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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]

#781

Post by robertlagrant »

calderknight wrote: post #659
robertlagrant wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You seem to be focusing on something quite beside the point. Anyway. Under communism, China went from being "the sick man of Asia" to the most economically successful and politically powerful country in Asia, no? It's the greatest single power on Earth other than the USA, no? But perhaps under a capitalist regime China might have had even greater success? Well, let us see: How does one compare the stumbles of early C…

> Under communism, China went from being "the sick man of Asia" to the most economically successful and politically powerful country in Asia, no?

I don't believe that's true, no. China does have a lot of natural resources, and a large population, and also it's true that any very authoritarian regime, fascist Italy under Mussolini being another good example, can do things like create good infrastructure, because it can have long-term bets. That is an accelerator for long-term economic growth. But the actual economic growth has come from China allowing capitalist economic systems to develop, where the people doing the work or risking the cash make decisions. Of course, Communism dies hard, and so if you say the wrong thing you can be "reminded" that the Party is all-powerful[0], but China has done well to allow individual people create value, evidenced by its economic growth.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56448688

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

#782

Post by hutzlibu »

bawolff wrote: post #750
hutzlibu wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Does it matter? His message isn't for non-programmers." I see. Well then, carry on. But maybe then do not wonder when the rest of the world does not care about software freedom and also don't donate or support it in any way. Oh and Plato is well known as a philosopher, but yes, most people do not know that he proposed a very totalitarian state and is rather known for platonic love.

> But maybe then do not wonder when the rest of the world does not care about software freedom and also don't donate or support it in any way. I mean, i would more wonder why people would think the rest of the world care about the gnu project's four freedoms or even understand them. Half the time we can't even get citizens to care about basic things like freedom of speech.

Everyone wants to fully control the devices they own. But more importantly they want their devices to work. So a half working open source lineageOS mobile is less valuable to them (and me), than a closed source, but working blob.

But if you can get them to understand, that open source eventually means consumer friendly, that the device will be fully under their control(no ads, no restrictions) and working if OSS gets more support, they will listen. But since they largely do not know all this, I think it is exactly because most free software preaching evolves only around devs.

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

#783

Post by minerva23 »

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…

> We need absolutists like him

I agree we need passionate people working tirelessly for software freedom.

The broader free software community agrees we don't need people like him though.

From Wikipedia:

> The FSF board on April 12 [2021] made a statement re-affirming its decision to bring back Richard Stallman.

> Multiple organizations criticized, defunded and/or cut ties with the FSF, including: Red Hat, the Free Software Foundation Europe, the Software Freedom Conservancy, SUSE, the OSI, the Document Foundation, the EFF, and the Tor Project.

For those out of the loop, the Richard Stallman had repeatedly defended adults having sex with children over many years and he most recently said sex slaves aren't raped.

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

#784

Post by PostOnce »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #747
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…

You might want to visit this link: https://stallman.org/saint.html "Sainthood in the Church of Emacs requires living a life of purity—but in the Church of Emacs, this does not require celibacy (a sigh of relief is heard). Being holy in our church means exorcizing whatever evil, proprietary operating systems have possessed computers that are under your control, or set up for your regular use; installing a holy (i.e.,…

Father forgive me for I have sinned: I am still using a graphical IDE, and have tried vi, but have never tried emacs.

I am installing it now.

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

#785

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

93po wrote: post #773
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to visit this link: https://stallman.org/saint.html "Sainthood in the Church of Emacs requires living a life of purity—but in the Church of Emacs, this does not require celibacy (a sigh of relief is heard). Being holy in our church means exorcizing whatever evil, proprietary operating systems have possessed computers that are under your control, or set up for your regular use; installing a holy (i.e.,…

Does this mean that adherents can't actually text or call via carrier? Or have a data plan? I believe every modem-chip used to do this has proprietary code.

Acolytes of Church of Emacs can use mobile phones, it is considered a minor sin. But, of course, this prohibits a path to sainthood for them.

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

#786

Post by sqldba »

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…

I'm worried about that but also feel like GPL 4 needs an anti-AI clause. I don't want code I'm written fed into a machine that writes code that doesn't respect user freedom.

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

#787

Post by onetruepretzel »

dale_glass wrote: post #52
H8crilA wrote: post #33

What's cool about RMS is that he perfectly foresaw many decades ago the world that we live in today: your car or smart fridge refusing actions because its software says so. And you cannot change the bloody software! I cringe every time I see encrypted firmware running in trusted execution environment, DRM, DLCs for fucking physical products, websites or apps that scam you into signing up or giving up some other freed…

The pity is that while he was remarkably prescient, he seems to have stopped adapting decades ago. GNU seems to have little interest in keeping up with modern developments, and seems to be content with maintaining the old command line tools for the most part. Meanwhile, they're becoming a smaller and smaller proportion of an useful software stack, and people are rewriting them in more modern fashions, eg, Rust. Prett…

> GNU seems to have little interest in keeping up with modern developments, and seems to be content with maintaining the old command line tools for the most part. Meanwhile, they're becoming a smaller and smaller proportion of an useful software stack, and people are rewriting them in more modern fashions, eg, Rust. Pretty much none of that is done under the GPL.

We need these "content" people who maintain reliable tools with stable interfaces/behaviours. These people and tools are at the core of what modern infrastructure run on. Fly by night tools, languages and frameworks do not allow us to progress like we have. It's very easy for us "users" of these tools to forget that there is something maintaining something we take for granted.

You seem to be forgetting you're standing on the shoulders of giants.

https://xkcd.com/2347/

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

#788

Post by fennecfoxy »

Roark66 wrote: post #640
kortilla wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nic…

Yes, people on the extreme ends treat FOSS etc almost as a religion. Humans are wont to get very tribal, unfortunately.

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

#789

Post by collyw »

meepmorp wrote: post #723
collyw wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. https://swizec.com/blog/pirates-downfall-causes-global-warmi... > But go for it put your head in the sand and call me an antivaxxer. Ok.

Will you be taking the next booster out of interest? Rushed out in record time. Tested on a few mice. But sure its safe and effective.

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

#790

Post by taway1237 »

hk__2 wrote: post #326
nesarkvechnep wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about it once more.

> Think about it once more. There’s nothing to think more; the FSF should use YouTube or similar services as mirrors so people can watch the videos even when their website is hammered down by the HN crowd. You can hardly argue that the current situation where nobody can watch the video is a good idea.

The FSF is ideologically opposed to youtube and other proprietary services. They don't want to use it and will not use it. It's their work and they have no obligation to you - it's like going to a vegan party, complaining they have no food you like and demanding they order some hamburgers for you. There's nothing to think more, the FSF shouldn't use YouTube or similar services.
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