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Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

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Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but some companies think they need trade secrets and or licence fees. And GPL companies somehow have not replaced them. So they maybe have a point in todays capitalistic world? I mean, how many articles and blogs are there about how to make money with foss and how many desperation and frustration is around that topic? How many games exist, that are donation funded? I mean, please tell me, I want to publish a game…

I know how you might make money. You build a game. Maybe its fun and ripe for mods like minecraft. Open source it under GPL. Build a community of hackers/gamers who want to learn and collaborate. Have an awesome collection of mods for your game. Once you build a name for yourself, take donations or release a new game or talk at conferences.

Soo, assuming I build something like Minecraft, something that made the developer millions (I think over 100) via the conventional way.

And your proposal for how to make money with such a moneymaker game and the GPL is eventually down the years take on donations and talk at conferences? Was that irony? Then I missed it. Because the context was someone above claimed that it is only the stupid lawers fault, that companies reject the gpl.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#632

I had emailed stallman about this. My email: Greetings Dr. Stallman, First of all, Happy 40th GNUversary! I was not able to attend the GNU40 meeting in Switzerland, but I have heard rumours that you have announced that you have some form of cancer. Can you give me some more information about this? And is the cancer manageable? I hope you are around for many more years. --- tusharhero Stallman's reply: [[[ To any NSA…

Very kind of him to reply to you. Perhaps it is just my culture, but asking someone you don't know personally who has a potentially life-threatening illness what their prognosis is can be perceived as very rude. Stallman is sharing the information he wants to share and rest is none of our business.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#633
post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not say it's all doom and gloom. I just founded a FOSS/Linux club at my university. There are going to be some kids who are so interested in technology that they go down a rabbit hole of different communities, open source included. I definitely agree that the general trend towards less advanced technology will harm that though (some 18yo's don't even know how files work because they just use Mac's Finder), bu…

The whole "charging for distribution is fine but charging for development is wrong" thing is what keeps me well away from any kind of involvement with FOSS groups.

I don't get where you get that idea of not charging for development.

That said, I basically never seen anyone charge for a distribution. I figured that people think there's no point, so they just don't.

Now, charging for development? That absolutely happens.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#634
post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your definition of "cancelled" seems to be pretty different than the current usage, in particular people who are against "cancel-culture" as a threat to legitimate freedom and/or as a dangerous unfair ideology. (in both cases, it requires the cancellation to be unfair. If it is not unfair, then it cannot be considered as a danger) I don't really see the point of the term "cancelled" if it is what you describe: what y…

Can you state which parts of the popular conception of cancellation are fantasy? What is it that people have in mind? that thing which practically never happens in real life. Norman Finkelstein is as left-wing as it gets. He views wokism as a right-wing ideology (correctly).

The popular conception of cancellation is that cancellation is an unfair imposition of an ideology on people who don't deserve to be judged, and that it is destroying their life.

But on this discussion you've provided a list, and some people have highlighted that there is legitimate ground for their "cancellation" and that their lives are not destroyed. Therefore it does not correspond to this idea that we have a kind of crazy inquisition randomly punishing perfectly innocent people.

Sure, those "cancellation" can be criticized and discussed, but they are not more a big danger than any other decision about rule of society.

My comment here is rather: "I was told that cancel culture was bad, life-destroying and unfair. Then, someone asked for a list. Someone else provided a list. But then, others have noticed that this list does not correspond to what I have been told: it's way milder than bad, life-destroying and unfair."

It is possible that what I have been told is not the "popular conception of cancellation", but it would be surprising: it is still very much how it is depicted in mass media (from "official newpapers" to "twitter feed of politicians").

About Finkelstein: it is not really what I mean. I'm not saying Finkelstein is right-wing or left-wing. I'm saying I'm interested to see example of cancel culture of someone who wanted to do something left-wing and was canceled by people who defend right-wing ideals. Was Finkelstein canceled because he was too left-wing to the taste of people who liked right-wing?

It's a honest question, the answer can be "yes". The situation is just that I first saw "Finkelstein was canceled for being too woke", which seems to be a description that correspond to that. When you said that it was not the case, I thought "oh, ok, maybe it's not the case, then".

As for "wokism is a right-wing ideology", I would be more convinced by argument saying things like "wokism shares aspect with authoritarianism" or things like that. Something "right-wing" is first and foremost "something that is loved and adopted in the right-wing community". At the end of the day, it fails against to reach my argument. My argument is not really that "a good list will have people who are blue and people who are red in it", my argument is rather "a good list will have people who are canceled by the group A and the group B is outraged by the cancellation, and people who are canceled by the group B and the group A is outraged by the cancellation". So, in fact, it does not matter if wokism is theoretically right-wing or left-wing: if the cancellation is done by the left-wing community acting like the right-wing community, and that the right-wing community is upset about the cancelation, it still has the problem I've raised: why are all the cancellation examples always done by the left-wing community?

