9 ms·
Please, no GitHub (2015)
- johnchristopher 8y agoThe interesting tidbits are here https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/discuss-gnustep/2015-12/msg00182.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/discuss-gnustep/2015-12/m... Savannah is some kind of hosting platform for GNU projects.
- Promarged 8y agoYep, your link is more relevant. There is also this: https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html
- mattl 8y agoSavannah runs a fork of the original era SourceForge when it was released as free software. Wrote about this 10 years ago. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/savannah https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/savannah Have a new version coming soon.
- felipelemos 8y agoThis answer from Luboš Doležel it's right in the point IMHO: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/discuss-gnustep/2015-12/msg00187.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/discuss-gnustep/2015-12/m... "Your vision of freedom is rather absolutistic, since forcing freedom upon others goes against the very nature of freedom."
- briandear 8y agoThat is the money quote to be sure. The idea that his version of “freedom” should be considered the only version of freedom is, perhaps paradoxically, totalitarian. I honestly don’t care about thinking about license philosophy every waking minute. When I use a Coke machines, I don’t care if that system is proprietary: I just want my Coke. The Stalman approach would be to never use a Coke machine — nor permit others to do so either because he hates proprietary licenses. That’s great except that imposes a restriction on my freedom to drink a Coke. Would he eat at a restaurant that doesn’t provide detailed recipes of everything he orders? If he had his way, there would be no restaurants unless they all provided recipes, which means that “secret sauce” becomes not so secret and thus commoditizes the hard work of those who developed it.
- bonesss 8y ago> If he had his way, there would be no restaurants unless they all provided recipes I'd suggest you read more of his work -- The Right To Read springs to mind -- as that's a misrepresentation of his ideology. His fight is for the right to open the hood of your car and decide yourself if you've got the right carburettor and maybe swap out a lug nut or two using standard dimensions, conventions, and tools. To match your example: he wouldn't eat at a restaurant that somehow made it impossible to open up your burger and see if the onions are caramelised, and required you only use McRestaurant brand utensils to eat the food. Do you own the food? Is it yours? Are you free to take parts out and add parts if you want? Or do you not have "the right" to decide that the pickles look sketchy? Recipes, in your analogy, would represent academic knowledge. I'm pretty sure he's for sharing that, too, but the GPL has no requirements that people understand how you're creating the tasty algorithms you're serving on those floppy disks... That doesn't get commoditised, as such, but instead gains new value propositions as the demand for it raises through developing an economic ecosystem surrounding it. That is to say: RedHat is more valuable because I can "commoditise" their drivers and then pay them money to scratch my itch, not less. Most businesses are in the "make money" business elsewhere, not in the Linux business. Sharing is profit.
- AlexandrB 8y agoRMS has an annoying habit of being quite unreasonable and also, in retrospect, absolutely right.
- djsumdog 8y agoHe doesn't ride Amtrak because they don't take cash (you can be tracked via credit card payments). I really respect RMS, but my purchasing decisions kinda stop at not shopping at Wal-Mart since 2009 and Amazon a few years later. I also realize my choices are symbolic and those companies will keep doing what they do no matter what. I still shop at Whole-Foods.. I feel like you need to find the balance between Stallman idealism and the reality that we live in a post-Edward Bernayes world. I remember our sun will burn out one day and take a shot of nihilism before bed, to help forget so I can bike to work the next day.
- roadbeats 8y agoHe would feel home in Germany then. Most people prefer cash here for same reason.
- gmueckl 8y agoThis is mostly because payment systems in Germany are not there yet. Supermarkets often still require a minimum amount before they accept bank cards. There are tons of shops which don't accept credit cards at all. Also, often payment with cash turns out to be executed faster than going through the motions with a card (the waiting times between steps are unusually long).
- SOLAR_FIELDS 8y agoPerhaps Germany might be lucky in that when (if?) cards finally see widespread adoption everywhere will have NFC support so that solutions like Apple Pay will be accepted everywhere. It seems likely because most new card systems accept NFC. We’ve seen very slow adoption of NFC based systems in the USA mainly because of legacy systems.
