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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]

#761

Post by yyyk »

dale_glass wrote: post #96
blueflow wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And gcc and grub and potentially some other 10 libraries that everybody is still using! > Where's their Youtube channel, or their Twitter? You are seriously asking why the Free Software Foundation isn't using a propietary social platform?

> And gcc and grub and potentially some other 10 libraries that everybody is still using! Stallman almost screwed up gcc, I think multiple times. GRUB at this point can be safely declared obsolete in the age of EFI. But yes, GCC is very nice. > You are seriously asking why the Free Software Foundation isn't using a propietary social platform? If only to direct people to content hosted elsewhere, but yes.

I dislike GRUB - it is way overcomplex - but it is ubiquitous and very much in use.

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

#762

Post by kortilla »

NavinF wrote: post #699
sodality2 wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean people who are literally unable to navigate directories because they drop all their folders on the desktop, and use exclusively Spotlight to find these files. Of course it makes sense to use Spotlight - I use the equivalent on Linux - but I still know how to navigate a directory, unzip a zip file, etc when many people simply never learn that.

I refuse to believe that a smaller proportion of people know how to navigate a directory and unzip a zip file today compared to any prior year. A lot of people didn't know how to use computers at all a decade ago because they didn't have any kind of computer at home, not even a smart phone

It peaked and is in the decline. The number of households with desktops/laptops is in the decline. Fully native tablet+phone is the way a bunch of kids are growing up. Only computer usage in our local public schools is chromebooks.

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

#763

Post by jraph »

bjourne wrote: post #639
jraph wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 opinion…

I don't find any opinion of RMS unacceptable. I actually happen to find him very reasonable on most things.

I've read he has had inappropriate behavior with women. I can't know for sure to which extent it is true or false. I find this plausible but have no proof and it could be wrong. The best I can find is this tweet from 2018 I cited in another comment about women at MIT trying to avoid him by putting plants in their offices. I find this quite bad but would agree it's weak.

I also had in mind his harsh email answering this guy announcing his baby on some mailing list, or the numerous times he harshly dismissed questions at his presentations that were not perfectly phrased (that I actually saw it first hand).

There's also this great talk from Keith Packard [1] were he states they didn't use the GPL for X (mostly) because RMS was so annoying.

But the unacceptable status of any of these things is arguable and I fundamentally don't want to witch hunt him. In the end I still admire him and spending time on this is just annoying.

So let's just say that I indeed have no strong evidence of him having unacceptable behavior, so let me clean things up and retract this claim until some strong evidence shows up.

Thanks for keeping me in check.

[1] A political history of X https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yqDJv4W7m8

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

#764

Post by mbakke »

onethought wrote: post #753
mbakke wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A metal bar will always be a metal bar. Software is malleable, and Tesla (or hackers) can change it under your feet. You should be able to inspect it and have a say in what it does or whether to accept the next update. See the recent Philips Hue debacle for an example of when software that's been running well for years suddenly turns on the user.

Metal isn’t malleable? I guess they just dug it up in the shape of a car. See recent car recalls where there is a structural problem with the car. This is not unique to software.

Right, I worded that poorly. The point is that Tesla cannot remotely change the metal in your car, whereas they can with the software.

We as users should demand insight into the software running on hardware we own. Otherwise we only partially own it, and if the device is connected to the internet, we can lose ownership any time.

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

#765

Post by belorn »

Gigachad wrote: post #475
leidenfrost wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot more understandable if you consider the state of computing he experienced while growing up: Programs were way simpler, and shipping the source code in paper was the de facto way of distribution. It's not like he was a wacko around his peers. He just created what seemed a logical step from that. I'm just sad that there's no young people to pass the torch for when the time comes and the founding fathers are…

It’s commonly said that his inspiration was from wanting to improve a printer driver but couldn’t because it was proprietary. I feel like back in the day there would have been so many easy wins for modifications. Like how people used to root Android to add screenshot capability. These days modern software is so extremely sophisticated and refined that I can’t think of anything I could improve for say iOS. Still love…

When it comes to large sophisticated software the goal is not so much to improve it one self. Rather it is the knowledge that any anti-patterns will be removed by the community if it ever get added. Most of the time the community will not even need to remove anti-pattern from open source projects, since companies know that adding anti-pattern is just wasted developer time.

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

#766

Post by PostOnce »

bawolff wrote: post #438
PostOnce wrote: post #322

Stallman's character is one of the reasons I have repeatedly considered establishing some kind of "Church of Computing", i.e. an organized "religion" solely to secure religious protections and rights as they apply to the modern world. For example, the right not to have to use some random company's app to interact with a government agency or a public school (and agree to said company's EULA, etc). It only takes a few…

This feels like one of those - programmers think they understand how laws work but don't actually.

Even the pastafarians get to wear strainers on their heads in driver's license photos. Some religions are exempt from paying social security. A group of adamant people is a powerful thing.

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

#767

Post by TheHappyOddish »

bjourne wrote: post #632
tusharhero wrote: post #560

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.

Western culture is for sure the same, but Stallman specifically would not mind that question.

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

#768

Post by dale_glass »

tgma wrote: post #741
dale_glass wrote: post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way would be not having Stallman do the advocacy. His ideals is just fine. His social manners not so much, and that highly limits the effectiveness.

As someone else posted in the thread earlier, FSF has professional staff that work on PR etc. Please note that it is a small non-profit and they cannot afford a big marketing department, partially because their ideals hinder growth to a huge degree (e.g. even Linus is on record suggesting you should donate to EFF not FSF.) It is not surprising that big corporate donors will also avoid donating when they have pages un…

There's no need for any corporate conspiracy. RMS does a good job of looking bad on his own, and the FSF barely shows up on Linux sites. I don't think the likes of Netflix even know the FSF exists at this point, let alone bother allocating any effort towards fighting back.

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

#769

Post by lima »

b800h wrote: post #620
lima wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux desktop is more viable than ever. Zigbee/Matter/... are widely adopted open standards without vendor lock in. Things like Home Assistant are getting serious attention and funding. Could be much worse.

"You mean GNU/Linux." :-)

Indeed, though Android/Linux, ChromeOS/Linux and others are doing fine also!

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

#770

Post by tgma »

dale_glass wrote: post #768
tgma wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone else posted in the thread earlier, FSF has professional staff that work on PR etc. Please note that it is a small non-profit and they cannot afford a big marketing department, partially because their ideals hinder growth to a huge degree (e.g. even Linus is on record suggesting you should donate to EFF not FSF.) It is not surprising that big corporate donors will also avoid donating when they have pages un…

There's no need for any corporate conspiracy. RMS does a good job of looking bad on his own, and the FSF barely shows up on Linux sites. I don't think the likes of Netflix even know the FSF exists at this point, let alone bother allocating any effort towards fighting back.

All FAANGs have lawyers thinking about GPL, copyleft, AGPL, and have policies what to use by default for their own code, so you can be damn sure they are fully aware of FSF and what they are doing when they invest in LLVM and change the default shell to zsh and encourage Apache 2.0. The "Open Source" movement is explicitly a conspiracy to avoid using the term Free Software.
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