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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]

#671

Post by hedora »

newscracker wrote: post #270

I hope he’s able to manage it well (since the prognosis is good) and is around for a lot longer. We need absolutists like him who go to extremes and are known widely. For a few moments, leave aside his personality and what people have said about his behavior or hygiene. If he hadn’t been there, our world would’ve been a lot different and a lot poorer. A visionary is what he was and is. While the Free part of FOSS is…

I'm a bit worried about the health of the GPL ecosystem. GPL 3 is basically an anti-TiVo and (now) anti-Apple license, but it leaves giant loopholes for Google and other service providers.

The whole point of the GPL was to empower users, and it's pretty clearly failing at that. SaaS providers provide access to GPL software, but users can't decide which version to run, or move their data, or even use an old version of the software if the new one comes with unreasonable restrictions, surveillance clauses, or unreasonable price tags. At this point, FOSS isn't even free-as-in-beer for most people.

On top of that, Red Hat has basically said they're not going to abide by the GPL any more. They're taking third party code, modifying it, distributing binaries, and if you exercise your rights under the GPL, then they'll stop giving you access to the code or the binaries.

Ironically, BSD and Apache licenses seem to be better at preserving user freedom at this point. They allow commercial distribution on hardware and as a SaaS. GPL 3 forces *aaS business models in practice.

I hope RMS makes a quick recovery, but I'm pretty bummed about how the GPL has played out at this point.

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

#673

Post by rpmisms »

oblio wrote: post #392
jeltz wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PipeWire made sound finally work flawlessly for me on Linux, Proton made it possible to play a ton of games, graphics drivers being stable, especially for Vulcan and Firefox enabling hardware acceleration. Some things are worse as you note, but there have been som important improvements.

Is there a mainstream laptop on which Linux runs as well as Windows? I'd really want one that doesn't cost 3k+.

Any recent Thinkpad will do fine. The Apple Silicon laptops can't run Windows, but can run linux, so there's that, too. Also, Dell XPS laptops do very well with linux.

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

#675

Post by Qwertious »

robertlagrant wrote: post #563
calderknight wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia, China, Vietnam. Anyway, you're being illogical. A flawed argument will remain just as flawed when it is used to reach a true conclusion as when it is used to reach a false conclusion. If you want to prove me wrong, show that it is sensible to infer from the fact that an extremely selected-for sample has some property that the entire population has that same property - and do so without appealing to a bigger p…

The Russian and Chinese death toll under Communism went into the mid to high tens of millions, no?

I don't want to defend Mao/Stalin, fuck em both, but: If you're counting deaths by starvation under a communist regime as "death by communism", then you have to count deaths by starvation under capitalism as "death by capitalism". Poverty kills a whooooole lot of people, and the current system is broken specifically because the billionaires who benefit are specifically blocking any attempts to fix the system - like oil lobbyists who prevent climate action. We could have ended world poverty in the 1980s, we had the resources and it would have been overall profitable for the world economy. We can't afford to not end world poverty.

Of course, communism is a system where the workers have control over their workplace, and by "the workers" I mean "random government bureaucrats that supposedly represent the workers", and by "have control" I mean "they have their choice of vote in the single-party election for the government that appoints said bureaucrats".

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

#676

Post by oh_sigh »

vasco wrote: post #319
hutzlibu wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We need absolutists like him who go to extremes and are known widely." But what is he known for, outside tech circles, if he is known at all? When you want to deliver a message, it matters a lot, how you deliver it.

I'd bet there will be a blockbuster movie about this guy within 10 years of him dying and it'll be in the pop culture, and maybe even stoke a temporary privacy / freedom focus for a while in common consciousness. Unfortunately the world doesn't know how to really appreciate people as much when they're alive for some personality types.

Nah, the world only really cares to hear about techie stories if they make a few billion for themselves.

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

#677

Post by code_duck »

code_duck wrote: post #30
eurleif wrote: post #13

Asking out of curiosity, not to be cruel: I wonder if he's willing to use medical equipment that uses non-Free software? To my knowledge, his stated position against using non-Free software is pretty much absolute; but given that medical equipment's software is almost universally non-Free, taking that stance here would seriously endanger his ability to receive necessary medical care.

I don't believe that Stallman would give up his principles. I suppose one could investigate whether has ever been to an ER. My guess is that he would rather stand firm and die.

Not sure how people interpreted this, but it wasn't criticism or celebration of his misfortune. I intended to note that he is extraordinarily firm in standing by his beliefs and principles.

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

#678

Post by hedora »

cultureswitch wrote: post #573
corethree wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idealists had it right about global warming too. It's our own incapability to be idealists that will inevitably and ultimately bring about the worst case scenario for global warming.

The idealists have it right today. Global warming is one ecological problem out of dozens and we'll economically outscale it even if we don´t do anything special about it. Damage to human health and infrastructure plus spending in adaptation will be a steady drag that will be much slower than our increasing ability to withstand its effects. In the meantime, we have tons of global and local issues caused by human acti…

> We will soon have the technology to concentrate power and security into the hands of an ever-shrinking minority pretty much to the point that any violent rebellion of any amount of normal people will fail.

This isn't new. Read up on the dark ages, and how Gutenberg ended them with the printing press. As technologists, the best thing we can do is figure out how to build technology that scales down enough to be wielded by individuals. That includes education and media distribution technologies.

Also, climate change models that estimate economic damage project annual damage from extreme weather exceeding global GDP in a few decades. Humanity will probably survive, but its unclear that anything resembling the modern economy will.

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

#679

Post by jandrewrogers »

nottorp wrote: post #448
jraph wrote: post #181

Here he is, 70, under chemo, giving a speech. He keeps being a force of nature. May he recover well, or at least have long enjoyable years ahead. He has/had arguable/unacceptable behavior, but I believe we strongly owe him. He has built incredible software, defined important stuff and kicked our asses in the right direction.

Hmm I'm curious. He's been basically running non profits all his life. In the US. How can he afford the treatment? Is the FSF big enough to be able to get medical insurance for their employees?

If you are poor, medical care is essentially free in the US. I know a few people that had excellent cancer care at some of the best oncology clinics in the country all paid for by the US government.

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

#680

Post by linuxftw »

hedora wrote: post #671
newscracker wrote: post #270

I hope he’s able to manage it well (since the prognosis is good) and is around for a lot longer. We need absolutists like him who go to extremes and are known widely. For a few moments, leave aside his personality and what people have said about his behavior or hygiene. If he hadn’t been there, our world would’ve been a lot different and a lot poorer. A visionary is what he was and is. While the Free part of FOSS is…

I'm a bit worried about the health of the GPL ecosystem. GPL 3 is basically an anti-TiVo and (now) anti-Apple license, but it leaves giant loopholes for Google and other service providers. The whole point of the GPL was to empower users, and it's pretty clearly failing at that. SaaS providers provide access to GPL software, but users can't decide which version to run, or move their data, or even use an old version of…

The solution is simple: don't pay for SaaS products. And that's if you consider it a problem. When email was created, you didn't care what the remote mail server's software was, as long as it conformed to the protocol, you're good.
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