One possibility is that one includes ideological orientation in the definition. But even so, if cancel culture is bad, it would be because it's unfair or arbitrary, and "being unfair" or "being arbitrary" is possible whatever ideology you have. So it feels strange that "cancel culture" is a danger while something that is as unfair and arbitrary is not considered as a danger.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#635
post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So would you agree with the statement that all attempts failed? Yes, to the extent there were none, really. And if we consider all the regimes calling themselves communism, yes, sure, failed in every possible ways too, of course. > you're mockingly No no no, I wouldn't dare making fun of you / mocking you. I have no interest doing so and I would not find this funny. I'm sorry I made you feel I'm mocking you, in any…

> You didn't address the hypothesis I exposed in my first comment and that I will restate: any regime calling themselves "communism" were set up by huge assholes using the noble name to call their totalitarian views. Ok lets break it apart. > any regime calling themselves "communism" were set up by huge assholes ( ... ) Agreed. > ( ... ) using the noble name to call their totalitarian views. Wrong. Research into the…

> "using the noble name" (lol?)

Taking a shortcut. I meant using a name that possibly had good reputation back then.

For the rest, I'm no expert on the topic, you seem to know better than me, continuing to argue would be pointless.

edit: (to answer your edit) Okay, but then why didn't you counter me right away with solid arguments if you had them from the start? Happy to learn from an actual expert! Like, you could have just written: "Actually, there's strong evidence that both are the same. Here are some references: ..."

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#636
post #590

[flagged]

Are you suggesting his cancer was somehow caused by being vaccinated?

I can't say definitively. But if you look at the linked article there has been a large increase in cancer since the vaccine rollout.

Are you going to somehow tell us that they are safe and effective despite all the evidence to the contrary?

Other oncologists reporting similar, and it is being covered up by mainstream media. https://kittywells.substack.com/p/london-oncologist-reportin...

But go for it put your head in the sand and call me an antivaxxer.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#638
post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always good to know that the modern generation of devs are ok with discounting someones ideas because they are "gross". These "gross" people are the ones who made overpaid dev positions possible.

It's crazy to think how back in the day, software devs were basically hard science engineers, needing to be proficient in hardware and the nitty gritty of CPU architecture to be effective programmers. All so they could be paid $60-80k/yr in today's dollars for 50-60 hour work weeks. Whereas nowadays you can do a few weeks of a javascript crash course and land a $100k job organizing text windows on a webpage for a few…

Well, that’s because demand for sales-y engage-y web pages is furious while demand for exquisitely refined self-balancing distributed power grids (for example) is at the “call me back when the tech has become a 0.02 commodity” level

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#639
post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He has/had arguable/unacceptable behavior, Can you explain what you mean?

I did there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37699851#37702074

In that comment, just like in this one, you avoid mentioning anything specific. It appears that you are doing that because you can't defend any implied claims; that doing X, Y, and Z is unacceptable. It's a whispering game where the claims are prefixed with "according to some" or "perceived by many" because it's all smoke and mirrors and no substance. E.g you don't even specify whether it is some behaviour or opinions that are what are unacceptable.

Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]

#640
post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm just sad that there's no young people to pass the torch for when the time comes and the founding fathers are no more. I feel like this is a bit of a misperception. Does this historically happen?

Yes, every institution is default dead without constant recruitment of young people to the cause. Most things won’t make it past a generation because everyone fails to focus on how to pass it on. It’s not too late by any means, but it’s looking very bleak for Free software with most kids’ computing being smartphones and cloud services via chromebooks.

Indeed. The FSF is a very worthy cause. If it is true there is a lack of young people involved I'd look for reasons why amongst things like "is it a pleasant space to cooperate in", "are people accepting of new people"? I never had anything to do with FSF directly, but whenever I dealt with people involved with heavily "politically charged" projects like guix, guile, linux-libre and few others in addition to very nice people I always encountered complete idiots that would try to chastise me for example for having the audacity to report problems running a nVidia gpu. Or one person told me flat out he will not answer any of my questions regarding a programming language syntax because I admitted to be making a non-Libre package for my own use. It is 100% bonkers. You may say so what, it's just one person. Every community has idiots, right? Yes, correct, but in case of these projects I had dealings with the toxicity is rather bad to the point that only very dedicated people stay. This also means the communities are tiny and it's much more difficult to get help when you're just starting out.

I think that's why we don't see many new people flocking to FSF projects.

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