81–90 of 841 posts
I think he is one of the most influential persons in the last decades, not only regarding GNU or FreeSoftware but also about technology overall. While sadly at the same time lots of people underestimate his works and foreseeing.
He has really been and still is an inspiration for me. Really all the best to him!!
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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…
The FSF is a tiny organization with little funding; you can't lay the responsibility for "reaching out" on them. It's a question of what other cultural, educational and commercial organizations and groups have been doing; whether enough of them have taken these messages to heart; and what they have been promoting. Also, in suggesting they use Youtube or Twitter, you're simply exemplifying how you reject their princip…
Sure can, that's the very purpose of their existence. "The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a nonprofit with a worldwide mission to promote computer user freedom." -- how is that going to happen if nobody hears what they want?
> Also, in suggesting they use Youtube or Twitter, you're simply exemplifying how you reject their principles.
And how else are people on those platforms going to hear anything? The only way I can imagine is either by people who don't agree with the FSF repeating their message (do you trust them to be accurate?), or people who do agree, but more willing to compromise.
> so ask yourself, why have we not been promoting those platforms, and why have everyone seemingly yielded to ever-widening control of our digital lives by these large corporations?
And you think posting in tiny platforms that almost nobody knows even exist is going to fix anything?
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This is what's on his personal page, stallman.org: `Richard Stallman has cancer. Fortunately it is slow-growing and manageable follicular lymphona, so he will probably live many more years nonetheless. But he now has to be even more careful not to catch Covid-19.`
for the curious, "follicular lymphoma" is what you want to search for. Fairly pithy site to get started: https://www.pathologyoutlines.com/topic/lymphomafollicularno...
He is the one who we need now , in the era of saas/cloud run by big tech. So sad.
Does he really turn against SaaS/Cloud? Software that doesn't run on your computer doesn't necessarily need to be in your control, right? As long as the clients are free.
I really liked the idea of Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS): https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...
It's gotten to the point where most cloud services are no longer managed instances of open source or even compatible software.
You could take a managed cloud PostgreSQL instance and migrate to something self-hosted if the prices were to hike up or something else happened that would necessitate it.
But how many of the cloud services in your stack does that apply to? Geocoding or routing? Push notifications and messaging? Payment gateways? Authentication and authorization solutions? File storage solutions? Web Application Firewalls?
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The FSF is a tiny organization with little funding; you can't lay the responsibility for "reaching out" on them. It's a question of what other cultural, educational and commercial organizations and groups have been doing; whether enough of them have taken these messages to heart; and what they have been promoting. Also, in suggesting they use Youtube or Twitter, you're simply exemplifying how you reject their princip…
Their goal should be encouraging people to demand open software and hardware, not being principled. Youtube and Twitter have power, not acknowledging that is dumb.
The technology is there to make their own website and platforms; I'd argue that the problem isn't that they're not active on the big social media platforms, but that they don't produce media in the first place.
They can chuck videos onto their own website, license it under a free license and allow others to repost them onto social media for exposure, for example.
Horrible fate. Freedom is in freefall.
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I will answer this assuming good faith, but this line of reasoning is very irritating since the answer (to me) is obvious. If RMS made a choice to use proprietary software, with the only alternative being his dead, there is absolutely no moral conflict, or even anything against his principle. The only issue could only ever arises if he claimed "Free Software is more important than human lives", which I am pretty sure…
> The only issue could only ever arises if he claimed "Free Software is more important than human lives", which I am pretty sure not a claim he, or anyone, has ever made. Valuing freedom (even in limited spheres) more than human lives is a pretty familiar American idea. For example, recall Patrick Henry's "give me liberty or give me death" and consider that he was talking about the prospect of being taxed without his…
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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…
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?
They're terrible at it, Youtube or not.
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.
GNU existed without a kernel for a while, RMS did not stop using computers. If there is no free alternative you use what you can.
Linux is not a GNU project. But it's free software, so I suppose RMS could use it without major pain. Although he'd probably prefer Linux to use GPLv3.
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Also, old.reddit.com usually doesn't have all these shenanigans, so I just set up a redirect.
Nice, any tips on doing that for an entire home network? Or do you have to do it per device somehow
You'll need a local webserver running to serve the redirect, but that's a simple nginx config. Maybe I'll write a blog post for this stuff...