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RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

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Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#91

Post by tmarble »

wiz21 wrote: post #66
ashitlerferad wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eben has recently argued for combining code under GPL and GPL incompatible licenses, which could lead to the combination of code under GPL and proprietary licenses. I regard him as compromised by his corporate clients.

ouch, didn't know that... Would you care to give a link where this is explained ?

Here's some background: http://info9.net/wiki/tmarble/posts/is-slfc-shooting-open-so...

And a statement last week from the former Debian Project Leader: http://gensho.acc.umu.se/pub/debian-meetings/2016/debconf16/...

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#92

Post by cpach »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #82
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit nit-picky, but RMS is perfectly fine with commercial software (software that is sold for money), he objects to proprietary software (software that you cannot read and modify the source code of). Freeware is not commercial, but proprietary. When you buy a Linux distro CD, that's commercial, but might be non-proprietary (depending on the distro).

Yet selling software--not services--seems incompatible with RMS's insistence on the freedom of end users to distribute without cost.

It sure is harder, but not impossible.

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#93

Post by yarrel »

danso wrote: post #10

> There are organizations that proclaim support for free software or the GNU Project, and teach classes in use of nonfree software. It's possible that they do some other things that really support free software, but those classes certainly don't. On the contrary, they work directly against the free software movement by promoting the use of the nonfree software. That increases the magnitude of the practical problem it…

Software written in JavaScript may be free or non-free, like software in any other programming language.

In this particular case the code is not freely licensed and so (by rms' definition) is not free.

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#94

Post by yarrel »

dcgudeman wrote: post #9

I really appreciate what RMS has done as far as start a movement that I think has contributed greatly to the human existence but when he says things like "The basic point of the free software movement is that nonfree software is unjust and should not exist." I can't but seriously question his judgment. It's one thing to personally want to use free software, it's another to claim that nonfree software "should not exis…

The "wrong" is where that software prevents you from exercising precisely the kind of choice that you are arguing for.

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#95

Post by quadrangle »

cpkpad wrote: post #25
rmc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's been RMS & FSF's position for decades. They view it as wrong that you have software which you do not have the four freedom for. Many legal and ethnical systems have limitations on what you can consent to. You're not allowed to consent to work for less than the minimum wage, for example

This is a little bit different. The only reason proprietary software exists is the copyright clause in the Constitution, which grants the government a right to issue limited-time monopolies to creators of original works. Revoking a government-granted monopoly is very libertarian. Revoking mutual consent is the opposite.

Proprietary software can be that way via unavailable source code and/or DRM without any government monopoly. So, legal elimination of proprietary software would require abolishing copyright and patent laws and mandating source release for published works along with prohibition of DRM.

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#96

Post by quadrangle »

dcgudeman wrote: post #9

I really appreciate what RMS has done as far as start a movement that I think has contributed greatly to the human existence but when he says things like "The basic point of the free software movement is that nonfree software is unjust and should not exist." I can't but seriously question his judgment. It's one thing to personally want to use free software, it's another to claim that nonfree software "should not exis…

It's quite a shallow idea that right and wrong in life are exclusively related to consent. Just building on that concept (not to compare to software issues), one could say that it's fine to own slaves as long as they consent to selling themselves to you. Ethics is clearly far more complex than just the issue of consent. And that even ignores the issue that the real world is far removed from the abstract principle of consent given imperfect power balances and imperfect knowledge on each side.

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#97

Post by belorn »

legulere wrote: post #77
belorn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide a single political movement that is fully optional in their goal. Would a vegetarian say that if a person voluntarily buy animal factory meat, then there is nothing wrong with it. Would a environmentalist say that if a person voluntarily buy a polluting car, then there is nothing wrong with the manufacturer selling it. Would a anti-war activist say that if a person voluntarily join the military, then…

Do all vegetarians try to "replace and eliminate" meat-consumption for the whole population? How do you view those that do? > if a person voluntarily buy a polluting car, Everyone is affected by the pollution, so a bad comparison. > person voluntarily join the military, Again people are involuntarily affected by war. > I am looking at a list of political movements, and I can't see a single one which would say that th…

"No means no" is about rape, so can people voluntarily be raped? If I look up the definition of rape, will I find the word "consent", as in, rape is an act when someone is involuntarily being involved in an sexual act. You can not voluntarily be raped. People can pretend, but then people can pretend that they are dragons and live on the moon.

