4 ms·

Reasons Not to Use Google (2015)

118 points by dsr12 10y ago

wonko1 10y ago
His reasoning that it uses "non-free JavaScript" seems a bit redundant these days (given that almost every site does). I always value Stallman's commitment, but it's often impractical to maintain while being a productive member of society. Keeps me considering the possibility of freer alternatives though, and I find it valuable for that reason alone.
- bleahYuck 10y ago
  Just because everybody does it, doesn't make it right.
  - unixhero 10y ago
    Insert Godwin's Law here
  - kome 10y ago
    Indeed. The web is sick of JavaScript, and I mean it. JavaScript is used 70% of the time for totally unnecessary stuff, than makes the web slower and full of cruft.
  - wonko1 10y ago
    Doesn't make it right, but doesn't seem worth mentioning if you're talking about specific issues with Google, rather than websites in general.
  - rabbyte 10y ago
    Just because it's right, doesn't make it practical. It can be occupy protesters who own iPhones to coordinate or open source purists who use Slack to join projects they love or environmentalists filling their gas tank. In the end, there has to be a more practical strategy that enables a person to fight for the world they want while living in the world that exists.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      > open source purists who use Slack That is inexcusable, though. There are more alternatives than you can count, if you use Matrix, Mattermost, some webirc system with included bouncer, or whatever.
      - rabbyte 10y ago
        You misunderstand. It was not the open source purist that chose Slack, it was the wave of popular projects all on Slack the open source purist could no longer resist joining. The alternative to Slack in their case isn't IRC, it's doing another line of work as all the projects within their chosen area of expertise are on Slack. Same is true of my other examples, there's a tipping point where your principled stance forces you to be an outlier, completely irrelevant to the world. edit- In this case, the open source purist has to join Slack if only to beg people to go to IRC, a move that is at that point more energy than the community will think worth the purists principled gain.
  - LeanderK 10y ago
    But just because a minority does it, doesn't make it right (correct english?). I don't share his definition of freedom applied to software, simple as that. I also don't think most of the society shares his values, i often get the idea that he lives in a bubble. Like somebody preaching abstinence instead of birth-control. I get that "free software" has advantages, but for me it also has disadvantages and therefore can and should not replace all the "unfree software".
TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
tl;dr: because non-free JavaScript. Also tracking. Okay, thanks for your opinion RMS.
Santosh83 10y ago
Nothing inherently wrong in companies, profit, or even proprietary software. It is abuse and misuse of their power and capacity that we should raises of voices (and choices against). For example I consciously avoid Google Chrome because I object to how it is bundled with literally every Android phone, bundled with a lot of unrelated software and you cannot browse through any Google web property without being nagged to use/install Chrome from time to time, even after I dismiss those prompts. I see this as incipient abuse of power that could grow a lot worse if we keep turning a blind eye. But not all Google products/effors need to be tarred with a broad brush. Everything depends...
drinchev 10y ago
People can hardly choose use / don't use Google anymore. If there should be a protest against Google and other big companies, I expect it to be lead by governments and regulations. I don't mind companies use non-free software, but I do mind if they do whatever they want with their users on a legal basis. Not to mention government services, built with .NET, which yeah - you are obliged to use.
- bostand 10y ago
  There are reasons for avoiding Google, but I found Stallman's list a bit odd. Why do I care if the javascript I use to sign up on Google+ is not free? Now if you don't like being tracked at all time 1: enable privacy options for your Google account 2: avoid using Google Play and 3: start using duckduckgo
  - rahoulb 10y ago
    Ultimately all RMS's issues come down to "who do you trust?" If you enable all your Google account privacy options - can you be sure that they do what they say they are doing? How do you know that? Can you be sure your information isn't being intercepted along the way? If you trust Google then fine. But if there is even the slightest amount of doubt then someone you trust (preferably you yourself) needs to audit the code and every pathway the data travels along before you can be absolutely sure.
    - bostand 10y ago
      I don't think what you say really applies in this particular context. Sure you may 100% trust someones open code, but if you don't have any insight in their backend once again it comes down to who you trust the most.
      - rahoulb 10y ago
        Which is why you need to audit every pathway the data travels along. And why RMS only uses computers with free software firmware.
xook 10y ago
Obvious privacy issues aside, Stallman has always come off - to me - as someone who doesn't really see the bigger picture. I thank him for taking a stance against corruption, but there is a line between practical and impractical. I don't know him personally, but his being top wheel of the FSF has skewed his reality. I cannot remember where I heard it, but I believe he is quoted (heavily paraphrasing here) along the lines of, "I may be fighting a losing fight, but it's all I can do, and I won't stop until I'm dead." Practicality is the ultimate deciding factor at its core. Practicality decides whether you use a GPL-based license or the Apache license. Practicality decides whether you choose to avoid a website because of non-free Javascript. Practicality decides whether you can eat that muffin and switch gears on the road, and so on. It is a bit like using secure services and utilizing OpSec. Where do you draw the line between convenience and security? Where does it stop being practical and where does it matter to stick to a principle? Maybe he is just aging, and his brain is in an infinite loop. As I said, I do not know the man myself. But not having a clear focus of how life is for a majority of people can be a huge factor.
