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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]

#791

Post by lproven »

Qwertious wrote: post #593
lproven wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android is not proprietary. https://source.android.com/ That makes it rather easier...

You linked to AOSP, not Android. AOSP doesn't have things like the Google Play Store; the shipped image is substantially different and isn't necessarily open-source just because it contains open-source components - Windows contains BSD networking code but that doesn't make Windows open-source.

You know what the "A" in AOSP stands for, right? :-)

All I'm saying is that there's a big difference in jailbreaking an OS when most of the source code of that OS is publicly available for study and experiment. Surely that is not a controversial statement?

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

#792

Post by freedomben »

Worldblender wrote: post #654
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…

> 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 wish I can be one of those young people who can be a worthy successor to Richard Stallman. I already am to a great extent, preferring FLOSS whenever possible (with an unfortunate exemption for video games, especially many PC and all console games). My primary issue is now trying to find like p…

I'm also a big FLOSS advocate to the point where I'll use GIMP and kdenlive (which I feel are great software) even though it would be far, far easier for me to use something non-free.

An important thing RMS did was producing good software along with his advocacy. For example, even though it's inferior to vim (joking), it was and is a killer app. What RMS didn't write himself, he helped to drive and organize, and ended up as a force behind some of the most important tools we still use today, like gcc.

For RMS it was pretty obvious where the needs were. Today it's much less so, but if you want to make a big difference and start a name for yourself, I would probably look for areas where there aren't great FLOSS options and try to take on one of those. It will be challenging no doubt.

My best advice (take with a grain of salt as I'm not the next RMS which is where you want to be), keep preaching the gospel of FLOSS! Help people find and use software (and hardware) that respects their freedom! Pay attention to users that you teach, and identify usability issues that hurt adoption and work to fix them. Be "that guy" that people call when they have a problem and need a solution.

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

#793

Post by freedomben »

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…

wow, that's wild. I get the appeal of living in the world you want instead of the world that exists, but at the end of the day that approach is self-defeating.

It makes me wonder if a new org isn't what we need. I love the FSF and feel they did a tremendous service to the world, but the religious extremism limits their appeal only to true die-hard believers.

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

#794

Post by dale_glass »

tgma wrote: post #770
dale_glass wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

LLVM by the way happened in a good deal because Stallman refused to have GCC dump the AST. This created an area where LLVM could provide extremely valuable functionality which GCC just refused to offer at all.

And with that sort of maneuver, GNU lost exactly what made their stuff popular in the first place: that they provided better tools than what commercial Unix used to come with.

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

#795

Post by freedomben »

Merad wrote: post #687
dEnigma wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel similarly. While I absolutely can't and won't operate under the severe restrictions that an ideologically pure stance on software freedom ala Stallman would impose, I'm glad that there are some people, like Stallman himself, who take it to those extremes, tirelessly advocate for improvement and thus move the needle towards a better middle ground for everyone.

Well, RMS tirelessly advocates for his beliefs, but sometimes his beliefs are regressive and outdated. In particular I remember a debate perhaps 8-10 years ago when the gcc team wanted to expose more info from the compiler back end to enable better support for editor integrations and similar tools, because gcc simply couldn't compete with LLVM in that department. IIRC RMS stepped in with a unilateral decision blockin…

I thought it was actually worse than that, that he wanted it to be harder to integrate with so that proprietary software couldn't easily hook in.

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

#796

Post by groestl »

mrtksn wrote: post #352
layer8 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sell support, and protection against liability.

Cool. You do that, good luck for selling support for your open source TikTok video effects app. The gist is, for different situations different business models can work. If the one you propose works for your software, good for you. The problem starts when you demand that other business models should not exist, so yours can work.

> when you demand that other business models should not exist, so yours can work.

Aside from the fact that in democracies we regularly oust business models which we believe have dimetral effects on society, this is not what happens here. Free software exists as a choice. And is often chosen freely, because of it's transparency, quality, and continuity, not because of it's price. In fact, when you base your work on a foundation so large that it's infeasible to recreate it, the Four Freedoms actually work in _your_ favor as a business.

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

#797

Post by NegativeK »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #754
NegativeK wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fellow Debianer that visits Windows. It's fine when I'm derping around in Photoshop or something, but it's infuriating for actual work. Debian is home.

Are you aware of Photopea? It's FOSS and a very capable alternative to Photoshop. It evens runs smoothly on my old Android 5 tablet. https://www.photopea.com/

I've tried a few of the FLOSS photography tools. I'm impressed with them, but I prefer the Adobe suite for how I work.

There's also a few other tools like Fusion 360, games, etc. that I prefer having Windows around for.

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

#799

Post by chris_wot »

bdamm wrote: post #736
chris_wot wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you should avoid exercise daily.

Sadly, the English language is not precise enough for me to express what I wanted in a compact way. Recently I have been learning Ukrainian and there is a language where it is easy to precisely express this kind of thought due to the many different forms of "and", word terminations indicating expected noun context, and different rules about punctuation.

Exercise daily and avoid sugar, alcohol and bacon.

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

#800

Post by calderknight »

robertlagrant wrote: post #781
calderknight wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

OK, so, by Communist China you meant China after Mao took power but before capitalist economic systems developed.

Everything that has happened in China is possible only because of the victories of communism. From a non-existent school system (Mao managed to attend school because his father was the wealthiest in his village, but the schooling was nothing but rote memorisation of poems) to a well-educated population. From a nation controlled by war-lords to a nation controlled by the CCP. From a nation occupied by various foreign powers to a nation controlled by its own people, capable of controlling its borders. These were not the achievements of capitalism.

China had authoritarians before communism. Many countries has authoritarian leaders contemporaneous to Mao but achieved nothing. Mao's successes were not what "any" authoritarian could have achieved. It needed to be an authority with faith in the masses of its people, and an authority altruistic enough to put aside its own immediate interests for the good of the people. Fascism shares some of these qualities, but the fascists were expansionist, impatient, etc. Fascism lost, Mao won.

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