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Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

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Re: Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

#91

Post by quickthrower2 »

nologic01 wrote: post #44

Its easy to drift into lamenting how the vision of the original free software movement was lost. This would be missing the growing forest (the widespread adoption of open and collaborative modes of software production) for a singular tree (a specific ideology about the role of computing). What has been happening in these four decades is that ever more segments of society (whether individuals or private enterprise or…

Yes indeed. The alternative timeline - Windows on nearly all servers and desktops. All software purchased from ISV and closed source. Bugs galore that never get fixed because they have you locked in. Crappy software due to lack of competition.

Re: Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

#92

Post by badsectoracula »

sbuk wrote: post #47
psychoslave wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s see. On the one hand you have people motivated by the ideal of software "developed specifically for the sake of users' freedom". On the other hand you have dystopian corporate whose biggest dream is slave labor and locked-in cash cows from which value is drained 'til the last drop. There is no tactic for obtain reconciliation of two world views in direct and systematic opposition. If engaging in a tactic lead t…

> "On the other hand you have dystopian corporate whose biggest dream is slave labor and locked-in cash cows from which value is drained 'til the last drop." An therein is the problem I, and I know many others, have with the FSF and it's followers. This language is just not compelling - in fact, it's a massive turn off, even if you think it's true. This comes off as the ravings of a crackpot! Consider "On the other h…

This reminds me George Carlin's skit on soft language:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h67k9eEw9AY

Re: Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

#94

Post by bonzini »

red_admiral wrote: post #60
severus_snape wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and then others came along GPL came after MIT ( https://nitter.net/humphd/status/1112747178685026304 ) > and it's a genuine improvement How?

Let's say you want to develop software as a job, and make enough money to live. You also have the ethics not to go into the ad-supported track-everything mobile apps business. There is still good money to be made without selling your soul, but most of it is in the B2B not the B2C market. And there, you negotiate the terms of who owns what individually for each contract anyway, at least if you have any sense. The prob…

Google uses GPL software all the time and links it to proprietary software all the time. Since it runs on their servers and is never distributed, this is perfectly fine.

Re: Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

#95

Post by ta8645 »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #75

I'd like just to say thanks for all the longstanding efforts of FSF and GNU. While one could debate minutiae to oblivion, it's hard to dismiss the core ideas, particularly in light of the continuous stream of facts and events that unequivocally validate the very real threats and maliciousness that this movement stands against. Free Software in general contributes significantly to keeping the environment I live in mor…

> I'd like just to say thanks for all the longstanding efforts of FSF and GNU.

I'd like to extend your thanks, by explicitly thanking Richard Stallman for his important role in creating both those organizations. The man deserves a lot of praise and respect.

Re: Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

#96

Post by mbakke »

dale_glass wrote: post #65
Osmose wrote: post #36

40 years on and they still seem to think giving talks and making free software is a suitable defense of Free Software. It's passive, and has fallen apart in the face of tech companies that actively use their free software tools to make closed source software that routinely violates user's rights. There's so much they _could_ be doing. Where's the grant program for startups working on free software? Where's their shop…

Yeah, I think the FSF and GNU are resting on their laurels and barely relevant. So one of the core things for the FSF has been the GNU tools. Recently it's become trendy to rewrite stuff in Rust, and overall it seems like an excellent idea to have the core tooling of an OS being much harder to exploit, and often much more performant. For instance ripgrep is a nice improvement on the classical grep, nushell is a bette…

I think the FSFE (Europe) is doing a lot better than its American sister foundation, with active involvement in EU politics, running campaigns, etc.

Individual GNU projects are doing fairly well on the technical side (toolchain, Emacs, Guix, Mes), but there is little to no coordination across GNU, much less with the FSFs.

FSF Asia seems to have fallen off the earth, even though India appears to have a fairly active free software movement.

I don't think rewrite in Rust is a solution to "modernize" GNU tools. Maybe another memory safe language, but Rust has severe bootstrapping issues which is a hard sell for distros that care about source to binary transparency.

Re: Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

#97

Post by antipurist »

I’m glad that the free software movement existed for so long and achieved a lot, giving me the opportunity to reap the benefits of their work.

And that’s exactly what disappoints me: everyone can benefit without giving anything in return. FSF didn’t find an approach to software freedom that incentivises participants to contribute. FOSS is not a business model, so we see what we see: https://xkcd.com/2347/

I believe there is a need to adopt more semi-free source-available licenses that will force corporations to finance the projects they rely upon, while granting the expected freedoms to individual users, tinkerers and contributors.

Re: Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

#98

Post by noufalibrahim »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #63
pjmlp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am confident that after GNU generation is gone, everything will fold back as it used to be. We are already living it due to the rise of non-copyleft licenses, return to the shareware model only with another set of marketing names for newer generations, return of timesharing with thin clients only with newer set of nomenclature for newer generations, most relevant FOSS projects are sponsored by big corps for their o…

I hope it doesn't come to that, but some indications are there. The problem is, that nowadays manufacturers and big tech giants can or do lock down their devices much more than when the Free Software movement started out. Also the hardware is way harder to reverse engineer, if possible at all. It is difficult to imagine "a new Software movement" to be initiated in our times. What hardware can they rely on? How would…

That's sort of my point. I don't want it to come to that but a huge of part of why it's come to that were tactical mistakes (esp. in communication) on the part of the FSF.

Re: Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

#99

Post by noufalibrahim »

sbuk wrote: post #47
psychoslave wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s see. On the one hand you have people motivated by the ideal of software "developed specifically for the sake of users' freedom". On the other hand you have dystopian corporate whose biggest dream is slave labor and locked-in cash cows from which value is drained 'til the last drop. There is no tactic for obtain reconciliation of two world views in direct and systematic opposition. If engaging in a tactic lead t…

> "On the other hand you have dystopian corporate whose biggest dream is slave labor and locked-in cash cows from which value is drained 'til the last drop." An therein is the problem I, and I know many others, have with the FSF and it's followers. This language is just not compelling - in fact, it's a massive turn off, even if you think it's true. This comes off as the ravings of a crackpot! Consider "On the other h…

Precisely. It's hard to argue that these "dystopian corporate" entities haven't added any value to the society. You can make a solid case that the intangible costs are too high but starting off with accusing them of "slave labor" and "locked-in cash cows" is a non starter and it's been the kind of rhetoric that the FSF has always used.

I don't (and never wanted) the FSF to dilute its message but I do think they'd benefit from someone who can communicate their ideas in a more palatable way. Perhaps it's too late anyway.

Re: Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

#100

Post by psychoslave »

sbuk wrote: post #47
psychoslave wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s see. On the one hand you have people motivated by the ideal of software "developed specifically for the sake of users' freedom". On the other hand you have dystopian corporate whose biggest dream is slave labor and locked-in cash cows from which value is drained 'til the last drop. There is no tactic for obtain reconciliation of two world views in direct and systematic opposition. If engaging in a tactic lead t…

> "On the other hand you have dystopian corporate whose biggest dream is slave labor and locked-in cash cows from which value is drained 'til the last drop." An therein is the problem I, and I know many others, have with the FSF and it's followers. This language is just not compelling - in fact, it's a massive turn off, even if you think it's true. This comes off as the ravings of a crackpot! Consider "On the other h…

Now, obviously not every small business out there are necessarily fitting such a description. Just like not every FLOW author live and breath by the stance that every single bit out there should contribute to people freedom and empowerment.

If anything, when an audience is unease with what is obvious caricatures which overstate the usual median traits, there is all the more concerns about the situation.

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