- pavanky 10y ago
  Eh, we need the idealists in the world. If not it'd be a much more boring and fractured place.
- kristopolous 10y ago
  No need to be polite. Extremist weirdos are behind essentially all important, groundbreaking, awesome things. A well mannered "normal" person would have never written the GPL and would have tolerated software that didn't match their politics. The fringe provides a mandatory function in steering the cultural ship. Early advocates for things like minimum wages or child labor laws were Molotov cocktail throwing anarchists. Early women suffragists were equally way out there - even by quite permissive modern standards. Subversives are necessary in order to subvert and often make the world a better place.
  - spiridon64 10y ago
    Hugo Black or Edgar Gardner Murphy were molotov coctail throwing anarchists? Well, the more we know...
verandaguy 10y ago
It's already been brought up in this thread, but I'm concerned that RMS is undermining his own points by distancing himself from reality, allowing him to exaggerate them to the point where nobody takes him seriously anymore. Nobody on Earth* will restrict themselves to using only websites, operating systems, and software and hardware packages which are fully free and open source. That would be insanely restrictive, and generally speaking -- at the risk of being blunt -- you'd be resorting to consistently using lower-quality, less-supported software a lot of the time†. I'm sure he's got some valid points, but his approach to modern technology based on them essentially involves reverting back to the days of the extremely early internet, where the actual person-to-person networking was restricted to mailing lists and IRC; two formats which the majority of internet users today likely wouldn't be crazy about compared to the alternatives. * who wants to be a normal and productive member of modern society † not that there isn't great F/OSS software out there -- Linux and BSD are absolute wonders compared to Windows, but a lot of the time it's like comparing the GIMP to Photoshop -- there's just more refinement in a piece of software developed by thousands of paid, dedicated, full-time developers over two or so decades.
- Ace17 10y ago
  > "who wants to be a normal and productive member of modern society" Maybe it's just me, but being a "normal" member of any society isn't very appealing.
  - wott 10y ago
    And that's the second comment with the exact same wording: "productive member of society". Productive. Member. Of society. It's got something scary.
- yousry 10y ago
  In East Germany Stasi (Staats Sicherheit = Homeland Security) informers were normal and productive members of society.
- loup-vaillant 10y ago
  Many worthwile causes require effort and sacrifice. A world of free software would most certainly be better, but to get there, some of us may have to suffer extreme inconveniences, such as using lower-quality, less-supported software just to boycott the proprietary stuff. It's a political choice.
austincheney 10y ago
I prefer DuckDuckGo. Privacy issues aside they just strive to be the better search engine for software developers. And they have an open source platform for displaying a selected tool or result to a software request query called DuckDuckHack. https://duckduckhack.com/ https://duckduckhack.com/
- NovaS1X 10y ago
  I've been using DDG exclusively for almost two years now. I honestly forget that I'm using it most of the time. I can "Google" things and I always get what I'm after. It perfectly replaces Google 100% for me.
  - __david__ 10y ago
    I think that it's far worse than google. Don't get me wrong, it's still my main search engine, but I find I have to revert to google to find what I want between 30% and 50% of the time.
    - svarrall 10y ago
      Agree. I'm in the same position. I find it particularly poor and combining multiple search terms, where it seems to favour the most popular of the terms and ignore the important narrowing keywords important to the search.
      - odabaxok 10y ago
        Another agree. Also, it is way behind with localized searches.
    - NovaS1X 10y ago
      I'm legitimately interested in what things you have been unable to find. Back when I was still working as an SE there were a few minor things that I'd have to revert back to Google for but for 95% of my "professional Googling" DDG worked for me.
- 10y ago
ifdefdebug 10y ago
> "A nonfree program submits the users to the power of the program's developer." That's true but it's not evil to offer nonfree programs. It's my choice to run it or not.
NuDinNou 10y ago
I've been using DuckDuckGo instead of Google for the past 2 years and I'm happy with it. I love the bangs feature https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang
jusq 10y ago
At some point I realized I have more than enough local disk space to maintain and run my own local search engine. So I have been saving and indexing every page of my browsing history and bookmarks for the past 3-4 years. I have a local copy of wikipedia/stackoverflow and offline docs via Zeal. The only time I need google these days is for casual map location/distance queries. I am too lazy to type out the details of my setup but it works quite well. I point people at this link and the associated search project for similar ideas - http://aurelieherbelot.net/how-small-is-the-world-wide-web-really/ http://aurelieherbelot.net/how-small-is-the-world-wide-web-r... Initially the only thing that I missed out on and struggled with was news (cause at the time google news had been my default homepage for a while). After trying all kinds of url/keyword blocking at various levels (browser/host file/router) I am finally down to 2 hours of internet a day. Why am I doing all this - cause the web today (including hacker news) is just wasting my time. Tim Wu makes the case much better than I could here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xm-1CoAuw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xm-1CoAuw8
- akavel 10y ago
  Is there a chance you could reconsider and try sharing some of the details of your setup? I never imagined one could try doing something like that, and even now that you triggered my imagination (and after reading the link), I have hard time picturing how to even start building such a setup, not to mention a practically usable one???