- djsumdog 8y agoI feel like what I liked about open source, back in the 90s when I was in high school, was the concept and ideals around the GPL. Linux was my primary OS all through University. I wrote this about OSS a while back: https://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source-in-community-and-enterprise-software/ https://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source... I've worked for an "open source" shop that made no differentiation on licenses (GPL vs BSDL). They did a lot of consulting/contracting and although they did release OSS code, a lot of times it was for a project that died off or was deprecated. Meanwhile, Apple has actively been trying to remove GPL code from their OS. I know Stallman does agree with support license based companies liked Redhat, but what are his opinions on Commercial vs Enterprise setups like Gitlab? (Even with Gitlab, the Enterprise version is open source; you just can't legally run it without a license ... which is an interesting model for sure).
- Tijdreiziger 8y agoGitLab Enterprise is _not_ open source. https://about.gitlab.com/installation/ce-or-ee/ https://about.gitlab.com/installation/ce-or-ee/
- quadrangle 8y agoTrue, but that's because the comment you are replying to is being erroneous and sloppy with the term "open source". GitLab EE is source-available while not meeting the full "open source" definition.
- Tijdreiziger 8y agoAfter Googling some more I see now that GitLab's source is indeed publically viewable [0] (I was under the impression that it's not). [0] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee
- Maro 8y agoThe reasons RMS has for not liking Github have nothing to do with the recent MS acquisition. If you read into the thread, it's quite non-sensical, RMS eg. says Github is evil because the license picker doesn't push his license strong enough, with just the wording he'd be happy with: "You've put your finger on the problem. The site leads people not to specify explicitly whether it is [GPLv3] "only" or "or-later"." I read into thread about 10 deep but I had to stop, my blood was starting to boil from the nonsense.
- djsumdog 8y agoI think RMS can be about as crazy as David Moore, yet I can see the method in the madness. So I'm in my mid-30s and I still really believe in the GNU GPL. I even license my own stuff as GPLv3 (except for some libraries I released under Apache). I still really believe in the GPL and that model of OSS. I feel like I'm in the minority; that people my age and younger who give a shit about things like this, prefer BSD/MIT/Apache style licenses.
- craftyguy 8y agoI'm slightly younger than you and feel the same way. We can be in the minority together!
- pasabagi 8y agoI think I'm pretty left-wing, and I agree with software freedom as a general rule - but I don't really understand the venom over the subject. We live in a world where people of all ages regularly die because basic necessities are non-free. Software freedom is nice, but compared to every other political problem, kind of boring. In the end, the entire development of computers has been underwritten by massive corporations, the military-industrial complex, and to a large extent, the surveilance/telecoms hybrid that spawned companies like AT&T. I don't really see where being extremely punctilious about software freedom wins you in this context. There's no such thing as a free computer - the concept is borderline absurd, and even if it was possible, you're still using a free computer in a world that's largely characterized by tyranny, which is also absurd.
- roadbeats 8y agoFree software is a healthy diet. You’ll feel restricted but benefit from it in the long term.
- mi100hael 8y agoOn the same topic: https://bogomips.org/unicorn-public/20140801213202.GA2729%40dcvr.yhbt.net/ https://bogomips.org/unicorn-public/20140801213202.GA2729%40... > Current state makes it very hard to mange/search/fork/open-issues etc > especially for newcomers, > please move the project to github so we can have nice disussions > forks/prs etc goodness. No. Never. Github is proprietary communications tool which requires users to accept a terms of service and login. That gives power and influence to a single entity (and a for-profit organization at that). Contributing to unicorn is *socially* as easy as contributing to git or the Linux kernel. There is no need to signup for anything, no need to ever touch a bloated web browser. The reason I contribute to Free Software is because I am against any sort of lock-in or proprietary features. It absolutely sickens me to encounter users who seem to be incapable of using git without a proprietary communications tool.
- stevebmark 8y agoPlease, GOD, no mailing lists. The irony of Stallman's irrelevant comment is multiplied by the use of a mailing list.
- Justsignedup 8y agoRichard Stalman hates _anything_ that isn't GPL. His restrictions is very dogmatic. Don't get me wrong, I think he is important to create the far extreme end of the open source movement so we can gauge ourselves. But his stuff is dogmatic in nature _NOT_ logical in nature. He would rather software be crippled than be useful but non-free. He wants everyone to magically develop on their spare time for free with copyleft licenses. This is craaaaaaazy. People gotta eat. With his model you fall into the musician trap. If you are a world-renown musician you get people coming to your recitals and don't gotta worry about anything else. If you are not, nobody attends and thus you work as a teacher or waiter. There are some open-source developers who make a full living on donations. But they are few and far between.