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#98

Post by quitspamming »

It's articles like this that make it very hard to continue to take RMS seriously, and that is a huge shame. He's brilliant and has contributed so much. Things he created are the reason I get a paycheck.

That said, this tribal religious you're-either-100%-with-us-or-you're-against-us and I'm going to "condemn you" ("nor have anything to do with it, nor even talk about it except with condemnation.") attitude makes it almost impossible to be sympathetic to his cause and puts him on the level of other rigid religious fundamentalist radicals.

If he IS talking about Red Hat here, as others have theorized, then he is worse than a fanatic, he's a self destructive jerk.

Red Hat just recently came out and said despite other companies abandoning GCC for Clang (See Google, Apple, FreeBSD, Android, even the Linux Foundation) they were still investing in GCC. Without GCC there is no more "GNU slash Linux" it's just Linux at that point. There are other C libraries, other userlands, but Linux still needs GCC and Red Hat is backing GCC. Keep condemning allies like Red Hat and soon they'll wonder why they even try to be your friend.

As soon as llvm.linuxfoundation.org gets Linux written in C instead of GCC, there will be no more GNU slash Linux or GNU plus Linux or whatever RMS wants it called. FreeBSD, Android, and then Linux will be fully capable of ditching GNU, FSF, and RMS and GPL'd software (save for the kernel which is GPLv2 and only nominally so, they never actually sue for violations like binary blobs) altogether. And who would be sad? Linux didn't "win" because of the philosophical views of RMS. Linux won because it worked. What happens when Linux, and companies like Red Hat, don't need this kind of garbage anymore?

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#99

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #82
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit nit-picky, but RMS is perfectly fine with commercial software (software that is sold for money), he objects to proprietary software (software that you cannot read and modify the source code of). Freeware is not commercial, but proprietary. When you buy a Linux distro CD, that's commercial, but might be non-proprietary (depending on the distro).

Yet selling software--not services--seems incompatible with RMS's insistence on the freedom of end users to distribute without cost.

It's not incompatible in the slightest. If I write software and give it to you only in exchange for money, licenced under the GPL, then I am selling software completely in agreement with RMS's principles.

Also, RMS doesn't insist on any freedom of end users to distribute without cost. Only on you not limiting their redistribution.

Now, that makes some licencing models impossible, sure, but those are hardly the only way to sell software.

Re: RMS: Beware of Contradictory “Support”

#100

Post by mtmiller »

emp_zealoth wrote: post #89
deepnet wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Prof Andrew Ng first ran his Machine Learning MOOC, very many of us relied on Octave. An Octave dev showed up to help students and a fundraiser was organised in return. In the cases you mention, surely it would be trivial to prove if the problem was Ghostscript or not by demonstrating graph 3 or the missing data points were output or not by Octave before Ghostscripts png conversion. Surely modularity makes it ea…

http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?44050 I could easily reproduce the issue on a few different machines. I'm pretty sure it is ghostscript issue because it also hangs similarily when converting some images to pdfs. I can't remember if I even bothered to report the issue on GhostScript tracker - there are exactly the same issues being reported as early as 2008 all the way to today.

Hi, as one of the devs who commented on your issue (and the one who closed it as "not our problem"), I empathize with your position and agree that it can be frustrating to deal with large complex projects with a lot of dependencies. If any of our comments contributed to your feeling less welcome or less empowered to use or help improve Octave, then I sincerely apologize.

I have personally been affected by more than a couple of ghostscript bugs that have drastically impacted my use of Octave over the years, either crashing, busy waiting, or memory grabbing. My first response has always been to start digging into ghostscript to find out why it's screwing me over and try to fix it myself or come up with a workaround.

Not making an excuse, just offering that for myself one of the immeasurable advantages of working with completely free software is that I feel empowered to at least try to identify and fix problems when they happen.

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