- tzs 10y ago
  What do you do when you want to find information about a topic that is not mentioned in any sites you've browsed before or bookmarked, and is not covered in Wikipedia or Stackoverflow?
jmartinpetersen 10y ago
Why is it a problem for him that Google serves you non-GPL Javascript, but not that they host all your files and can remove them at will? Or that they can remove all the backend services whenever they please? I find it really hard to follow his line of thoughts at times, but he's usually some sort of internally consistent, so what am I missing?
hashmal 10y ago
I'm using google less and less, and it's not because of any of this. I find the results just not as relevant as before. The web viewed through google's lens seem to be just about content marketing and outdated stuff.
edanm 10y ago
I get where Richard Stallman is coming from. But, practicality aside, and sometimes childish tone aside (e.g. derogatory names for companies) here's what really bothers me: the framing of this as a moral issue. I can get behind the idea that non-free code might be a problem, sometimes. I can get behind the idea that we should, in some situations, strive to have non-free code. But why is this a moral issue at all? Why can't reasonable people get together and decide that proprietary code makes sense for some situations, and that doesn't make them or the people using the code morally wrong? I have a hard time with people whose shtick is mostly "appeal to emotions".
- kuschku 10y ago
  Because it is a moral question: Should you be able to control all data about you, and how it moves? Should ownership mean the ability to entirely modify something? If you agree that these two are automatically derived from basic moral principles – control over yourself, and the right to ownership – then you also have to agree that closed source products, and SaaS, are morally problematic.
  - anon1385 10y ago
    >Because it is a moral question: Should you be able to control all data about you, and how it moves? That's not the argument Stallman actually makes here though. Note that he doesn't list 'propriety software running on Google's servers' as a reason not to use Google, even though that has far more of an an impact on your ability to control information about you (or to modify the software that you are using) then the comparatively small amount of client side javascript that runs when you use Google. The general FSF/Stallman position is that non-free software is fine as long as you access it over a network. So clearly control over your own data isn't why RMS is morally opposed to non-free software.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      > The general FSF/Stallman position is that non-free software is fine as long as you access it over a network No? https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...
faragon 10y ago
Stallman is right. However, people, myself included, use Google services (search/email/groups/docs/maps/youtube/etc.) because it is easy, cheap, and good.
tzs 10y ago
> Google supports the TPP because of three mostly-evil provisions that would benefit Google According to the link he gave to Google's statement on TPP, here are the three provisions as described by Google: #1> The Internet has revolutionized how people can share and access information, and the TPP promotes the free flow of information in ways that are unprecedented for a binding international agreement. The TPP requires the 12 participating countries to allow cross-border transfers of information and prohibits them from requiring local storage of data. These provisions will support the Internet’s open architecture and make it more difficult for TPP countries to block Internet sites -- so that users have access to a web that is global, not just local. #2> The TPP provides strong copyright protections, while also requiring fair and reasonable copyright exceptions and limitations that protect the Internet. It balances the interests of copyright holders with the public’s interest in the wider distribution and use of creative works -- enabling innovations like search engines, social networks, video recording, the iPod, cloud computing, and machine learning. The endorsement of balanced copyright is unprecedented for a trade agreement. The TPP similarly requires the kinds of copyright safe harbors that have been critical to the Internet’s success, with allowances for some variation to account for different legal systems. #3> The TPP advances other important Internet policy goals. It prohibits discrimination against foreign Internet services, limits governments’ ability to demand access to encryption keys or other cryptographic methods, requires pro-innovation telecom access policies, prohibits customs duties on digital products, requires proportionality in intellectual property remedies, and advances other key digital goals. #1 and #3 sound like things that Stallman would like. Anyone happen to know what he dislikes about them?
- bamboozled 10y ago
  I believe it doesn't sound so bad because that's Google interpretation of why the TPP is good for Google. But the TPP is a huge deal and there are many different aspects to it. I think the point Stallman is making here, is they're lobbying for something that would be harmful for the future of mankind, out of self-interest. I believed in Google because I believe in "don't be evil", but we're passed that now, regrettably.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
bamboozled 10y ago
I agree with Stallman, he sounds like radical but he always has been. We should consider that maybe the Internet really has become a mass surveillance tool, a privacy issue, a billboard and maybe even a distraction from the real issues humans face today. We might have to except the fact that Google is now, just another major corporation trying to grow infinitely and is less concerned about what it takes to stay at the top, they're walking an ethical tight rope of their own making, especially with regards to supporting the TPP. I use alternatives frequently now and I feel better for it. DuckDuckGo, TOR, Diconnect.me etc. We as tech focused people could be doing more to protect users online privacy and I applaud Stallman for having the courage to speak out about these issues, they are important.