- quadrangle 8y ago> Richard Stalman hates _anything_ that isn't GPL Actually, Richard emphasizes consistently every time that he is asked that copyleft (GPL) is not required to be free software, and that non-copyleft free software is absolutely fine in itself. It's just that it risks being used to develop proprietary software which shouldn't exist. Richard's problems with GitHub are only about the non-free aspects of it. There's tons of cases of Richard supporting non-GPL free software. Even if he would prefer GPL, the idea that he opposes (let alone "hates") non-GPL free software can only come from pure ignorance of his actual views. > He would rather software be crippled than be useful but non-free Certainly. He feels that we are better off with no software than with non-free software. And incidentally, I find that view to be too dogmatic. But it's not true that he wants people to "magically develop on their spare time for free". That's not only a distortion of his views but a complete fabrication from nothing. Richard wants free software development to be funded and actively advocates for it to be funded. But since he feels non-free software is negative, of course he doesn't want people funded to do something he sees as bad! It's true that he advocates for those privileged enough to volunteer in their spare time to do so, but that's part and parcel of pushing for everyone to take whatever resources they have and actively use them for pro-social good. Regarding the musician analogy, it's pretty decent. We're talking about public goods in both cases, with a set of economic dilemmas inherent. Richard doesn't deny any of this or think it's fine. He's interested in (and has actively proposed) solutions both for music and software. You're completely mistaking Richard's view that non-free software doesn't deserve to be funded (or made at all) with a view he doesn't hold in the slightest (that software doesn't deserve to be funded).
- lasermike026 8y agoI'm game. I'll have to figure out how to help. RMS has strong principles. We need more of that.
- quadrangle 8y agoSome of the comments here help remind me to shut up whenever I find myself thinking dismissive thoughts about a caricature of someone's views when I don't really have insights into what they think. It's far too easy to get a vague impression from a few tidbits, hearsay, and groupthink. It's worth practicing saying "I don't know" a lot more. It's crazy how much people are willing to attack others for holding supposed views without bothering to actually verify the view being held. The vast, vast majority of criticism of Richard Stallman comes from people mischaracterizing his views. It's as though grappling with his actual arguments is just too much of a threat or something. More likely, it's just intellectual sloppiness — posting crap on some online forum without bothering to care about being reasonable.
- JdeBP 8y agoEnjoy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17093957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17093957 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17094036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17094036 . (-:
- quadrangle 8y agoWell, those actually seem totally different from what I'm getting at. I think people who understand Richard can still have valid arguments about his positives and negatives as a leader etc. I can't tell quickly skimming those threads (even their context) whether these are people with real understanding bringing up particular reasonable complaints in just absurdly hyperbolic fashion or whether they are ignorant people with invalid criticisms. Either way, the comments aren't of the simple style where they just say that RMS thinks X and are factually wrong.
- m_mueller 8y agoisn't your comment intellectually sloppy by simply appealing to authority rather than providing actual counterarguments?
- quadrangle 8y agoHere's a rewording: all of us should be very careful not to put words in others mouths, especially when doing so with little knowledge and understanding. That's it. It just so happens that I know Richard's perspectives very well. I've not only read most of his writings, heard/watched several recordings of his, and heard him speak half a dozen times… I've also had several conversations with him directly and also with several people who know him well. So, I have a pretty good understanding of his views. It's only in that light that I'm able to see how rash and poorly-thought-out many of the other people's comments are when they make bold and quite inaccurate assertions about what and how Richard thinks. It's not that you should accept my authority in some sort of logical way that would prove anything I'm saying as true. It's just incidental that I have knowledge in this case that allows me to recognize gross intellectual sloppiness in others in this topic. Asking you to blindly accept my claims about Richard would be closer to appeal-to-authority. But my point is that I want to be wary not to be sloppy the way I see others being. It's a commentary about being overconfident in general. What I'm saying in my meta comment is that there's a risk that I could or even have done the same sloppiness in describing other people who I don't really understand as well. I could imagine writing some dismissive caricature of someone I have negative impression of, such as say Jeff Sessions, for example. And I would be better not to claim to know anything there. All I really know about Sessions is a few bits of impressions from a small number of places I've seen reference to him in the news… If I had to bet, I'd go with my impressions, but it would be careless of me to weigh in with some assertion about what he thinks in the context of some comment-section on some news. I have no real knowledge there, and at most should describe my impressions and ask questions rather than make bold claims about what Sessions believes.