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The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

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Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#71

Post by wmf »

eruleman wrote: post #67
samatman wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to do a lot better than UBI for FOSS to keep advancing. A caste of code monks who forgo a comfortable life to write free software from their Mom's basement, or a cabin in the woods, isn't nearly good enough. Might not be able to pay out a quarter million a year like the FAAAM crew does, but we need a bunch of jobs paying half that to write and maintain open source. If it isn't competitive with the other optio…

Good news: Crypto created the new business model for open source software. Naval: "Ironic that the most monetizeable code in the world is now open source (running on blockchains). OSS has the best business model." https://twitter.com/naval/status/867860551522598912

That only works if you're willing to attach a scam to your software and it gives you no incentive to work on the software since it doesn't generate value.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#72

Post by ptero »

grawprog wrote: post #53

Phones, consoles, Chromebooks and other unrootable hardware, restrictive hardware licensing, arm's business model, abstraction over abstraction, SAAS, corporate cloud infrastructure, web apps over local, streaming over storing, walled gardens, signed binaries, nearly everything about 'modern safe computing' is all about taking control and responsibility away from users and handing it over to somebody else to be paid…

Well put! Your part about the current attitude that "users can't be trusted with this power and need to be protected from themselves at their own expense by some other benevolent entity" is spot on.

We should strive to get back to having engineering level access to the general purpose computers we buy. And then continue on to give tinkerers the same engineering access for tools for making things: CNC lathes and mills, etc. Then your "whoever you are ... you can do just about anything" part becomes even more powerful. My 2c.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#73

Post by Zak »

mullingitover wrote: post #35
city41 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember in the 90s people all thought Stallman was crazy. And by people I mean developers, Linux users, people on usenet, etc. We all appreciated his contributions but at the end of the day just figured he was wearing a tin foil hat.

To be clear, Richard "I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children" Stallman is totally nuts (although I'll give credit where it's due, he finally walked back his stance on pedophilia). A stopped clock is still right twice a day.

This seems like an instance of "what you can't say". The taboo is so strong that to even question it leads observers to speculate about whether the questioner is insane or evil. I suspect the reality is some manner of neurodivergence, either autism or a thing we don't yet have a good name for.

I even feel the need to add that I don't share his skepticism, lest I raise suspicion about my own position by posting this.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#76

Post by [deleted] »

bigbubba wrote: post #12
twentydollars wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate in plain English? Your comment makes no sense to me.

That is plain English. Using a dictionary to help yourself out with the more uncommon words is a better approach than asking people to restrict their vocabulary to suit you.

[deleted]

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#77

Post by grawprog »

Hokusai wrote: post #65
grawprog wrote: post #53

Phones, consoles, Chromebooks and other unrootable hardware, restrictive hardware licensing, arm's business model, abstraction over abstraction, SAAS, corporate cloud infrastructure, web apps over local, streaming over storing, walled gardens, signed binaries, nearly everything about 'modern safe computing' is all about taking control and responsibility away from users and handing it over to somebody else to be paid…

Great comment, I agree with it. Except for the blame part: > Those people are the ones running the tech giants today, pushing locked down hardware, and trying to crush general computing as a thing. To blame individuals will solve nothing. This is a systemic problem. There is a strong incentive to gate-keep computers for maximum profitability, put anyone in charge of a tech company and they will feel the market pressu…

Fair enough, it wasn't so much blame more of a they only got where they are because of general purpose computing, like it or not, those are the people now acting as gate keepers. It was more of a 'I expected better', trying to lay the blame kind of thing.

I'll admit my choice of words was poor.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#78

Post by YuccaGloriosa »

adamgordonbell wrote: post #37
matheusmoreira wrote: post #4

> But in general, the poorer and younger you are, the more likely you are to be a tenant farmer in some feudal lord's computational lands. An analogy that will probably define the 21st century...

Cory has a great fiction story about this called "Unauthorized Bread" https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...

Great book. tl;dr dystopian future with HP business model applied to all your kitchen appliances.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#79

Post by GoofballJones »

city41 wrote: post #14
heavyset_go wrote: post #7

This is something Stallman[1] and others have talked about for a while now, with this article having been published in 2003[2]. [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.en.html [2] https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

I remember in the 90s people all thought Stallman was crazy. And by people I mean developers, Linux users, people on usenet, etc. We all appreciated his contributions but at the end of the day just figured he was wearing a tin foil hat.

Make no mistake, Stallman is a loon. Yes, a loon that developed some great things and has some good ideas, but he's still a loon.

That doesn't mean he's wrong. Just...a loon.

Re: The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)

#80

Post by theshadowknows »

ptero wrote: post #72
grawprog wrote: post #53

Phones, consoles, Chromebooks and other unrootable hardware, restrictive hardware licensing, arm's business model, abstraction over abstraction, SAAS, corporate cloud infrastructure, web apps over local, streaming over storing, walled gardens, signed binaries, nearly everything about 'modern safe computing' is all about taking control and responsibility away from users and handing it over to somebody else to be paid…

Well put! Your part about the current attitude that "users can't be trusted with this power and need to be protected from themselves at their own expense by some other benevolent entity" is spot on. We should strive to get back to having engineering level access to the general purpose computers we buy. And then continue on to give tinkerers the same engineering access for tools for making things: CNC lathes and mills…

As a sr architect who requires management approval to install node.js on my work laptop...yes!
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