenters without investigating.

I have no affiliation with Lunduke. I'm not a paid subscriber to his journal, I just get it by email sometimes.

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

#592

Post by throwaway693 »

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…

I used to laugh at RMS but reading more about him is shocking to say the least. Just check the story he wrote in 1997 to make a point https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html .

Basically he foresaw people will not be able to own books. He is a genius who *really* does not care about money. That makes all the difference. Very rare to find people with this trait. To top it off he is relentless in his cause. Think if there is any one who can meet these standards. Very few.

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

#593

Post by prmoustache »

pjmlp wrote: post #573
prmoustache wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

CentOS, have you missed the news? Yeah there is CentOS Stream now, but that isn't what freeloaders want.

> CentOS, have you missed the news?

Alternatives popped up literally days after the annoumcement of centos stream. We got back to original point. If you know the history of rhel and its clones, you surely know they used to be tenth of projects similar to centos, some much more active/reactive. The redhat funding of centos as a perfect rhel clone is more a parenthesis in history than anything.

So in the end freeloaders still get exactly what they want.

> Yeah there is CentOS Stream now, but that isn't what freeloaders want.

I would say that isn't what some freeloaders think they want. All the feedback I get from people deciding to stick to centos stream and trying it out before a potential switch to something else has bern mostly the same: a lot of fuss for nothing, their life hasn't changed and centos is still meeting their needs.

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

#594

Post by alkonaut »

crtasm wrote: post #460
alkonaut wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main problem is that RMS lives in a world in which people care about freedom, when they only care about brand recognition - and that is in fact related to marketing and thus "millions of dollars". There are other reasons than licensing and marketing that makes games cost hundreds of millions too. People expect games to be on the scale that they are, so the cost of developing these games will be astronomical. It…

Mobile games are more popular than AAA games, and would AAA games be so popular without the millions spent on advertising?

Mobile games are popular on mobile. The medium is somewhat limited, but there at least there is still a theoretical chance you can develop a blockbuster without a massive bugdet.

> would AAA games be so popular without the millions spent on advertising?

Kind of a hypothetical, but I'm guessing yes. But to spend a billion on a game and then not tell anyone you did would be kind of silly. It's not like "advertising" or "marketing" is some kind of scam to get people to buy things they don't really like.

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

#595

Post by lelanthran »

gsinclair wrote: post #583
lelanthran wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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. 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,…

> 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. That is incredibly false. It is always legitimate to argue implications.

> That is incredibly false. It is always legitimate to argue implications.

It's not "incredibly false"; like everything else in life, it's "sometimes it depends".

In this case, making a successful argument against free software based on a side-effect of the movement has little to no effect:

1. The movement doesn't care. It's of no concern to them, so at worst they'll ignore it, at best they'll suggest mitigations. They aren't going to stop their cause.

2. The developers of the free software don't care. Many of them are already paid well even though the movement has been around for most of their entire lifetimes, and for most of them their jobs already depend on free software. They aren't going to care about what the implications are because in the last 40 years there hasn't been any negatives for the clear majority of developers, while they currently depend on it.

3. The users of free software (which includes almost all developers alive today) care very much that free software continues being a thing. They depend on it. Doesn't matter how accurate your argument is, they'll ignore it too.

So, once again, who is the target audience of any argument against free software? If all the audiences are going to mostly ignore it because it is against their best interests, why continue tilting at windmills?

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

#596

Post by kome »

expropriator wrote: post #556
GiorgioG wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I ask myself how he pays for his servers. Does it count if another person does it? Apparently, he connects to the internet over an other person. I think that's a real issue. If you have enough power that other persons do the stuff for you, it doesn't mean it's a way in which other persons can do it as well.

"I never pay for anything on the Web, because I cannot pay anonymously. Anything on the net that requires payment that would identify me, I don't do. (I made an exception for the fees for the stallman.org domain, since that is connected with me anyway.)"

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

#597

Post by ryan_lane »

Gollapalli wrote: post #229
ryan_lane wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He bought both of those companies. It's a bit disingenuous to say he built them.

I buy a broken down camaro. The windshield is gone. The sheetmetal is rusted. The frame is bent. The motor needs rebuilt. I patch/replace the sheetmetal, and paint it. I straighten the frame. I rebuild the motor, and put a supercharger on it to boot. It’s a pretty nice little hot rod, and it was busted before. But you tell me, did I buy it or build it?

You buy an already functioning camaro factory that restores camaros, you do basically nothing in terms of hiring or management, you shitpost on twitter all day and hire an army of twitter bots to promote the amazing work you're doing on building that camaro.

But you tell me, did you buy that camaro, or did you build it?

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

#598

Post by throwaway693 »

enneff wrote: post #170
csdreamer7 wrote: post #155

Around the 8 and 9 min mark RMS talks about old hardware losing software support, like 32 bit systems. I am a kernel developer and the kernel removes code for a lot of older systems all the time (often lesser known 32bit ARM systems). Phoronix reported that 5.18 removed the Andes NDS32 CPU arch code. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux-51... The reason they do this is because a lot of these syst…

Stallman is not a pragmatic guy. He picks all battles related to free software simultaneously.

Yep. He is a genius who does not care about money and stands up for a cause. So cool

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

#599

Post by guerrilla »

kergonath wrote: post #509
guerrilla wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just Google "Stallman was right", sounds like you might be in a bit if a bubble.

Well yeah. I know he has been right on a couple of occasions. Still, how does this make me unwise for laughing at him? What went worse because I did so? To be fair, his position was interesting in the 1980s. But he’s been hopelessly out of touch with the vast majority of computer users since the 1990s. He can keep harping on about the GPL and keep watching the world pass by.

Seems weird to laugh at someone who pretty consistently predicts the future. Does it make sense to laugh at physicists too? Was their predictive theory only relevant in the early 1900s?

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

#600

Post by pvg »

WoodenChair wrote: post #591
dang wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 some…

I think you got this one wrong. The original posted URL was: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/richard-stallman-the-state-of... The grandparent comment says that Lunduke ripped off Slashdot. I don't see that. There is one quote that's the same and several that I see that are different. You claim you changed it to the original source... the original source would be the Libreplanet link here: https://media.libreplanet.org…

The quotes overlap just about completely, they aren't offered with any additional analysis so the 'original source' of both the curation and transcription is really those slashdot comments. There's no 'ripping off' mentioned.
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