118 points by dsr12 10y ago

His reasoning that it uses "non-free JavaScript" seems a bit redundant these days (given that almost every site does). I always value Stallman's commitment, but it's often impractical to maintain while being a productive member of society. Keeps me considering the possibility of freer alternatives though, and I find it valuable for that reason alone.

bleahYuck 10y ago
Just because everybody does it, doesn't make it right.
- unixhero 10y ago
  Insert Godwin's Law here
- kome 10y ago
  Indeed. The web is sick of JavaScript, and I mean it. JavaScript is used 70% of the time for totally unnecessary stuff, than makes the web slower and full of cruft.
- wonko1 10y ago
  Doesn't make it right, but doesn't seem worth mentioning if you're talking about specific issues with Google, rather than websites in general.
- rabbyte 10y ago
  Just because it's right, doesn't make it practical. It can be occupy protesters who own iPhones to coordinate or open source purists who use Slack to join projects they love or environmentalists filling their gas tank. In the end, there has to be a more practical strategy that enables a person to fight for the world they want while living in the world that exists.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    > open source purists who use Slack That is inexcusable, though. There are more alternatives than you can count, if you use Matrix, Mattermost, some webirc system with included bouncer, or whatever.
    - rabbyte 10y ago
      You misunderstand. It was not the open source purist that chose Slack, it was the wave of popular projects all on Slack the open source purist could no longer resist joining. The alternative to Slack in their case isn't IRC, it's doing another line of work as all the projects within their chosen area of expertise are on Slack. Same is true of my other examples, there's a tipping point where your principled stance forces you to be an outlier, completely irrelevant to the world. edit- In this case, the open source purist has to join Slack if only to beg people to go to IRC, a move that is at that point more energy than the community will think worth the purists principled gain.
- LeanderK 10y ago
  But just because a minority does it, doesn't make it right (correct english?). I don't share his definition of freedom applied to software, simple as that. I also don't think most of the society shares his values, i often get the idea that he lives in a bubble. Like somebody preaching abstinence instead of birth-control. I get that "free software" has advantages, but for me it also has disadvantages and therefore can and should not replace all the "unfree software".

TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago

tl;dr: because non-free JavaScript. Also tracking. Okay, thanks for your opinion RMS.

Santosh83 10y ago

Nothing inherently wrong in companies, profit, or even proprietary software. It is abuse and misuse of their power and capacity that we should raises of voices (and choices against). For example I consciously avoid Google Chrome because I object to how it is bundled with literally every Android phone, bundled with a lot of unrelated software and you cannot browse through any Google web property without being nagged to use/install Chrome from time to time, even after I dismiss those prompts. I see this as incipient abuse of power that could grow a lot worse if we keep turning a blind eye. But not all Google products/effors need to be tarred with a broad brush. Everything depends...

drinchev 10y ago

People can hardly choose use / don't use Google anymore. If there should be a protest against Google and other big companies, I expect it to be lead by governments and regulations. I don't mind companies use non-free software, but I do mind if they do whatever they want with their users on a legal basis. Not to mention government services, built with .NET, which yeah - you are obliged to use.

bostand 10y ago
There are reasons for avoiding Google, but I found Stallman's list a bit odd. Why do I care if the javascript I use to sign up on Google+ is not free? Now if you don't like being tracked at all time 1: enable privacy options for your Google account 2: avoid using Google Play and 3: start using duckduckgo
- rahoulb 10y ago
  Ultimately all RMS's issues come down to "who do you trust?" If you enable all your Google account privacy options - can you be sure that they do what they say they are doing? How do you know that? Can you be sure your information isn't being intercepted along the way? If you trust Google then fine. But if there is even the slightest amount of doubt then someone you trust (preferably you yourself) needs to audit the code and every pathway the data travels along before you can be absolutely sure.
  - bostand 10y ago
    I don't think what you say really applies in this particular context. Sure you may 100% trust someones open code, but if you don't have any insight in their backend once again it comes down to who you trust the most.
    - rahoulb 10y ago
      Which is why you need to audit every pathway the data travels along. And why RMS only uses computers with free software firmware.

xook 10y ago

Obvious privacy issues aside, Stallman has always come off - to me - as someone who doesn't really see the bigger picture. I thank him for taking a stance against corruption, but there is a line between practical and impractical. I don't know him personally, but his being top wheel of the FSF has skewed his reality. I cannot remember where I heard it, but I believe he is quoted (heavily paraphrasing here) along the lines of, "I may be fighting a losing fight, but it's all I can do, and I won't stop until I'm dead." Practicality is the ultimate deciding factor at its core. Practicality decides whether you use a GPL-based license or the Apache license. Practicality decides whether you choose to avoid a website because of non-free Javascript. Practicality decides whether you can eat that muffin and switch gears on the road, and so on. It is a bit like using secure services and utilizing OpSec. Where do you draw the line between convenience and security? Where does it stop being practical and where does it matter to stick to a principle? Maybe he is just aging, and his brain is in an infinite loop. As I said, I do not know the man myself. But not having a clear focus of how life is for a majority of people can be a huge factor.

pavanky 10y ago
Eh, we need the idealists in the world. If not it'd be a much more boring and fractured place.
kristopolous 10y ago
No need to be polite. Extremist weirdos are behind essentially all important, groundbreaking, awesome things. A well mannered "normal" person would have never written the GPL and would have tolerated software that didn't match their politics. The fringe provides a mandatory function in steering the cultural ship. Early advocates for things like minimum wages or child labor laws were Molotov cocktail throwing anarchists. Early women suffragists were equally way out there - even by quite permissive modern standards. Subversives are necessary in order to subvert and often make the world a better place.
- spiridon64 10y ago
  Hugo Black or Edgar Gardner Murphy were molotov coctail throwing anarchists? Well, the more we know...

verandaguy 10y ago

It's already been brought up in this thread, but I'm concerned that RMS is undermining his own points by distancing himself from reality, allowing him to exaggerate them to the point where nobody takes him seriously anymore. Nobody on Earth* will restrict themselves to using only websites, operating systems, and software and hardware packages which are fully free and open source. That would be insanely restrictive, and generally speaking -- at the risk of being blunt -- you'd be resorting to consistently using lower-quality, less-supported software a lot of the time†. I'm sure he's got some valid points, but his approach to modern technology based on them essentially involves reverting back to the days of the extremely early internet, where the actual person-to-person networking was restricted to mailing lists and IRC; two formats which the majority of internet users today likely wouldn't be crazy about compared to the alternatives. * who wants to be a normal and productive member of modern society † not that there isn't great F/OSS software out there -- Linux and BSD are absolute wonders compared to Windows, but a lot of the time it's like comparing the GIMP to Photoshop -- there's just more refinement in a piece of software developed by thousands of paid, dedicated, full-time developers over two or so decades.

Ace17 10y ago
> "who wants to be a normal and productive member of modern society" Maybe it's just me, but being a "normal" member of any society isn't very appealing.
- wott 10y ago
  And that's the second comment with the exact same wording: "productive member of society". Productive. Member. Of society. It's got something scary.
yousry 10y ago
In East Germany Stasi (Staats Sicherheit = Homeland Security) informers were normal and productive members of society.
loup-vaillant 10y ago
Many worthwile causes require effort and sacrifice. A world of free software would most certainly be better, but to get there, some of us may have to suffer extreme inconveniences, such as using lower-quality, less-supported software just to boycott the proprietary stuff. It's a political choice.

austincheney 10y ago

I prefer DuckDuckGo. Privacy issues aside they just strive to be the better search engine for software developers. And they have an open source platform for displaying a selected tool or result to a software request query called DuckDuckHack. https://duckduckhack.com/ https://duckduckhack.com/

NovaS1X 10y ago
I've been using DDG exclusively for almost two years now. I honestly forget that I'm using it most of the time. I can "Google" things and I always get what I'm after. It perfectly replaces Google 100% for me.
- __david__ 10y ago
  I think that it's far worse than google. Don't get me wrong, it's still my main search engine, but I find I have to revert to google to find what I want between 30% and 50% of the time.
  - svarrall 10y ago
    Agree. I'm in the same position. I find it particularly poor and combining multiple search terms, where it seems to favour the most popular of the terms and ignore the important narrowing keywords important to the search.
    - odabaxok 10y ago
      Another agree. Also, it is way behind with localized searches.
  - NovaS1X 10y ago
    I'm legitimately interested in what things you have been unable to find. Back when I was still working as an SE there were a few minor things that I'd have to revert back to Google for but for 95% of my "professional Googling" DDG worked for me.
10y ago

ifdefdebug 10y ago

> "A nonfree program submits the users to the power of the program's developer." That's true but it's not evil to offer nonfree programs. It's my choice to run it or not.

NuDinNou 10y ago

I've been using DuckDuckGo instead of Google for the past 2 years and I'm happy with it. I love the bangs feature https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang

jusq 10y ago

At some point I realized I have more than enough local disk space to maintain and run my own local search engine. So I have been saving and indexing every page of my browsing history and bookmarks for the past 3-4 years. I have a local copy of wikipedia/stackoverflow and offline docs via Zeal. The only time I need google these days is for casual map location/distance queries. I am too lazy to type out the details of my setup but it works quite well. I point people at this link and the associated search project for similar ideas - http://aurelieherbelot.net/how-small-is-the-world-wide-web-really/ http://aurelieherbelot.net/how-small-is-the-world-wide-web-r... Initially the only thing that I missed out on and struggled with was news (cause at the time google news had been my default homepage for a while). After trying all kinds of url/keyword blocking at various levels (browser/host file/router) I am finally down to 2 hours of internet a day. Why am I doing all this - cause the web today (including hacker news) is just wasting my time. Tim Wu makes the case much better than I could here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xm-1CoAuw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xm-1CoAuw8

akavel 10y ago
Is there a chance you could reconsider and try sharing some of the details of your setup? I never imagined one could try doing something like that, and even now that you triggered my imagination (and after reading the link), I have hard time picturing how to even start building such a setup, not to mention a practically usable one???
tzs 10y ago
What do you do when you want to find information about a topic that is not mentioned in any sites you've browsed before or bookmarked, and is not covered in Wikipedia or Stackoverflow?

jmartinpetersen 10y ago

Why is it a problem for him that Google serves you non-GPL Javascript, but not that they host all your files and can remove them at will? Or that they can remove all the backend services whenever they please? I find it really hard to follow his line of thoughts at times, but he's usually some sort of internally consistent, so what am I missing?

hashmal 10y ago

I'm using google less and less, and it's not because of any of this. I find the results just not as relevant as before. The web viewed through google's lens seem to be just about content marketing and outdated stuff.

edanm 10y ago

I get where Richard Stallman is coming from. But, practicality aside, and sometimes childish tone aside (e.g. derogatory names for companies) here's what really bothers me: the framing of this as a moral issue. I can get behind the idea that non-free code might be a problem, sometimes. I can get behind the idea that we should, in some situations, strive to have non-free code. But why is this a moral issue at all? Why can't reasonable people get together and decide that proprietary code makes sense for some situations, and that doesn't make them or the people using the code morally wrong? I have a hard time with people whose shtick is mostly "appeal to emotions".

kuschku 10y ago
Because it is a moral question: Should you be able to control all data about you, and how it moves? Should ownership mean the ability to entirely modify something? If you agree that these two are automatically derived from basic moral principles – control over yourself, and the right to ownership – then you also have to agree that closed source products, and SaaS, are morally problematic.
- anon1385 10y ago
  >Because it is a moral question: Should you be able to control all data about you, and how it moves? That's not the argument Stallman actually makes here though. Note that he doesn't list 'propriety software running on Google's servers' as a reason not to use Google, even though that has far more of an an impact on your ability to control information about you (or to modify the software that you are using) then the comparatively small amount of client side javascript that runs when you use Google. The general FSF/Stallman position is that non-free software is fine as long as you access it over a network. So clearly control over your own data isn't why RMS is morally opposed to non-free software.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    > The general FSF/Stallman position is that non-free software is fine as long as you access it over a network No? https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...

faragon 10y ago

Stallman is right. However, people, myself included, use Google services (search/email/groups/docs/maps/youtube/etc.) because it is easy, cheap, and good.

tzs 10y ago

> Google supports the TPP because of three mostly-evil provisions that would benefit Google According to the link he gave to Google's statement on TPP, here are the three provisions as described by Google: #1> The Internet has revolutionized how people can share and access information, and the TPP promotes the free flow of information in ways that are unprecedented for a binding international agreement. The TPP requires the 12 participating countries to allow cross-border transfers of information and prohibits them from requiring local storage of data. These provisions will support the Internet’s open architecture and make it more difficult for TPP countries to block Internet sites -- so that users have access to a web that is global, not just local. #2> The TPP provides strong copyright protections, while also requiring fair and reasonable copyright exceptions and limitations that protect the Internet. It balances the interests of copyright holders with the public’s interest in the wider distribution and use of creative works -- enabling innovations like search engines, social networks, video recording, the iPod, cloud computing, and machine learning. The endorsement of balanced copyright is unprecedented for a trade agreement. The TPP similarly requires the kinds of copyright safe harbors that have been critical to the Internet’s success, with allowances for some variation to account for different legal systems. #3> The TPP advances other important Internet policy goals. It prohibits discrimination against foreign Internet services, limits governments’ ability to demand access to encryption keys or other cryptographic methods, requires pro-innovation telecom access policies, prohibits customs duties on digital products, requires proportionality in intellectual property remedies, and advances other key digital goals. #1 and #3 sound like things that Stallman would like. Anyone happen to know what he dislikes about them?

bamboozled 10y ago
I believe it doesn't sound so bad because that's Google interpretation of why the TPP is good for Google. But the TPP is a huge deal and there are many different aspects to it. I think the point Stallman is making here, is they're lobbying for something that would be harmful for the future of mankind, out of self-interest. I believed in Google because I believe in "don't be evil", but we're passed that now, regrettably.
deleted 10y ago
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bamboozled 10y ago

I agree with Stallman, he sounds like radical but he always has been. We should consider that maybe the Internet really has become a mass surveillance tool, a privacy issue, a billboard and maybe even a distraction from the real issues humans face today. We might have to except the fact that Google is now, just another major corporation trying to grow infinitely and is less concerned about what it takes to stay at the top, they're walking an ethical tight rope of their own making, especially with regards to supporting the TPP. I use alternatives frequently now and I feel better for it. DuckDuckGo, TOR, Diconnect.me etc. We as tech focused people could be doing more to protect users online privacy and I applaud Stallman for having the courage to speak out about these issues, they are important.